Suddenly, it was the month of year-end summary.
The Oxford Dictionary, one of the most comprehensive and authoritative English dictionaries in the contemporary era, announces its annual vocabulary every year, but this year it has said that it has never been able to choose a suitable word to describe 2020. From the COVID-19 outbreak at the beginning of the year to the bushfires in Australia, from anti-racial demonstrations in the United States to the US elections, there have been so many things to remember in 2020.
In the blockchain industry, there have also been many major events in 2020 that deserve careful review in the future. In today’s article, the mine will first lead everyone to take stock of 10 things that have a relatively large impact on the miners.
01
312 Conflict
Under the combined effect of multiple factors such as the new crown epidemic, high leverage, and the death cycle of Bitmex exchange technology, BTC suddenly plummeted from 7934USDT to below 5000USDT on March 12, and the currency price continued to drop the next day, with the lowest falling to 3,782.13USDT.
The plunge of the BTC price dragged the entire crypto market into the water. In just a few days, the market value of the entire cryptocurrency market lost more than 100 billion U.S. dollars.
For miners, the 312 plunge not only led to the shrinking of crypto assets in their hands, but also caused a large number of S9 and other old mining machines to shut down. Bitcoin’s entire network computing power dropped from 110E to a minimum of 85E. On March 26, the difficulty of Bitcoin mining dropped by 15.95%. At that time, this reduction could rank second in Bitcoin history.
The biggest enlightenment for miners from the 312 plunge is to use leverage on the market with caution. Borrowing money to mine can indeed make money and coins, but the money must come from off-market. Because of the 312 black swan market, even if it is double the leverage in the market, it can explode cleanly.
02
Antminer S19 released
Mining machines are like hens that lay golden eggs, continuously bringing “after-sleep income” to our miners.
This year, the most worth mentioning Bitcoin mining machine is the Ant S19 series developed by Bitmain. The Ant S19 series can be divided into S19 and S19 Pro models. Among them, the computing power of the S19 mining machine is 95T, and the energy efficiency ratio is 34.21W/T; the computing power of the S19 Pro mining machine is 110T, and the energy efficiency ratio is 29.55 W/T, which is significantly ahead of the competition.
Because of the 312 plummeting and the low currency price, Bitmain directly delayed the announcement of the price of the Ant S19 mining machine for a week. In the “B.TOP Press Conference and Interview with Miners in the World” held by Zhikuang University, Lebit founder Jiang Zhuoer analyzed:
This mining machine has very little moisture and is basically at a relatively low price. At this time, buying this mining machine for mining, and gradually reducing costs through mining output, it is easy to make yourself invincible.
The first batch of S19-95T mining machines are May futures. When the B.TOP platform under Lebit goes online, the price is 15,295 yuan (200 yuan cheaper than the official website). Looking back now, if I bought the S19 mining machine in Bidou at that time, it would be a very successful mining investment. This year, the production capacity of mining machines is generally insufficient, and it is difficult to find a machine. Bitmain’s S19 futures mining machines will be sold until August 2021, and the price for major customers is as high as 13,770 yuan.
03
Mining output halved
On April 8 this year, BCH took the lead in halving the mining output, and the block reward was reduced from the previous 12.5BCH to 6.25BCH. During the period when BCH mining output has been halved but BTC has not been halved, just as the science popularized by the University of Mining and Technology, BCH has not entered a death spiral.
On May 12th, Beijing time, the Bitcoin block reward was also halved as scheduled. After the halving, Bitcoin’s annual inflation rate fell from 3.7% to 1.8%, which is lower than the 2% inflation target designed for fiat currencies by most central banks in the world.
The mining output is halved, and the first to bear the brunt is the high-energy-consuming old mining machine. However, fortunately, the cheap hydropower resources during the wet season and the steady increase in the price of Bitcoin after the halving have allowed many high-energy-consuming old mining machines (such as the Antminer S9) to still start mining every day.
In addition to BTC, BCH, BSV, many small mining coins have also experienced production reductions this year: BEAM, ETC, DASH, XZC, ZEC, ZEN, Sero, etc.
04
Park Power
This year, the term “park electricity” has entered the field of vision of many miners. Park electricity refers to the electricity in the hydropower consumption industry demonstration zone in Sichuan Province. Because this electricity is consumed in the government-planned industrial park, it is commonly known as park electricity.
This year is the first year that Sichuan Province has implemented park electricity. Compared with direct power supply, the park has the following advantages:
1. The park’s electricity comes from the National Grid, which has better stability.
2. The price of electricity in the park is transparent, and the cost structure is also very clear and transparent.
3. The park electricity is safer.
4. Park electricity means safer venues and more convenient transportation.
For the mining industry, the emergence of park electricity has promoted the standardization and transparency of mining activities, allowing miners to use more stable and compliant electricity, and also promoted the consumption of local surplus hydropower. If you want to know more about the park’s electricity, welcome to read the previous tweet “Mineral Owners Talk About All Aspects of Park’s Electricity”.
05
DeFi liquidity mining
At the end of May and early June this year, the decentralized lending platform Compound fired the first shot of DeFi liquidity mining, and the price of its token COMP rose to a maximum of 372.27 US dollars. The success of Compound has injected new vitality into DeFi, and more and more projects have introduced similar liquidity mining incentives.
Liquid mining does not need to purchase mining machines, select mines, or deploy mining pools. You only need to deposit the corresponding tokens in the DeFi application to participate in mining. It is simple and convenient, and when it is popular, the annualized rate of return is as high as 100 Hundreds of points. Those of us who honestly buy physical mining machines to mine are classified by many people as “classical miners” and we are ridiculed as outdated.
However, after a short-term madness, the bubble burst, and the prices of many tokens went all the way, and even went straight to zero. In the end, we found that it was us “classical miners” who had the last laugh, because the popularity of DeFi caused congestion in the Ethereum network and the gas price soared. During that time, the revenue of our graphics card mining machines was more than three times the usual.
06
Filecoin mainnet launch
On October 16 this year, the mainnet of Filecoin, a storage public chain project that was postponed for more than two years, was finally launched. On the eve of the mainnet launch, the officially announced FIL pre-staking rules were too strict, which caused dissatisfaction among miners. After some games, Filecoin officials finally made a compromise.
After more than two months of development, the effective computing power of Filecoin’s entire network has reached 1.476 EiB, and the number of active miners has reached 836.
07
Card break operation
On October 11 this year, the State Council and the Ministry of Public Security organized a meeting to make arrangements, announcing the launch of a “broken card” operation nationwide. The card-breaking operation is mainly to severely crack down on and rectify the illegal and criminal activities of illegal opening and selling of phone cards and bank cards.
Affected by the card interruption operation, the difficulty of withdrawing gold has increased a lot, and the miners have to pay electricity bills every month, which is greatly affected. According to official reports, there is no time limit for the card breaking operation until the passive situation of the proliferation of two cards and the massive use of two cards in crime is completely changed.
08
BCH forks again
On November 13, 2018, the divergence of the upper limit of the BCH block size caused the BCH to fork, and the forked BSV that wanted to engage in “unlimited blocks”.
Two years later, on November 15, BCH forked again. The key point leading to this fork is the IFP proposed by the ABC development team: miners will donate 8% of the theoretical output of the block to the development team to solve the problem of the source of funds for the development team.
At the time of writing this article, the price of BCH is 310 USDT, and the price of the forked BCHA is 19.5 USDT, which is less than one-tenth of the price of BCH. For miners, it is good to be able to receive BCHA candy for free after the fork.
09
Ethereum 2.0 and 4G graphics card
On December 1, the beacon chain of Ethereum 2.0 was successfully launched. As of the time of writing, in the contract deposit address of Ethereum 2.0, staking has accumulated more than 1.79 million ETH, and the current staking annualized rate of return is about 11.5%.
For miners, the biggest impact of Ethereum 2.0 is its PoS consensus mechanism. Once the current Ethereum PoW chain is merged into the PoS chain, Ethereum miners can no longer mine ETH. However, miners do not need to worry about it at the moment, because according to the estimates of veterans in the industry, Ethereum can be mined for another one and a half to two years.
Even though the beacon chain is now online, it is still a good time to enter the Ethereum mining market.
In addition to Ethereum 2.0, Ethereum miners also need to pay attention to 4G graphics cards. According to the information provided by Spark Mine Pool, it is estimated that after Christmas this year, the DAG file will exceed 4G. At present, some 4G graphics cards have been completed or are being expanded to 6G/8G.
After the mining machine 4G graphics card mining machine is eliminated, how much Ethereum’s whole network computing power will fluctuate is worthy of our miners’ attention.
10
Bitcoin hits record high
In the article “Where is the current bull market cycle & the upcoming mainstream currency skyrocketing”, Lebit Mining Pool founder Jiang Zhuoer mentioned that BTC only broke 20,000 before it really broke the previous high, and there was a lot of news and flow. On December 16th of this year, Bitcoin successfully broke through the $20,000 mark. Subsequently, Bitcoin broke through 21,000, 22,000, 23,000, and 24,000 US dollars one after another. As of the time of writing, Bitcoin reached 24,295 US dollars at its peak.
The blockchain market is often the quotation of hairtails. What’s worse than having no fish is that a hairtail only ate a fish head. Of course, historically speaking, it is a pity that most people can’t hold the currency, and they sold the currency early at some point in the bull market. Only miners, most miners, can eat the bull market from beginning to end. The reason is simple: you can’t help but want to sell the coins that you have increased by 10 times, but the hen who keeps laying golden eggs in your hand (mine Machine), you definitely don’t want to sell.
Now that Bitcoin has broken through the previous high, I hope you have both mining machines and coins in your hands.
