Bad times for Bitcoin [BTC] mining companies

The decline in the prices of Bitcoin and the main cryptocurrencies has been maintained for the last three weeks in a way that is impossible to avoid in terms of investment and business calculations involving cryptography. Discouragement has taken hold of many and it is a notorious fact that the fall in bitcoin prices affects its mining.

Just a month ago, the two largest cryptocurrency mining equipment manufacturing companies – Bitfury and Antminer – launched their most recent equipment just days after the decline in the prices of both bitcoin and major altcoins began on waterfall effect.

Being that until then nothing seemed to notice a decline in cryptography, many investments were still announced, start ups continued to make launches of platforms and products related to cryptography, and not a few analysts still maintained their projections of a rebound in the prices of bitcoin especially thinking about the figures at the end of 2017. But the reality of the market is very pragmatic and the figures do not lie, and the decline has been maintained without anything happening that stops it at the moment.

And precisely in terms of figures, the total hash rate of the Bitcoin network has fallen by almost a third, according to a BitMex report a few days ago.

This fall in prices is unprecedented and has affected both large and small investors alike, and especially to all those who do mining since the profitability of this activity is not viable under the current conditions, which is why many miners have gone turning off their operations.

The profitability has not only been marked by the maintenance costs of the mining activity, between equipment, electricity, etc., but it has been affected by something even more complicated, such as the decline of mining incentives.

The drop in incentives was even greater than the drop in the price of Bitcoin: 21.8 percent fewer blocks were found than the 144 expected per day in the six days ending on December 3, 2018. The report cited here  also indicated that this fall was a consequence of the fact that the miners left the bitcoin network in general, and that lack of activity impacts the result.

Total income from Bitcoin’s mining activity has also experienced a marked downward trend, falling from around $ 13 million per day in early November 2018, to a figure of around $ 6 million per day in early December of 2018, according to the BitMex report.

In these weeks it is perfectly coherent to infer that in relation to the fall in the prices of bitcoin and the main altcoins, many miners are struggling to stay afloat, and that many more have chosen to step aside and stop their activity .