- Smaller miners are facing solvency issues since crypto winter
- Consolidation accelerating as public miners leverage advantages
- The Bitcoin mining market is becoming more monopolized as the shakeout continues.
After the crypto winter of 2022, the Bitcoin mining business saw severe headwinds in Q1 of 2023. With bitcoin prices stuck below $20,000, miner profitability has plummeted, requiring them to make challenging adjustments to their business models. Consolidation among the top mining businesses has been hastened by the current market environment.
Top Mining Companies
To continue operations, several miners have resorted to liquidating reserves or taking out loans. Core Scientific, a publicly traded Bitcoin miner, sold 7,202 Bitcoins in January 2023, depleting a significant portion of its reserves. Bitdeer isn’t the only mining operation that relies on loans and promissory notes to keep operating. The decrease in hash rate suggests that some miners have gone offline, and the danger is greatest for smaller miners.
Companies in the mining industry have been slashing expenses by eliminating jobs and stopping the procurement of new machinery. In January, Core Scientific announced it will be laying off about 40% of its personnel. Bitfarms did the same thing to lower payroll costs. Bitfarms’ capital expenditures have decreased as well, from $100 Million in Q3 2022 to barely $13 Million in Q4 of the same year for the acquisition of mining equipment.
These changes will enable efficient miners in the long run to gain market dominance. Older generation equipment is being decommissioned first as energy and labor costs return to normal post-pandemic. After dropping by roughly 25% from its high, Bitcoin’s hash rate has leveled off at around 227 exahash per second. The share of the market taken up by more efficient machines keeps growing.
In that case, there has been a dramatic rise in the share of the total hash rate controlled by the strong miners. The percentage of the Bitcoin network that Core Scientific is now hashing for has climbed from 6.4% to 8.7% over that time. Marathon Digital doubled its market share in that time, from 6.3% to 18.3%. Because of this, generating money as a gamer on the internet is less of a challenge.
Leveraging Scale in Tough Times
As a result of their size, public miners are also able to negotiate cheaper energy rates. Core Scientific has secured below-market electricity rates through a contract with power provider Grid. As a result of the merger, Marathon and Compute North now have access to 325 MW of electricity infrastructure. During a recession, these types of bargains are crucial for staying competitive.
At the same time, many small-scale miners without financial backing have departed the industry. Prospective public miners are purchasing mining rigs. Due to the acquisition of foreclosed assets, Core Scientific was able to add 2,508 rigs to its stock in January.
The bigger miners are currently engaged in intense competition for a larger market share. Even if the price of Bitcoin recovers, the mining industry will continue to be dominated by a small number of corporations that control the vast majority of the market in terms of hardware production, electricity generation, and mining pool utilization.
In Conclusion, Miners may expect greater uncertainty in 2023, but the industry still has a promising future. As a result of this worldwide expansion, the total hash rate is still around 60% more than it was a year ago. Speculators have given up, and miners are fortifying their moats and improving efficiency. Their current work will ensure the long-term decentralized stability of Bitcoin’s underlying infrastructure.
