Evacuate The Mine

Bitcoin difficulty for miners has plateaued in recent months and is slightly down from its high in May. What’s happening in the mining world, and why have things slowed down?

• Bitcoin more than halved in price during Q2 of this year and the reasons behind this and knock-on effects are well documented.
• This has impacted the earnings of miners, whose Bitcoin rewards for block validation are sometimes cashed out immediately.
• Consequently there has been a flood of mining hardware into the market, with some high-end graphics cards now trading at a discount of 45% from where they were a few months ago.
• This is not necessarily a bad thing, as gamers and other retail participants looking for cards can now find them at prices closer to manufacturer’s recommendations.
• Elsewhere, a large storm in Montana has knocked out 75% of Marathon Digital Holdings mining power.
• According to blockchain explorer, the miners seem to have been out for about 2.5 weeks.

The damage is believed to be mostly at the nearby power station rather than the actual mining equipment, and 0.6 Exahash per second is still operational via third party mining pool. The company is looking for new locations to move its equipment to prevent similar future outages.