2018 was a tough year for everyone in the crypto industry – especially miners. The rapidly declining prices of big-name coins and the ever-increasing difficulty levels meant that mining quickly became unprofitable, forcing many miners to shut down. For DMM – a Japanese e-commerce giant – the bear market has become too much and it has decided to shut down its crypto mining operations just one year after it started.
Just Switching Mining Offline
DMM began mining some of the biggest cryptocurrencies back in October 2017 and had set its sights on securing a place as one of the top 10 biggest crypto mining firms in the world. However, the protracted bear market took its toll on DMM’s ability to mine and remain profitable. There could be numerous factors for this – such as high cost of electricity and power of ASIC mining rigs – but all point to the same core issue – rushing the setup of the mining arm. Scores of crypto miners managed to stay profitable throughout 2019 and are still turning a huge profit now, leading us to believe that DMM didn’t plan well enough for a protracted bear market.
ASIC Mining is Still Profitable
Don’t believe the FUD you are hearing in the mainstream media, mining using ASIC rigs is still highly profitable. If you set up your mining operations properly, you can still turn a fairly decent profit. Several ASIC rigs are still giving miners the potential to profit upwards of $20 per day, per rig – not bad if you scale up to an industrial level. The fact that DMM has had to shut down its mining highlights that it rushed the setup process and didn’t consider all eventualities.
New Ultra-Powerful Mining Rigs Incoming
Just in case you weren’t happy with the power your current mining rigs consumed, Intel has secured a patent to develop the ultimate mining rig. Instead of creating millions of hashes per second to find the right hash, Intel’s new mining rig design will create a rig that creates one hash that’s perfect right off the bat. This will be an incredible gamechanger and will revolutionize the way we look at crypto mining.
It’s All About the Power Source
It looks like DMM fell into the trap of massive power bills draining funds. Japan isn’t known for its low-cost electricity, and DMM would have been better off setting up its crypto mining in Iceland of Canada. These two jurisdictions produce an insane amount of renewable energy that costs a fraction of the price when compared to traditional power sources. In fact, more than 77% of all power consumed in the Bitcoin mining process if from renewable sources, and we bet all of those miners are still running at a profit.
Fortunately, DMM is still running its regulated crypto exchange and will be moving ahead with the launch of its new crypto trading app. It very much appears as if it decided to cut the unprofitable arm loose before it caused trouble and damaged the wider business – a smart move to make considering the bearish market is still with us.
