Cryptocurrency mining equipment manufacturing giant Bitmain is among the biggest and the most popular names when it comes to the world of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology. Latest reports indicate that Bitmain plans to set up 200,000 cryptocurrency miners worth $80 Million across China.
The company is starting to set up this infrastructure for mining keeping two things in mind: First off, China plans to slash electricity rates this summer, and secondly, the price of Bitcoin is expected to increase over the months.
At this moment in time, the mining difficulty has been reduced greatly as compared to a few months ago. Add that to the cheap electricity and Bitmain is sitting on a goldmine! The company is expected to make use of their own products - their latest mining machines such as the AntMiner S11 and S15, as well as some older models such as the AntMiner S9i and S9j for the purpose of large-scale mining operations.
Reports from Coindesk point out:
While it’s unclear what electricity deal Bitmain can get eventually, mining farm operators said the cost in the summer on average is around $0.037 per kilowatt hour. Taking that into f2pool’s index equation, each S9j, S11 and S15 could return a daily profit of $1.29, $2.24, or $3.38, respectively.
Even assuming the 200,000 machines will all be the lower-end S9j, the capacity could potentially bring home a monthly profit of about $7.7 million for Bitmain.
Interestingly, Bitmain’s AntMiner S11, Antminer S15 and AntMiner T15 are all marked as ‘out of stock’ on the company’s website. It looks like Bitmain is focusing more on using their devices for internal revenue generation than on sales operations at the moment. This might be a sensible move for the company given that the sale of cryptocurrency mining devices has taken a major hit over the past year.
The ‘crypto winter’ has caused a general lack of interest towards mining as mining operations are getting costlier than the revenue they generate. Last year, over 600,000 cryptocurrency miners went offline! Bitmain too, felt the pain of this in mining operations as the company had to shut down its Israel and Amsterdam offices. The company also suspended activity in its Texas mining farm. Bitmain also ended up laying off 50% of their workforce.
However, large-scale mining might still be profitable - especially if China reduces the price of electricity. It will be interesting to see what steps Bitmain takes with this $80 Million investment! Stay tuned with us at Cryptoground for all the latest updates and news stories from the world of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology.