At 3:23 am on May 12, Beijing time, the AntPool ant mining pool dug out the 630,000th bitcoin block, the block reward has been reduced from 12.5 bitcoins to 6.25 bitcoins, and the daily output has dropped from 1800 900. This means that the third halving of Bitcoin is officially completed. However, after halving, Bitcoin continued to weaken, hovering around $ 8,600.
Earlier, Bitcoin had halved twice in 2012 and 2016. After the halving, there have been price increases of dozens of times. The third halving did not temporarily start the rise.
“Half reduction” is a mechanism for acquiring bitcoin. When Satoshi Nakamoto originally designed bitcoin, miners were required to package each block to receive 50 bitcoin rewards. The blockchain network generates a block approximately every 10 minutes. For every 210,000 blocks produced, the bitcoin reward is halved, that is, the number of bitcoins generated by each mining is halved until bitcoin can no longer be subdivided, and the total amount of bitcoin is limited, with an upper limit of 21 million Pcs.
The third halving of Bitcoin will have a great impact on Bitcoin-related industries, especially the “mining” industry. The bitcoin mining industry was once guided by supervision to “orderly retreat”, but today the industry is still widely distributed in regions with abundant power resources in China. However, after this “halving”, in the short term, a large number of old mining machines with high energy consumption will be forced to withdraw. According to F2Pool fish pond statistics, as of the date of publication, at least 0.38 yuan / kWh electricity price calculation, including at least “main machine” ant S9 mining machine and other more than 60 mainstream bitcoin mining machine losses immediately, the daily net income is negative, facing elimination . This brings no small challenge to the small and medium-sized mines, and even experts bluntly said: “Small and medium-sized mines are shut down is inevitable.”
Bitcoin completes third halving
Market value hovering at $ 1.6 trillion
On May 12, Bitcoin, which experienced a halving, did not show a strong momentum of “rare for the expensive”. According to the cryptocurrency market website CoinMarketCap, as of press time, the latest price of bitcoin is $ 8687, corresponding to a market value of $ 1.60 trillion.
In the previous two halvings, the bitcoin price experienced a process of surging first and then plunging. For example, the first halving of Bitcoin occurred on November 28, 2012, and the Bitcoin reward was reduced from 50BTC to 25BTC. The price at the time of the halving was about $ 12. One year later, in December 2013, the bitcoin price reached a historical high of $ 270.94, an increase of 2000%. But after the peak, the price of Bitcoin appeared in a bear market in 2013, and the price fell by about 80%.
Therefore, the market is very concerned about the trend of the third halving and after. As of press time, Bitcoin prices have not strengthened.
There are disagreements in the industry about the future of Bitcoin after this halving, and many people hold the view of “short-term bearish and long-term bullish”. However, for ordinary investors, investing in Bitcoin is highly risky. Wu Tong, deputy director of the CECBC Blockchain Special Committee of the Ministry of Commerce and dean of the Digital Economics Business School, told the Securities Daily reporter, “The risks that ordinary investors face are mainly market risk, operational risk and institutional risk. The market risk is mainly no ups and downs, 24-hour trading, this market mechanism increases the transaction difficulty of ordinary traders; the operation risk is mainly that users may not be able to roll back the transaction after the operation error; the institutional risk is such as exchange Centralized institutions do not use the maximization of customer benefits as a guideline. ”
More than 60 mainstream mining machines
Faced with “power on is loss”
The Bitcoin mining industry has been controversial in China. In 2018, the Bitcoin mining industry was once regulated and guided to “orderly retreat”. On April 8, 2019, in the “Guidance Catalog for Industrial Structure Adjustment (2019 Version, Draft for Comments)” issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, virtual currency “Mining” activities were included in the elimination industry, but this article was deleted when the catalog was officially released. Today, there are still large and small bitcoin mines distributed in areas with abundant power resources and cheap.
However, the halving of Bitcoin means that the mining rewards will be greatly reduced. In the short term, this will allow the mines to passively eliminate from the bottom up.
On the day of the halving, a large number of mining machines on the market were already facing a “power-on loss” situation, which reached the so-called “shutdown price”. According to F2Pool fish pond statistics, as of press time, the “Securities Daily” reporter has calculated that the daily net income of at least 60 mainstream bitcoin miners in the entire network is negative at a price of 0.38 yuan / degree, which means that the shutdown price is reached, or even more The electricity cost of the mine accounts for more than 200%, and it is in a state of serious insufficiency. Among them, there is no shortage of star products of the three major mining machine manufacturers of Bitcoin Mainland, Jianan and Yibang International, including old models of ant series mining machines, wing bit series mining machines, Avalon series mining machines and so on.
“Half halving has caused a large number of high-energy mining machines to stop operating in the last two halvings. I believe this halving will be no exception. High-performance new machines and elimination of high-energy old machines are an inevitable trend in mining development.” , Jianan Shao, general manager of Jianan Technology Blockchain, told the Securities Daily reporter, “The first is the” miner “group. After the block reward is halved, the survival status of the” miner “group that does not have a comparative advantage will be It becomes very difficult, and the subsequent high probability will be eliminated. Secondly, we have also seen that the halving has not slowed down the pace of institutional layout. Overseas institutions such as the United States and Canada continue to set up mining funds and build mines. With the continuous layout of the organization, the degree of specialization and head effect of the mining industry will become more obvious, and the pace of market clearing will be further accelerated. Those mines, miners and other groups whose comparative advantages are not obvious and the degree of specialization is not high, Both will face greater competition pressure. ”
Hashrate will return to stable
Reshaping the pattern of “mining” industry
Many industry experts predict that at least 20% of the mining machines in the entire network will face shutdown, and the computing power will drop significantly. However, as the market adjusts, the computing power will eventually transition to a relatively stable state.
“In the short term, the direct impact of halving the output of Bitcoin is that the revenue from ‘mining’ is reduced by half, and some old mining machines and non-professional mines with high energy consumption will be phased out.” Huobi University President, China Communications Industry Yu Jianing, deputy director of the Association’s Blockchain Special Committee, said in an interview with the “Securities Daily” that from the previous experience of halving production, the computing power of the entire bitcoin network will be significantly reduced after the reduction, but bitcoin The mining network has a self-adjusting mechanism, which will adjust the difficulty factor according to the changes in “mining” computing power, and then achieve a new balance. As new mining machines with lower energy consumption are widely put into the market, the computing power of the entire network will also resume growth within a few months.
Wu Tong believes that “for” mining “, there will be about 20% -40% of mining opportunities in the short term, because in the short term, the profit calculated at constant currency prices will decrease. There will be a recovery and a relatively stable state will be reached. In this process, the small and medium mines will be shut down, the industry concentration will increase, and the head competition will be more intense. ”
Yu Jianing believes that the replacement of mining machines formed after the reduction of production will make manufacturers work harder. The advantages of the head mining machine manufacturers will be more obvious, but the market structure of several head enterprises may appear to trade off, and the production reduction will reshape the mining machine market structure to a certain extent. “It is worth noting that the cost of mining is not the core factor that determines the price of the Bitcoin market. It is the changes in market supply and demand that are the main factors affecting market trends.”
(This article only objectively and deeply explains the Bitcoin news event, not as investment advice. China’s regulatory agencies have explicitly prohibited the issuance of tokens. The risk of crypto Crypto currency investment is huge)