Last December, the Bank of America (BofA) published a report indicating that Bitcoin represents the most successful investment from the last decade, stating that investors who invested $ 1 in 2010 now have $ 90,026.
In the report, BofA experts discussed, among other things, the best and worst assets in terms of investment efficiency in the last ten years. Although due to the problem that the spread of the Coronavirus has generated (Covid-19) and other problems of profitability and global warming, have made the price of the cryptocurrency depreciate
And now the question that arises is whether Is Bitcoin still a good investment today? And lThe answer may be that apparently not, because many miners began to leave the network.
As they were preparing for the bitcoin halving. Bitcoin miners, especially those in China, in addition to being affected by Covid-19, are feeling the brunt of the drop in bitcoin prices.
According to data from Bitcoin mining pool F2Pool, most of the mining groups have registered sharp falls in the hash rate on their platforms (the hash rate is the amount of computing power that bitcoin miners spend trying to mine new bitcoins).
Crypto Exchange, Huobi's mining pool, saw the biggest drop in hash rate, losing 26% last week. 1 Thash is not far behind, with a drop of 20%. The largest mining pools saw smaller decreases in hash rate.
While F2Pool fell 12%, Poolin 18% and Btc.com 10%. According to the Media Decrypt, we generally observe in the Bitcoin world a drop in hash rate from 136 million TH / s (tera-hash per second) to 103 TH / s.
“Most of the hash rate losses come from China, I know this from our own customers, and I have seen many Chinese pools (with older machines) lose their hash rate. The Chinese miners better prepared with S9 [Antminer] have sold significant quantities of S9 in recent months, mainly to countries where energy is even cheaper, such as Russia and the Middle East, etc.
«Said Thomas Heller, commercial director of F2Pool.
The value of bitcoin is currently $ 6245 and it is announced that electronic money will continue to decline, Although during the last few days it has shown a rebound, the problem of the decrease is due to the fact that despite the fact that China has announced that it has already fought the battle with the Coronavirus.
The problem continues to increase in Europe and America has begun to spread and the worst is expected during the remaining days of this month and the next.
In addition to this, also the other problem that affects is that the fall in prices it has made mining less profitable.
The profitability of bitcoin mining has dropped to $ 0.09 per TH, 80% less than the recent high of $ 0.44 in July 2019.
"This is an extremely difficult time for miners," Heller said. This drop in activity is surely good news for the ecology and the climate.
In fact, the electricity consumption of Bitcoin by mining activities It has reached a critical threshold and has therefore begun to raise myriad questions related to global warming.
In October 2018, scientists issued conclusions that Bitcoin can lead us to chaos in twenty years, by raising the global temperature beyond the critical limit. They fear that if Bitcoin is adopted at rates similar to other technologies, such as credit cards, it could increase global temperatures by 2 ° C in less than two decades.
The conclusion comes from a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change in 2018.
"Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency with high hardware requirements, which obviously translates into significant demand for electricity," said Randi Rollins, senior student at the University of Hawaii at Mano.