The city of New York is currently seeing a heavy decline in crypto mining activity which has been precipitated by the enduring crypto winter. New York City and its environs was just the perfect operating ground for crypto miners during the crypto boom that was experienced in 2017 and the first months of 2018, because of the low cost of electricity at the time.
However as time wore on and crypto mining activities intensified, the cost of power skyrocketed due to the increased demand for power from the Bitcoin mining industry. This led to municipalities like Lake Placid slapping a ban on mining activities after observing how nearby communities like Plattsburgh had been affected by the increased costs.
The New York state government moved to check this problem last year by ruling that power providers could go ahead and charge crypto miners more for electricity inorder to relieve locals. This means that unlike before where the costs of electricity were shared evenly across the community, miners have had to contend with special prices; this along with the fact that the crypto bear market still persists, has driven a lot of miners in the New York area out of business.
According to Albany Times-Union writer Rick Karlin, only one major operation is still standing in the New York region as of now which is Coinmint. The company has two facilities in Plattsburgh and one other opening in Massena, New York. Coinmint is currently in the process of launching an ICO; hopefully it does not end up going down like the WATT token.
New York is not off course the only place where crypto mining has been affected by the biting crypto winter. The network difficulty for Bitcoin saw a steep drop in October last year and is yet to recover to anywhere near previous levels. Network difficulty is crucial in mining since it is a great way to measure the number of miners and hash power on the network. The higher the number, the more miners and hash power going into Bitcoin.
Profitability in mining is usually tied to numerous factors except in exceptional bull markets where miners make money mainly on the rise of price. Bull markets as well create a pressure to expand as new money enters into the market, and creates fierce competition.
The high costs in electricity for crypto miners coupled with a biting crypto bear market is making it harder and harder for them to survive. Miners are not only shutting shop in America, but also in other active mining areas around the world. Chinese miners have had it rough as well with GPU mining gadget manufacturers such as NVIDIA reporting low sales of their gadgets. As speculations rage on about how this crypto bear may stay on, it seems to be a question of which miners can hang on.
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