[JustAnotherPat]

Am I missing something, or is it inevitable that bitcoin mining will lose profitability again, possibly very soon?

The problem is anecdotally outlined in the article. People are willing to mine bitcoin at a loss if need be and that makes mining rough for everybody because of the increased difficulty.

The problem is it's too easy to mine bitcoin. As the article points out, all you really need is somebody to keep an eye on the servers. People will push it to the edge, at which point, a tragedy of the commons will ruin it for everybody.

The only hope is for bitcoin prices to increase exponentially for all of eternity.

[tim333]

It's kind of the way with all capital intensive industries - airlines, car and steel manufacturing and the like. People put in capital till the profits are gone.

[freejulian]

Your uninformed opinion only serves to mislead others. You should at least have the courtesy to preface your post with a "I don't know anything about Bitcoin" to warn other readers.

Anyways: The mining difficulty is dynamic. If mining becomes unprofitable and miners stop mining the difficulty will adjust downwards making it easier to mine and hence profitable again.

[JustAnotherPat]

I 100% understand that it is dynamic.

My point is that that is not how it will work out. As the article points out, people were still mining when bitcoin dropped to $200 even though it was unprofitable. Because they were still mining even though it was unprofitable, they kept the dynamic difficulty high enough that mining remained unprofitable. Why? Because they had the infrastructure and it is easy enough to keep on mining until you are completely bankrupt. You don't quit mining just to make it profitable again for somebody else, so you hope that you can outlast them. That is the tragedy of the commons and it seems inevitable as people spend more and more money on infrastructure investment.

[freejulian]

Of course -- it's unreasonable to think that all miners would exit at the same time. Different miners have different margins. Miners exit when it's no longer profitable for them. I don't quite see what the problem is.

[JustAnotherPat]

My point is, there will always be somebody willing to mine it unprofitably. The only reason that hasn't happened now is because the price has increased too quickly for capacity to keep up.

[SCdF]

They literally started with "Am I missing something"