Griping about why SHA256 mining is unfeasible for "The Rest Of Us."
In almost every City Hall, there is a connection to an energy provider. When the "Big Boys" come knockin', the folks at City Hall listen. They get electrical rates so low, they could mine bitcoin profitably with GPUs if they were stupid enough to try. Those savings are passed onto the retail customer as fees, and increased utility rates. We pay the majority of the utility bills for the Big Boys.
They invest heavily in utility scale renewables, Megawatt switch gear, and of course really powerful mining equipment. They devalue bitcoin by throwing so much horsepower at it the blocks are being found like easter eggs hidden by Grams for the baby.
Are jobs being created? No, not really. It only takes a handful of well trained monkeys to maintain a bitcoin farm. Meanwhile, our utility rates make mining bitcoin profitably impossible. Well, you could hit a block. But, when? Pool mining should be profitable. Period.
The adjustments will never be made, though. The big players will always get the red carpet treatment from City Hall and energy providers. Heck, they make their own hardware and sell it for new to the rest of us.
I'd wager we don't see a new bitmain ASIC, ever. That, what we get are runs long after the tech is behind the curve. Maybe, boards are being desoldered and resoldered with used ASICs for our little bitaxes.
I'd go on about AI now, but this is a bitaxe forum.
I have an ASIC that runs at 13.22J/Th at 785mhz, and pulls 23W from the wall. I did a feasibility study to find the cost of electricity has to be $0.05kWh for me to make money. Mind you, that is working in a pool at Kryptex on eCash. Yeah, it's really cheap. But, it was the first to pay out. Just not nearly enough.
To make this more frustrating, I have solar on the house that overproduces a few months out of the year. But, as times changed, my payout for my solar was largely eaten by service fees. They even include the consumed energy from MY solar in the equations for their service fees.
Now, you think they treat the Big Boys like that?
Nope.