The next Bitcoin halving is anticipated to take place in April of the coming year – an eagerly awaited event for crypto market participants. The halving typically marks the onset of the next Bitcoin bull cycle as it leads to deflationary BTC supply, while the hype surrounding it increases the demand. 

During a bull market, the Bitcoin mining industry comes into the spotlight as the miners’ BTC reserves and rewards start to surge in value. However, rewards are just one side of the equation – miners typically have to spend enormous amounts of capital in setting up extensive mining rigs and farms. 

While the energy costs continue to rise, the BTC price can display wide fluctuations. This leads to an important question – is Bitcoin Mining even profitable and just who is reaping the maximum benefits. 

This article dives into the current state of the Bitcoin mining industry and how early miners – which include some renowned personalities –  amassed a fortune when BTC price skyrocketed. 

From CPU To Mining Pools – The Evolution Of Bitcoin Mining Industry and Who Profited?

Bitcoin mining is a complex and energy-intensive process that involves verifying BTC transactions, combining them into a block and including the block into the blockchain. 

In his visionary whitepaper, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto laid out the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism as his solution for verifying all transactions and maintaining the network’s integrity. The mechanism requires miners to spend computational power to solve a mathematical equation and create a new block, receiving mining rewards at the end. 

In its early days, Bitcoin mining was a relatively simple process, easily accomplished on a personal computer with a CPU. In fact, Laszlo Hanyecz, the man who became a part of the Bitcoin folklore for exchanging 10,000 BTC for two large pizzas, is believed to have mined all the tokens himself. 

Hanyecz is also the person responsible for realizing that a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is much more suitable for the mining process than a CPU. He is also said to have developed the first macOS mining software. 

While Hanyecz sold his 10,000 BTC tokens – which would be worth near $270 million – his story highlights just how profitable BTC mining was in the early days.

In fact, on-chain firm Whale Alert highlights that Nakamoto himself has mined over 1 million BTC tokens, which would be worth $27 billion at today’s price. 

Other early miners which include Bitcoin advocate Charlie Shrem, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee, BTCC founder David Lee, the Winklevoss twins and Anthony Pompliano, all mined thousands of BTC tokens worth millions. 

However, the proof-of-work mechanism also encourages competition between miners as only the agency creating the block ends up getting the rewards. This led to a horse race between miners to increase their computational power, with wealthy corporations soon joining the competition. 

Consequently, Bitcoin difficulty – a measure that indicates the amount of hashing power required to mine 1 BTC block – has skyrocketed from 32 M in 2013 to over 50 T today. 

As a result, GPUs were quickly replaced by Field-Programmable Gate Arrays, which eventually gave way to Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) – big-money companies today are building extensive mining farms that deploy thousands of ASICs. 

Riot Platforms, one of the biggest mining companies in the world, ordered 33,280 next generation miners – with the option of purchasing an additional 66,560 – to increase its computational power by 7.6 EH/s by mid-2024. Even without them, Riot produced 1775 BTC tokens in the second quarter of 2023, earning a mining revenue of $49.7 million. 

These powerful companies also combine their computational power to form mining pools, giving themselves the maximum probability of winning the rewards. Today, two mining pools – Foundry and Antpool – control 50% of the global hash rate. 

Simply put, there is no way an ordinary Bitcoin enthusiast can compete with these giant corporations. In a study conducted in 2015 – when Bitcoin’s network difficulty was only a fraction of its current level – it was found that a typical CPU would require “several hundred thousand years” to successfully mine a new block.

Similarly, a solo miner would need to pay an average electricity cost of $45,000 to mine 1 BTC token. Depending upon geographical location, the cost may even be north of $200,000.

Bitcoin Minetrix Makes Bitcoin Mining Easier Than Ever Before

While Bitcoin mining has long been a complex, expensive task to carry out, one platform is now making it accessible to the masses.

Bitcoin Minetrix is offering a tokenized and decentralized cloud mining approach to combat the established monopolies in the mining industry. The platform allows retail investors to own only a portion of the computational power, without the hassle of operating an entire mining farm.

Investors can purchase $BTCMTX tokens – preferably in the presale at a cheap price of $0.011 – and stake them in an Ethereum smart contract. In exchange, they will receive mining credits, which can be burned for cloud mining time or a percentage of the yields, eventually leading to BTC rewards.

Cloud mining is not altogether a novel concept in the crypto market – however, rampant scams and frauds deterred investors from entering the industry. However, Bitcoin Minetrix’s stake-to-mine mechanism introduces transparency and legitimacy into the process. 

Investors can unstake and sell their tokens at any time, which is much more ideal than the long-term complicated contracts forced by legacy cloud mining platforms. 

Bitcoin Minetrix eliminates the technical expertise required to run a mining operation, while offering excellent passive income opportunities. In fact, retail investors can earn staking rewards even before the development of the cloud mining platform. 

Thanks to the project’s unique value proposition, the Bitcoin Minetrix presale has raised over $250k in less than a week. Even some deep-pocketed investors – such as the admin of the Crypto Whale Pumps group on Telegram – have made a sizable investment into the token. 

Visit Bitcoin Minetrix Presale