Since the bitcoin block halving in July, Mining rewards have gone from 25 BTC per block to just 12.5 BTC.

With bitcoin price bordering around $580, mining profitability has been an issue to many miners.

New Miners With More Efficient Chips

Various ASIC manufacturers came up with solutions to combat this issue. Both Bitfury and Bitmain has launched its 16nm Asics, with BW launching its 14nm ASICs.

Before the block reward halving, Bitmain started the production and sales of the Antminer S9. The Antminer S9 boasts a 14THS hashrate, with a power consumption of 1375W. This gives it a power efficiency of about 0.098J/GH at a rated voltage of 11.6V~13.0V.

Offering up to 0.1J/GH efficiency with speeds of 100GHS is BitFury’s 16nm ASICs. While announcements have been made that it would be mass produced for the public, further details have yet to be provided.

BW has produced its 14nm bitcoin ASICs. At present, BW offers its product as part of its hosted mining service, as public sales of the ASICs are delayed. Their website posts the specifications of their miners as having a hashrate of 5THS, with a power consumption of 190W/THS.

Cloudmining & Reduced Costs

For users who purchase cloudmining contracts, most of the providers have also announced either a reduction in prices of Mining Contracts or the maintenance fees.

Hashflare has made a 25% reduction in their mining fees to its current rate of $0.0045 per 10GH. OXBTC has reduced the price of its mining contracts to $0.099 per GHS, with mining fees being 10% of your daily mined total coins. Mining contracts at EOBOT currently goes for about $0.08 per GHS.

Mining, A Profitable Investment?

Multiple factors need to be taken into consideration to determine mining’s profitability. The total network hashrate, the current difficulty and bitcoin’s price needs to be looked into to determine whether or not mining is a profitable form of investment.

With bitcoin’s price making a slow rebound since the Bitfinex hacking and factoring in other unforeseen situatuations, it is hard to determine if mining would be a profitable method of investment. In fact, many are of the idea that one would be better off buying, holding and trading bitcoins instead.

But for those with a high risk investment appetite, mining could be an ideal form of investment in the long run, should conditions remain favorable.