Mining Update 9/9/22
As The Merge approaches, mining pool operators are shutting down Ethereum mining pools and some are even offering introductory bonuses for mining other coins after The Merge.
AntPool recently committed $10 million towards the development of the Ethereum Classic (ETC) ecosystem.
Ethermine, the largest Ethereum mining pool, is ending ETH mining on September 15, 2022 (The Merge is expected between September 10-20). Ethermine is already offering staking, ahead of The Merge, with $24,857,543 worth of ETH already staked. At the moment, mining pools are not yet open, but non-custodial solo staking is available with a minimum of 32 ETH staked.
Ethermine is still outputting a hashrate of 256.5 TH/s (Terra hash per second) with 210,259 active workers. Last week on August 30, the pool was outputting a hashrate of 264.6 TH/s with 223,711 active workers, suggesting that many have already repurposed their mining operations ahead of The Merge.
Hive Blockchain is exploring options to repurpose its GPU mining operations
The Canadian mining firm provided a production update for August 2022 in which it stated that they already commenced analysis of several GPU mining-capable coins and would be implementing beta-testing later this week, prior to The Merge. The firm's main operations mine Bitcoin with ASIC miners. Their Bitcoin production for August 2022 totaled 518.8 BTC.
Hive’s GPU mining operations that were capable of mining Ethereum were able to produce 6.3 TH/s. This would, at the time of writing, produce around $4.6 million per month minus power costs.
Bitcoin mining stocks are up
Some Bitcoin mining stocks saw double-digit gains today, including Riot Blockchain, Hut 8, Hive Blockchain, and Argo Blockchain.
The White House released a report, titled “Climate and Energy Implications of Crypto-assets in the United States”, which criticized the current power and environmental impacts of current crypto mining.
According to the report, the global electricity usage by crypto mining in August 2022 exceeded the annual electric usage of certain countries including Argentina and Australia. Instead of suggesting banning crypto mining or proof-of-work networks, the report outlined the need for coordinated efforts to enact legislation and regulation to ensure efficient and safe crypto mining. The report recommended that we’d need to reduce global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to net-zero by mid-century to prevent severe climate-driven damages to human health, ecosystems, and infrastructure.
The report also outlines a few “potential uses of blockchain technology that could support climate monitoring or mitigating technologies.”
