BITCOIN

    Bitcoin Halving: How to Prepare

    17 April 2020. Written by Thomas Heller

    With the bitcoin halving right around the corner, our co-founder Chun Wang, spoke with other leading players in the space about how they are preparing themselves.

    We are all well aware that the Bitcoin halving is right around the corner and every serious organization within the Bitcoin ecosystem has been preparing for this event for some time.

    So we invited Johnny Yao from Canaan and Ye Mao (Night Cat) from CoinSummer to the f2pool office to speak with our co-founders Chun Wang and Mao Shixing (Discus Fish) about how pools, farms, and manufacturers are preparing.

    We live-streamed the event, in Chinese, and here we present an English language summary from each of the panelists for our global community.

    Along with stake.fish we’ve been proudly securing 60+ PoW+PoS blockchains since 2013. We’re currently the second oldest mining pool, and over the past couple of years we’ve been busy decentralizing our team and our infrastructure.

    We have BTC servers in North America, Northern Europe and Russia as well as our Asian servers in China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. We’ve been working fully remote since the start of the COVID-19 crisis with colleagues checking in from Germany, Russia, Malta, South Korea and several other home offices around the world.

    Along with mining profitability, we must also focus on the network security of Bitcoin.

    Chun Wang, Co-Founder at f2pool

    During the broadcast, Chun Wang, the co-founder of f2pool and founder of stake.fish, highlighted that currently more than 87% of bitcoins have been mined, and with the upcoming halving, mining revenue will again decrease. Chun’s main concern lies in the needs of miners to maintain Bitcoin network security.

    The Bitcoin halving will present short-term arbitrage opportunities, and f2pool will soon launch our SHA-256 profit-switching pool.

    Discus Fish, Co-Founder at f2pool

    Discus Fish, the co-founder of f2pool and co-founder of Cobo Wallet, highlighted that of SHA-256 coins (BTC, BCH, and BSV), BTC has by far the most hashrate supporting the network, and there will be short-term opportunities to profit from arbitrage. These windows may only last for 1–2 hours at times. f2pool has been conducting a long-term internal test of the performance of the SHA-256 profit-switching pool. Mao mentioned that “profit-switching” is not a new concept, and the key point is to develop a strong strategy and algorithm that optimizes mining profitability.

    Miner hashrate is not the only key factor, machine stability is equally as important.

    Johnny Yao

    Johnny Yao, the Overseas Sales VP of Canaan, highlighted that machine hashrate is not the only important aspect of an ASIC miner. The stability of the machine is also crucial. One or two failures of a machine can make a big difference in miner ROI.

    Johnny also discussed the cheap electricity prices of Chinese Hydro Season and the availability of current and future stock of mining hardware, as being important factors for mining profitability of any miner and mining farm. A reasonable plan is to choose suitable new generation miners that are able to mine for the coming 1–2 years.

    They key to avoiding traps is to be agile and make adjustments where needed.

    Ye Mao (Night Cat)

    Ye Mao (Night Cat), the CEO of CoinSummer, highlighted that the best way to avoid traps is to be agile and make timely changes. Ye Mao mentioned, with the events of the recent “Black Thursday”, the community always believed that BTC is digital gold and safe-haven asset, which can effectively resist the risks presented by COVID-19.

    However, the recent price trend of BTC shows that it is positively correlated with the US stock market, suggesting it is still a risky asset class. Future bull and bear markets will occur cyclically, and this bear market is mainly caused by the COVID-19 crisis. We need to wait for the epidemic to pass, the global economy to recover and the BTC bull market will begin once again.

    When talking about how to get through the bear market, Ye Mao said that miners need to consider future mining revenue and implement correct hedging techniques to offset any risk. The priority of the mining industry is to survive, and after we survive, there will be many opportunities for success.

    Written by Thomas Heller

    Thomas Heller

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