Survey: the challenges facing bitcoin miners

A veritable epidemic.

For the past few months, bitcoin miners have been experiencing difficulties one after the other. At the end of December, one of the biggest players in the sector, American Core Scientific, filed for bankruptcy in the United States under the now infamous "Chapter 11" regime ⚖️

Brief reminder: miners are those who secure a cryptocurrency's blockchain with the computing power of their machines. Since Ethereum's switch to proof-of-stake in 2022, Bitcoin has been the only "big" cryptocurrency on the market to operate with proof-of-work and therefore mining.

The "chapter 11" does not mean that Core Scientific, whose machines account for around 5% of Bitcoin's hashrate (the computing power needed to secure the protocol), will file for bankruptcy, but that the company will restructure to get back on its feet. The fact remains that the difficulties of one of the heavyweights in mining show just how much pressure the industry is under. At least in part.

The reasons for these difficulties are well known: with falling prices and rising energy costs, many players are hanging on by their fingernails. Above all, and this is something new, some of them are also faced with... massive over-indebtedness.