Some social data suggests that bitcoin mining is more popular than ever among retail participants as interest continues to rise that began early last year, despite a downward trend in the market.
Bitcoin is currently trading at about 50% lower than its last all-time high of about $ 69,000, set in early November 2021. But even with the steady decline in the price of bitcoin in recent months, some online communities are full of miners. novices and experienced who discuss. best practices, new products and educational resources for successful mining. Sustained activity and growth in these communities, despite the market slowdown, suggest that widespread interest in mining relative to previous years is isolated from the characteristic volatility of the bitcoin market.
Different data, different stories
However, before discussing the data, it is interesting to note that one of the favorite sentiment data sets in the Bitcoin community does not reflect this trend. Google’s search interest is a favorite tool for measuring general interest in all kinds of activities and investments related to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. The basic reasoning behind inferring the general interest in this data holds that as more people are interested in Bitcoin, the search levels for certain terms and phrases will increase. And when interest and activity decrease, search rankings will also decrease.
But search data for a variety of simple, common mining-related terms and phrases show low or declining interest rates. The following graphs show this data for mining-related searches:
Where the mining blessing is happening
But maybe novice miners don’t just ask Google to answer their questions. Alternative data suggest that in the case of mining popularity, Google Search rankings are a poor indicator of the general interest and growth of the industry.
Twitter is often recognized as the leading social media platform for public conversations about cryptocurrencies, but for miners, especially novices looking for answers to their questions, Reddit is king. So forget about Google as a measure of mining interest because miners go to Reddit forums to talk to their novice peers or learn from experienced professionals.
Reddit users have created a variety of subreddits focused on cryptocurrency mining. Some of these communities have tens of thousands of members and growth in almost all of them has been parabolic for over a year. Other metrics, such as the volume of daily posts and comments, as well as the ranking of subscriber activity, add to the growth in gross subscriber numbers and signal healthy community growth, not just the swarms of new members increasing their size. forums.
The following graphs show some of the data showing the growth of Reddit’s mining communities.
The Bitcoin mining subreddit has grown from 40,000 subscribers to more than 80,000 by the end of 2021 and continues to grow through February. Prior to January 2021, that same subreddit took more than three years to double its number of subscribers.
On Reddit, the growth of cryptocurrency mining forums is on the rise.
Other general cryptocurrency subreddits shown above also saw near-vertical growth curves in the subscriber count. The attraction for alternative cryptocurrency mining, especially for new small-scale miners, is often explained by the interest in betting on higher profitability of smaller protocols and lower financial barriers to entry with hardware and other materials.
A key feature of this data is that the trend does not delay the price of bitcoin; it is not fully correlated with it. Many data sets in mining delay the price of bitcoin, including the prices of ASIC mining machines that typically rise or fall with bitcoin but lag behind. Instead of falling with the price of bitcoin, the growth rate of these Reddit communities has continued to increase. Retail interest in mining is an element of the ecosystem that does not seem to be affected by price volatility.
The popularity of automotive
What kind of mining are these communities interested in? Activity levels are high in Bitcoin mining and alternative cryptocurrency mining forums. But for all types of miners, the desire to self-mine with full control of the operation is strong. The types of questions asked in the forums point to this interest: the forums are full of users discussing basic electrical issues, hardware comparisons, and more. The new miners also ask about best practices for ventilation in different climates, sound and thermal insulation tricks, income calculations and handling with brick control boards. Experienced miners, mining companies, and other novice miners offer tips, educational resources, and tips and tricks for successful mining. Although some miners prefer to use hosted services such as Wattum Management, Compass Mining, Blockware Solutions and others, small-scale mining is the main attraction for members of these mining communities.
All the mining fun isn’t just on Reddit. Twitter conversations about mining news, products, and educational resources have also grown considerably. However, quantifying this growth is difficult, as Twitter conversation and interaction data is not as readily available as Reddit data. But the growing crowds of miners on Twitter regularly post photos and videos of their facilities, sharing tips on how to optimize their mining operations. A couple of active Twitter users using aliases that use nyms Diverter e Econoalchemist they have also created powerful libraries of educational articles, discussion threads, and interviews aimed at retailers who want to extract their own bitcoin.
There is no uniform or complete instruction manual on how to mine at home, but dozens of miners have followed the example of these two creators, posting their own educational content to help other aspiring miners. Shared on Reddit, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms, this growing content canon has played no less important role in creating an army of retail miners.
The future of retail mining
What sparked a career in retail in bitcoin mining is an open-ended question with many possible answers. On the one hand, mining profitability increased throughout 2021 as Chinese miners were forced offline, leading to a massive variation in the hash rate between mining pools and leaving money on the table for new miners, both retail and institutional.
On the other hand, the growth of retail mining may be a reaction to the rapid industrialization and institutionalization of mining in progress. In 2021, institutional mining has undoubtedly moved to the forefront of the Bitcoin market with an increase in listed mining companies (e.g., Rhodium, Core Scientific, Greenidge), a group of new financial products and services created for large-scale mining companies such as Galaxy Digital and NYDIG, and even creating a mining board to form a unified voice for corporate mining companies that could be subject to regulation and legislators.
Possibly by a refusal to accept mining forever as something for “suits,” small-scale miners crowded internet forums and fueled a hot mining market for themselves. But whatever caused the mining craze, the online communities growing around it are not dwindling at all. Quite the contrary, while bitcoin is well below last year’s all-time high, online mining communities are thriving, with growth and activity as strong as ever.
This is a guest post by Zack Voell. The views expressed are entirely personal and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.