History repeats again and again as human beings don’t change; they only change on the surface. There is a good lesson learned from the Gold Rush in the 19th century – there were some lucky diggers, who made a fortune, at the same time many merchants who were selling equipment and jeans became rich. But many adventurers left broke.
These days we have the Crypto-Mining Gold Rush led by Bitcoin with a market share of more than 60% and market capitalization over $124 billion. This coin is worth as much as the Hungarian GDP and exceeded the market cap of NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) – one of those “merchants” selling “shovels” to modern “diggers” aka miners.
Today, as long ago, the competition gives an advantage to cooperated mining pools with the most advanced equipment, lowest electricity, and labor costs. That’s why there is no surprise that the top mining pools are located in China (70% of the Bitcoin hashrate).
There are two main types of suppliers to the crypto mining industry: electricity suppliers (up to 70% of all mining costs) and equipment suppliers. The massive demand for mining equipment attracts nimble middlemen, for instance, they resell the ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits, microchips) for 2x-3x of the original price tag, making relatively risk-free money on modern “diggers” that risk a lot. Continue reading "The Modern Gold Rush: These Three Stocks Could Benefit"