The Merge is Coming

The Merge is upon us! This week, Ethereum’s new Bellatrix upgrade has locked in a time for kicking off miners forever for a different kind of consensus called Proof of Stake. The date is tentatively set for September 14th. You can track the date here. BitCap will likely be on with Bits Be Trippin’s livestream for the Merge itself, and you can follow the performance of the network post-merge here. This is an exciting time for Ethereum to move away from miners, and test the waters with Proof of Stake. Time will tell if the network can remain decentralized under this new consensus algorithm.

Unfortunately for GPU miners, Ethereum is our cash cow for mining, and that revenue is expected to dry up overnight. This has happened before with other coins that are now run on ASIC’s, but we have not seen a coin like ETH that was paying out $21 million per day just evaporate in an instant. This means there will be many GPU's globally scrambling to bring in revenue from a number of other GPU-mineable coins such as Ethereum Classic (ETC), Ravencoin, (RVN), FLUX (FLUX), ERGO (ERGO), FIRO (FIRO), Conflux (CFX), BEAM (BEAM), Aeternity (AE), and others. We expect this shock to the market to take months to stabilize, and many GPU’s paying high power rates will have to turn off. Fortunately, at BitCap, our clients are paying well below the national average for power and there will be many miners with higher power rates that will shut off before BitCap. Based on our experience in previous bear markets, we believe there are some steps you can take to take advantage of this situation.

1. Mine through the bear market, even if it is painful. History shows that those that mine during the bears are collecting the largest quantity of coin, even if the value of those coins are low. The idea is to use mining to “dollar cost average” your position into blockchains, and then cash out during bull markets, which have historically been triggered with the BTC “halvening” event scheduled to occur in 2024.
2. Do not sell your mined assets to pay hosting fees. If you are cashing out your crypto to pay the power bill, you are severely chipping away at the asset we expect to appreciate in value dramatically. It is best to pay your operating costs with additional outside capital.
3. Buy mining hardware when there is blood on the streets. Capitulation is real. It’s hard to be bullish on GPU mining, but mining hardware will be dirt cheap. GPU’s can do a lot of things.
4. Point your hashes to a pool where you can take advantage of the new dynamic GPU mining market to ensure maximum profitability among all the various coins vying to secure their network with your hardware. Which brings us to...

Announcing our new partnership with MagicPool.co, a new public mining pool with multiple coin support and profitBOOST baked right in. BitCap will have exclusive first access to the MagicPool’s features, which takes app.bitcap.co’s vision and blows it out to support a half a dozen new GPU mineable coins that app.bitcap.co currently does not support.

Today, we will initiate our transition to Magic Pool. This means app.bitcap.co will be in “maintenance mode” for the week which means that hashrate charts will be deactivated. Please do not worry as mining activity will indeed continue during this period. CSV downloads will be available for your personal historical app.bitcap.co chart and payout data. We will be paying out everyone on app.bitcap.co a few days after the Merge (given the Merge does not cause security issues), and you will begin to accrue new balances for the various supported assets on the pool. MagicPool intends to announce a slew of new features in the weeks and months ahead including native payout support, more coin support, and a few more that I am told we cannot discuss yet. 

We know the road ahead is not as clear as it once was, but we believe GPU mining will continue to have a future like it has since 2009. We are doing our part to ensure we capture as much revenue as possible for our clients. We are excited for the vacuum Ethereum moving on will cause in our niche industry, and we thank you for mining with us.