<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>praptak</author><text>A dude I know has cheap electricity on his allotment garden where he built a wooden hut&amp;#x2F;cabin. He uses three PCs built from throwaway parts to heat the hut in the autumn and early spring (in winter there&amp;#x27;s nothing to do there).&lt;p&gt;On the PCs he runs an app that basically manages the mining for you, automatically switching between cryptos to get the most microcents per watt per second.&lt;p&gt;I have no idea why the allotment gardens got the cheap deal on electricity and I don&amp;#x27;t know if the mining gives him a significant &amp;quot;discount&amp;quot; on the heating.</text><parent_chain><item><author>RL_Quine</author><text>You don&amp;#x27;t have to do anything dodgy to get power at an unbelievably low cost, even in north america bulk rates are a couple of cents per kilowatt hour if you know where to look, and in some cases you can even be paid to use power due to politics. You can also be mining at a loss and have it be completely rational, because it is less of a loss than turning it off and writing off the equipment. The economics are very non intuitive for people who aren&amp;#x27;t exposed to the industry.</text></item><item><author>MengerSponge</author><text>If they&amp;#x27;re either using subsidized or pirated electricity, and their hardware is paid for, why would miners pull out?</text></item><item><author>thematrixturtle</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a self-correcting equilibrium though, since the block difficulty is tied to the hashrate, which will fall as miners pull out.&lt;p&gt;That said, the hashrate is not showing major drops yet:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.blockchain.com&amp;#x2F;charts&amp;#x2F;hash-rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.blockchain.com&amp;#x2F;charts&amp;#x2F;hash-rate&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable as BTC price falls to average cost of mining</title><url>https://finbold.com/bitcoin-mining-becomes-unprofitable-as-btc-price-falls-to-the-average-cost-of-mining/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>roenxi</author><text> &amp;gt;The economics are very non intuitive for people who aren&amp;#x27;t exposed to the industry.&lt;p&gt;In the short term, sure. There&amp;#x27;ll probably be fireworks for the next month or two. But thread ancestor might well be talking medium-long term where the economics are really simple - the amount of resources the miners put in to hashing will drop until they are making a profit again.&lt;p&gt;The miners will be profitable again inside 12 months. Even if all that means in practice is that &amp;quot;miners&amp;quot; is some kid in a basement in Khazakstan with an old Pentium.</text><parent_chain><item><author>RL_Quine</author><text>You don&amp;#x27;t have to do anything dodgy to get power at an unbelievably low cost, even in north america bulk rates are a couple of cents per kilowatt hour if you know where to look, and in some cases you can even be paid to use power due to politics. You can also be mining at a loss and have it be completely rational, because it is less of a loss than turning it off and writing off the equipment. The economics are very non intuitive for people who aren&amp;#x27;t exposed to the industry.</text></item><item><author>MengerSponge</author><text>If they&amp;#x27;re either using subsidized or pirated electricity, and their hardware is paid for, why would miners pull out?</text></item><item><author>thematrixturtle</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a self-correcting equilibrium though, since the block difficulty is tied to the hashrate, which will fall as miners pull out.&lt;p&gt;That said, the hashrate is not showing major drops yet:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.blockchain.com&amp;#x2F;charts&amp;#x2F;hash-rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.blockchain.com&amp;#x2F;charts&amp;#x2F;hash-rate&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable as BTC price falls to average cost of mining</title><url>https://finbold.com/bitcoin-mining-becomes-unprofitable-as-btc-price-falls-to-the-average-cost-of-mining/</url></story>