When asked if the updated bitcoin production cost estimate of $45,000 implies that JPMorgan expects the bitcoin price to rise to that level, Panigirtzoglou told The Block that while the current bitcoin production cost estimate stands at $45,000, it still maintains the $42,000 level for the medium term.
Why do they keep with this stupid assumption?
Bitcoin is not mining for coal or drilling for oil, you can't cut production, there will still be 450 Bitcoin mined every day, and you can't support the price if something is more expensive to mine, you will just have some miners quit and the ones in profit will keep on mining, mining cost will NEVER influence the price!
If such thing were true then all the community would have to do is invest just 10 billion in gear and voila, the hashrate is doubled, the cost per Bitcoin is doubled do suddenly we're at 90k per coin and we have gained 500 billion in market cap, but things don't work like this!
Price determines the hashrate, not the other way around.
It goes both ways. Unless you really think JPMorgan doesn't know what they're talking about.
10 years ago the hashrate was a lot lower, therefore the mining cost was also lower.
Miners have to sell at a certain price to break-even. 10 years from now the mining cost will be a lot higher, I reckon.
Back in 2009 the mining cost was dirt cheap due to CPU mining, that's why you saw people selling 10k BTC for €20.
The harder it becomes to mine a single BTC, the more miners will have to charge for selling their BTC.
And vice versa, back in May 2021 we saw a huge hashrate reduction (China miner exodus) and a BTC price reduction at the same time. It's a self-regulating mechanism.
Btw, solar panels of 410W cost €79.99 currently. An array of 20 panels seems dirt cheap for a typical household.
ps: Suggesting that TSMC can ramp up their 3nm wafer production, so that the hashrate will be doubled in a short amount of time is a pipe dream.
The BTC network grows organically.
TSMC also has to produce chips for Apple, Nvidia, AMD etc. That also makes 51% harder to achieve, unless pools decide to collude and destroy their precious income.
Price determines the hashrate, not the other way around.
If you find a way to mine bitcoin with very low cost, won't that influence the price? The total bitcoin entering the circulation will remain 450 every day, but your share increases, and that alone, can influence the price.
Let me give an example. Suppose we have 450 EH/s total hashrate. You find near zero electricity cost in Hypothetical-Islands. It only takes $10,000 to mine a bitcoin there, while it costs $50,000 the least to your competitors. Since you're with $56,000 profit for every bitcoin mined, you decide to make a big investment in infrastructure, mining at 50 EH/s. Adding this to 450, and total hashrate becomes 500 EH/s.
Your competitor might be selling it at $51,000 to make $1000 profit, but you can drop it a lot less than that, making it unprofitable to them. Then, they'll have to shut down their operations, and you can take their hashrate by expanding your operations in Hypothetical-Islands. You're practically taking a large portion of the pie, and have the flexibility to sell it for a lower price than your competitors, while expanding the hashrate.
Have I missed anything?
Nuclear fusion could be the Hypothetical Island, but we won't see it before 2050.