BitMEX Research: The BCH “Hash War” Costed Miners $6.1 Million In Lost Revenue

BitMEX Research is in the latest cryptocurrency news – mostly for its new report which shows that the hash rate of both sides of the Bitcoin Cash “hash war” has led BCH miners to collectively lose as much as $6.1 million in gross revenue since last week’s blockchain split – leading to the creation of Bitcoin Cash SV (BCHSV) and Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHABC) accordingly.

As a tweet from BitMEX Research’s Twitter profile shows:

Hash war estimated costs live update

Combined totals:
* Estimated leasing fees: $8.1m
* Combined gross losses: $6.1m

Even assuming cheap energy costs, SV miners have a negative gross margin of 353% & $1.4m of gross losses. @CalvinAyre @ProfFaustus cant keep this up forever. pic.twitter.com/CdTQm0vVf4

— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) November 19, 2018

Something which must be noted is that the profits that were gained from such mining – or loss thereof – would currently be on paper only as neither BCH nor BSV has a liquid market at this time – in fact, they are measuring serious losses.

The figure also assumes that everyone renting hash is actually finding blocks or that most or all of the hash being used to win blocks in either chain, right now, is rented. Obviously, this is not always the case as there are many Bitcoin Cash miners that own their hardware and choose to mine on BCH chains for various reasons.

What we can conclude is that mining is not anymore a hobbyist game. As you can see from the report, the majority of miners run on tight margins and hardware expenses are at least as important as the cost of electricity – which always varies.

As a result of this, analysts believe that a significant amount of new BCH will continue to be sold regardless of how the markets treat the tokens.