Japanese Mining Firm GMO Stops Mining Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash prices have taken a dive. Therefore, mining for BCH has become less profitable. The equation is simple: electricity is paid for in fiat, and if the coin’s price goes down, the margin after paying the utility bill gets thinner. This is why GMO, one of the leading Japanese mining outfits has discontinued its mining service for Bitcoin Cash.

BCH Mining No Longer Profitable

Trace Mayer of the Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast revealed that GMO did not mine on the BCH chain during July. The report states that BCH mining peaked at 287 coins in February and decreased to a low of 62 coins in June. Moreover, in comparison to the 568 blocks it mined on BTC, GMO mined 0 BCH blocks last month. According to GMO, Bitcoin Cash is no longer profitable hence the firm is no longer mining it. However, the firm may start mining BCH again in the future if the price goes up or looks more profitable.

Mining Power

The announcement comes as no surprise since GMO has been affected by the ongoing conditions in the markets. As per the reports, GMO intends to see its operation scale to 3000PH/s by December 2018 despite the weak market conditions. So far GMO has not expanded its mining capacity. The firm claims that its hash rate for the month of June and July was identical.

Despite the BCH mining announcement, GMO, a Tokyo based firm, is still a leading mining firm. Although Bitmain, a Chinese giant launched the Antminer S9 hydro, GMO has development designs of its own. GMO is set to develop the B3, which is expected to achieve hash rate up to 33TH/s and dominate Bitmain’s recently launched Antminer S9 that can go up to 14TH/s.

Other Services

The Tokyo-based firm also offers a wide-range of services including smart platforms, e-commerce, internet solutions and smartphone solutions. It was the first firm to begin offering the GMO miner B2 with chips ready in May. Nevertheless, it seems that GMO could miss its goal to boost capacity up to 3000PH/s before December; the markets do not seem to favor the move.

BCH

Despite the fork scandal and the report that GMO stopped BCH mining, Bitcoin Cash is still the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Following, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple, BCH has a market cap of over $9 billion USD and is trading within a range of $530 to $650 over the last few days. If that is enough for other miners to keep on mining on that chain remains to be seen.