Mining machines will soon become scrap metal if they are not sold? Second-hand mining machines are only worth one or two hundred yuan each

"As long as the price is not too low, I am willing to sell it quickly."

Looking at the nearly 100 mining machines piled up in the basement, which took up two-thirds of the basement area, Li Chengwei felt mixed emotions. He told Dongdong Notes that in the second half of last year, he resigned from his position as a business manager of a small loan financial company and, despite his family's opposition, took out hundreds of thousands of yuan of savings to join the mining army, hoping to catch a wave of gold rush in the cryptocurrency boom.

Written by: Muzi Editor: Qin Yan

But what he didn't expect was that not long after the mining farm started operating, it began to fall into the nightmare of the global cryptocurrency going from bad to worse in February this year. "Friends in the circle warned me that the hash rate of Bitcoin mining has nearly doubled since the beginning of the year, indicating that more and more new players are entering the market. At that time, I realized that if I didn't upgrade the mining machine, I couldn't continue to play this game."

However, his mining farm has already invested a lot. Faced with increasingly fierce market competition and the rising costs of electricity consumption, equipment depreciation, and manual maintenance required for mining, their mining costs were once higher than the market price of Bitcoin.

“In mid-June, I did the math with another guy who brought me into the industry and found that our profit margin has dropped by 90% over the past six months. He was even worse off because he was also dealing in altcoins. He basically lost everything.” Therefore, Li Chengwei decided to close the mine and sell the mining machines to reduce further losses.

However, in the past three months, he has only sold two mining machines on the second-hand e-commerce trading platform, and the price has been reduced from 1,000 yuan to 700 yuan. He asked many offline stores, but no one was willing to recycle these old mining machines. In order to save storage costs, he could only take the remaining mining machines back home for storage, but he could not avoid daily complaints from his family.

Unknowingly, many miners are facing the same situation as Li Chengwei. They can’t mine virtual currency, and they can’t sell their old mining machines. They can only sit in front of a pile of dusty iron lumps and worry about it.

No one is interested in second-hand mining machines, just because the price of new ones is lower

“It’s really hard to sell. New mining machines are cheaper than my second-hand ones.”

Compared to Li Chengwei, "miner" Ma Tao seems to have better luck. In the past month, he sold four old mining machines on the second-hand e-commerce platform at a price of 850 yuan each. He told Dongdong Notes that this price is less than a quarter of the price of a new machine, but it is still very difficult to sell.

After all, on second-hand e-commerce platforms, there are still many sellers who are clearing out their inventory at low prices and selling brand new mining machines. Ma Tao found that some new mining machines with a computing power of more than 10TH/s that were piled up at the beginning of the year can mostly be traded for around 1,000 yuan, and some new mining machines from small brands are even cheaper than most second-hand mining machines.

“Although I am also clearing out my inventory, I don’t want to sell it too low. After all, I will try to recover as much loss as possible.” Ma Tao said helplessly that he spent more than 200,000 yuan just to buy the mining machine, 40,000 yuan of which was borrowed from his family.

Even if all the mining machines were sold at 850 yuan per unit, it would only be enough to repay this part of the debt and could not recover other investments. In order to sell all the old mining machines as soon as possible, he tried to find offline merchants who could recycle old mining machines in large quantities, but still ended in disappointment.

In a large digital mall in Huaqiang North, Dongdong Notes saw that the various mining machines that were once displayed on the counter have become "supporting roles" in the stalls of merchants, quietly piled up behind other digital products. The red-bottomed black-lettered slogans that used to read "mining machine" have also disappeared.

"If you want, I can give it to you at a discount. Take two and it's 900 (per unit)."

In front of a stall that still sells mining machines as its main product, Dongdong Notes asked about the price of an assembled mining machine. The merchant said that all mining machines are sold at a 30% discount. If you take more than one, the price can be further negotiated, and the power cords and accessories you need can also be given more sets.

But when Dongdong Notes turned to ask the merchant whether they could recycle used mining machines, the boss lady's face immediately changed. She even subconsciously turned away and tried to skip the question. She thought for a while and said that there are very few stalls recycling old mining machines now, and it is a waste of time to waste time without making money.

“After clearing out the inventory of these mining machines, we will no longer operate here.” The proprietress said with a wry smile. In the first half of last year, the Bitcoin market was booming and there was a mining craze in the market. As a result, many Huaqiangbei merchants stockpiled a lot of branded mining machines and assembled mining machines, hoping to sell them at a good price. She and her husband also increased their purchase volume at that time.

But after the mining accident at the beginning of this year, the sales volume of mining machines dropped significantly. Some brands of mining machines could not be sold at the original price, and finally had to be discounted to clear the stock. Some merchants with machine assembly business even disassembled the new accessories in the assembled mining machines, especially graphics cards, and sold them individually.

In an avalanche, no snowflake is innocent.

Whether it is the virtual currency investors who blindly chased high prices last year, the speculative Bitcoin miners, or the mining machine merchants who blindly pursued profits, they have now not only become victims of "mining accidents", but also one of the promoters of "mining accidents".

For miners or merchants, selling every piece of iron that is about to rot in their hands is the only way to reduce investment losses.

The mining machine accessories that made many businesses "rich" are also out of fashion

Earlier this year, Dongdong Notes mentioned in an article titled "Mining is "dead", but smart mining machine merchants are "making a fortune"" that there are many examples of merchants dismantling old mining machine parts and selling them one by one, making a second fortune and making a fortune.

However, things are different now. After only half a year, the second-hand mining machine parts business in Huaqiangbei has become very difficult. The prices of a large number of old graphics cards that have been resold and disassembled have been falling again and again, which has put a lot of pressure on miners and merchants.

"Now, except for the relatively new GTX1070 and 1080, I dare not buy other graphics cards casually." Although Liang Sizhong's computer repair stall has moved from Huaqiangbei to Huaqiangnan, there are still customers who come to them every day to inquire about the prices of purchasing mining machine accessories.

He told Dongdong Notes that as early as the beginning of the mining craze, professional mining cards on the market were hard to come by. Many branded mining machines and assembled mining machines use installed mining cards, which are also high-performance home graphics cards. Some graphics card brand manufacturers have even increased production and supply to meet market demand.

However, after the mining disaster at the beginning of the year, the old mining machines were sold by miners, and the new mining machines were unsalable in the warehouses of merchants. A large number of mining machine accessories such as graphics cards and power supplies were disassembled and sold in pieces, and the prices hit new lows.

"A brand new GTX1080 (graphics card) costs more than 4,000 yuan, but a second-hand one costs 1,200 yuan." Liang Sizhong said, and as there are a large number of old graphics cards of the same model waiting to be sold in the market, merchants have also started to become picky.

Some graphics cards that have been installed and used for a long time and have serious wear and tear will not be recycled. However, users and buyers prefer those "new" graphics cards that are disassembled from unsold new mining machines, with good quality, low price and high performance.

"As for spare parts such as CPU, hard disk, motherboard, and power supply, they are even less valuable." He told Dongdong Notes that many miners and merchants put these disassembled parts on second-hand e-commerce platforms such as Zhuan Zhuan and Xianyu and sell them as idle parts.

But consumers seem to have become smarter. When seeing such large quantities of low-priced second-hand digital accessories for sale, they are cautious about purchasing or even stay away from them. "Many buyers have been fooled. They probably guess that these are disassembled hardware of high-loss equipment such as mining machines and group control systems," Liang Sizhong said with a wry smile.

The graphics card market once saw a surge in prices due to a Bitcoin "speculator" saying that "graphics cards are better at mining than CPUs", and it became hard to find a card as the cryptocurrency surged. However, now, after this unfinished "mining disaster", graphics cards have once again become cheap computer accessories.

Of course, high-end hardware that can be sold at a high price still has a certain value. However, in the hands of many miners, there are also many brand mining machines with ordinary configurations, which have completely become worthless scrap metal.

If you don't sell it, it will soon become scrap metal? Second-hand mining machines are only worth one or two hundred yuan each

"There's really no other way. I even asked at the store that recycles old electrical appliances, and then I went to the scrap collection station."

The old mining machines piled up in the basement have always been difficult to sell. The almost desperate Li Chengwei once called several old home appliance recycling stores, hoping that some recycling stores would be willing to purchase these nearly 100 old mining machines at a better price.

He told Dongdong Notes that most of the mining machines purchased at that time were branded mining machines. Whether it was the chassis, motherboard, power supply or the most critical mining card, they were all professionally customized. They were not compatible with ordinary computers, so they could not be disassembled and sold.

Faced with this batch of brand-name mining machines of decent quality, most home appliance recyclers offered a price of only 100 to 150 yuan per unit, which he could not accept at all and felt the price was too low. Some recyclers even made harsh remarks after being rejected.

"They said that if these (mining machines) are not sold now, they will have to be sold as scrap metal at 50 cents per pound in a while." Li Chengwei admitted that he has asked everywhere, from the electronic mall in Huaqiangbei to the computer assembly shop on the roadside, and now to the old home appliance recycling shop.

It’s not that the mining machines are unsalable, but the prices offered by the merchants are mostly too low, which really makes him feel distressed and reluctant. A brand new mining machine that costs more than 3,000 yuan can now only be sold for 100 or 200 yuan.

"But if the mining machine can't make a profit, how high can its value be?" Compared with Li Chengwei, Yao Xu, who is also a down-and-out "miner", seems much more open-minded. In the past two months, he has been staying in a rental house in Xiasha that used to be a mine, constantly dismantling old mining machines.

He told Dongdong Notes that the mining machines purchased at the beginning were divided into several batches, some of which were assembled mining machines and some were branded mining machines. Among the branded mining machines, there are also several brands and models. If they are sold as old electrical appliances, they are indeed worthless.

"So I dismantled them all, and then sorted them into different categories, and tried to sell them for as much money as possible." After Yao Xu dismantled the mining machine into pieces, it was disassembled into various parts, including hard drives, power supplies, mining cards, motherboards, etc., and he planned to take them to the computer market to try his luck.

A large number of connecting wires, power cables, and data cables were also classified. Because they contained copper wires, he sold these wires to electrical appliance recycling companies. The remaining iron shells, chassis, cabinets, and special spare parts were sold by pound to nearby scrap collection stations.

"I can get 400 to 500 yuan for each machine. The loss is not much, but I accept it." Yao Xu shook his head and said that during the period of bitcoin's surge, his relatives and friends advised him not to blindly follow the trend, but he still chose to go his own way. Now the market is sluggish, resulting in the loss of the initial investment, he lamented that it was all his own fault.

In less than a year, mining machines fell from grace with the "mine disaster", from a money-making tool that earned millions of dollars a month to a second-hand accessory or even scrap metal that sells for hundreds of yuan today. It can only be said that in the mining craze, miners and merchants are all victims of gambling.

After the early players left with a lot of money, the cryptocurrency market, which was built up with bubbles, collapsed. A large number of successors continued to persist in the argument that a new wave of "market" was coming, holding on to mining machines that could no longer create value myths, and became what the industry jokingly called Bitcoin refugees and downtrodden "miners". The adventurers who lost the game are indeed worthy of sympathy, but who should they blame for their current situation?