It had to happen at some point. https://www.forbes.com/sites/colinh...fitability-amid-crypto-crash/?sh=23740d434bf0
Bitcoin mining difficulty is naturally adjusted every 2 weeks to make mining a barely profitable activity. It's like the invisible hand of the market.
Not sure why Forbes needs to play Captain Obvious here and tell us what was known years ago, but then again, some millennials and boomers can be pretty stupid when it comes to crypto so I guess there is a need for Forbes after all. I stayed the hell away from mining stocks, as even a newbie to crypto would have picked up that Ethereum was switching from PoW to PoS, and pretty much all other cryptos were going the same way. Hell, there was even a trial to move BTC into PoS, which failed. And ironically, Europe tried to ban all PoW cryptos recently, which COULD still occur. Mining crypto is and was a dead-end tech... the writing was on the wall for years. I have no idea why mining stocks kept pumping to the stratosphere but... "This time it's different." ehh?
Bitcoin core believers will never switch to PoS but core devs will support any person or group or team that wants to fork Bitcoin and issue a PoS version It's been a while since BTC got a free airdrop of fork coins Ever heard the saying JPow cannot print more oil or wheat or chips to fight inflation? Governments and central banks love PoS, all they gotta do is print as much fiat currencies as needed and buy as much of Eth coins to stake and control the blockchain Impose KYC on all wallets? sure why not Impose geo-location restrictions? sure, why not Impost restrictions on ESG transaction? sure, why not PoS is not decentralization. Who even knows the people or team behind the top staking wallets of Eth 2.0? Could be just a bunch of broken up wallets owned by 1 group
You can make the same argument for PoW. It's no longer everyone using his own CPU or GPU. It's only done now by large conglomerates purchasing mass ASICS at discounts no one else can. Basically, decentralization of BTC has become centralized now. It's to the point that mining pools are dominated by just a very few large guys, that could easily group together to collude for a 51% attack. Also, no one uses the term Eth 2.0 anymore but stock & bond guys trying to pretend they know Ethereum. You are referring to the consensus layer.
You don't know the state of the Bitcoin mining decentralization, but it's ok I don't follow the Etherum development as closely as you do, fwiw, I do not hate Ethereum, but can't say I like PoS but it won't make a difference since I'm not part of the Ethereum Foundation, Vitalik and friends I have over 100 Eth exposure to Ethereum merge due to me owning a BAYC and Otherdeed, so let's just say I hope it goes very smoothly
The last I checked, PoW was causing 15 million per day in downward selling pressure. Once the merge happens, this will flip to 15 million upward pressure every 24 hours. There is a reason why hedge funds own so many CALLs @ the strike of 8K expiring in December this year. Note, the December CALLs were being purchased when the last estimate for Merge was for August. But knowing how many times development keeps pushing back their targets... it is possible we'll be waiting still in 2023.