With the past 2 years bringing in record highs for mining profitability, it was only a matter of time before we started to slide back down the slippery slope. In times of economic uncertainty and crypto currency still being in development, with new use cases being discovered, it makes sense that this asset would take a larger hit. In the future if crypto becomes more of a necessity instead of a luxury, then we won't see as much of an impact in price.
Mining Profits:
Estimated daily revenue taken from Whattomine.
As of June 6th 2022 we can see that 180Mh/s on ETH would net you $3.85 per day before electricity. Depending on which GPU's you were mining with, how efficient they are and the cost of power would determine your profit at the end of the day. This would net you roughly 0.0022 ETH/Day meaning you would need this mining rig to run for a little over 454 days to get 1 ETH.
In April of 2021 we can see the same 180MH/s making $16.11 per day before cost of power. You would be mining roughly 0.0078 ETH/Day meaning it would only take 128 days to mine 1 ETH.
Why Profits are lower now:
If we look at the two screen shots above, one from June 2022 and the other from April of 2021 we can see some key data that explains why profits are down. The first item to look at is the block rewards when mining ETH. We can observe that in April of 2021 the block rewards were 3.08 ETH per block and the block times were 13.36 seconds. Comparatively we can see that the block rewards in June of 2022 is set to 2.02 ETH per block and also the block timing increased to 14.05 seconds. This is a 34% decrease in block rewards and a 5% increase in block timings. We can also compare the network hash rate / network difficulty at the time. We can see in April 2021 the network difficulty was 499.07 Th/s where as now in June 2022 it is 1060 Th/s. This is roughly a 2.12x in difficulty in a little over a years time.
Why are Block Rewards Lower:
The block rewards took a major dip with EIP1559 was implemented. This Ethereum improvement proposal brought in a burn mechanic, where the transaction fees were destroyed. Previously these transaction fees went over to the miners as a tip, as the miners would validate the transactions and more transactions turned into more transaction fees. Unfortunately this Ethereum is now being burned and not tipped to the miners, they did however implement a miner tip option when doing transactions. This on the other hand is not a mandatory fee and can speed up the transaction of Ethereum.
