As soon as next week, Ethereum could move away from miners' services when it shifts the burden on validators. Public mining companies are looking at altcoins to reconfigure their equipment to. According to White Rock CEO Andy Long, GPU mining will never be as profitable as it was in the past two years for Ethereum.

In mid-2021, Ethereum miners' earnings consistently exceeded those of Bitcoin miners. The reason for this was the large reward for transactions in terms of overall income. As such, in February 2021, it reached 52%, while the absolute high was in May 2021, when miners earned $1 billion in one month on commission alone. According to the mining company Hive, which mines ETH and BTC, mining an altcoin is 3-4 times more profitable when factoring in megawatts spent.

Despite Ethereum's significant drop and the high computing difficulty, mining it is still the most profitable. Alternatives offer a return only half as large. The profitability calculator promises $2.34 a day for ETH and about $1 for mining ETC or ETP.

However, these numbers will also be tested when the army of ETH miners begins to migrate to other coins, thereby increasing the hashrate and computing difficulty. On the other hand, decentralisation and resistance to potential attacks will grow, which will positively affect the investment valuation. In two months, Ethereum Classic has more than doubled after developers set mid-September as the final date for the merger.

Due to the expectation of a drop in the profitability of GPU mining, a number of miners are already getting rid of graphics cards, which is leading to a significant price drop in the secondary market. Andy Long believes that the prices will fall even more since supply will soon exceed demand. 

The transition to PoS is expected to take place on 15 September. The main tests have already been conducted, and 76% of node operators have already updated their clients to the latest version.

StormGain analytics team

(cryptocurrency trading, exchange and storage platform)