As bitcoin and most of other cryptocurrencies have dropped to a point where it’s not that profitable to produce, a lot of miners lose their incentives. A severe decline occurs in the mining machine market.

In Huaqiang North Commercial Area (HNCA), the world’s largest distribution center of cryptocurrency mining machines, the price of an AntMiner S9 has dropped from a high of 19,000 yuan to 9,000– 10,500 yuan in a short time. Mining machine retails also sent money-saving coupons (valid with 2,800 RMB purchase per miner) to their customers who purchased AntMiner S9 in a price range of 12,000 to 19,000RMB.

However, although the price of mining machine drops a lot, bitcoin currently trades essentially at the break-even cost of mining a bitcoin. Under ideal conditions, using an AntMiner S9 with 14 TH/s hashrate, the daily cost of electricity is about 15.12 yuan ($2.4 USD), the daily income is about 50.62 yuan ($8.06 USD). The current bitcoin price is $7898 USD, if we only count the cost of equipment and electricity, it still takes nearly 300 days to make profit. Plus the cost of maintaining cooling facilities, the cost to mine a bitcoin could easily exceeds the reward.

In some cases, miners may simply turn off their mining machines until the price comes back a bit. Small-scale miners also choose to quit this industry. However, although the minging market enters to an ‘ice age’, smart mining machine retails can still make profits.

Some senior retails disclosed that, The lucrative seller’s market in the previous period enabled mining machine merchants to have certain anti-risk capabilities. After the cryptocurrency fever cooling down, they selling their mining machines at sharp discounts in order to reduce stocks and lower the risks. Although the retails give a 30 to 40% discount, they can still make profits from it.

“We can also recycle second-hand mining machines with good quality in a very low price from miners who want to quit this industry”, said by a shopkeeper from Huaqiang North. Some of the mining machines looks brand new but the price of recycle is only 1/5 of the original price. “Although the price is really low, these clients are satisfied without bargaining,” he added.

The old mining machines with surface imperfections would be dismantled. Retails could sell the CPU, hard disk drive and graphics. For example, a new GTX1060 graphics sells at a price of 2,500 yuan, while a secondhand GTX1060 graphics only needs 800 to 1,000yuan  in the market.

“We can get 6 GTX1060 graphics from a old miner and sell them at a price of 4,000 to 5,000 yuan or even higher,” said by a miner retail.