Voell agrees that industrial mining is growing, but suspects that if the space encounters a true bear market, the plucky home miners will be more likely to ride it out. “It’s much more difficult to squeeze a retail miner out of the market,” says Voell. The big shops are only mining bitcoin to make money, says Voell, whereas the home miners — who also care about profit, sure — enjoy getting KYC-free bitcoin, they’re in it partly for the ideology, and sometimes they’re heating 17,000 gallon swimming pools. “Even if they’re running at a small loss,” says Voell, “they’ll run an ASIC or two just to participate in the network.”
