By George Ward
A Bitcoin mining company, Luxor, has announced the launch of an auction-styled platform that will host the buying and selling of mining hardware. The firm aims to use the new product to improve mining hardware’s price and liquidity supply in the secondary market.
A Single Platform For Mining Hardware
According to the company’s operation manager, Lauren Lin, buyers and sellers previously relied on multiple sites to buy and sell Bitcoin mining hardware. With the introduction of the Luxor platform, they can observe offers, listings, and price settlements in a single place.
Lin added that this would help boost pricing transparency and advance the procurement process for mining hardware. On the one hand, the new platform will allow buyers to request orders based on model types and locations to get the best value to suit their needs.
Moreover, sellers can mix and match numerous models and producers in their orders to enhance efficiency. It is worth noting that prices for ASIC mining equipment have been steadily declining since 2022, with the industry struggling to keep up with the decreasing margin.
As a result, the machines lost over 80% of their value last year. In addition to the hardware sale platform, Luxor reportedly launched a derivative Bitcoin-based product for increased mining revenue last October.
The firm stated that this was just the first among the many derivative products it intends to launch soon.
A Drop In ASIC Miner Prices
Toward the end of last year, data from the Hashrate Index showed that Bitcoin ASIC miners sold at their lowest prices. According to the data, the price of Bitcoin mining machines has seen a significant fall of 86.82%.
This means that the devices dropped from their May 2021 high of $119.25 to $15.71 as of December 25, 2022. The steep fall in the price of mining equipment is primarily attributed to the struggles facing most Bitcoin mining firms.
As a result of the bear market trend for most of last year and some companies going insolvent or selling their mining equipment to stay in business, the sector has seen a steady decline in profits. Some of the most notable firms hit by the market downturn include Core Scientific, Riot Blockchain, Marathon Digital, Argo Blockchain, and Bitfarms.
However, the massive price slump has attracted keen buyers who took advantage of the drop in price to purchase some of the mining machines. Given that the year has just started, it is hard to predict the direction of the prices of the ASIC miner machine.
Even though there was a price slump for the equipment during the last Bitcoin halving period in May 2020, the same won’t occur in the next halving scheduled for April 2024.