Yeah but if their hardware is now confiscated, does it still pay off? How long do you need to mine until the hardware is paid for, assuming free electricity?

Also this is the part of the cycle where news about mining rigs catching fire and stealing power start creeping into the mainstream again. The price goes up, more people mine, more people do illegal shit to mine, mining equipment sells out, people get pissed and start whinging about graphics cards or some shit because crypto crypto blah blah so annoying and that gets in the news too. Then after no talk about any of this stuff for the last 2 years concern about bitcoins power usage starts making it back to the mainstream even though not much has changed except the price. This kicks off the feedback loop and the talk of the halving of rewards does the rounds and a new wave of investors are pulled in. Alt coins follow and people get rich, then the story’s of someone you know getting rich go around and people think, this is bullshit, I want to get rich and they get fomo and throw in their money and the run is in full swing. Elon makes his play and reveals his purpose for buying twitter is to use bitcoin and dogcoin as payment. Hysteria ensues and all fundamentals, ethics and common sense go out the window. Then when it feels like the craziness is normal the billionaires sell up and the crash begins. New comers are rattled and pull out straight away only to watch it go up again and to put their money back in and get wrecked again. Digital gold, utility, financial instrument, hedge against inflation and the money printer blah blah rinse repeat. Bitcoin is going to zero even though it’s literally gone on average from $1 to 50000 in 12 years or what ever, but yes it’s really risky somehow. It’s also dumb as shit but so is everything these days. People don’t give a shit what it is as long as they’re getting rich and people love talking about making money, not losing it. So when price goes up you hear about it whether you want to or not