In September 2017 John McAfee in one of the interviews said, that it's worths to his company $ 1000 to mine 1 Bitcoin. From that moment difficulity of the network has rised 3 times and miners revenue got cuted as well. Right now payback period of any mining equipment is already more than 200 days.
Or real cowboys mine even at loss?
I started a conversation on reddit about this subject. You can join it there if you like.
For that happen price should got REALLY low. And If that happen I wonder if some whales will come to table to get price up, to make miners work again.
Good question @reklamapsy
I don't believe network will stop simply because it's not profitable. Anyone who is mining I'm sure is aware of it takes time to get your money back on a mining investment. Overtime the value of BTC will go back up and the 200 day return period can actually be cut even shorter(depending on how fast the value goes up) Haha i guess what i'm trying to say is yes. Real cowboys mine even at a loss. Keep the good questions coming, maybe we can get others involved and spark a conversation. Cheers :)
Maybe we'll go PoS someday (also because PoW not "green" at all).