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Nov. 26 (NBD) -- Bitcoin dived further to 3,620 U.S. dollars at 6:24 p.m. of Sunday, hitting a record low since September 24, 2017.

Compared with the market on November 14, Bitcoin has lost 44 percent of its value in a mere 11 days. The price bounced back slightly on Monday.

The price drop of Bitcoin doesn't only affect holders of the leading crypto coins, but also plagues miners that swarmed to the mining industry along the rise of Bitcoin at the end of last year and drives down the price of mining rigs, new or second-hand.

Between 600,000 and 800,000 bitcoin miners have shut down since mid-November amid declines in price and hashrate across the network, leading source of cryptocurrency news CoinDesk reported citing data provided by Chinese leading mining pool F2pool.

Mao Shixing, founder of F2pool, said new mining rigs with improved performance came out within 1-2 months and the mining chips had to get changed for third-generation ones in 3-6 months, which caused a lot of miners to suffer huge losses. A second-hand mining machine which was bought at the price over 20,000 yuan (2,879.6 U.S. dollars) in early 2017 is now sold at several hundred yuan, Mao noted.

Mao held that now is the most painful time for bitcoin mining, as the current input-output ratio of the cyclical industry is not high, adding that miners he interviewed recently suffered an average loss of 10 million U.S. dollars.

Moreover, the hashrate of the bitcoin network has been declined over 43 percent to 42.01EH/s on Sunday from about 74.54EH/s on October 4 this year, according to btc.com.

Photo/VCG

Cryptocurrencies in general are facing increased regulatory scrutiny, putting pressure on their values.

The tightened regulations have also extended to affect mining plants which provide hosting services for miners.

A source at such a mining plant confirmed with NBD that authorities in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region demanded mining plants to rectify and reform and to receive inspections of taxation departments.

The plant is now facing declining clients and looking for buyers of mining rigs for clients that quitted mining, according to the source.

New mining equipments are not selling well amid the downward wave of Bitcoin.

Early this month, bitcoin mining behemoth Bitmain released its Antminer S15 model at a price of 11,600 yuan (1,670.2 U.S. dollars) per unit. Bitmain declared on its official website that it sold out the new miners within five minutes, whereas NBD found there were still goods in stock when contacting Bitmain in the name of a customer last week.

Bitmain's Head of Miner Sales Fan Xiaojun last week clearly stated that mining machines currently were hard sells.

This contrasts sharply with the beginning of this year when each bitcoin was worth as high as 100,000 yuan (14,398.2 U.S. dollars) and the much-hyped Bitmain's Antminer S9 miner jumped to 30,000 yuan (4,319.5 U.S. dollars) from 8,000 yuan (1,151.9 U.S. dollars).

Price dive of Bitcoin, withdrawing miners and dull sale of mining machines have brought unprecedented shocks and changes to the controversial industry.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn