Surviving as a Miner in a Bear Market: Key Criteria for Choosing a Pool
When an asset's price falls while network difficulty remains at its peak, the profitability of any equipment comes into question. Under such conditions, a wrong choice of mining pool can turn even the most energy-efficient farm into a loss-making project. In my view, during a prolonged downturn, infrastructure reliability becomes more important than promised bonuses or minimal fees. That is why I decided to break down what truly deserves attention when connecting hashrate.
Hidden Risks of New and Small Platforms
In a falling market, competition among pools intensifies to the limit. To attract clients, small services often lure users with zero fees, generous bonuses, and aggressive advertising. However, behind this usually lie three systemic risks that I highlight as the most critical:
- Non-payment of rewards. A small platform may simply lack a reserve fund. In the event of block delays or technical failures, it is physically unable to cover obligations to miners.
- Hidden deductions. A low rate is often offset by inflated withdrawal fees. There are cases where a pool underreports a user's actual hashrate in its statistics.
- Vulnerable infrastructure. Saving on security makes such services an easy target for DDoS attacks, leading to downtime and lost income.
Criteria for a Reliable Pool
Track record. A platform that has survived several full cycles of growth and decline has already proven its resilience in practice. This is a better indicator than any marketing promises.
Payment model. Here, it is important to understand who bears the risk of failure. With PPS+, the pool pays for every accepted share regardless of whether it finds a block, plus adds transaction fees. Income becomes predictable, but the platform's fee is higher. In the case of PPLNS, the payout directly depends on whether the pool finds a block—and all the variability falls on the miner.
Security and infrastructure. Servers distributed across different regions and reliable protection against network attacks ensure stable ping and uninterrupted operation.
Financial tools. A built-in wallet, auto-conversion of mined coins into stablecoins, and crypto-backed loans allow managing revenue within a single ecosystem without withdrawing funds to external platforms.
An illustrative example is ViaBTC, operating since 2016 and having weathered more than one prolonged bear cycle. In November 2025, the company passed a SOC 2 Type II audit, which verifies the effectiveness of protection mechanisms over the long haul, not just at the moment of inspection. The service by default accrues rewards under the PPS+ model, withdrawals to the CoinEx exchange are fee-free, and auto-conversion and crypto-backed loans allow covering operating expenses without selling assets at the market bottom.
My position here is unequivocal: choosing a pool in a bear market is a matter of business survival. Saving a fraction of a percent on the fees of a small service does not justify the risk of losing an entire day's or week's revenue. Large, proven platforms give miners the security, stability, and technological support needed to overcome any market downturns. At the same time, mining companies are now intensifying their fight for energy capacity amid growing demand from data centers, adding another layer of complexity to an already challenging mining economy.