Even when Bitcoin was selling at $47,000 in mid-September, “mining” the world’s leading cryptocurrency ranked as probably the most world’s most lucrative legal enterprise. The Bitcoin picture provided a business school-worthy case study in how the combination of soaring prices and barriers to entry were leading to astounding profitability for the entrenched players. By September, Bitcoin was selling for over four times the $11,000 it fetched a year earlier, when the industry was already making good money. But a crackdown in China and a severe shortage of the semiconductors used in mining computers rendered the industry a lot less competitive, handing a bigger share of the market, and far fatter profits, to the established producers that already had plenty of machines, and just kept minting coins.
In the past month, Bitcoin’s gone on a tear, jumping 21% to $57,000 at mid-afternoon on October 15. The field that already dwarfed the profitability such high-margin stalwarts as luxury…
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