Anybody else getting slaughtered by this latest difficulty? - page 2.

CydeWeys

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Quote from: Mousepotato on June 28, 2011, 03:10:27 PM

Well, if you're going to assume that growth will be the same, then the BTC value will double every 3-4 weeks as it has done in the course of June alone. Assuming worst case scenario (4 weeks) that puts the BTC value at $1088 per BTC by the end of December (based off $17 by the end of June).

Thus mining will still be profitable.

The only guarantee is that it will remain profitable for people with pre-existing hardware and free electricity. People who pay a lot for electricity may find it no longer profitable in the not too distant future, and people who would have to buy hardware up-front to start mining with now are already finding it unprofitable.

btcvc

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Quote

My main concern is that the people buying bitcoin don't value them in the same way as we, the miners, do. To a daytrader, it doesn't matter what the difficulty is as long as they can sell high and buy low.

This part of the thread is absolutely central. People have to realize that unless there is something tangible that they can buy with bitcoin easily, daytraders will be the ones who determines BTC's value. We have to get sites off the ground that are accepting BTC for actual goods and services, or else Bitcoin will always just be a version of Forex with less transaction fees.

Yeti

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Come on, people! Mining will always be profitable! If it won't be profitable anymore (for a short period of time), people will drop out like they did with Namecoin mining and the difficulty will drop. Thus making it profitable again. Somebody will always be mining, otherwise who would include your transactions into the blockchain?!

Whether it will be profitable for the Average Joe is another question. In the long run, when prices are more or less stable (2-3% variance on a "bad" day), only the most efficient will be mining.

Mousepotato

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Quote from: hugolp on June 28, 2011, 02:07:36 PM

But this is assuming same growth. And 120Gh/s for half BTC with GPU technology does not cover electricity expenses even at the cheaper rate of 8 cents Kw I think (I have not made the math really), so its not going to happen.

Well, if you're going to assume that growth will be the same, then the BTC value will double every 3-4 weeks as it has done in the course of June alone. Assuming worst case scenario (4 weeks) that puts the BTC value at $1088 per BTC by the end of December (based off $17 by the end of June).

Thus mining will still be profitable.

Jack of Diamonds

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Quote from: ?? on ??

So, assuming ATI is capable of producing enough GPUs, 120gh/s to
get your hands on half a BTC is likely to happen around December
this year.

If price doesn't rise in the hundreds of dollars then it wont happen until FPGA/ASIC boards are released.
Assume a Radeon 5850 gets around 300mhash/s at 225 watts. That's 90,000 watts of constant power consumption for 120ghash/s

If electricity costs about $0.10 per kWh,
you are spending $216 dollars per day to generate 0.45 bitcoins.

If the price of 1 bitcoin is below $480 ($216 for 0.45) nobody is going to mine them on GPU's.

hugolp

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Quote from: ?? on ??

Quote from: Jack of Diamonds on June 28, 2011, 01:16:45 PM

Why? Because market conditions will make ASIC mining favorable. Even if 120 ghash/s will only create 0.45 BTC per day in 2013, a farm of circuit boards creating that amount of BTC per day will only draw maybe 1kW of power and cost a few hundred dollars.

120 gh/s to create 0.45 BTC in 2013 ?

I think you're waaaaaaay off:

   - right now, it takes roughly 1.5gh/s to generate 1 BTC/day

   - looking at the charts here: http://bitcoin.sipa.be,
   the amount of online hashing power online grows roughly like
   this:

   - x10 every 3 months
   - x100 every 6 months

So, assuming ATI is capable of producing enough GPUs, 120gh/s to
get your hands on half a BTC is likely to happen around December
this year.

Merry Christmas !

But this is assuming same growth. And 120Gh/s for half BTC with GPU technology does not cover electricity expenses even at the cheaper rate of 8 cents Kw I think (I have not made the math really), so its not going to happen.

Jack of Diamonds

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Quote from: AngelusWebDesign link=topic=23000.msg298163#msg298163

Yes, because there's no limit to how much electricity a residence can use. Roll Eyes

Seriously, though, there's a limit to how much a residence can draw from the power company. Transformers in your neighborhood can only handle so much, etc. Remember, electric company engineers assume a transformer will be for 20 RESIDENCES, not businesses or industry.

Then there's the whole "use more than 90 KWh a day and we can bust your door down, and fine you $2,000 EVEN IF WE FIND NO POT"

Single mining operations will never reach tera/petahash performance with conventional GPU's or even clusters in data centers with massive amperage.

ASIC boards will overtake GPU's in power efficiency by at least 2012-2013, if not earlier. Devices hashing multiple hundred mhash/s at a few watts will become the norm once GPU mining becomes infeasible & mining will continue.

Why? Because market conditions will make ASIC mining favorable. Even if 120 ghash/s will only create 0.45 BTC per day in 2013, a farm of circuit boards creating that amount of BTC per day will only draw maybe 1kW of power and cost a few hundred dollars.

Price per BTC will probably not stagnate at $17 at that point either, due to demand & immense difficulty of creating new blocks.

tanerlorn

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Quote from: makomk on June 28, 2011, 09:24:03 AM

Quote from: tanerlorn on June 28, 2011, 02:22:32 AM

Its amazing that you would imply others are of lower intelligence than yourself when you ignore the very base and simple concept of:

It is impossible to predict future price
It is impossible to predict future price
It is impossible to predict future price
It is impossible to predict future price

So yeah maybe that 5830 will never make you $160. Or maybe it will make you $1600.

Would you ever be better off than if you just bought a suitable number of bitcoins for USD directly right this instant, though? If not, it's entirely pointless to buy one for bitcoin mining at that price.

Because when you buy a rig, many people see it as an additional hedge...If bitcoin goes to $0, they can still sell this rig for some amount of $. If they invested straight in bitcoins and that happened, tough luck.

Plus all the stuff Yeti says.

AngelusWebDesign

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Quote from: Sjalq on June 28, 2011, 09:44:55 AM

Quote from: Cluster2k on June 27, 2011, 09:50:59 AM

Quote from: Grinder on June 27, 2011, 04:28:08 AM

Quote from: Rob P. on June 26, 2011, 08:21:15 PM

Then don't sell them if you believe they are undervalued.

If lots of people think like that it means that a large amount of bitcoins that people really want to sell is piling up. When you give up waiting the price will crash.

Price will collapse and 0 - 2016 blocks later so will difficulty. Unless BTC is deposed from some other inherent flaw in the long run this will only make mining more attractive to those of us who think BTC has a future in its own right.

More likely the efficient will crowd out the inefficient as gigahash miners become tera and peta hash miners.

Yes, because there's no limit to how much electricity a residence can use. Roll Eyes

Seriously, though, there's a limit to how much a residence can draw from the power company. Transformers in your neighborhood can only handle so much, etc. Remember, electric company engineers assume a transformer will be for 20 RESIDENCES, not businesses or industry.

Then there's the whole "use more than 90 KWh a day and we can bust your door down, and fine you $2,000 EVEN IF WE FIND NO POT".

I realize profit is profit, but nevertheless it's a BIG STEP to go out and rent office space for an operation. Even if it were profitable to do so, only 1 out of 100 people (if that) would actually do it.

Not everyone is willing to take this to the Nth degree.

Yeti

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Yeah, I don't know why they don't reset that stat after a difficulty change. Takes at least 24 hours for the "network hashrate" to adapt after a difficulty change.

Kuber

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It was definitely on current difficulty 1379223, but, as already mentioned, could have been a display error due to the diff increase.
-> http://www.bitcoincharts.com/markets/

Sjalq

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According to those graphs it looks like difficulty is now slightly above mining interest.
If there are no more price spikes I suspect the next difficulty might be less than 10%( Huh

) when the next adjustment comes around.

Yeti

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How many few days ago? Mind you, the last diff change was on Friday.
http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-2k.png shows the variance (green line) quite nicely.

Kuber

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Quote from: Yeti on June 28, 2011, 09:44:20 AM

Nope. That's more likely just the ups and downs of luck.
If there's a block/hour ratio of (more or less) 6 that means people still run their rigs but do not add new hardware (which had already been unfeasible before the last difficulty change).

So IMHO everybody is still on board (more or less) but right now it's not attractive to invest in new hardware. Should the price rise again we will see another rise in difficulty because more people will buy new hardware (new and old miners alike).

Yup, but the block/hour ratio was nearly 8 few days ago.. haven't known that luck could have such a big impact at such high hashing rates.

Sjalq

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Quote from: Cluster2k on June 27, 2011, 09:50:59 AM

Quote from: Grinder on June 27, 2011, 04:28:08 AM

Quote from: Rob P. on June 26, 2011, 08:21:15 PM

Then don't sell them if you believe they are undervalued.

If lots of people think like that it means that a large amount of bitcoins that people really want to sell is piling up. When you give up waiting the price will crash.

Indeed. Bitcoin's value requires a constant infusion of new market participants. If people become disillusioned with mining and bitcoin fails to find a real use, the hoarders waiting for a better price will be waiting for Godot. If enough people come to the conclusion that 'this is as good as it gets' in regards to BTC's price, it's a downward spiral from there. Sellers attract more sellers as BTCs are dumped onto fewer and fewer buyers. Speculators may cherish this buying opportunity but there comes a time when even the strongest believer in a commodity must wonder if they're going to be stuck holding the bag.

Price will collapse and 0 - 2016 blocks later so will difficulty. Unless BTC is deposed from some other inherent flaw in the long run this will only make mining more attractive to those of us who think BTC has a future in its own right.

More likely the efficient will crowd out the inefficient as gigahash miners become tera and peta hash miners.

Yeti

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Nope. That's more likely just the ups and downs of luck.
If there's a block/hour ratio of (more or less) 6 that means people still run their rigs but do not add new hardware (which had already been unfeasible before the last difficulty change).

So IMHO everybody is still on board (more or less) but right now it's not attractive to invest in new hardware. Should the price rise again we will see another rise in difficulty because more people will buy new hardware (new and old miners alike).

Kuber

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Total hashrate is nearly below 10Thashes - down from like ~12. Seems some people don't like the new difficulty.
Or was it a display bug?

Yeti

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Everybody that thinks this way should buy my mined bitcoins from me. Shush, go away! Let us nerds mine in peace for the helluvit. Buying $160 (or $1,000 for that matter) Bitcoins on an exchange is nothing compared to the joy you get from building a rig yourself from scratch. It's like having a baby! (Also about as high-maintenance.)

Really, it's not so bad. I expected difficulty to rise a lot more since there are so many people with cheaper electricity than me. But now it seems to level off and people are already exiting which makes it that much more profitable for me to mine. Wink

Who needs to recoup investments when they have fun playing around with hardware?! I've not built a system from scratch in almost 10 years!

All you whiny get-rich-fast miners should sell your stuff on eBay and buy some coins at your local exchange.

makomk

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Quote from: tanerlorn on June 28, 2011, 02:22:32 AM

Its amazing that you would imply others are of lower intelligence than yourself when you ignore the very base and simple concept of:

It is impossible to predict future price
It is impossible to predict future price
It is impossible to predict future price
It is impossible to predict future price

So yeah maybe that 5830 will never make you $160. Or maybe it will make you $1600.

Would you ever be better off than if you just bought a suitable number of bitcoins for USD directly right this instant, though? If not, it's entirely pointless to buy one for bitcoin mining at that price.

killer2021

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Look guys, here is the bottom line. The amount of btc paid out per hour is like a lottery, its basically a fixed amount regardless of how many miners there are. If more people mining then it means less btc for everyone.

With that being said the bottom line is that the only people who are going to mine in the future are those who have the most efficient mining rigs. By efficiency I mean the people with the lowest cost for electricity and the most efficient rigs that can turn that electricity into btc. If your electricity is over 10c/kwh then its pretty much game over.

As the difficulty increases only those that meet the above criteria will continue to mine. Everyone else will just go bankrupt.

I would strongly suggest to analyze their rig operation and see if it makes sense to mine in the future. If the answer is no then best to sell while you are ahead. For most of you, the biggest problem is that you electricity is too expensive.

Topic: Anybody else getting slaughtered by this latest difficulty? - page 2. (Read 10240 times)