Topic: Estimate of ASIC pre-orders: 13 to 15 PH/s (diff 1.8B to 2.1B) by end of 2013 - page 5. (Read 30648 times)

Predicting mining 6 months out is like trying to predict today what the weather will be in 2089. However here is my guess.  

First I have always been in the "price drives difficulty but difficulty doesn't drive price" school of thought.  So all of the following is basd on price being relatively stable (say $200 +/- 20% long term with no more than +/-35% in the short term).  If exchange rate moves up or down significantly and "sticks" (i.e. falls to $100 and stays there for weeks/months) then you can expect the following to be pushed higher or lower respectively.

For Q1-2014.
I think we will see pretty aggressive hashrate growth in Q1 of 2014.  If the estimate holds and we are roughly 12 PH/s on 01/01/2014 my best guess is that will rise to at least 30 PH/s over the next three months.  As an upper limit I am reluctant to put one but if I had to pick a number I am fairly confident I would say less than 60 PH/s.  This is simply because there is a lag in chip ordering and thus hashrate growth is constrained by wafer batch size.  While in theory an ASIC company could order hundreds or even thousands of wafers I doubt any ASIC company wants the risk of holding a small fortune in chips in the event something happens to Bitcoin and/or mining.   So no matter how delusional miners are I think there will be cap on how fast (not how high but how fast) hashrate will rise.  

Without significant exchange rate increase I don't see mining companies being able to sell the amount of rigs necessary to push hashrate up another >20PH/s (for visualization that is >20,000 KNC Jupiters).   If we are looking at 20 to 50 PH/s added in Q1 at $10 per GH/s thats $250M to $500M.  I don't think there are that many rich people who are bad at math.   Even $4 per GH/s is $80M to $200M which is likely too high given the annual mining revenue and amount of existing hardware so my guess is hardware prices are going down a lot in early 2014.  I expect every major vendor to be <$3 per GH/s with prices heading closer to sub $2 per GH/s as the quarter progresses.  The vendors with the most aggressive pricing may be pushing up against $1 per GH/s.   I would be surprised to see <$1 per GH/s for complete "ready to mine" systems although raw ASICS in bulk (chips on a reel) might get that low.

For the miners who thought power doesn't matter and bought rigs in countries with high power rates (>$0.10 per kWh) we probably will see a lot of used hardware up for sales.  This will be a migration of hardware from high cost miners to low cost miners albeit at a significant price reduction.  This will be more frequent with lower efficiency rigs (anything worse than 1 J/GH).  This resale of hardware to lower cost miners will increase its economic lifespan and ensure difficulty isn't going down (other than minor fluctuations).  It isn't until an Avalon rig is paying more than the value of a BTC in electicity in low cost areas that equipment will be retired.   At current exchange rate that isn't going to happen until north of 30 PH/s.

I also think more than one vendor will go bankrupt, be exposed as a fraud, or simply exit the space in the quarter.  There might be a new entrant or two but net-net the number of vendors will shrink.  Margins will be falling and competition increasing.  The weaker players probably won't make it.  It wouldn't surprise me to see an OEM type arrangement emerge (i.e. AMD doesn't make graphics cards, they make GPUs and sell them to a dozen or so OEMs who make graphics cards) with one or more vendors simply supplying SHA-2 processors not complete systems to a handful of OEMs.

For Q2-2014.
Your guess is as good as mine.  To be honest, even the Q1 outlook should just be taken as my opinion but I think it is at least grounded in probable events.   Going beyond a full quarter out is just throw a dart at the board territory.

D&T:  With all this information in hand (I thank you), what is your prognosis for the state of the mining sector in 6 months?  Which do you see giving way, BTC FX Rate (upward), Hardware Pricing (Way down) or Difficulty finally leveling off or declining?  Basically which of these mechanism will breakdown to possible compensate for the deluge of hardware coming online?

Your thought?



Thanks,
Dalkore

If all the companies postpone by 1-2 months the roi-calculations stay pretty much the same cause we see then also a postponed diff-increase by 1-2 months.

Diff increase has to be fueled by someone and if those companies have delays then the diff-increase has also delays.

I really hope your pre-orders arrive on time. Every day I hear another company postponing delivery.

I think subject like states quite realistic diff estimate. Maybe it goes roughly Jan 2000, Feb 3000 March around 5000 and then increase slows down significaly, but eventually  doubles again to 10.000 MM, but who knows when! Maybe by end of the next summer?

The only thing I know for sure is that this amount has been ordered, no clue about whether it has been paid and will be shipped.
Meanwhile refunds might take place, so the amount can be lower than expected.

Add 2000 Jupiters to your cart and click reclaculate, then you will be told that in this very moment
"there are only 1849" left.

Where did you get the info about how many Jupiters were bought?

10days ago there had been more than 2003 Jupiters available, now it's down to 1855 and I assume there are more new orders in general than refunds - but this is just an assumption.

Based on probable die size and wafer batch size.  If KNC gets too many refunds they will lower prices to sell more units.   The general version of this idea is that once chips are ordered (not by customers but by company from the foundry) it is very unlikely they won't end up hashing eventually.  Anecdotally I haven't seen much chatter on large number of refunds requests yet. Denial is a powerful thing.

Still the purpose of the list is not to be the "end all be all" official number but a starting point.  If you think the KNC Nov batch will be smaller then adjust the total accordingly.  Still the network is getting so large that even if KNC batch was half that size we are still probably looking at 11 to 13 PH/s by end of year.

Why would you estimate KnC November to be so high?  A lot of people are probably getting refunds.  It would be the smart thing to do while KnC allows it.

I think in time all vendors will cut prices in good time.  Vendors want high prices, customers want low prices eventually the demand will dry up and with it the cashflow.  The only way to get customers to open their wallets will be lower prices.      To be fair Cointerra doesn't have lower prices because they are "nice" it is because they are last.  $10 per GH isn't going to fly with a "late Dec" = industry talk for Jan (or later) delivery.   To move units they have to be cheaper because they certainly aren't going to be earlier.

My guess is when KNC and HF open up January orders either they will be priced aggressively or the market will simply not commit.  

Cointerra is the only one that is competing on price and hash, and this is their V1. I first upgraded 2m GPU to 20M asicminer just to get my ,03 a day. I'll continue to run them until they produce less then 20 cents a day. Looks like I'll have to upgrade again to 200M just to keep up, but I refuse to pay the ongoing prices, in particular the pre-order ones. One thing is to spend a few hundred just to have a hobby, the other is spending thousands These hardware vendors are crazy, they are sure making a kiling. Want to see if they are going to lower their prices to compete with Cointerra  and the much higher diff. Ebay is already flooded with BFL going at bellow the last of their prices. If the network hash is going to run as much as you forecast this is going to stop being a hobby for many to being a big business. Save your BTC, they will become very rare to mine.

Those big red ads all over the place make me very not-interested in spending any time reading that thread.

Actually unless they didn't ship anything on 10/14 it is probably closer to 3000.

10/24 -
10/23 - "with good day ~400 units?" should be finished
10/22 - ?? "600 boxes shipped in last few days"
10/21 - ??
10/18 - ??
10/17 - 280 boxes shipped
10/16 - 455 boxes shipped
10/15 - 350 boxes shipped
10/14 - ??
10/11 - 700 product total since start

So the "600" probably refers to 18th, 21st, and 2nd.  That leaves 10/14 as a unknown so unless nothing shipped we can guestimate it was probably 200-400 more units.

So 700 + 300 + 350 + 455 + 280 + 600 (3 days) + 400 (one final good day) = ~3085.  I will round to 3000 units. 
Assuming 350 GH per avg unit (mix of Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury) that 1 PH/s.

Thanks Puppet.

https://www.kncminer.com/news?page=2

10/11 "So far the factory has produced about 700 products, while it seems a lot we were hoping for more by now,"

The rest is here:

https://www.kncminer.com/news

Yesterday the factory produced and shipped 350 boxes
Yesterday in the factory we had 455 boxes
The factory produced 280 boxes yesterday.
Ok so after a weekend of producing boards and over 600 boxes shipped in the last few days I have imported the last of the October orders into the production Queue, If the factory have a good day tomorrow they should be able to completely finish the Order queue for all orders that had an October shipment.

its not entirely clear if that 600 figure also includes some of the ones reported earlier, but judging by the numbers and dates, 5 days after the previous shipping update, I guess it does not.

Total is 2,385 + one good day.

Have I missed where the hashfast orderbook increased?  Can you throw a hapless miner a linky?

Can you provide a link?  Hmm.  I don't have a link handy but in KNC thread I do recall them indicating ~500 shipped with ~1000 to go.  Maybe that was orders not units.  If the first batch was indeed 2700 units the hashrate should be updated (nearly double).

Is the KNC Sept/Oct number for unshipped items only, or their entire first batch? Because if you read the KnC blog, I get a total of 2385 units already shipped and "one good day" worth of production pending (presumably >400).

Updated to reflect increased HashFast order book (2.24 PH/s excluding IceDrill all batches combined).  Reduced KNC Sept/Oct back to 0.6 PH/s (1500 reported units @ 300 TH/s average - mixed units).   Estimated  KNC Nov batch @ 2 PH/s.