How badly can natural disasters stop mining operations?

Uhwuchukwu53

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Quote from: karabiber on April 20, 2023, 04:45:35 PM

If you are a big miner you should have calculated all the negativities that may occur beforehand.

You are very correct, I think in mining one can't jump into it even in another business or investment without checking what the risk are, minner has this in mind but some time it may occur that there are unforseen circumstances even in other business or investment which may affect dramatically beyond people calculation of risk , as some natural disasters can't be determined where it may occur at any given specific period.

Weezenhofnar

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It's possible that a sudden drop in mining activity due to natural calamities or other reasons could create an opportunity for smaller miners to try their luck at finding a block. However, mining difficulty adjusts regularly to ensure a consistent rate of block production, so any influx of small miners could potentially lead to an increase in difficulty once the larger miners return to the network. Additionally, mining profitability is largely dependent on the price of Bitcoin, which can be volatile and unpredictable.

So, while such an opportunity may arise, it's important for miners to consider the potential risks and rewards before investing in mining equipment and joining the network.

karabiber

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It's tedious to have to wait for natural disasters for small miners to have a chance to combine and find blocks. The odds are closing as small miners look for block increases in already large hash rate drops. I think that natural disasters are not regular enough to affect large miners, and i think that small miner also suffers with the hash rate decrease in times of disaster.

If you are a big miner you should have calculated all the negativities that may occur beforehand. I'm sure they will activate powerful generators against possible power cuts. A sheltered mine shed can be built for floods.

tjtonmoy

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Natural disasters could affect everything. So it will affect mining too. And it will be bad. If you have strong mining rig, it will always require energy to run it. If the natural disaster damage the source of power, it won't be able to run. It's a total shutdown for any system.
And as for small miners, they could get some advantage over a big facility being shutdown, but the percentage would be very low.
If you have a strong mining system and others are being out of the competition for natural disaster, then the percentage would go a bit high, but the difficulty stays the same for some time.

Lida93

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Quote from: Stedsm on December 29, 2022, 03:48:43 PM

I read an article which says that Bitcoin mining hashrate fell more than 13% in one single day, but yeah it recovered back since and is almost near to where it was. Bitcoin mining difficulty reached an ATH of 35.36T and it's being said that it may drop to more than 7-10% due to the US winter storms.

On Chrismas eve, BTC’s hash rate fell over 40% because major miners in the U.S. had shut operations due to the winter storm. While the hash rate soon recovered on Christmas day, peaking at around 247.87 EH/s, it has gradually declined since.*

The above mentioned statement shows that natural calamities can definitely hinder towards the growth of mining industry and even show such big plunges in the numbers. Do you think that some day, if miners are to stop their mining for a longer period, maybe a week or a month (very least/rare chances of this to happen), will it become an opportunity for small miners to merge and mine and try their luck at finding a block when the big numbers are out of the game for some time?

*Source

There's nothing that halt economic operations to the extent with which a natural disaster would, especially one with a very high magnitude like earth quakes, flood etc. These are natural disaster that can affect the distribution of electricity which is what is what miners depends on for mining. So natural if you asked me, i will say natural disaster really does has a great negative effect on mining activities.

In business a disadvantage for Mr B. could be an advantage for an advantage to Mr A., so most definitely if a natural disaster forces the big miners off for a period it's an added advantage to the smaller Miners to easily hit a block or some blocks. That's how business entails anyway!

dansus021

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How badly can natural disasters stop mining operations? In my opinion it well bad as other industry,since crypto mining uses a huge electricity to running their farm if the disaster can cut power grid we pretty much dead, but if only snow comes but it doesn't hurt the power grid is pretty much fine since bitcoin mining is on the internet not real life mine Cheesy

oh flood also maybe can be dangerous since one piece of hardware can cause you thousands of dollar.

kano

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Well considering it is literally impossible to claim
"Bitcoin mining hashrate fell more than 13% in one single day"
I wonder who actually made that claim?

It's completely impossible to know the world mining rash rate on any particular day.
It's impossible to even estimate it reliably.
All you can use is the diff change every 2016 blocks, to get an estimate of the average world hash rate over that 2016 blocks (usually about 2 weeks).
That too is also an estimate, and not exact at all either.

Using Erland's CDF over a set of 144 blocks, it says quite clearly that the hash rate can stay the same for a day,
and yet within +/-1% possibility change by more than 21% i.e. on average, once every 100 days it will drop or rise by more than 21% for no reason than random variance.
On average, once very 8.5 days it will drop or rise by 10% for no reason than random variance.

Across a full diff change, 2016 blocks, the probability of it being more than +/-2% wrong due to random variance is, on average, once every 5.4 diff changes.

So yeah, anyone making claims about the hash rate change over a single day, has clearly misunderstood whatever data they read,
or worse, believed data they read somewhere that was displayed by someone without any statistical understanding of bitcoin mining.

BitDane

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Quote from: Stedsm on December 29, 2022, 03:48:43 PM

The above mentioned statement shows that natural calamities can definitely hinder towards the growth of mining industry and even show such big plunges in the numbers. Do you think that some day, if miners are to stop their mining for a longer period, maybe a week or a month (very least/rare chances of this to happen), will it become an opportunity for small miners to merge and mine and try their luck at finding a block when the big numbers are out of the game for some time?

I always think that the opportunity for small miners to merge and mine to solve blocks is always there, it is that when several miners shutdown due to the natural disasters, the possibility of finding a block increase due to the other miners that supposed to be competing are shut down. Aside from that difficulty adjustment will happen after some weeks when the number of hashing power is reduced, which also increase the chance of small miners to compete in solving blocks. But I think the changes is minimal that it isn't noticeable at all.

Woodie

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Quote from: Stedsm on December 29, 2022, 03:48:43 PM

Do you think that some day, if miners are to stop their mining for a longer period, maybe a week or a month (very least/rare chances of this to happen),will it become an opportunity for small miners to merge and mine and try their luck at finding a block when the big numbers are out of the game for some time?

*Source

One of the greatest strengths the blockchain technology has is decentralization, same thing applies to mining but in this case mining is kind of centralized because of special conditions needed like cooler temperatures, cheap electricity, fair legislation governing crypto, more computing power if centralized etc and if a calamity were to happen that causes a long term downtime for established miners... Definitely mergers would happen as this will add on a pools computing power to have a higher chance of those block rewards on a regular basis .

mikeywith

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Natural disasters are usually regional unless aliens invade planet earth or it's the day of judgment, aside from that, it can't get worse than the China ban except with a U.S ban assuming the U.S owns more than 60% of the total hashrate (China had 50-60% when the ban took place).

Now that we got that out of the way, I don't see how small miners can benefit from this, even if we were to assume a worldwide disaster, small miners don't live in a vacuum, they will be in the same shoes alongside the large miners, right after any difficulty drop, everyone will have the same chances of rushing into the mining business, in fact, the large players will be more ready than the average small miner who sent the miners to his grandmother's garage thinking he would never fire them again.

Large farms play the game a lot differently, they go to the extent of automating everything, at x profitability level change the miner's setting to x, at x profitability overclock the miners, at x profitability shut down the miner, if x coin has better profitability switch to that coin when disaster is over switch the miners on! so without a doubt, large miners will make use of any difficulty drop a lot better than most of us.

stompix

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Quote from: Stedsm on December 29, 2022, 03:48:43 PM

Let's say that the difficulty adjustment (that I forgot to mention about TBH) takes place right after the hashrate has dropped significantly, won't the small miners still stand a chance at trying their hands on getting a block or more?

You can't have both!
If for nearly the whole difficulty you have 100% pace as the previous and on the last day you drop 50% of the hashrate the difference will be just 6%, if for example, we drop 75% you will have an adjustment of -20%, but you end up with 3 more days in the first period and a difficulty that is more than 3 times what you currently have, so it will take the small guys almost two months of running their gear to gain those 2016 blocks.
So, no, you won't make that much in the first adjustment, only when it will drop to the level that matches your hashrate would that happen.

But after two months of blocks every 40 minutes, how low do you think bitcoin would go in price?

philipma1957

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Quote from: Stedsm on December 29, 2022, 03:48:43 PM

I read an article which says that Bitcoin mining hashrate fell more than 13% in one single day, but yeah it recovered back since and is almost near to where it was. Bitcoin mining difficulty reached an ATH of 35.36T and it's being said that it may drop to more than 7-10% due to the US winter storms.

On Chrismas eve, BTC’s hash rate fell over 40% because major miners in the U.S. had shut operations due to the winter storm. While the hash rate soon recovered on Christmas day, peaking at around 247.87 EH/s, it has gradually declined since.*

The above mentioned statement shows that natural calamities can definitely hinder towards the growth of mining industry and even show such big plunges in the numbers. Do you think that some day, if miners are to stop their mining for a longer period, maybe a week or a month (very least/rare chances of this to happen), will it become an opportunity for small miners to merge and mine and try their luck at finding a block when the big numbers are out of the game for some time?

*Source

No. China cut hash rate by 50% in April of 2021 all that happened was 1 very slow diff period of 20 days or so and a price drop,

then when gear was relocated we had a second diff rally and price rise.

NeuroticFish

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Quote from: Stedsm on December 29, 2022, 04:03:30 PM

Let's say that the difficulty adjustment (that I forgot to mention about TBH) takes place right after the hashrate has dropped significantly, won't the small miners still stand a chance at trying their hands on getting a block or more?
I'm not saying that they go for solo mining, my main purpose is to know that if a big herd of small miners (more than 100k or maybe more) go ahead and try their best to earn something out of this opportunity (only if difficulty adjusts down quickly), will there be a possibility they make some bucks against their mining activity?

The difficulty adjustment period is about 2 weeks. If the hashrate drops to half after one week, then there will still be 2 weeks until next adjustment.
Of course, it can happen very close to the adjustment block/moment, but the chances are small.
However, if the difficulty goes down very much then yes, probably smaller miners will have a chance again. They may need pools be adapted for them though.
But I would not be hoping for such situations because then a business with a lot of dormant (less profitable) ASICs can fire them up and perform a 51% attack. Risky.

Stedsm

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Quote from: NeuroticFish on December 29, 2022, 03:56:58 PM

If a big number of miners go offline (or get stopped) the chances are pretty big the difficulty will remain high. So the small miners will not really stand a chance.
The small miners can chip in only after the difficulty adjustment has kicked in and reduced the difficulty significantly. This may take long(er) if the hash rate has dropped greatly...

Let's say that the difficulty adjustment (that I forgot to mention about TBH) takes place right after the hashrate has dropped significantly, won't the small miners still stand a chance at trying their hands on getting a block or more?
I'm not saying that they go for solo mining, my main purpose is to know that if a big herd of small miners (more than 100k or maybe more) go ahead and try their best to earn something out of this opportunity (only if difficulty adjusts down quickly), will there be a possibility they make some bucks against their mining activity?

NeuroticFish

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Quote from: Stedsm on December 29, 2022, 03:48:43 PM

Related to the question in topic title, the answer would be: pretty badly, depending on the magnitude of the disaster and how much of the earth would be affected. I mean that if something like what killed the dinosaurs will happen, I'd say that mining will be in trouble. Possibly humanity too.

Quote from: Stedsm on December 29, 2022, 03:48:43 PM

Do you think that some day, if miners are to stop their mining for a longer period, maybe a week or a month (very least/rare chances of this to happen), will it become an opportunity for small miners to merge and mine and try their luck at finding a block when the big numbers are out of the game for some time?

Your question tells only one thing: you should read much more before posting.
If a big number of miners go offline (or get stopped) the chances are pretty big the difficulty will remain high. So the small miners will not really stand a chance.
The small miners can chip in only after the difficulty adjustment has kicked in and reduced the difficulty significantly. This may take long(er) if the hash rate has dropped greatly...

Stedsm

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I read an article which says that Bitcoin mining hashrate fell more than 13% in one single day, but yeah it recovered back since and is almost near to where it was. Bitcoin mining difficulty reached an ATH of 35.36T and it's being said that it may drop to more than 7-10% due to the US winter storms.

On Chrismas eve, BTC’s hash rate fell over 40% because major miners in the U.S. had shut operations due to the winter storm. While the hash rate soon recovered on Christmas day, peaking at around 247.87 EH/s, it has gradually declined since.*

The above mentioned statement shows that natural calamities can definitely hinder towards the growth of mining industry and even show such big plunges in the numbers. Do you think that some day, if miners are to stop their mining for a longer period, maybe a week or a month (very least/rare chances of this to happen), will it become an opportunity for small miners to merge and mine and try their luck at finding a block when the big numbers are out of the game for some time?

*Source

Topic: How badly can natural disasters stop mining operations? (Read 549 times)