Topic: Mining and the Halving (Read 4892 times)

I think the big banks can adopt bitcoin in their payment system and they can make more money due to its low cost.

I don't know that I would say BTC was created for "arguably, to circumvent the gigantic capitalistic nightmare that is big banking".   Long term with that as a goal.... we fail.  We want mass adoption of crypto currency.   So we want "regular" people to hear bitcoin and thing good things not that it's trying to beat big banking... as it really is not.

It's ideas like that that give bitcoin a bad name sadly.  That is why many who have startups at this point use "blockchain" vs "bitcoin" is we again want mass adoption, not some small percent trying to beat big banking.

Erumara,  I am with you man!  Been watching this insane boom bust cycle too long, and the stranglehold that these banks and corps have on everything...  I am sorry to hear about your job situation.  It sounds like the Saudi war on fracking is starting to wind down so there may be a rebound coming your way.  It appears a lot of us have been dealing with the bad economic situation up close and personal.  I am thankful to be employed again, but I am not wasting any time diversifying and trying to become more immune to these economic shocks.  Lots more of it is coming unfortunately, so anything we can do to try and make us more sustainable is a good thing... I hope your job situation changes soon.  

Having our fingers in multiple pies to try and be in a better position for the next wave of economic consolidation I think will be key.  Once you have been around the block a few times and finally figure out that the "marketplace" is largely a manipulated and controlled casino it becomes obvious we need other options.  Crypto's are not a primary diversification plan for me because I can see how vulnerable it is, but it is a small step in a new direction that I hope pays off.  

This halving situation is tough.  It is going to be interesting to see how the markets and the coins react.  I am hoping we will see more diversification into other coins to help the market become stronger in the long run.  Greater market access to fiat for other coins and the use of more coins for day to day purchasing power.  Right now we are pretty vulnerable with everything relying on BTC.  I hope that changes.  Maybe halving is that opportunity to make this more of a reality.  

Indeed sir, well said.

The fact that cryptos were created, arguably, to circumvent the gigantic capitalistic nightmare that is big banking; certainly does not make them immune to those in positions of great power. I spent the last decade of my life working my fingers to the bone learning trade skills and making myself an indispensable employee to any number of companies; and now almost entirely as a result of my government pouring billions of dollars into the oil market, only guaranteeing the eventual crash, I find myself unemployed and struggling to provide for my family along with tens of thousands of others.

If cryptos hold any hope of breaking the vicious cycle of debt-creation and bubble economies, I'm all for it.

My money is on BTC being reasonably stable for the near future, can't help but have a bit of a biased attitude.

Cheers!

I guess I am just too old... and seen too much... Roll the clock back to 2000 and all the talk about the speculative bubbles all over the place created by the central banks.  Massive leverage and it was clear they weren't keeping tabs on the money supply... The so called conspiracy NUTS told us of trillions of dollars in derivatives, leverage, and debt and that in order to avoid global default they would have to print trillions and trillions of dollars... We all laughed, nobody would be so stupid, nobody would stand for it to suddenly have the money supply so drastically increased... We of course assumed that they would just let the banks fail, and that there would be a day of reckoning for those who made bad choices, gambled and lost, and put their businesses at risk...

Well in case you haven't been around for the last 15 or so years the so called conspiracy NUTS were dead on the money... They did and ARE printing TRILLIONS of dollars. Yes they are doing exactly what we thought it wouldn't be possible to get away with...  Next those that started to get a clue about the fiat flood started trying to find safe harbors.  They looked to precious metals... Guess what?  The big boys(banks and central banks) figured out how to game that system also.  The market for the metals is so small that it doesn't take a lot of those fiat currency units to boom and bust the market.  They tricked people into accepting paper metals and then gamed the system so that it no longer reflects the risks to the market or any valuation related to anything real... Demand precious metals in your possession and see the disconnect.

Crypto is no different...  If you haven't been part of the history or just haven't been paying any attention it is time to start looking.  This isn't conspiracy, it is fact.   Again if you think the govts are worried about what it would cost to kill any competing currency you missed the part about the ability to get away with printing trillions and nobody seems to care... It won't matter the cost if they decide to kill it. 

Crypto(bitcoin) is here because it is useful to them for the time being.  They have already tiptoed into the market and started playing/gaming the system in 2014 with the big speculative run up in prices... They are in the bubble and bursting them business... 

Does that mean you don't do crypto?  No, I think anything you can do to hedge yourself in this global financial mess is smart.  Precious metals, land, tools, the means of production, crypto, skills... All valuable... But if you think this is all the stuff of fables and conspiracy your gonna be surprised at the events that unfold in the not so distant future...  Negative interest rates are just the beginning.  Bubbles abound... Where this goes is anyones guess. 

So now how does that all fit in the halving and difficulty... We see people sitting here sweating the natural progression of bitcoin and are freaking out.  The point of all of this is diversification is needed to ensure that it is much more difficult to stop cyrpto.  It is already hard to make anything mining with the cost of energy, cost of the latest and greatest rigs to keep the efficiency high enough to make something... An external factor like the banks or govts putting just a little pressure could easily make it completely unprofitable and it won't take long before people head for the exits.  We already see people screaming about the places where energy is cheap or free putting unfair competition in the market and driving a lot of people out, and then the consolidation of power on the network... As far as we know those aren't nation states that are doing that and people are freaking out.

So I love the enthusiasm here, people go from "the sky is falling" due to halving to the flip side "nah, our network and currency is too big to manipulate or fail"... LOL  All funny stuff....

My cousin is great with these conspiracy theories, always worth a laugh.

The current hashrate of the network is 1.17EH, if we were to try and estimate the actual total cost of mining equipment on the BTC network I'm going to take s7's at current price (600USD). To gain 51% of the network would take ~126,958 s7's running full bore at a daily cost of $158,444 @ $0.04USD/kWh. I don't believe for a second any one organization would put ~$76,174,800 (not even including power supplies, power distribution, cooling, floor/rack space, assembly and monitoring/maintenance, you can basically just double that number to get an idea) worth of equipment running at that daily cost for the sole purpose of destroying BTC and ultimately rendering an $80,000,000 investment worthless and throwing all that money for power down the toilet for some imaginary war on crypto-currency.

Are people threatened by crypto-currency? Sure
Are there forces always working to destabilize the system for any number of purposes (almost always personal gain)? Sure

Do I believe any person or organization would be short-sighted enough to spend tens of millions to nuke a technology just to watch it burn? Not so much

As for taking control of the network as to make small miners a thing of the past: Well that's the beauty of crypto-currency, only if a single organization took control of manufacturing the only miners could they squeeze us out; even then how do you stop someone else from making a miner? To reduce profitability for the small miner is to reduce profitability for the medium/large miner. That's how it works. And greed ALWAYS wins. Not to mention the day a single organization takes that kind of control is that day I and the vast majority of Coinheads will wash our hands of BTC, yet again leaving the organization with vast amounts of worthless miners and coins.

Cheers, always love a good conspiracy.

If you don't think that a large nation state or several large nation states couldn't suddenly stand up all the computing power they wanted at tax payer expense and run those servers until Bitcoin difficulty and halving makes it impossible for anyone to make money, and/or to control enough processing power on the network to manipulate it then you are really fooling yourself... Seriously, if they wanted to "end it" they could. 

Wow, your block of text could be shorten to a few key sentences lol.

But yeah overall we dont know nor no one does.. but as for you point with "Govts around the world could suddenly decide to end it" thats a big Bologna lol.

I think someone else stated this earlier and I don't think it can be over emphasized.  The key is efficiency in what you have today, and offsetting your power consumption with renewables like solar and wind are your best bet long term to be able to continue mining and possibly return something to you.  If your in a place where you pay for your power like most of us do I can assure you one thing is for sure.  Your power bill IS going to go up... Bitcoin may not, but your cost of energy will be going up.  The funny money central bankers are printing like there is no tomorrow.  This will and is devaluing the fiat money and the cost of everything will continue to climb.  Now is the time to invest for the long term in solar and renewables at what will be viewed over the next 10+ years as an incredibly cheap time to get into these technologies.  Drive down your cost today to be profitable tomorrow regardless of the halving.  Tweak and tune your rigs for lean burn, the least power used for the most hashes produced.  Look at your power supplies and see if the numbers add up over the long haul to invest in more efficient gear with an eye on the cost factors I mentioned above.

You cannot predict what is going to happen with Bitcoin.  Govts around the world could suddenly decide to end it, or they could decide to embrace it to choke it to death.  Powerful players in the central banking world could decide to run it up and crash it again... So diversify.  It is high time other currencies here in the cryto world take center stage so that we have options.  More ways to get into and out of the markets.  Make it harder for those that seek to control "money" to control the whole ball of wax.  We have to think and act outside of the box... :-)  No offense to Bitcoin, but at the moment my mining efforts are focused on other coins.  The strangle hold that BTC has on getting funds into and out of the market is very very dangerous.  This has to change if any of this is going to work well over the long term.

okay  the facts to back your claim up are on wiki


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China

but they are not enough facts

they also have 282giga watts of hydro power

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China#Hydropower

Hydropower[edit]
China's installed hydro capacity in 2014 was 282GW[8] up from 172GW in 2009 and constituted about 17.3% of total power generation capacity. In 2014, hydropower generated 1000TWh, which was equivalent to 17.6% of China's total and 85% of primary electricity generation. As China's potential hydropower capacity (estimates range up to 600GW, but currently the technically exploitable and economically feasible capacity is around 500GW[18]) is only about 50-60% utilized, there remains much space for further hydro development. In comparison, hydro utilization in the U.S. currently is 80% and in Norway, Iceland, and other countries it is at over 90%. The country has set a 350GW target for 2020. Due to China's scarcity of fossil fuels and the government's preference for energy independence, hydropower is an attractive option.



that 282 giga watts of hydro power is cheappppppp power!


the world BTC network is 1200ph.

 at .5 watts  per gh  .

you need :

6 watts for 12 gh
60 watts for 120gh
600 watts for 1200gh
6000 watts for 12000gh or 12th
60000 watts for 120000gh or 120th
600000 watts for 1200000gh or 1200 th or 1.2 ph
6000000 watts for 12000000 or 12ph
60000000 watts for 12000000 or 120ph
600000000 watts for 12000000 or 1200 ph


600,000,000 watts 
600,000 kwatts
600 mwatts


.6 gwatts   this is all of the btc net work

so 10x it for worst power efficiency and alt coins  and all the mining in the world is 6 gwatts

and china has 282 gwatts of cheap hydro power.

and china has 800 gwatts of costly coal power.

so the big chinese farms have 6gwatt of 282gwatt at the worst.

reality is I have no idea how much  of the way big 6 giga watts is in china    and I 10 x  the number

so more then likely they have 1 giga watt max and access to 282 gigawatts of hydro.

so while there is tons of coal 70 to 30 percent there is plenty of hydroplants  to use to mine with.

This would be a very bad assumption. China really doesnt have cheap power at all. The VAST majority of power produced in China is coal based. That means it costs a good $0.07/kwh just to produce the power on average when you factor in the retrieval, transportation, and processing of the coal to make power.

I don't think many are here to double right away.  Most bitcoin investors have  knowlege that it is a long term game.  At one point we could ROI every 3 month's on gear it was great.... now again much slower.

A fool and his money are soon parted... so ones expecting doubling of money soon or selling at slight down turn are not going to be BTC investors long.  And chances are they hold very few of the overall amount of BTC out there.

Yes all this have sense, but you can't expects that most of people have same beliefs as you and me.
Many are here only because they want to double money and on small sign of danger they will sell.
This is human nature, panic is something that was exploited so many times in history.

But that arms race is a been one sided lol.

I dont got like $100k to start like those chinese mining group aka bitmain - and so cant get any of that market share which is a sad reality for most.

Difficulty will always continue to rise as long as there is profit.  If we stop and lose lot's of hash, or stay's the same.... chances are BTC is not going to do so well.  It's always been a arms race and nothing shows it will stop.

Just look at last 9 month chart and you will see how it does increase .... and it will not stop as long as there is profit - https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Yes but many people believing only in endless rise and this is very dangerous when they realise endless
rise simple is not possible, and then problems will come with much speculations (dumps) with price and many can be
 burned this way. All this is very bad for adaptation and using of bitcoin as money.

It s simple, either the price goes up and doubles, due to reduced generation of new BTC or most of current miners will be shut down, which will in turn reduce difficulty and the race starts all over again. I prefer the first scenario but one simply can never know. Let s wait and see.

It's always been a race in power though.  Companies make new miners and pump out as much as they can for max profit.  Even in day's of early asic's tons were competing for sales and trying to sell A1 gear. 

As long is money in BTC mining there will be companies participating in the hashing rate race.  And in all honesty if there is not profit for those big makers means none for little guys..... and I think would lead to loss in price.  I think a certain amount of race of hash power is good.

This way we will have constant race in hash power which is good for bitcoin and security of network but it is very difficult to achieve constant rise of price, one day you will see downfall, someone "big" will cause it, for sure.
This can trigger major fall , we can call it panic. This will launch smaller farms out of business.

It's more then just that though.  There are many places with cheap electricity.  Most miners are made in China at this point... so they keep cost down only having to ship in country.  Also seems to be not only cheap.... but just as important reliable electricity.

I disagree on "But eventually difficulty will come to one point where further rise will be non profitable".  Since it's a open market price adjusts these mega farms if not profitable they shutdown... but I don't think that is going to be a issue.  I foresee them being profitable, if they don't BTC fails.

I can assume the majority of mining farms will stay in China and this is it, because they have cheap electricity.
They will flourish in this business and we can expect further development to come from theirs labs.
But eventually difficulty will come to one point where further rise will be non profitable and will stay there for some time. But price (demand)  dictates tempo of mining.

Good question but your anwser is not correct.  You are speculating.... could your anwser be correct?  Sure it might be.  But there is no way to guarantee a price increase or difficulty change.

You talk about things as fact's.  But espically on price increase there are no guarantees.

Price will increase or difficulty will adapt, I think, no more no less but is a good question!

not only that, but the efficiency would have a minimal impact in the future, because going from 1k to 500w is one thing

but going from 500 to 250 is another thing, you cna clearly see that the more the efficiency get better, the less you are saving on the efficiency itself

There is no guarantee it can only go up long term.  As investors..  we hope this is true but there could be things we don't know and it goes down a lot, or replaced with a new coin one day.  Fact is we just don't know, and cannot possibly predict BTC 10-20 year frame.

You act like 400 is cheapest it's been in that timeframe.  But look in it sometimes in period was in 200's..... and some paid 1K and are still holding.  So there are some bad timing lost lots of money.  Don't invest more then you can afford as there are no guarantees in this game.

Bitcoin can only go up in long term, maybe in 10 to 20 years. It was down since later 2013 ($1200) to 2015 (400).

Yeah I would think bitmaintech will come out with something a little worse the bitfury"

Maybe a .14 watt miner uses 1000 watts and does 7th

We do know that Bitmain's next gen won't be smaller than what the large foundries can currently produce, unless Bitmain is currently funding the foundries R&D for smaller nm chips.

Not sure that was worth bumping thread for...  But we have always been in a continuous progress of new miners being made.   We really don't know a whole lot about what limit is .... as we don't know R/D as most companies don't share it.    Sure we can guess nothing under 10 nm, probley a safe bet right now but this will change eventually.  And we will have no idea when it does change until it's public.... which is hard to say.

I mean look at bitmain they are biggest maker of home miner I would think.  And we know 0 about their next gen.  I think that shows us how little we know, as they have to be having some R/D chances are as we speak.

Yes. But the progress of making efficient miners will be lower than now or in the past. 10 nm will be limit for now.

It is not really that much optimism.  It just is if we do peak and there is not money for R/D..... that means bitcoin no longer has a very bright future.   Were talking serious drops in  price.   Lots of bad things.

I think bitcoin is long term.   If I didn't I would not waste so much time of this site.  I think asic is still the future just smaller nm and more perfected.

Hopeful think but I admire your optimism.  Bitcoin ASIC mining is a zero-sum game.  That means you need a heavy incentive for people to invest the amount of capital in R&D to keep pushing improvements.  At these levels we are talking high-mid in the millions minimum and that doesn't count for production once you have a good chip.  If you are going to make that investment, you are going to want guarantees of a ROI or at at least ROC (Return of Capital).   If what you say is true about it being bad for the little guys, how many generations of hardware releases do you think will stick in there?  At a point, you can't rely on those dollars.  That comes to my other predictions is that mining is going fully private for the most part with some retail going out the door but likely only to big players.  That is where the incentive is going.   

Once we went ASIC, this was an inevitable path.  With GPUs and FPGAs, you at least had secondary uses for the hardware so you resell it once it was not profitable for you, with ASIC hardware, this is it and because people will sit by and wait for dips to turn it back on, the difficult is never fully allowed to correct for a meaningful enough time to let people make reasoned long-term investments. 

Last point is the power usage is becoming to a point where it is really moving out of the home and commercial office into data-centers and industrial spaces setup for this application.  I hope the halving will give us some market discipline that will help future miners. 

Thoughts?

There will always be work on more efficient chips as long as there money in the industry.  BTC is still the gold of crypto, so even after next gen hits there will be some perfecting next gen and working on even farther.  We will not cap out on best machine.

But electricity is always important it is today and still will be in future.

In the future, there will be little progress in the efficieny of the miners. So the miners will compete with cheap electricity.

Well it all depends also with performance as well, not just free electricity.

But yeah thats a huge component where most of us cant avoid, so lets stop with this mining dream lol.

you will lose money because of the diff, 0.2 is too high and matching the earning is not a good idea

it was also an easy math because at 0.05 the profit is 4x the consumption

Yea many like me are not that lucky.   But free miners are in a GREAT time ahead.  Last gen gear keeps getting cheaper S5, SP20, Avalon 4.1, etc.  They still are great gear just to expensive to run on normal electricity.

So I see a flood of these last gen, but still great miners being sold cheap.  So free/super cheap actually have a good time ahead of them (I think at least).

Ya it is true that who are running mining on free electricity or on heavy investment can survive but it is also true that this halving will decrease the production of coin by 50% so their will be a big challenge for miners as i think price wont rose 50% up but production will surely come down to 50%. only the potential miners will survive who have before itself made changes according to the halving problems.

I just noticed at today's bitcoin price, if you pay $0.2/kWh for electricity, the revenue is the same as the cost for S7 miners.

I think it's hobby miner and home miner will have a hard time if it continues.  Both are not big enough to get gear discounts when buying.   But it will all come down to electricity.

Those small miners with included electricity/free.. will continue to make money.  So all depends on that electricity.

Well, smaller miner will exit the game, and hash power will concentrate on fewer miners.
On the bright side, the price per coin probably will rise, otherwise, even fewer miner will be.

You speak things that are not true.  Bitcoin can only go up... many of us are here from day's of 900+ coins.  We have seen it can go down.  

One would think having would help in price but there is not 100 percent guarantee.  Not sure why you focus on criminal activity.... I think they can operate on fiat money to.   And if bitcoin's main reason becomes for activity you use as reasons.... I think your in for a severe drop in price.

And it's anonymous to a point.  But what if you want to use it or cash some in? There is a point most will be tied to.

No, you dont understand.  Bitcoin is secure regardless of the halving.  It can only go up.
I support it because it is an anonymous currency.  The governments of the world want rid of cash and want money all electronic so it can all be accounted for. So they can have controll. I love Bitcoin for what it has done for the worlds markets.

If you wanted to buy crack, would you want to pay with paypal or Bitcoin?

What does any of this have to do with having or mining? 

You seem to bring up a lot of reasons not to have BTC... money laundering, conspiracies. I think this is more off topic then speculation.

I don't care how worthless Bitcoin becomes, I'm not shutting down my mine.  Its the only heating i have.

Anything that makes it more difficult to obtain can only be a good thing for Bitcoin.

It will not die.  How would criminals launder their money?  It could destroy the international elicit narcotics market?  One of the few growth areas in our global economy.  Plus, how would Wiki Leaks get paid for publishing American Security Secrets?

No, It will continue to grow.  This is Global Insurrection Against Banker Occupation and you good people are party to it all.  It canot be stoped.  Within the next 3 years Bitcoin will be the reserve currency and we will see the dollor fall from its reserve status, just like the pound did.

They killed Gaddafi because he was about to get an Islamic Gold Dinar off the gorund and the arrab world was about to adotp it in place of the dollor.  Gaddafi Gold for Oil Project.

No, this time Bitcoin will be unstopable. Well,  who would they Bomb this time, everyone with a bitcoin miner?

The way difficulty was moving it was already doing this to normal electricity priced people.   Difficulty made it hard for last generation gear, I was better off selling it then mining.  So I did sell last gen miners.

I think you will be surprised on amount of miners that will sell at least last gen before having.  And it's not like having is sneaking up on us we know it's coming.   So many factor this in ROI charts.

If the price does not increase after the halving, some less efficient miners will be out of the market. But the hash rate will not decrease due to the more efficient miners.

we are still at 14nm for silicon and there is room in theory to go as low as 7nm, so no, i think there is still improvement to be made, and in the end they will use something else other than silicon for better efficiency in the future

I think there is a possibility that the halving will increase the value.

I don't think were going to hit quantum computers in near future on mining.  Asics do one thing great... they are designed for this.  They will continue to be lower NM and perfect the lower NM.   It just makes sense.

Free power is kinda a different thing as they don't need the latest and greatest.  The newest gear traditionally is in a place that pay's a little bit for gear.  If you have a few cent electricity.... you are lucky and can profit on older gear.

I think we'll continue the same way technology always has, more powerful miners will come out and the system will continue as normal

We're mining ourselves to oblivion.Even when quantum computing comes out, it wont be much help as algorithms like sha256 just dont work as well. Efficiency will eventually peak and we'll start seeing a transition from regular mining to solar and wind powered mining. Efficiency will peak eventually and when that happens, we'll start turning to "free" power sources and hashrate will be all over the place.

I don't think it will peak.... if it does that is not good.  That would mean companies are not investing in R/D which would mean profits for big companies don't look great.  Which means us little guy's even worse.

I feel we will continue to see improvements in gear 14nm heck it's a game changer and were pretty close to seeing it I think... bw has one being sold right now but higher specs then fined tuned one they talked about on site.   So gear is only going to get better.

I think the efficiency of the ASIC will reach peak this or next year. The miners will compete with the cheap electricity.

the diff always increase, you need to look at the whole picture, right now the diff follow the price and the price always increase by average each year, or by absolute average since bitcoin was created

the same for the diff, it is always increase by average each year

I think there's going to be a huge dropoff in miners as the ability to run a profit seems to disappear into thin air.  As all the smaller miners get out of the game, the hashrate will go down or at least stutter as more efficient miners are made, until it's feasable to make a profit with the miners being put out...  then it starts all over again

The happened before during the last mining. As long as the miners add more efficient miners, the difficulty will rise.

From january 13 we almost haved due to difficulty:

Feb 19 2016    163,491,654,909    13.44%    1,170,318,852 GH/s
Feb 07 2016    144,116,447,847    20.06%    1,031,625,717 GH/s
Jan 26 2016    120,033,340,651    5.89%    859,232,121 GH/s
Jan 13 2016    113,354,299,801    9.12%    811,421,684 GH/s

Were talking like 48 percent chance since Jan 13.   I am not sure having will have as big as change as I thought it would.  At least not at first.   I predict more slow upwards (hopefullly).  But there is no way to say for sure.  Also having is known it is not sneaking up on us so investors should know about it before and base investments knowing it's coming.

Aside from the obvious half reward as opposed to now, there will be a phase wherein the total of hash used would be less than now mainly due to the owners switching off their miners and then the next phase would be the time when better (stronger) and cheaper (efficient) miners come to market and that's when we could see a rise on total hash power used for mining again.

new asic will emerge the diff will keep climbing, maybe a minor slowdown initially, but in the end the diff always climb, just look at the charts

weaker miner(in terms of electricity) will stop mining, and stronger miners, will add more hash

Mining will continue as it is after the halving.
The only thing that will happen is that the mining hardware will become nearly obsolete and new hardware will come to take its place.
It has been going on like this since GPU MININg

What do you think it will be the impact of the halving on mining?