It's nice to see our hash rate over 3GH, means we will find blocks more often but still low enough that the luck factor will help keep payouts higher. Even if we get to 12GH, that would mean a block a day and still would get better payouts than the big pools, most of the time.
Of course everyone is worried about the massive drop in ETH value, but that shouldn't scare people, just hang onto what you mine for now. After August 1st and bitcoin has their soft-fork which should cause them to split into multiple chains, ETH should get a surge of new investors and prices could skyrocket. If all those people with millions invested in bitcoin decide to switch to ETH it will raise the price dramatically. My personal prediction is that ETH will hit record highs next month, but that's just my opinion based on what is happening. So don't put much faith into the ETH calculators right now as the price has dropped dramatically this month. Personally I'm going to try to get as much ETH as possible before the end of the month and hopefully reap the rewards in the following months.
Either that or bitcoin will crash and burn and bring down other currencies with it. Either way it's going to be interesting.
People are also scared about investing in more GPU's and mining rigs because of the ROI with ethereum at it's current state, but you have to remember, if after the soft-fork in a couple weeks from now, if ETH doesn't recover (which it should pretty fast), we can always switch to another currency. Mining is long term, not a quick buck.
Normal correction. This is long term. We are mining so, just hold. I'm holding position. Every Dollar you spend in electric and GPUs now to maintain the equipment is as if your investing in ETH. Just at a lower price. If it got to 300 once it will again. These miners are great to accumulate coin over time. Crypto Currency is now considered a hold and save for later by over 1 billion people.
It will have it's ups and downs, but eventually continue up.
And that's right multiple currencies, POS, Proof of Stake, is being pushed by some young developers here in Ethereum, but they are 6 months to 1 year away from progressing forward. There will be time to continue to mine and then switch to a more profitable mining coin in the future. I think Ethereum developers will look long and hard at the Bitcoin fork. It's a true test. IMO, the Ethereum POS is an attempted move in a more centralized mechanism moving towards the programmers to profit in large exchanges. The small guy can't win based on POS structure. I think also part of Ethereum devaluation was a conference call with developers about 2 weeks ago. Interesting watch. He calls the Miners a Cartel. Yet what he wants to setup with POS is more cartel like. Talk about programmers hating miners. I thought it was the programmers who wanted the miners to do what we are doing now. Even Bitmain says a Decentralized network is much better with a miner in every home, even as they create large data mining centers.
How about a Pool for the PASCAL coin. very interesting story. Zcash and Siacoin is also hot right now.