Topic: Post-halving - Will miners still operate? (Read 3120 times)

It doesn't really effect me to much since I only have s5 miner and electricity is not to expensive. Im in so cal 

Not many profitable altcoins allow mining. Most of the profitable ones are POS from ICO.
ETH and XVG have a good tracked, but especially ETH seem to be over now with them doing a soft fork.

Which leaves holding bitcoin as the only real alternative for profit.

I don't see this as affecting the value in that way. It's not an overall supply issue. Most bitcoin is not in circulation - it's mined and held. That's not going to change; if you're selling to cover your operating cost, you're going to continue to do that at the same rate. If the value goes up, you will need to sell less coin to cover the same cost.

However, the truly critical variable is hashrate. All of the hardware out there is reflected in the marketplace as hash rate, and (for the most part) is governed by the rules of economics. There is sunk cost that needs to be recovered, and that hashrate will be applied in the most profitable way (again, generally - there will be people who run "unprofitable" rigs and bet on the exchange rate increasing). After the halving, what will happen to the difficulty of SHA256 altcoins? Will hashrate move to those coins and re-level the profitability and difficulty across all coins?

The hardware situation is also interesting. A few years ago, you had choices for your hardware purchase. Now you don't.  At this point, there is bitmain and other Chinese industry that has exclusive control over the hardware supply and access to state-subsidized energy.  At the current hardware price, exchange rate, and "western" electricity prices ($.10/kwh), an S9 WILL NEVER PAY FOR ITSELF. It certainly looks like we're a bunch of suckers.

The other thing I'd like to know is what happened on 25 May. It's like the exchange rate went cuckoo all at once.

You forgot to tell us which of the altcoins you mine... might help a miner in need.

I do not quite agree, you see when the rate at which btc is mined reduces, it's true that demand will still remain high and more miners will open their 'treasure house' and sell. This is exactly what will bring the price down, so many people selling btc will make the price drop...

I'm very interested to see what is going to happen in the SHA256 altcoin universe after the halving.

Now days i think the best is to sell of miners if you have make your ROI, and then start playin with Alt coins ,
Its gonna eat up all your free time tho, but bigger profit will come along, risky tho but...It is what i did ! ^^

I still plan on keeping my 4 S5's mining through this winter season. Then I'll probably sell them off once Spring hits.

here is what you need to know

s-5 and sp20 sp30 sp35 avalon   this gen and older will be losers at the ½ ing if you are a 5 cent power guy and if  coins are 635  this is about 400ph of gear but I am using 12.5 btc and 635 usd




I see a big opportunity for bitmaintech if coins drop in price to 350 -  400 usd

if coins drop in price  to the 400 dollar level  all old gear at 5 cents including the s-7   are losers or close to losers.

they can

 a) not sell the s-9  for 30 days  replace all their old gear with the s-9 and be the only company with solid mining farms
b)  after all the shit hits the fan  people would be completely  forced to buy the s-9

at some point, even with free electricity, just the cost of mailing something as heavy as an old miner is too much. wont even make the cost of postage back.

dunno what generation of gear fits that criteria though.

Again, great analyse from your part and I can agree completly. When buying older equipment for winter as space heaters, what matter a lot is cost per hashrate, like are 10 s-3's much cheaper than one s-7, including PSUs. By the way I like S2 and S4 as space heaters much more.



This is not something new, 2 or 3 pool operators have over 51% hashrate for very long, many years. But to those few pool operators are connected many individual miners, ten thousands, so they going to switch their hashing somewhere else if some pool operators collude on a 51% attack and this would hit Bitcoin news pretty quickly, so the individual miners responce could be quick as well. Fortunatelly no 3 individuals have 51% of hashrate, not even close.

Big mining operations are making huge profits at the moment. More than enough to make up for the short period of time where the difficulty will be adjusting. Also segwit looks like its going to be ready soon, hopefully.

After the halving, anything less efficient than a S-7 will cost you money to mine (unless you have "free" electricity), unless enough hashrate goes offline to bring the difficulty down. Also, I don't think you're going to see the BTC exchange rate change much as a result of the halving - the adjustment has been underway since May.

I think the larger question going forward is, will there be a continuing reduction in profit margin that results in further consolidation of mining power? If you get to the point that 2 or 3 operators could collude on a 51% attack, it calls the viability of bitcoin into question.

I think most miners will continue to mine with profit as long as they have cheap electricity due to the recent price rise to +-650$ and because I think the price will rise a bit more. Some smaller miners will have to quit, however this make the nethash and difficulty drop which will then make it a little more profitable for others.

Low end miners can also upgrade to newer hardware with better efficiency and keep mining profitable for them.

I think most of the low end miners will have to stop due to it not being profitable for them.

you mean like this?

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pair-of-s-9s-now-running-photos-are-up-1512186
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/solar-array-starting-to-look-good-1369207

Bitcoin is money. wit hits value, anyone with the motivation to earn bitcoin will definitely mine it no matter how.
if creating a power source of their own can help, they might create it. there were even people mining thru solar energy. saw it on youtube.

well we soon know what happens  figure july 11 or so.

Last halving, miners still ran for up to a week before the hashrate really fell. If at all difficulty or hashrate overall falls, it'll be very slow, as S9's will replace a lot of the network hashrate. Bitmain themselves probably runs their own S9's right now as well. S7s will still mine for a little given that Bitcoin rises just a bit above where it is now. Avalons could, but generally people sell their miners before they stop earning for easier sales, rather than selling when they stop earning altogether. Miners are often in large pools, so you'll see chunks going down instead of whole pools.