Topic: Post-halving - Will miners still operate? (Read 3118 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.

Miners have already taken their profits during these days when the prices were up by 400%.
I don't think they have any reasons not to mine, they will still continue to mine bitcoins as profits will still be there for them if the price remain higher than expected.

I guess the miners will still be mining and they will be upgrade their miner to more power and saving electric. And the miner will mine alt coins too for add their profit.

the older gear have density issues.

a set of 10 s-3's = 1 s-7    say 4700gh

  the power needed to run = 4000 watts vs  1300 watts

soo for the summer heat mostly all s-3 or worse will power off.

maybe some s-5's and avalon 4.1's along with a few sp20s will run  since they are .5-.6 watt    but they need cooling and  getting 1 cheap post s-7  replaces 4 of the the older units.

I think a lot will drop out for July and August  but  late sept or Oct a quiet s-3   or two may come back on line.


I am guessing here.  As some people want a space heater in the summer and have free power.

My friends office has a 80 percent power subsidy so in the summer he is 3.6 cents  and he needs a space heater due to ac  I am putting in a S-7ln with sidehack's mod  he will run it 24/7/365

Since he needs the heat it will give to him.

I like the analyse, but I believe some of the pre s-7 going to hash no matter what. When someone is not profitable, he sells the rig. But the buyer should be profitable, probably with free electricity.

So there will be always very old rigs hashing by those with free electricity. So maybe half of the very old rigs could continue hashing and the second half be inactive on sell market waiting for someone with free electricity to be bought. Just my guess.

Okay

 400ph = pre s-7
 800ph = s-7
 500ph = s-9 ?

maybe 1700ph in gear could be  fired up today  if coins were worth 2000 usd

So  after ½ ing  none of the 400ph  or more like 50ph of the really old gear will mine.
and all of the s-9 will mine

so that is 450 to 550 ph as a guess

now what happens with the 800ph in s-7 and avalon6's  maybe ⅓ leaves   that is a guess say 300 ph leaves and 500 ph mines


so 950 to 1050 ph will mine in late July   but this is subject to  btc price.

so say 850 to 1250 will mine in late July.   

     850 will mine at  550usd to 650usd 
   1000 will mine at  650usd to 750usd
   1250 will mine at  750usd to 850usd   

All subject to many factors.

  Price of BTC , availability of s-9 , Price of ETH coin and availability  of rx 470, rx 480

Many of them will be disappointed and maybe we will see a decrease on the diffficulty because the old miner rigs will not be anymore profitable so people will leave mining or move to the latest release of the mining rigs like S7, S9(14TH).

They're we go.  If a home miner can still afford to mine after the halfing even at today's prices then chances are any mining corporation in china with very low electricity costs can definitely mine.  For some people mining is their lively hood,  they won't just give up without a fight.

I'm a home miner from Finland and I'm planning to keep on mining after the halving.

I think some miners will quit and some miners with bigger investments and stakes will stay and there will be a new balance between the price and the difficulty factoring in the new halved block rewards. Are there still Bitcoin hobbyist miners that mine at home? Well someone will still be there to mine the new blocks so there will still be people mining mostly professionally in China or wherever. Can the Bitcoin network function without miners?

In my opinion it would became a problem and a big issue especially to those bitcoin fans and enthusiast and also for those investors , and i think mining pools will affect the blockchain i cannot predict what will be the result of the bitcoin halving .

I think these are the most probable conditions after halving.

There are two conditions;
1. miners will left mining, reducing difficulty so that existing miners can still make profit even with current price
2. price will be up by atleast 1.5x or more after halving, than miners will keep running with same difficulty or even more

I am sure after halving, only one of the above condition will exist.

Why on earth would miners stop supporting the network given the recent positive price action? I predict that difficulty will temporaily fall but recover pretty fast

They will only shut down if the price goes down.

Yeah i think they will still continue if more miners are stopping mining bitcoin i think they will notice that the difficulty are reduce and new miners will come.
And i think bitmain will make a new way to increase the hashrate speed of new releasing asic miners. but for now increasing voltage of asic still can be happen if they release s10..

If the Bitcoin price after halving is around 400 USD, then I would expect big reduction in difficulty, maybe up to one half. But it seems Bitcoin price could be higher, around 700 USD so I dont expect significant reduction in difficulty.

The reason is when the price was around 400 USD, miners mined at a profit. Since then price increased, but the difficulty not increased so much - so still possibility for most miners to be profitable even after halving.

The problem is that many (if not most) of the altcoins use an algorithm other that SHA, so the mining hardware would be useless.

So no, they can't simply "switch to another altcoin", especially if that alt does not use SHA. It's possible they can just switch to a SHA-algo altcoin, but the alternative would probably be of really low value and probably just a ripoff of BTC.

True, and if the price does not cope for the regular miners they'd be forced to turn off, only the most efficient mining equipment will be able to operate. Worst case scenario? China would control all mining.

Miners are going to keep mining, everyone will keep doing what they've been doing, aside from the value going up so the miners can compensate for the smaller supply. A halving of the supply doesn't mean that everyone has to shut down, it just means they sell their Bitcoin for more.

It's like how gold is mined, because there is less available in the ground not everyone doesn't mean everyone shuts down, it means they sell it for more, to cover their costs.

i think, in the end, it'll come down to whether it'll be profitable for them to mine based on the price/diff/electricity-cost, triangle.

some miners might have reserved a stash of coins to be able to sustain operation while market is adjusting.
as in they might continue mining, for some time, with loses, hoping it'll become profitable again.

When the bitcoin price was @$200 maybe the difficulty is low and block reward is high during that time. Meaning they still can have profit. Now, we have to see what will happen since the reward will be cut to half and difficulty is high. But still, its the market/supply and demand that will dictate. If the miner is reduced,maybe  there's delay in transaction.If this happens,people will increase fees to be prioritize and processed.With this happening,IMHO it will attract some bitcoin miners again. Also, with the release of new models of mining hardware,hope it can mitigate the situation.

Most miners would have to continue. As of right now though, I'm having quite a problem with one of the cloud mining sites like TopMine because of the fluctuating value of bitcoin. The rates of getting bitcoins is also changing, mostly slowing down.

If miners will stop then it will be a big issue for the bitcoin network/community because the there will be lots of unconfirmed transaction, delayed transaction etc. But i think that they will continue (not all of them) but they will still mine bitcoin. The price can't be doubled immediately but gradually they will still have profit.

As long as they are making any profit at all i think they will continue. They have thousands in hardware that will be come obsolete unless they continue. So using that id say they have no choice unless they are mining at a complete loss with no speculation on bitcoin going up in price in the future. Although some will stop im sure, they will be more joe blogs at home.

don't think so,they have many choice especially on mining altcoin,it's all depend on the miners and their environtment such as the electricity cost or anything related to this

They have no other choice rather than continue operating because there is always a hope that the bitcoin price will be increased so there will be still a profit for them. The price now i think is not bad for miners because there were mining also when the price was @200s so why not at $600 or $800s

I predict a decline in mining and pools shutting down one-by-one. Possibly, the difficulty will reduce.

What do you think will happen to the miners after halving?