One also has to consider the geopolitical risk as well. Ask companies how much they lost when Chavez started nationalizing foreign assets in Venezuela.
Following my experience that is an extreme example. Billion $ companies base their operations in countries where the geopolitical risk is theoretically high, but nevertheless the profit is well worth that risk.
As I said earlier, I've seen first hand a few big european companies opening factories in North Africa to be more competitive. There are many benefits (operational costs are lower in general), but especially for companies for which electricity is massive cost, moving abroad is a no-brainer. When you are used to pay 6/7 figures in monthly electricity bills, a mild geopolitical risk is nothing compared to savings
An individual will NEVER be able to be as efficient as a corporation in a business as is BTC mining as its currently conceived.
Never is a strong word. A company may have cheaper power and mining hardware (although I think in time margins will be so compressed it won't be much cheaper) but it has more expensive "everything else." Imagine a hypothetical miner in 2015. He buys mining boards (which by now are very low margin) he constructs his own case/frame powers it from his old ATX power supply, and puts it next to a window with a box fan. Additional cost beyond hashing equipment and power: ~$0.00.
You can't do that for a PH/s or more. Take the price of the business property lease, add in employees, add in security (you aren't going to leave you $50M in miners alone at night are you), add in insurance cost, add in fire suppression (might be mandatory in some areas), throw in business taxes, and pile on the additional energy and capital costs for 800 KW of industrial chillers, etc. Even mundane stuff like enough racks to mount 1 PH/s (you aren't going to just leave them on the floor are you, and the cost of an electrician to run enough drops to power 1,000 or more systems all add up. All those are Diseconomies of scale. The company may be cheaper but GH/s but it isn't 10x cheaper like the raw power costs might suggest. The last thing to consider is cost of capital. After this gold rush period is over mining isn't a particularly attractive venture from a risk vs reward point of view. Many investors may look at the small reward, the outsized risk, and the fact that profits are largely determined by the actions of outsiders and simply pass on the millions necessary to build up such a mining farm.
One thing I am particularly interested in is using the "waste heat". For a large operation (say 1 PH/s = 800 KW = 1 million BTU/hr) they have a lot of waste heat but it has no value. It actually has negative value as the company will spend money both on hardware and energy to remove that heat. On the other hand a home user could use waste heat to preheat hot water (free hot water for the rest of your life), and in the winter supplement heating the residence. With GPU rigs they are too bulky, complex, and skill intensive. However take some ASICS put them in a compact sealed box, cold water in, hot water out and that "waste heat" suddenly has value. I am doing some experiments right now. Interesting stuff.
That being said I do believe large commercial players will make up a significant portion of the network capacity in the future. I still think hobbyists and small home farmers will exist however they will be in areas of the world with lower than average energy prices (<$0.10 per kWh), generally cooler climates, and may look to thinks like using waste heat to boost ROI%.
You can't do that for a PH/s or more. Take the price of the business property lease, add in employees, add in security (you aren't going to leave you $50M in miners alone at night are you), add in insurance cost, add in fire suppression (might be mandatory in some areas), throw in business taxes, and pile on the additional energy and capital costs for 800 KW of industrial chillers, etc. Even mundane stuff like enough racks to mount 1 PH/s (you aren't going to just leave them on the floor are you, and the cost of an electrician to run enough drops to power 1,000 or more systems all add up. All those are Diseconomies of scale. The company may be cheaper but GH/s but it isn't 10x cheaper like the raw power costs might suggest. The last thing to consider is cost of capital. After this gold rush period is over mining isn't a particularly attractive venture from a risk vs reward point of view. Many investors may look at the small reward, the outsized risk, and the fact that profits are largely determined by the actions of outsiders and simply pass on the millions necessary to build up such a mining farm.
One thing I am particularly interested in is using the "waste heat". For a large operation (say 1 PH/s = 800 KW = 1 million BTU/hr) they have a lot of waste heat but it has no value. It actually has negative value as the company will spend money both on hardware and energy to remove that heat. On the other hand a home user could use waste heat to preheat hot water (free hot water for the rest of your life), and in the winter supplement heating the residence. With GPU rigs they are too bulky, complex, and skill intensive. However take some ASICS put them in a compact sealed box, cold water in, hot water out and that "waste heat" suddenly has value. I am doing some experiments right now. Interesting stuff.
That being said I do believe large commercial players will make up a significant portion of the network capacity in the future. I still think hobbyists and small home farmers will exist however they will be in areas of the world with lower than average energy prices (<$0.10 per kWh), generally cooler climates, and may look to thinks like using waste heat to boost ROI%.
I think you are assuming that efficient mining equipment will be generally available, and I doubt that. People with free electricity could keep mining with GPUs indefinitely, but the fact is that their hashrate is already a drop in the ocean. I think there will be a moment in which the most advanced ASIC will just be in the hands of big corporations with the means to fully develop their own chips & hardware, and thus the home miners will be a negligible part of the hashrate, which actually means they were "cut out", because they cannot compete with corporations.
I might be wrong, we will see - it's nevertheless an exciting, game-changing time. I also think your experiments about "waste heat" are extremely interesting. While the home miner as we conceive it might be a walking dead, a newborn "rational" miner might be on the way - and that could really be a new paradigm. I can imagine a future in which the hardware that secures the network is warming our homes and our water, and I like it
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