Topic: The end is nigh (Read 9413 times)

I edited it few days ago.

Added.

I think a lot of people will be mining Bitcoins for fun too in the future, it may well get too ridiculous for a lot of people if they want to profit from it but I think that's a good thing because then Bitcoin will be used as a currency more than a way to get rich from exchange rates.

I may switch to solo mining with my GPUs and take a chance before the ASICs go online.

The only thing that would cause a crash is people panicking over the value possibly dropping.

Take out the stupid humans who scream and yell about a crash and shout "SELL BEFORE THEY'RE WORTHLESS" at everyone, and the value should stabilize at ~$10-15.

Supply and demand applies to BitCoins.
What happens to supply and demand if everyone is trying to sell?
Supply goes up, demand goes down.
Just like how the value went from $10 to $12 while everyone was saying to buy and hold.
Less coins going into the market, more coming out, higher value.

$0.14 here and block halving worries me.  I might have to just end up buying coins soon.

Where's the "Until it's not longer profitable" Option?

You should edit the poll and run it again!

I voted "until asic's arrival", but that's not entirely accurate -- I plan to move gpu mining to LTC

Oh my, my ancient thread was resurrected.
 I've fixed february price to actual and reset the counter.

That is freaking hilarious! It all makes sense now.

Dude this thread is from FEBRUARY. That's why it was dead, and that's why the poll makes no sense now.

I breakeven about $8.40 if the price falls below that I'm out.  

I'm just running a couple of 5830's 24x7 when they're not used for gaming (so I'm ignoring equipment cost).

$0.15 kWh 340W 520MH/s

http://bitcoinx.com/profit/index.php

We're converting the cost of electricity into bitcoins so know your kWh and W and MH/s or you could be losing money.

You need to start your poll much higher than $3, more like $10 me thinks!

Just buy the coins, if you believe in the protocol, and it's uneconomical to mine.

this thread was from february... lol

Cheap electricity here, $0.075/KWh  and even if mining came unprofitable, I'll continue, as I've faith in the protocol to become widely used some day !

 
No, I did SETI@home for free until I discovered bitcoins.  So I'll keep mining these since it has great potential... better, IMO, than chasing green tiny men in rocket ships.

it's an open community. It would be fixed, and faith restored

What if the price is $0.01 because a flaw has been found, or an event occured which in another way has compromised the integrity of bitcoins?

It's much harder to determine break-even when you add A/C into the mix.  That's the part I'm having trouble with.  Multiple window A/C units throughout the house, along with miners, and the best way for me to determine actual costs is just to compare electric bills this year with last year.  I think I determined that it was costing me around $300 in electricity for 1.8 GH/s last summer... now I'm down to 1.4 GH/s, after dropping a card and lowering overclocks.  Maybe $225 in electricity required now.  To cover that, I'd need to make 1.7 BTC/day at current prices.  1.4 GH/s only makes me 1.0 BTC/day right now.  So.... if I have to turn on the A/C, I'll be turning off my miners first.

True.  It would be more accurate to say price ALONE is just as irrelevant as difficulty alone.


While there isn't a  1:1 correlation and there is a lag between movement in price and movement in difficulty as a miner it is still price/difficulty that determines you profitability.


So much better poll would be what price/difficulty will you be forced to quick.

Converting units it is sometimes easier to look at USD per day per GH/s since it takes both price & difficulty into account but is more tangible.  "If I have 1 GH/s I get x".

Bitcoinx makes some nice charts.  I wish it was in USD per GH/s instead of 100MH/s but just multiply by 10.



It is easy to determine your breakeven.

Operating Cost per Day per GH/s = 24*(Electrical rate)/(MH per W)

So if you have $0.10 per kWh and an efficient rig of say 2.5 MH/W then operating cost = 24*(0.10)/2.5 = $0.98

It costs about $0.98 per GH to operate.  Divided by 10 for the chart above it is ~$0.10.  If the green line drops below $0.10 you would be operating in the red.

Now lets look at a high cost low efficiency miner.  $0.28 per kWh and 1.7 MH/W.  Operating costs are 24*(0.28)/1.7 = $3.95 per GH.

On the chart above it would be drawing a horizontal line at ~$0.40.  Everything below that was operating in the red.

BTW the $0.10 & 2.5MH/W is my farm so Bitcoins are selling at roughly 300% of my electrical costs.  To be at breakeven price would need to fall to 1/3rd of today, difficulty rise to 300% of today or some combination. 

   And the irrelevant part is...

Nitpicking, but those two statements contradict each other.  Price is relevant if price/difficulty is relevant.

Either way, I know what you mean, and I agree to an extent.  Except, price/difficulty isn't a perfect relationship.  There will be more people mining, relative to the price/difficulty ratio, at a lower price, than there will be at a higher price.  That is because everyone only has a certain amount of efficiency.  There are only so many miners with free electricity, and beyond that, there are only so many miners with electricity at $0.4/kwh, etc, etc. 

So, difficulty will be lower at lower prices, but will be reduced at a slower rate than price is reduced.  If priced is reduced by a factor of 10, difficulty may only be reduced by a factor of 8.

I do agree that it is rather silly to pick a specific price that your own mining operations will cease to continue, simply because that would imply knowing what the difficulty will be at that price, and that is impossible to determine (unless someone has invented a fancy time machine that I don't know about).

Reading comprehension. 

Price IS IRRELEVANT.   All that matters is price/difficulty. 

You make the exact same amount @ $5.00 and 1.37 million difficulty as you would at $0.01 and 2740 difficulty or $50 BTC and 13.7 million difficulty.

As a miner price is irrelivent so saying at what price will you stop is stupid.  If the price goes to $10 and difficulty to 10 million I guarantee a lot more people will be quitting than if price falls to $1.0 and difficulty drops 90%.

Buying BTC is still supporting the network...I don't know what the aversion to this is, unless you have a problem with the exchanges. (That's certainly understandable.)

That being said, I've made at least 100% over electricity costs since last April. I don't think it will ever drop low enough to go below the electricity costs in my area.
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  If I had all my rigs at home, I'd also still be in the $2 range.

  Now that things are off-site the rent is quite a bit higher but power is included. 

  Like others said though, I want to believe in the currency for longer term and if price to difficulty averages out then I should see no reason to stop miming unless the costs to do so really put me in the red.  Profiting a bit even at the current prices despite the high costs.  Anything I add to this will just help the efficiency overall.

I was still profitable at $2 , I live in upstate ny and our energy is fairly inexpensive compared to other places. At $2 I was still bringing in about 150% of my total energy cost for my home

But wouldn't have you been better off just buying Bitcoins at that point?

If you're mining at a loss (costs $300 of electricity for $250 worth of Bitcoins), then you should have just spent that electric money on Bitcoins instead.  Unless of course, that electricity is helping to heat your house, or something, as it does in my case.

Anyway, I'll stop mining when the weather turns.  Since I have resistive coil heating in my home, it's the same efficiency as just using the miners to heat, except I get paid when I use the miners.  But when I have to start using A/C to keep it cool, I'll stop mining, unless there is a better price/difficulty ratio than there is right now.  It just costs too much with A/C included in the bill, I end up losing money on it.

When the last crash happened I was mining at full capacity and buying up all the quitters cheap hardware , when the difficulty was way down and value at $2 I was mining like han solo I was able to double my mining operation with mining profits

I too have faith I don't even read speculator threads at all 9 out of 10 of them are manipulating for their own agenda

I'm married to bitcoin....

Yes!

Price is not irrelevant - at some point just take the $ you'd be spending on electricity and buy BTC with it. Otherwise you're losing BTC, which is just dumb.

Buying BTC is still supporting the network...I don't know what the aversion to this is, unless you have a problem with the exchanges. (That's certainly understandable.)

That being said, I've made at least 100% over electricity costs since last April. I don't think it will ever drop low enough to go below the electricity costs in my area.

That's right...

Amen brother!

Oh, and...     BTFD!!!   

Some people with ~30 Ghs say they can mine for profit up to ~ 1$ per BTC at 1500000 diff

PS : It's easy to say "I'll never stop" when you have 1-3 GPU and you aren't paying electricity.

Inspector,

to be honest, bitcoin has come back one time since the october/november crash but this does not mean it will be able to come back a second time, so if your energy is not free it's not such a bad idea to stop mining when you can't even pay for your energy.

spiccioli

Not free, but complimentary. The business office I rent has utilities included, as it is a so-called "full service" rental. The biggest concern is how to get rid of all the heat. Going forward, I will focus on BFL singles and/or FPGAs, and gradually phase out most of the graphics card-based rigs.

Also, as the recovery after the last crash in October/November has shown, Bitcoins will always come back. Right now, speculators are selling in panic "the sky is falling, the sky is falling". Once it has fallen far enough, historical evidence suggests $2 or so, at first a few, then more and more speculators will re-enter the market "OMG, it's going up, I don't want to miss this elevator".

price is irrelivent.

I will mine at $0.01 per BTC if difficulty falls 99.5%

Believe it or not, some of us have faith in the network and system as a currency, not as a get rich quick scheme.

 21 votes for "never stop" option, damn. Do you guys all have free energy?

I regretted shutting my miners off during the last "crash".  Ill be keeping mine on too.

lol, i'll keep mining, they'll come back up

I'm out for a couple months (need the BTC from hardware sales to make more loans) until those BFL units are better-reviewed. Mining was still quite profitable, though... I'd guesstimate I was good until price dropped well below $2.

 So, are you still planning to mine? I'll wait till 2-3$, then quit. What yours price will be, when you'll decide to stop/quit?