Total mining investment thus far? | Bitcointalksearch.org

Cubic Earth

legendary

Activity: 1176

Merit: 1020

Quote from: Leon D on July 02, 2013, 02:27:09 PM

Why do you want to know total USD invested in ASIC mining btw?

For a few reasons. One reason being that such a number would have a correlation to the cost to do a brute force 51% attack. But mostly I think it is an interesting financial indicator that reflects the sentiment of the bitcoin community. The price of a bitcoin is of course the primary measure, but I would put investment in mining hardware as a strong second. It also just sounds cool as a talking point. Being able to tell people 'well, if bitcoin is bullshit, better tell that to the folks who have dumped xxx millions into specialized hardware' is also a plus.

Leon D

newbie

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Ah, I didn't think to look at network speed over time to come up with my % ASIC power number, nice approach. Why do you want to know total USD invested in ASIC mining btw?

Cubic Earth

legendary

Activity: 1176

Merit: 1020

I think you approach gives a good low-lower bound. I would guess that no more than 50TH/s is due to GPUs and CPUs, just looking at where the on the graph the spike started (and that coincided with the first Avalon rigs being brought online).

I think Avalon's batch 3 pulled in about $5,000,000 alone
75 BTC x 600 units x ~$100 per btc at the time (but some were four blade units at 100 BTC)

Leon D

newbie

Activity: 50

Merit: 0

The companies producing ASICs are all privately held. I don't know that you could really calculate a number like that based off preorder numbers. My suggestion for calculating a "total USD invested in ASIC mining" number would be to start backwards, looking first at total mining volume on the BTC network, ~161.5 Terahashes/s currently. Calculate the approximate cost per Terahash/s of ASIC hardware. I'd ballpark 1Gh/s from BFL costs about $50 --> $50,000 per Thash/s. Next, you'll need to come up with what percent of total BTC hashrate is generated by ASIC computers at this point. I'd go out on a limb and say 30% of the total network but this is probably way off. Using these numbers, we find that ASICs generate 48 Thash/s of Bitcoin activity. 48.45 Th/s ASIC power * ~$50,000perTh gives us $2,422,500 in revenues. The real number is much higher obviously, but that's my attempt to help you out.

Cubic Earth

legendary

Activity: 1176

Merit: 1020

Does anyone know, between all the ASIC companies, how much USD money has been spent on pre-orders and mining equipment? And invested in ASIC miner shares?

Looking for a 'total invested in mining' number.

Topic: Total mining investment thus far? (Read 1568 times)