Topic: What is the minimum profitable price? (Read 1277 times)

  How did you come up with this little tidbit about half the network hardware being nearly or fully paid off?  What does it have to do with the cost to mine?  Half the current network speed was added in the last year and the hardware responsible for the previous half is nearly or fully obsolete.  New miners replace old miners at additional cost to the farms.  Also, I would like to know how I left you with the impression that there was a need to pay off the hardware in the first month of mining?  I said nothing remotely akin to that!

 It seems you know the cost of production or you wouldn't be able to state that Bitoin price has gone below the cost of production.  I don't doubt that it could possible dip below the production cost periodically and for very short durations but I don't know the cost of production for the farms - only for myself as a home miner.  Please tell us the true production cost of a Bitcoin.  

 Around 8 months ago, KNC miner declared bankruptcy with Scam Cole saying "Effectively our cost of coin – how much we produce the coins for – will be over the market price. The price is now [roughly] $480. With all of our overhead, after July, the cost will be over $480. All of the liabilities we’ll have after that time will be too high."  This announcement only 1 year after they started mass production of their new 16 nm Finfet 3d Solar chip.  They claimed it would have an efficiency of 0.07 W/GHash though I never saw any test results and it wasn't sold to the public.   Anyway, this was the only time I ever found anyone speaking of the cost of production so today I don't know what the cost is.  I do know that if miners can't mine and go bankrupt, the network suffers and transactions take longer to process.  I also know that more efficient tech doesn't happen overnight.
 No, the miner never gets to set the price of Bitcoin but the miner plays a significant role in the base price of Bitcoin, whether we like to believe it or not.  If miners go offline in significant numbers, that could be the death knell for Bitcoin.

Edit:  I believe GoGreenLight is the company that took over KNCs equipment and they now have just under 1% of the Bitcoin network hashing rate. 

I am also very curious to know about this because I'm having some hash power unsold in CEX cloud mining.
I guess if bitcoin would have sustained the above $1000 levels, they must be planning to resume their mining services. Is there any announcements from them regarding re-starting their cloud mining services after we are having stable $900?

The problem is that half of the network hardware is nearly or fully paid off by now. There is also no need to pay it off in the first month of mining. The production price is lower than 888, I promise.
At others here, Cost of production is not a floor price. Bitcoin price has, and will again go below production cost. It will happen eventually. maybe not any time soon, but price support is not set by miners.

miners are currently working against themselves by increase the diff for nothing, just to still bitcoin to other farm, they are not increase their profitability

i hope they are clever enough to keep adding device yo their farm, it's pointless, only good for increase their electricity

^^
Same thing with gold.  A mine is viable so long as the fraction of gold in the ore allows for extraction at less cost than the spot price of gold.
Miners are going to mine while there is profit.

It is amazing how good the PoW scheme works in killing seigniorage when you see such a calculation !

All rewards are essentially gone in hardware and power.  Brilliant.

was i mean is that the bitcoin need only to be above the electricity cost in value, to be profitable for them to mine, the diff is climbing now because the value is very high

otherwise if it was low it would stay the same, miners are not that stupid to add other device in that case, so i would not take account of the diff increase

also their new equipment can roi in no time because they have a huge hashpower already

 Well I don't agree that those two items break the equations.  The equations remain the same, only the variables change.  Any ideas on the actual cost of miners for the farms? What about electricity costs for the farms?  Amph, do you get any special deals?  How much do your miners cost?  We know your electricity is 5 cents.  Let's say you buy the latest and greatest device from Bitmain:

 
 I'm not saying my calculations are standard industry-wide.  Also, I have not seen a stated cost of electricity in China from any quasi-official source yet and certainly nothing close to 5 cents... except maybe in Mongolia but we all know what happens to Bitcoin mines in Mongolia...  (for those unfamiliar with the AsicMiner story, they disappear) which brings me back to my point about hardware costs which you totally discount.  The hardware costs must be considered in any equation.
 The difficulty is posed to rise by 6% at the next retarget, these retargets happen every 14 days or thereabouts.  So there are ~ 26 periods in a year; let's extrapolate using that 6% for each period:

 diff X (1.06)²⁶ =  4.82 X diff

This means that by the end of the year, you will take 433 days to mine one Bitcoin with your S9 (the ones at 1400 THash/s) so even if I accept your cost of power @ 5 cents per kWhr, then at the end of the year it will cost you 727.44 to mine one Bitcoin in electricity costs alone which means you miner is essentially obsolete.  I bring this up because they cost of those miners (when released to the public) were 2100 dollars.  They are currently going for $1232  (for the 11 THash model) and you have to account for that cost.  You are only quoting electricity costs where I am trying to encompass the largest components of the cost of a Bitcoin which I believe are electricity and hardware.

 Using a more modest difficulty rise of 4.69% rather than 6%, the current price of an Antminer S9 (11 THash version), the current value of Bitcoin and $0.05 per kWh electricity over the next year:

Antminer S9 (11 THash model)
Exchange Rate 1BTC = $858
Difficulty increment per retarget 4.69%
Miner Cost $1,232
Hashrate 11,000 Gigahash per second
Electricity cost per day $1.29 (assuming $0.05 per kWh)
Mining start date - today

___Difficulty Period___	BTCday	Revenueday	Incomeday	difficulty	duration	total BTC	total Income	break even
01-08-17 to 01-09-17	0.0087 BTC	$7.47	$6.18	317,688,400,354	2 days	0.02BTC	$12.35	$-1219.65
01-10-17 to 01-22-17	0.0083 BTC	$7.14	$5.84	332,587,986,331	15days	0.13BTC	$88.3	$-1143.7
01-23-17 to 02-04-17	0.0079 BTC	$6.82	$5.52	348,186,362,890	28 days	0.23BTC	$160.09	$-1071.91
02-05-17 to 02-17-17	0.0076 BTC	$6.51	$5.22	364,516,303,309	41 days	0.33BTC	$227.91	$-1004.09
02-18-17 to 03-02-17	0.0072 BTC	$6.22	$4.93	381,612,117,934	54 days	0.42BTC	$291.95	$-940.05
03-03-17 to 03-15-17	0.0069 BTC	$5.94	$4.65	399,509,726,265	67 days	0.51BTC	$352.35	$-879.65
03-16-17 to 03-28-17	0.0066 BTC	$5.67	$4.38	418,246,732,427	80 days	0.6BTC	$409.3	$-822.7
03-29-17 to 04-10-17	0.0063 BTC	$5.42	$4.13	437,862,504,178	93 days	0.68BTC	$462.95	$-769.05
04-11-17 to 04-23-17	0.006 BTC	$5.18	$3.88	458,398,255,624	106 days	0.76BTC	$513.43	$-718.57
04-24-17 to 05-06-17	0.0058 BTC	$4.95	$3.65	479,897,133,813	119 days	0.83BTC	$560.91	$-671.09
05-07-17 to 05-19-17	0.0055 BTC	$4.72	$3.43	502,404,309,389	132 days	0.9BTC	$605.5	$-626.5
05-20-17 to 06-01-17	0.0053 BTC	$4.51	$3.22	525,967,071,499	145 days	0.97BTC	$647.34	$-584.66
06-02-17to 06-14-17	0.005 BTC	$4.31	$3.02	550,634,927,152	158 days	1.04BTC	$686.55	$-545.45
06-15-17 to 06-27-17	0.0048 BTC	$4.12	$2.82	576,459,705,236	171 days	1.1BTC	$723.26	$-508.74
06-28-17 to 07-10-17	0.0046 BTC	$3.93	$2.64	603,495,665,411	184 days	1.16BTC	$757.56	$-474.44
07-11-17 to 07-23-17	0.0044 BTC	$3.76	$2.46	631,799,612,119	197 days	1.22BTC	$789.58	$-442.42
07-24-17 to 08-05-17	0.0042 BTC	$3.59	$2.29	661,431,013,927	210 days	1.27BTC	$819.41	$-412.59
08-06-17 to 08-18-17	0.004 BTC	$3.43	$2.13	692,452,128,480	223 days	1.32BTC	$847.15	$-384.85
08-19-17 to 08-31-17	0.0038 BTC	$3.27	$1.98	724,928,133,306	236 days	1.37BTC	$872.89	$-359.11
09-01-17to 09-13-17	0.0036 BTC	$3.13	$1.83	758,927,262,758	249 days	1.42BTC	$896.72	$-335.28
09-14-17 to 09-26-17	0.0035 BTC	$2.99	$1.69	794,520,951,382	262 days	1.47BTC	$918.74	$-313.26
09-27-17 to 10-09-17	0.0033 BTC	$2.85	$1.56	831,783,984,001	275 days	1.51BTC	$939.01	$-292.99
10-10-17 to 10-22-17	0.0032BTC	$2.73	$1.43	870,794,652,851	288 days	1.55BTC	$957.63	$-274.37
10-23-17 to 11-04-17	0.003 BTC	$2.6	$1.31	911,634,922,070	301 days	1.59BTC	$974.65	$-257.35
11-05-17 to 11-17-17	0.0029 BTC	$2.49	$1.19	954,390,599,915	314 days	1.63BTC	$990.16	$-241.84
11-18-17 to 11-30-17	0.0028 BTC	$2.38	$1.08	999,151,519,051	327 days	1.66BTC	$1004.22	$-227.78
12-01-17 to 12-13-17	0.0026 BTC	$2.27	$0.98	1,046,011,725,294	340 days	1.7BTC	$1016.9	$-215.1
12-14-17 to 12-26-17	0.0025 BTC	$2.17	$0.87	1,095,069,675,211	353 days	1.73BTC	$1028.26	$-203.74
12-27-17 to 01-08-18	0.0024 BTC	$2.07	$0.78	1,146,428,442,978	366days	1.76BTC	$1038.35	$-193.65
01-09-18 to 01-18-18	0.0023 BTC	$1.98	$0.68	1,200,195,936,954	376 days	1.79BTC	$1045.19	$-186.81

 Based on this, I would say even you with 5 cents per kWh electricity need BTC to be at $800 - no?
My point is that you can't neglect the cost of the miner.  In your case it is the largest component of the cost to generate Bitcoins.

if you are calculating things in general the math that xhomerx10 did is more or less true but if you are talking about certain farms specially the Chinese farms things are so different.
- Electricity costs you see on the internet is an average for average people  miners have special contracts with electricity providers which makes it even cheaper.
- the mining equipment is built in China, they have access to it directly and they also have special contracts to get them cheaper.

these two alone break all the equations.

i confused the math there it's actually even lower than what i said

first of all the electricity in china is 5 cent if not lower, and with this a single s9 would consume only $36 per month

so in theory they can already mine until one s9 can only produce $36 per month, which is ridiculous low

with this in mind and the fact that a s9 can do 0.3 btc a month, you can keep mining until those 0.3 btc are worth $36, which is equal to btc worth $120

p.s. you are wrong about the consumption, the new s9 batch only consume 1000w not 1400, so even at 10 cent it's only $72 per months

and anyway even in your case scenario one btc need to be at $300 to not be profitable, because this equal the consumption, surely not at $800+ like you said...

edit again...new batch consume 1078w for 1100GH, so you were right, but still it won't change the point that you don't need btc at $800

I also thought it was strange the cost was all 8's
Maybe it stand for "The King of 8 Eggs" though! 

Also like you said, real estate, maintenance etc.. this would all add up. Even in China with cheap electric and labour.

My guess is that's why the price is staying around 888! Or maybe it's just because it's the Chinese lucky numbers

 Well I suggest you open your mind and look at it again.
With a 14 THash S9 it would presently take 90.24 days to make one bitcoin.  At 0.1 watts per GHash/s and 10 cents per kWh it will cost $3.36 per day to run the S9.  After 90.24 days you have paid 303.21 in electricity costs alone!  In my original calculation I used the entire network hashing rate - yet I see little difference in the per-coin electricity costs.

 Please point out where you get 36 dollars for a month of power to run the Antminer S9.  I'm curious.

it's not make any sense this math is off

currently one antminer s9 is generating $281.3 per month at 1000khw, this mena that each month it consume only $36 while generating $281

now do $281-$36($245) and scale it to 1000 of them and you can see the whole picture, they have a net of $245 at current price each month

so if bitcoin was going down from now by $200 they would still profit, the minimum therefore is around $600, and because of this i can easily assume that the market will nto fall under $700

A bargain indeed.

Thank you for your calculations. Funny it's the Chinese lucky numbers 888

http://bitcoincharts.com/  --> 2456335.762 Thash/s
and
https://www.hobbymining.com/bitmain-antminer-s9/ --> Very efficient at ~0.1 Joule per GH/s
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing --> a broad range of prices (so let's use $0.10 as an average)

2456335.762 THash/s is 2456335762 GHash/s
2456335762 X 0.1 J/GHash/s X 24hrs X $0.10 = $589520.58288 per day which produces 1800 BTC

dividing it out gives us $327.51 in electricity costs alone

now https://shop.bitmain.com/productDetail.htm?pid=0002016052907243375530DcJIoK0654 we can get some specs and pricing for miners.

Let's say an Antminer S9 is capable of 14 THash/s and assume the network is using only these highly efficient miners.  In this case, the network is comprised of 175452.55 S9s
each S9 retails for ~2100 USD and lets assume it will last for 1 year before becoming obsolete.  The network hardware costs for the year are 368450364.3 and per day would be 1009453.05 so per coin... $560.81 and lets add electricity to that = 888.32 per coin.

Wow.  $888.32 per coin!  I haven't included real estate, maintenance, cooling and internet connections/power supplies.  Obviously there would be some economies of scale for the manufacturer of the mining devices so they wouldn't be paying retail cost for the miners but that's a ballpark figure.

 $888.32

 It makes the current price of Bitcoin 836.12 seem like a bargain!

You can use these sites to do some simple calculations, I do not believe that some of them take into account the future increase of difficulty.

http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/bitcoin-mining-calculator
http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

Where can I see what the minimum profitable price is for bitcoin miners.

I know it varies but a general ballpark. You'd have to calculate it but is there a site where it shows it?