Bitcoin Forum

Mining just got a LOT less profitable.

1 GH/s used to bring in 1.146 BTC per day. Now it brings 0.656 BTC/day.

BTC are currently trading for $15.50.

So a guy with a 1GH/s rig went from making $17.76/day to making $10.16/day.

Both figures are gross profit, not net profit (after electricity taken out). I used Deepbit's estimator for these income figures; for proportional pools, multiply figures by 1.07. For proportional pools with 0% fee, multiply by 1.10.

Daily income for 5830's is now 0.167 BTC, or $2.60.

Qq

5 more 30-50% increases by the end of August and that 1GH rig is only making 0.08 BTC/day.

We will likely see a 7.0M difficulty by the end of August.

New miners, before dropping tons of money, please calculate carefully that difficulties only last 9-10 days, not months.

Without a 10-fold increase in BTC value, the 10-fold increase in difficulty will kick me right out~

It was really a big jump but what can we do?

Remember Charlie Sheen's words: I have one speed. I have one gear. GO!

 :D :D

nvm made a mistake  ;D

I don't know what math you use, but by my math 1.146 BTC / 1.57 = 0.73 BTC, unless I'm missing something...

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Angelus, just sell us your gear and stop.

You have to have the right equation.

I think that at any difficulty, mining will tend to be just a little more profitable than simply buying.  Just like mining for gold is just a little more profitable than simply buying gold.  I expect exchange prices to reflect this in time.

You like to blame the news reporter, just because the world is a dangerous place.

Go ahead and put your head back in the sand -- I won't be competing for that particular hole in the ground. While you're at it, feel free to buy some overpriced video cards from eBay or the Selling forum here. "Bitcoin is going TO DA MOON! If anyone says anything negative, I plug my ears and say 'Lalalalalalalalala...'"

I'm the voice of reason. No wonder so many people here don't like me  ;)

A 50% increase in difficulty is a 1/3 reduction of mining speed.

You have to divide the difference between difficulty A and Difficulty B by Difficulty A and then multiply that by the mining-rate in Difficulty A to get the mining rate in Difficulty B

(1.379-0.877)/0.877 *1.146 = Your answer. (0.65)

I really hope people who are throwing money at mining are capable of 5th grade math

I really can't wait until Mt. Gox re-opens.

Yeah, there might be a selloff, but if there's any recovery in the price of BTC it can't happen until this Mt. Gox incident gets put behind us.

Only after Mt. Gox is operational for a while (without any more hacks or shutdowns) can Bitcoin's reputation recover. It's in the sewer right now.

Is it ironic that you eagerly wait for MtGox opening, while you have "Trade Hill -- The best way to convert Bitcoins to US Dollars and more!" notice (with a referral) in your signature?  ;)

There's nothing contradictory or hypocritical about it --

I personally have some money tied up in Mt. Gox, plus a bunch of other people do as well. You can't just write off Mt. Gox like they don't matter, even if you hate them.

The fact of the matter is: around 65-80% of the money in the Bitcoin ecosystem (money people have put in, plus bitcoins in daily circulation) is tied up at Mt. Gox. That money can't bring the price of Bitcoins up, or down. It's stuck in limbo until Mt. Gox re-opens.

And there's nothing wrong with Tradehill. They have a lot more volume now than they did a week ago. They could use a better "market view" -- certainly a way to view open orders -- but they strike me as more professional than Mt. Gox.

Nothing wrong as long as you live within the USA. Tradehill's transfer fees are OTT. I'm opting for Bitcoin7.

Conspiracy Theory: Do you still think Mt. Gox got hacked?

 ;D

you can buy/sell bitcoins here: http://t.co/JpxbxqZ or here: http://www.tradehill.com/?r=TH-R11112

Wow I'm definitely not gonna buy those 2 5830's then...

Yeah, by TradeHill supporters  :o

Don't you mean

http://www.tradehill.com/?r=TH-R11524

I gotta love the amount the spam Tradehill adds to the community forum by using it's members. I never liked their approach from the beginning because of this and won't ever set foot on their website thanks to the sheer volume of junk information they add to the internet. I'm sure I'm alone on this seeing how greed seems to be the prime motivator for all posts here nowadays. Everyone spams the link, but I doubt many even use their own accounts.

A coincidence perhaps? Just a couple of days after Tradehill started its full operation.

yeah LOL!  ;D

he also said iam not bi-polar iam bi-winnning  ;D

Yeah!!! man its all I hear, doom and gloom from you
God, no one wants to hear your opinions on the scale you think

You are incorrect. Your method multiplies 57% by the current payout - this would mean that we now get 57% of the blocks we did before in a given time period. This means the mining rate is (1/0.57)-1 = 75% slower, which conincides with a 75% increase in difficulty.

Here is the correct calculation:

average time = difficulty * 2**32 / hashrate (straight from bitcoin wiki)

Hashrate is constant, only variable is difficulty. So in calculating increase in time per block for a difficulty we can simplify this to:

delta (avg. time) = delta (difficulty)

If difficulty is 57% more, then average time per block is 57% more. So if it took 1 day to get a block before, now it takes 1.57 days. Thus, your payout per day is now 1 block / 1.57 days or .636 blocks/day. Or in our case, payout was 1.146 BTC per day, it is now 1.146/1.57 = 0.73 BTC per day.

In the future it'd be good if you didn't insult before you knew you were right...

Good lord the th link/referral spam is (expletive) annoying.

Due to that, I wouldn't use TH if they paid me. 

Sod off with the referral links already.

+1

And double that expletive from me :)

I don't think of you as the voice of reason, I think of you as that little kid that keeps harping on the same thing over and over and over. And it's annoying.

Yes, difficulty increased, we've known that it would for days, you've been going on and on about it for days, did we really need ANOTHER thread from you?

To try to inject something interesting into the carcass of a horse that has been dead but people keep beating on it for no apparent reason... Hash rate has flat lined and slightly decreased since difficulty jump it seems. I wonder if some people were squeezing the last drops of miner juice out of their rigs before returning them after the jump. Will be interesting to see if this trend continues or not.

On topic...I could've sworn I posted this earlier.

talldude is 100% correct, although the math is harder than it needs to be.

Oldincome* ( olddifficulty / newdifficulty ) = newincome

It really is that simple.

1.146 * (877226 / 1379223) = 0.7289 to the proper number of significant figures...or rounding nicely to 0.73.

It really is that easy.  ;)

Coincidentally enough, 1Gh/s would get you .66 over at deepbit with their PPS and its extra fees.

Except that, to me, you're the little kid. You're probably younger than me.

Really? Really?

75% of these replies directly criticize you and/or your "logic/lackofmeaningfulopinion," and you return with "I know you are but what am I."

Nice, kid/bra/troll/Matthew.


lolololololololol

Real age does not matter, only apparent age. I am indeed probably younger than you, yet I have the decency at my tender young age to not spam up a message board with repeated attempts at driving down a market for my own selfish reasons, insulting those who disagree with my faulty assertions and generally expecting that my opinions are so incredibly important.

I will repeat the following though:

AngeliusWebDesign
Total Posts:   340 posts
Total Topics Started:   50 topic

You're doing a tiny bit better, almost up to 7 posts per topic started, but that's still an abysmal number. 7:1 post:topic ratio means you consider your opinions incredibly important, and really when they're so tedious and repetitive, they're not. When you're a normal contributing member of the forums you notice I don't say anything, but when your 3rd topic about difficulty jumps (p.s. I made a prediction in a thread last night that this thread would appear, so thanks for that confirmation at least) and 5830s and whatever appears it grates on regular users.

Boy, this Difficulty sure came fast. The network is eating up about 250 blocks a day... and there's only 2016 blocks, so yeah we're at eight days now. It'll go to a week pretty soon at the rate people are expanding the network, and soon it'll only be days in-between.

I've been doing pooled mining on Slush since the first week of June, first at 380 Mhash/sec and then later up to 1 Ghash/sec, and I've only acquired 11 BTC... which trading at today's prices wouldn't even cover a decent steak dinner with expensive bottle of wine. But I'll stick with it for another two difficulties, at least until it drops below a quarter BTC a day. I'm hoping to finish with at least 50 BTC but that's looking pretty slim at this point so I'll probably speculate up the rest.

im still getting the same payouts as before the increase..... guess i can't complain.

i'm still learning much about bitcoin so forgive my ignorance but is there some kind of lag on when the difficulty kicks in or am I just lucky or something? don't want to count on this staying this way if it's not going to.

Lets hope the prices are gonna get higher and higher so miners will not vanish.
There will never be a equilibrium between mining and buying/selling.
One of the two will always be better off.

Please elaborate.

How much were you making yesterday, and how much have you made in the past 10 hours or so?

Luck plays into it ("variance") but you will tend to get less -- +/- 2.0 BTC a day, instead of += 3.5 BTC/day like yesterday.

just realized, I was looking at my average share per block solved. i am getting the same shares- but the blocks are just taking longer to solve on average so i guess it is a bit slower.

I have faith that the market will balance out, while mining might not be as profitable or even a loss right now I suspect that the balance will nullify any short term losses..... At least that's what I hope!

I know this question might sound like a n00b just got let loose from the newbie pen on the forum, but do you think the general trend for BTC value will increase overtime as the difficulty increases? I'm not talking short term, im talking 1-2 years from now.

And won't these BTC value increases compensate for the increased mining difficulty?

Jim

OR you could just go to http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php and punch "1000" into the MH/s box...
0.73 BTC/day right now btw.

Not getting into the debate over whether the multiple topics or negative attitude is correct or not, I do have to defend his math, as he clearly states at the end "multiply by 1.1 for a 0% fee proportional share pool" which gets you up to the 0.73 that everyone else calculated.  He just went the roundabout way of saying it, showing the lowest possible outcome (PPS, deepbit)

I stand corrected.  

0.73 is actually significantly more than .65 btc/day.  

Should have used the alloscomp calculator!

7M difficulty at 1.0Ghash is 0.14 BTC/day.  That is 75% more than I had previously calculated (0.08).  Looks like I will be in this game for 7 more difficulties, not 5 more : )

Thanks Talldude et al (srs).  I am reworking my #'s.  I might end up with 10 BTC after all at my 330mhash.

I don't think it's that unreasonable to calculate using Deepbit's PPS either.
You don't think Deepbit got so big because they were just another Proportional pool with instant payout, did you?

BTCguild has 0% fees (donation only) and they have insta-payout up to 2x a day.

The *only* reason you have to go to Deepbit is if you want PPS payout. I'm guessing a lot of their customers go with it.

For those curious, I use Deepbit, Slush, *and* BTCguild, myself.

Matthew

At this point in time, despite intentions to the otherwise, BTC is primarily a speculative cryptocommodity.  As such, difficulty will follow price, with a lag.  Not the other way around.  That lag may be months behind the price, not days or weeks.  I think the difficulty is just now catching up with the influx of miners that came around (including me) in the rise up through $10-15 BTCs.  We're nowhere near the difficulty we'd hit with a sustained $30. 

JMHO as a latecomer to the game who did his research and planning before jumping in.  I've known about BTC for a while, but didn't do anything with it until this year.  Didn't even sign up on the forum obviously until really recently.

I'm small potatoes.  I don't have the coins or dollars invested to move the market.

Just for reference, and in case it helps anyone, I'm hashing at about ~910-930MH/sec consistently on Slush's Pool (read: LESS than 1 GH/sec), and over the last four days my rewards have been:

24 June: 0.92087392 BTC
23 June: 0.89964206 BTC
22 June: 0.92484342 BTC
21 June: 1.06128044 BTC

WAY off your calculations.

In my [humble] experience, equations are just models used to approximate what's happening in the real world (the world is continuous/analog not discreet/digital).  Happily, this time, they appear to fall short in our favor.   ;D

Isn't it reasonable to expect the value of bitcoins to increase with increased mining difficulty? Think about it. If you are now mining twice as hard for bitcoins (e.g. doubled efforts). Are you more willing or less willing to sell them at recent prices (e.g. $15 per bitcoin)? Also, that might need to assume demand is steadily increasing.

However, I'm not sure on how long it should take the higher ask prices to reflect in the BTC exchange.

If this is all correct, with just a steady linear demand increase, the profitablility will probably return....followed by higher mining efforts....followed by increased difficulty.... and perhaps this will prove to be the cycle.

This guy makes sense. It's obvious, byt some people think that you can't ask for more money for your BTC. Well you can. If I want I can ask $1000 each. It could catch on too.

Hmm... :-X

by the time you all get done complaining and what not, the diff will increase again and you will need new thread lol

Difficulty went up yesterday...

This is why i moved to Namecoins  :)

btw current estimation is only 1.44m, has growth stopped finally?

or just some kind of bug.

Could be... I'm not investing in rigs anymore... Just wait a month and if it isn't more profitable, I quit mining...
There's much more to earn in trading BTC... At least, when MtGox doesn't Gox us again...

Won't the law of supply and demand ensure that mining remains profitable (if just barely)?  This is because, if difficulty rises disproportionately to price, so that mining becomes unprofitable for some players, then those players will stop mining, causing difficulty to fall to the point where it is profitable again.

In fact, this has happened already before, see for example https://i.imgur.com/rMrdY.png (https://i.imgur.com/rMrdY.png) which is from http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=7427.0 (http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=7427.0).  The price leveled off in mid-February, but difficulty kept rising, so by mid-March it was above 100,000x the BTC price in USD.  At that point mining was probably unprofitable for many players, and indeed, mining activity fell soon afterwards, to the point where it was less than 100,000x the price again.

This month, mining speed and difficulty has been catching up to the recent price bubble (where it went up to 30 in early June), but now (just in the last few days) mining activity is leveling off in response to the decreased profitability - as can be seen in this chart:  http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-2k.png (http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-2k.png).  If the price doesn't go up soon, then before long the difficulty will fall, and mining will become more profitable again.

Bottom line is, don't worry about it - the invisible hand of the market will take care of the problem.

Don't forget miners with free electricity. I fear no invisible hand can prevent them from mining when their employer (or parents/etc.) pays for them.

Also, my power is significantly more expensive than in the US, so I'm out first. Again, no invisible hand to help me.

That my friend, is the invisible hand. Because it is not profitable for you, you will drop out of the market...

Well at least I have three very nice video cards.....

I can always put them to work on the SETI project, maybe the LHC and Climate predictions....  There are lots of ways to burn electricity with GPU cards that is contributory but perhaps not profitable.

I'm not sure I understand this.  We're not exactly talking about the chicken or the egg argument.  BTC difficulty clearly preceded price since bitcoin exchanges didn't even exist during the first difficulty period.  Difficulty came first, followed by price a ways down the road after it.

Yes, thats why price is not booming up directly right now.
It has a lag, but it will follow the difficulty.
This is since the difficulty only affects miners.
And miners do not really determine the average price.

If the market grows also the price will but the miners affect this with a tiny bit.

There was no speculative value then.  Would you spend 10,000 bitcoins when they're almost worthless if you had any suspicion that'd be worth (at least in a bubble) over a quarter of a million dollars a year later?

Come on.  Seriously. 

A:  Not every miner immediately rushes to sell every coin they get.
B:  Even if they did, in 14 hours Gox had over 22,000 btc change hands.  In that time only 4200 were mined (on average).

Imagine walking into a store that had 800 oranges for sale for $.20 each and shouting "Hey guys, I've got 200 fresh oranges here.  They're getting harder and harder for me to grow, so I want a buck each."

Now imagine after buying those $.20 oranges, everyone went home, traded 'em for something else (or hung onto 'em a while) and came back to resell 'em and they were still perfectly good as new.

The only time you're gonna get to choose the price for your oranges is when the rest of the market is gone.

This is pretty funny discussion. Even excluding those with free electricity, some of us can mine bitconis at a loss and make a profit.  ;)

What?  No.   That's rational actor.   The Invisible Hand is how Adam Smith thought that people would buy locally instead of cheap imports.   It's invisible because it doesn't exist.

Damn where is the clapping smiley? This x1000.