Bitcoin Forum

now bitcoin difficulty went up, you think will go back down again or will be hashing power + renewable energy power is that will make it?

difficulty up --> time --> price up

The price will go back up eventually otherwise the difficulty will have to lower eventually. People will stop mining if they're losing money.

I hear this mentioned often.   Maybe someone can clear something up for me.  People warn that if the price of Bitcoin doesn't rise, miners will suffer, and that means Bitcoin will suffer.  Isn't this a self-adjusting system though?  If difficulty gets too hard, fewer people mine, and difficulty goes back down.  If miners suffer due to low BTC values, fewer miners will mine, difficulty will decrease, and profitability will still be worthwhile to those who remain.   It will reach a new (lower) equilibrium.   So is there really a concern?

Thanks

-B-

I'm planning getting 3 sp35's, so hoping that bitcoin difficulty goes down

we are still a long way off before the system starts self sustaining itself with negative difficulty drops. with the data centers coming online theres no way theyll start unplugging because the price has dipped a bit.

The mine a few th of hash using 2-6  kwatts  in my shed/garage/basement guy is not longer much of a factor.

Chips and units using .5 or .6  watts are not that important.

 If a company can build a 1ph data center for under 500btc and get cheap power at 3 cents a watt it is a sure money maker.

I think asicminer, bitfury and bitmaintech can all do this.

So look at a btc calc read out.

they can make insane money if they limit the growth of their dc's and sales to us to 10%.  they only need to maintain the prices about 460 usd a coin. I think the next 4-6 months time they will look to do this. Little guys like us will need to find cheap power more then any other factor
second  factor $ per gh


http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/1024x768q90/912/a4HzYb.png

No.

Look at the price and difficulty graphs for the last six months. Difficulty is going to the moon, price is going nowhere.

Difficulty should start to level off when price/performance of Bitcoin ASICs levels off. Probably in 2015.

So is still good idea to increase hash power?

oh really ?  ;D ;D ;D

Sorry to be the bearer of such depressing news but...

The large private datacenters/ASIC manufacturers are so far beyond home miners in every conceivable way. The difficulty will continue to rise long after mining at home is completely unprofitable.

And if/when difficulty starts to decline, it will never again be profitable for home miners to join back in the game because the massive datacenters will ride a thin line of profitability that will exclude everyone else but the most efficient operations.

I have a feeling this is coming pretty quickly. IT is almost impossible for any home miners to make an ROI atm and i doubt it will be possible at all by the end of the year unless bitcoin price spikes to at least 800.

That is fiat ROI which basically has no connection with mining whatsoever.  Anybody wanting fiat ROI is always better off buying and just waiting for a BTC price increase.

BTC ROI was possible earlier this year and now seems impossible from any vendor at current prices.  It would be possible if the manufacturers dropped their prices significantly but they have no reason to do so.

Well buy and hold for fiat roi does not always beat mining.  but If you told me which one I am leaning towards at the moment buy and hold over buy a miner.

I can't speak for all miners but a high BTC price would be a massive help for me to continue mining.

I have to sell an ever increasing percentage of my mined BTC every month to pay the electric bill. A higher BTC price means I might be able to mine a few more months and keep more of my BTC.

But realistically, I have almost no hope that we are going to see a significant rise in BTC price over the next few months.

Buy and hold/sell is always better than mining if the goal is to increase fiat since you will always have liquidity.  Supposed you ordered 20 S3+ last week and Bitcoin just shot up to $1200.  If you bought the coins you could dump them for $1200 and have a guaranteed 2.5x profit while you would still be waiting on the S3+s to mint coins.

It is possible for the miners to pay back more BTC (as in BTC ROI), but for fiat pure liquidity is crucial and buying hardware doesn't allow exchange arbitrage or following P&D.

you can make easy roi, just use bitcoin miners as space heaters. You need that anyway.

I believe a real space heaters is more efficient, but I might be wrong.

"Fiat ROI" is what it's all about.  Speculation and mining are different businesses. One party can do both, but you have to account for them separately or you're deluding yourself.

Well said.

you are  mostly wrong.  an electric space heater and an asic machine are close to equal. 

 the only extra wasted money is your internet cost. 

If I run 3 s-3 's using 900 watts it will give off as much heat as a 1500 watt space heater set at 900 watts.

I will spend some extra money for my internet.

   So if running my internet is 15 a month that is the extra money 'lost'.

You have to have internet to check email and streaming anyway.

bitcoin price should rise up as dificulty rise
else miner will be lossing money with mining and they will stop mining

It's the other way round, difficulty will follow price.

A space heater is very efficient in producing heat.
An asic miner is pretty efficient in producing heat, the amount that is not used in heating is used to gain bitcoin.
So it is better if you need permanent heating.

You could say, well some miners are more efficient than others.
But more efficient miners are just spending more energy on the usefull calculations, the calculations themselves are equally efficient since it is the same algorithm.

When BTC got ASICs, it was a matter of "go pro or get out". Huge amounts of cash went into making and buying them and that affected the price

wrong.  watts is watts is watts.

heat from 1 watt spent = 3.42 btu of heat

so a 1000 watt space heater = 3420 btu

a 1000 watt miner = 3420 btu

If you go with some of the old miners like the old dragons they practically spit out heat.   The advantage I think a true heater has is sound, they can be more quiet then most of the stuff that is being sold as "heaters".

I think it's a little of a gimmick some sellers are using to unload some almost obsolete gear.  Yes they will make heat, but better hope it's one long winter if you are spending much for them.

s-3's and sp20's give plenty of heat.

  I burn 1200 + 1200+ 1200 + 720 + 350 + 480 = 5150 watts as I type.

 this is  3.42 x 5150 = 17613 btus of heat .

 I get  7.7th of hash     that is about  1100 usd a month

 the heat is 4.22 therms a day.  a therm is 100000 btus     so 17,600 x 24 =  422400 btus a day or   4.22 therms .

4.22   therms of gas heat cost me  about  5 bucks  so the heat from my miners is worth 5 x 30 = 150 a month.

  so I earn 1250 a month .

 the power will cost me  16.25 a day  so 30 x 16.25 =  487.50

so 1250- 500 = 750 profit a month    due to  mining.

S-3's are  a great  space heater. Just   down clock them to  freq 150.

  they use 240 watts run 300gh   and are  very very quiet.  you can run 5 of them on 1 evga 1300 g2  1200 watts 1500 gh   quiet and the heat is better then free you get paid for it. 

So sad to see current btc price, it's been around ~300 for weeks. I will stop mining by the next difficulty change if the price stays the same. mission fail, waiting for a miracle now

This is exactly what needs to happen. Those who are put off by the price need to stop mining so the difficulty can come back down.

Agreed, I thought that exact scenario was playing out a couple weeks ago when the difficulty had a slight reduction but then started going up again this week. Maybe we will see a correction take place in regards to mining this year.