Bitcoin Forum

Huge jump in network mining speed! Does anyone have any idea what could cause this? We are now around last year's high.
http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-thumbnail.png

BFL testing Mini Rigs? ;)

It just spiked from 15.5 to 17 t/hash for a minute.
Now its back to 16.5 15.5 t/hash.
Pretty weird how the total hash power is fluctuating this much right now.

Maybe its indeed BFL testing there stuff.

Its nothing out of the ordinary, or is it?
Have a look at historical charts here: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

$6.40~ could also be some threshold for mining profitability.  

All those stories about the BTC being safer than the Euro having an effect/

Aliens.

I wonder when we will break the old record.

Does more Thas/s acutally increase encryption or does it just make bitcoin safer by needing more for a 51% attack?

Its just luck. Hashing power is calculated from the number of blocks found in time unit. So more luck in block finding means spikes on the chart. And vice versa.

This is true. Ever notice how there are always spikes?

There's an assumed botnet that's been operating since April that has just cranked up their capacity.

See the mining sub forum 'Flurry of blocks'

Doesn't make sense. Power cost (determining factor of profitability if you discard initial investment, which makes sense here) is distributed anywhere from $0.05 to $0.30. Mining rig efficiencies also differ over quite a range. So there's no "inherent" treshold.

There was a massive LUCK-BASED surge yesterday.  At one point there were 10 blocks in 20 minutes.  Those weird spikes really screw up hash rate estimate graphs.  Yesterday there were many pools finding blocks much faster than they normally should (luck).

There has also been some growth due to the $1 increase in BTC price in under a week, which should be expected.

Looks to me there is atleast a real 1-1.5TH of new hashing, rest is likely due to the luck of yesterday. In fact there was a 18blocks in 60minute period, total madness.

This is what i thought too

Aliens, I think they are named "Probability" home world statistics.   

Aliens could always come to the Earth and set up their quantum computers to screw the network to rediculously high hash rates  ;D

To buy our products they could more easily produce using a replicator? Or just to screw up our economy before attacking to make that easier?

screw up our economy enough and we'd be begging them to help
can anyone say bloodless coup de grâce
:P

Aliens taste like chicken.  I am not threatened by anything that tastes like chicken.

With copywrite law now pushed out across the galaxy for eternity plus one million-billion years, they now have to come here and buy all of their hello kitty gear.

I never understood why miners would shut down their rigs when profitability is low, unless they don't think it (prices) will ever come back up to a profitable level, or they don't have enough cash to pay their electric bills. If profitablility for me = $4.50, and I mine for 10 years at $1/btc, then it rises to $5, I can sell 10 years worth of coins vs 1 week.

SHHH! Why are you giving away out secrets?! Let all the dumb miners stop mining!

The dumb miners would be the ones continuing to mine if they payed more in electricity than they earned with the current price of coins. Just take the money you'd be paying for electricity and buy the coins, otherwise you're just losing money and wasting electricity. The fact that the price might increase in the future is irrelevant, the coins you buy (which you would get more of for less money) will still grow in value.

Hmm... Good point.

example:

50€ mining: 7 BTC
50€ buying: 10 BTC

choose

aye, but the 50 spent mining continues to bring in BTC while the buying is a one off.  Still carefull calculation should be done which ever one chooses, I cannot disagree there.

lol ::)


What stopping you from spending money to get mining equipment THEN.

Its the bottom line that matters. Some ppl cant do finance at all.

your example was about a miner shutting down his rig. He can simply turn it back on as soon as "50€ mining > 50€ buying".

that wasn't my example.. I misread your example and took 'mining' to mean 50 euro worth of equipment.  I would assume 2 intelligent individuals, such as yourself and seriouscoin would have gathered that from the way I worded it.  How would 50 spent mining continue to bring BTC unless I was refering to a hardware purchase. Please, I beg your forgiveness for misreading and then, in turn being misread......

And I shouldn't even need to say this but its pretty obvious if you're running equipment that costs more in electricity than a BTC is worth then you're fucking doing it wrong...



 ::) ::) ::)

I worded this badly, didn't mean 'example', more something like 'case': I was referring to "miners would shut down their rigs when profitability is low"


You're correct, I misunderstood you.

Buying mining equipment for €50 doesn't make sense either, though, if mining is already not profitable (except if the equipment is more power-efficient).


You seem to assume everyone has access to cheap power. I've been mining on €0.23 /kWh quite profitably for quite a while, until it wasn't profitable any more at one point in late 2011. I surely wasn't "doing it wrong", I simply didn't have access to cheap enough power to mine profitably with the existing (GPU-) mining hardware. Ergo: switch it off and resort to buying.

sorry again for all the confusion... I don't think we really disagree?

Aye, I don't think we're in disagreement here, m8.  Sorry I was so grumpy about the misunderstanding. ;p

and yea, I tend to forget just how ungodly expensive electricity is there in some of the Euro countries. .23euro per KWH is just friggin insane.  An expensive area here in the US is less than half of that.

Ahem, panda perhaps you have discounted Southern California as part of the US.  Yes, in the great republic of Kalifornia my bill at home last month was $118 USD for 384 KwH (Summer rate with about 30 units into Tier 3 SCE) - that's without mining and only in Tier 3.  If I mined with just 1 6950 I go to Tier 5 and pay over $0.55 USD per KwH and have the possibility of having my electricity shut-off on a hot day.

You can add California to PIIGS I guess  ::) >:(

hehe, you mean to tell me Cali has still not succeeded from the US?  And, hoyl friggin cow, man!  How are they producing power in that part of Cali, out of curiousity?

I'm actually in favor of high energy prices. It prepares us for shortages of stuff to burn.

I have the impression in the US energy prices are somehow subsidized while in Europe they are punished by tax. Too bad we can't easily have a global market...

Hamsters, apparently. I hear they are fairly expensive to maintain.

I knew it!!!.........that was the only reasonable explanation. ;D

+++1

I'm glad I didn't turn off my rigs last November and December, yet I was even more glad many people did, and difficulty went down.

Why would I stop the rigs I paid quite a bit of money for, and start buying coins? The hardware didn't pay for itself at this point and turning it off would have meant to lose value by the day either way. It's not like anyone will pay you more if you told them the gpus are 2 years old, but were hardly used from November-December 2011. Buying coins on top of having built mining rigs wouldn't have been a possibility moneywise, and an extra risk in terms of over-investing, or losing your investment. Say you spent 2500 dollars on hardware and shit had started hitting the fan (a price drop to 2$ is not such an event by the way) you could still have sold the hardware. So, why take on extra risk buying coins instead of mining as an already heavily invested miner? The only thing one could have done is to sell the hardware right away, which would have meant a certain loss instead of a potential loss.

Another issue is whether you have to pay electricity every month, or if you only pay a monthly rate that stays constant the whole year long, and is adjusted at the end of the year only. The latter is the case for me.

So, what concern is it to me that the Bitcoin price temporarily goes down to 2$ if I can keep the coins and sell for 6-7, for example in January, or right now? No point in turning off the rigs there and leave others with a higher share of payouts.