Bitcoin Forum

By 4 hours, bitcoin network, will set difficulty to ~263,358,983

This difficulty change, starts a new era in bitcoin mining.

This is a very interesting excel table with history of bitcoin difficulty changes
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6a17Qe3LReURF91ZE1HdTFsRE0/edit?usp=sharing

So, making some calculations, considering all recent difficulty changes, and that every ~10 days difficulty increases of ~30%,
I think that if you plan to start a mining activity Today, you have not to pay more then 0.05 bitcoins per GigaHash
if you want to make profit after 1 month of mining.

Starting from today, to plan a new profitable mining activity, we have to start thinking in Terahash and not anymore in Gigahash

This is so true, The Gigahash era didn't last long tho  :o

/Rant
What annoys me about this era is the people who don't understand the difference between fiat world and crypto world, For EG:- People selling ASIC hardware here and linking to e-bay asking OVER the new price because it's in hand, Sure if your new and want to pay cash to start mining and loose 80% of capitol as the thing will never ROI go for it.
/Rant over

yes. Most probably small "gigahashes miners", will be good only for mining some alternative SHA-256 cryptocoins.

Goodbye BFL 5GH miners. Was about to buy cex.io ghashes but on a second thought, no.

yes, I think "cex io" is an excellent and innovative platform to buy gigahashes.

Gigahash price is made only by the market.

Anyway, actually market price of 0.14 BTC per gigahash is too high and not profitable if you start today a new bitcoin mining investment. This price was good 25 days ago, not now.
I think that considering new difficulty level, gigahash price should be 0.07~0.05 BTC , but probably market price is influenced by other factors, than mathematic.
Considering, new difficulty level and that every 10 days difficulty will increase of ~30%  it is mathematically impossible to make profit, buying today a gigahas at 0.14BTC

Buying today at 0.14 you could make profit, if you could sell by 3-4 months your remained gigahashes at 0.09 ~ 0.10

Cool. Higher the better.

Certainly, very soon. Just hoping that it will not happen so fast. Perhaps some miners would turn to alt coins mining. And difficulty increase would slow down.

yes.

on date 10/26/2013 difficulty could be 331,906,650.4
on date 11/05/2013 difficulty could be 431,478,645.52
on date 11/15/2013 difficulty could be 560,922,239.176
on date 11/25/2013 difficulty could be 729,198,910.928
on date 12/05/2013 difficulty could be 947,958,584.206
on date 12/15/2013 difficulty could be 1,232,346,159.46

these are only estimates, considering recently difficulty increases about 30% every 10 days

Panic refunds of BFL buyers will happen real soon. :)

these are only estimates, considering recently bitcoin difficulty increases about 30% every 10 days
Anyway, consider that fortunately there are a lot of SHA-256 alternative cryptocoins to be mined ;)

Personally I'll continue mining bitcoin with my mining rig, for other 3-4 months, but consider it has started to mine since beginning of september, so it made its work, and has been profitable, and will continue being profitable for other 3-4 months.

So, after Jan~Feb 2014 I'll evaluate stopping mining bitcoin, and starting mining alternative sha-256 cryptcocoins.

no problem just keep mining until difficulty hits 60Billion then call it quits.  It wasn't 6 months ago that 50 GH was no joke now its damn near chump change in a few weeks...that is if you are the type to mine and sell back to pay off debt right away.  If you hold it may reap rewards when you cash out.  Also speaking to legitimacy, wouldn't it qualify as a long term capitol gain if you didn't cash out mined coins or traded coins for at least 2 years if it were major amounts that were to be converted for substantial purchases such as homes or nice cars?  (Sorry I dropped off topic)

1 block to go... wonder who gets it.... come on little CPU solo miner!!

Next Difficulty
in 2 blocks
267,254,986

Difficulty   267,731,249

Estimated Next Difficulty: 529,565,380 (+97.80%) 

Bomchicka-bomchicka-bomchicka-pow-wow.

really?
http://allchains.info/

btc    264095    11.74G    2016    264096    1    99.95%    189281248    267598371    41.38%    0d 0hr 7m 4s

still no one found it yet :)

The new era is that finally people will start buying bitcoins instead of overpriced crap like usb miners ...

gtz to GHash.Io for finding the block... now if only this was accurate...

btc    264097    11.74G    2016    266112    2015    0.05%    267731248    134990545    -49.58%    27d 18hr 4m 10s

but yeah hopefully this will push the BTC price up higher and all the miners for sale in BTC down!

FuzzyBear

probably people will start mining other sha-256 currencies?
This could slow down difficulty increase for next months??

zeta, terra, asic, frei are more profitable now then bitcoin
see here http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency/

with BTC close to £100, I wish I had done that to start with.  But mining is, erm fun...

This sucks really bad, the huge jump is really unexpected. 40% increase!!! OMG!!!

exactly, 41.45% increase

we can reach 1 billion difficulty at beginning of December

 8)

This is part of the self preservation in BitCoin.  

Think about it from this point of view.

As the difficultly moves up, the value of .01 ,.001 and so on increase's to a point of usefulness.  Trades/Purchases will use sub-bitcoin pieces instead of whole bitcoins.  We currently see that for many purchases now, but it's going to become a staple instead of  a small purchase.  

I think we can comfortable afford at the end a 100 Billion index difficultly point on bitcoin mining.  This will extend the lifespan of bitcoin and allow people to use it for far long than previously expected.  

Agreed.  With increased difficulty comes increased bitcoin price.  Those of us who mine might rue the day we spent x number of monies on a rig (me included), however, actually buying bitcoin and holding onto it continues to be a valid investment option.

I expected it to be at least that.  KNC, Bitfury etc etc continue to pump out units that are 400gh plus, and effectively price hobbyists like me out of the market. 

If I had 11k to splash around at this point, I would buy bitcoins, not a miner. 

 

I think not. Every 10 days, are mined about 2450 blocks, for a total of 61,250 bitcoins; The whole bitcoin exctracted until now, are more then 11,000,000

A so small mined quantity every 10 days (61,250) compared to the whole bitcoin quantity on the market (more then 11,000,000) has a small influence on bitcoin price

I think I more pointing towards the increased demand for bitcoins being the deciding factor.  I could be wrong, but I see btc going above £120 soon.

yes, you are right. It is the bitcoin demand, who regulates the price on the market. Mining activities, have a small influence on the price

The real question is, at which point do people start powering off their equipment because its just not worth it anymore because its too expensive compared to income.

In my personal opinion, people will not shut down their equipment, in short time, considering that there are alternative cryptocurrencies to be mined.
Consider that actually asiccoin, freicoin, terracoin and ppcoin are actively mined and exchanged. The more bitcoin difficulty goes up, the more profitable will become to mine alternative cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin price is not directly and immediately connected to difficulty increase, so alternative cryptocurrencies will have their chances

Current Difficulty: 267,731,249
Next difficulty (estimate): 436,010,565 (+63%)

Good bye miners and pre-order miners. This is ridiculous.

Let's hope so. Good news indeed.

I've said this 100 times before.  You shouldn't power off your miners ever.  Even if you are running in the red.  It's not about the immediate compensation.  Quotes like " It's not worth it to mine because you are losing money on the power," & " It's time to shut off my GPU's because it's not worth it" I believe you are thinking to narrowminded.  Yes you are right, you are not/cannot make money if you are running in the red, but in the end, there is a finite amount of bitcoins.  A total mass of BitCoins that can not be exceeded.  You can't mine more after that. So keep your miners running until that day happens.  Every fraction of a bitcoin you find, it will be worth something, someday.  That .0004 you are getting today, could be worth $100 dollars in 10 years once BitCoin has exhausted it's mining potential.  

It's been the plan, the entire time that difficulty will increase at rapid rates when more & more people join, when ASIC becomes the norm and when whatever replaces that after.  You just need to step back and see where you fit into the plan.  This plan was set in motion some time ago, and it's unfolding beautifully.

 8)

And Im sure 100 times people have called you buffoon, but you still dont understand it? If you are "mining in the red" it means you are paying more for your bitcoins in electricity than they cost when buying on an exchange or localbitcoins or wherever. There is absolutely zero reason to do that.

Or rather with the money spent on the electricity bill buy bitcoins.

The correct move is to get what you can get for your hardware and then invest that to bitcoin.

I believe in most cases that would outpeform mining in long term...

If in 3 minutes 3 people say you're doing it wrong , maybe you're really doing it the wrong way

The correct way to look at one's 8gh jally or block erupters is as heating elements. It costs the same amount to run them as a 100 watt heater, and the heat output is pretty much the same.

So logically you're running a heater that can also make a tiny amount of money. As long as the equipment requires zero maintenance and it's cool outside there should be no problem. Now in the spring when the AC units come online it's stupid. Then you use them to heat water for your house.

As for being surprised, no trick there. Bitcoin is a perfect market, and as such it is impossible to make a long term profit on mining. I broke even on my device only because I paid for it in Jan, got it in end of August, and jacked it from 5gh to 7.5. Anyone who bought after me lost, and those slobs who didn't get their miners yet totally lost.

C

Maybe.  We'll see.

Sounds like you wont.

Even if bitcoin goes x1000 you will think you made the right decision while anyone with a brain would have understood you could have bought more bitcoins than you mined with the same amount of dollars spent on electricity, and they would go x1000 just as well.

Ill grant the exception for electrical heating that lightfoot pointed out, but anyone heating electrically probably didnt do the math on that either.

Well, if you can't pay off your electricity. Why not just power off your miners and use the so call electricity bills to buy additional Bitcoin. Or even better just sell away those miners all together and put all of them into BTC.

You fatcat's need poor people , so I'll fill that role.

If you do go this route, that's what I would do if I sold my mining equipment.  Just reinvest what I pay in electric for them into additional bitcoins.

Soon, I bet few more difficulty rise and USB eruptor can't even pay off its electricity charges although its only 2.5watt. But it counts...

The thing is, that when all those miners begin to realize, that mining is absolutely NOT profitable anymore, but in contrary creates big losses, because you always will be too late when you receive your miner, BTC will also die, because nobody is hashing anymore!!!

That's the bug in the system  :-[

*facepalm*

You know what runs on the same principle? The Christian faith.

oh god, you made my year! i love you! :D

I have one word for you, just one word:

Equilibrium.

(though Buffer Overflow's is also a pretty good word)

"2, 3, 5 and 7 are the first four prime numbers."

"Maybe. We'll see."

Jesus.

I will add that, apart from electric heating, there is one other reason one might wish to mine at a loss - to play one's part in securing the bitcoin network. If the electricity bill for the miner is sufficiently small (which it will be for a low-end asic, such as a USB miner or 1st gen AM blade, jalapeno, BFL single), one may wish to simply keep it going to contribute to the network hash rate. In that case one should view the electricity bill as a fee for participating in Bitcoin, and any mining proceeds as a partial subsidy or rebate on the fee. Anyway this is probably what I'll be doing with my 1st gen AM blade when the inevitable happens (which looks like Jan/Feb 2014 at the rate things are going).

1 isn't prime?

Nope:)

If BFL 5Gh miners are paying US$1.20 per kWh for electricity, sure.  Otherwise I suspect it's going to be profitable for quite a while longer than you imagine.

Depends. My house is heated with radiant heat and a nice fireplace insert on the lower level. Top top level can get cool, so instead of running the radiant up there it's more economical to use an electric heater in the room I am in. Erupters do that well :-)

Just need to get them for free. Soon enough it will happen; I'm impressed with the number of BFL FPGAs popping up on Ebay.

It's looking like Jan/Feb is when the break even point will pass. I will probably then run the miner outside on the solar panels, but even that is a bit of a lose as I could grid-tie the power back for more money than bitcoin mined.

Never dull.

off topic so this will be my last comment on this


Why not? 1 is only evenly divisible by 1 and it's self (just happens to be one again)

Because any prime number by definition has to be bigger than 1.


A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number
there are also the others reason stated there

Mining is becoming a fools game. I know, because I'm one of the fools.

This.  Doesnt help that some ASIC manufacturers appear reticent to send miners out to customers thereby affecting potential ROI

 :-\, Invidiuals should not be involved in this game from now and in the future.

Difficulty would fall and those left would gain more coin but coin would be worth less.  Not only that but because miners are the ones who confirm transactions this will take longer than it does currently

I feel that the statement is not completely true. Bitcoins is estimated to grow past $200 by end of year. If people stop mining, people who want to get bitcoins would need to buy. Thus, bitcoin demand will grow higher, the price would rise.

Precisely !

More of a Queen's Race, where you have to run faster and faster just to stay in place.

For details on why people would continue to do this, see "sunk cost fallacy" and "Dollar auction".

C

For what it's worth; I think you people didn't think about difficulty degrading at some point. I've read it somewhere here (I believe it was in the hardware/computer sales section) and didn't quite believe it to be honest. But watching the Computation/difficulty graph over here:

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-small-lin-10k.png

I begin to understand the guy's point...
Maybe I'm wrong; but maybe I'm not. ::)

I think the difficulty will still increase dramatically since all the new machines coming out UNLESS they all somehow get pushed back months. This will only slow the growth, I doubt the difficulty will go down in the next few months though

The difficulty will simply follow the overall hashing power. If every asic were to implode tomorrow, the difficulty would drop to pre-asic levels.

The more asics that come online, the greater the difficulty. If someone figured out how to do quantum bitcoins or something the difficulty would just jump to that level.

Difficulty will go down when there is less hashing power. Which will not happen, as when people quit diff will go down and more people will get back into the game. And people will mine at a loss to minimize their investment loss.

Queen's race.

We are no where near the point where hashrate will level off. You are reading tea leaves. The "drop" is either due to statistical variance or perhaps a DDoS or KnC datacenter struggling, but this is not a reversal by any means. You will see it level off eventually, but not this year. Here is a 7 day average that eliminates the statistical noise:

https://blockchain.info/en/charts/hash-rate?timespan=180days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=7&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

I'm wondering this myself. It's starting to look as though we will have an answer to this question very soon.

Well, the MISTAKE miners are making is they are calculating break-even using current or near-term BTC prices.  5-10-20 years from now, assuming mass acceptance, a BTC might be worth several orders of magnitude more than it is today.  So, taking that perspective, BTC .00001 tomorrow might be worth the same as BTC 1 today.  It is a risk, for sure.  It is a stretch, for sure.  It means mining at "losses" today, for sure.   But years from now, continuing to mine at a loss today will be seen as having been a brilliant move when BTC .0001 pays for your grandchild's university education.

Just something to think about.

On another note, I do think eventually BTC mining will be essentially centralized as the cost of machines required for big BTC mining (I'm suggesting 1+ BTC per day will qualify as big mining) continues to increase in power and price.  Then, as per design, "old technology" miners will profit from transaction fees, instead.

Just my 2 satoshi...

The one making the mistake is you, not the miners.

If you assume that the BTC price will increase, you can simply buy BTC. Instead of buying mining equipment for $1000, you could buy ~7 BTC. The mining equipment will most likely not produce 7 BTC over its lifetime, so you're better of just holding those BTC. It's also easier and less risky.

Not sure how good that is.  It's bad enough that a couple of major pools are well over 50% but if there will be a few entities with well over 50% I can easily imagine the following statement sometime around next reward halving.  "Due to high mining fiat costs both ongoing and initial capital invested and a not high enough exchange rate we decided to not reduce the block reward.  Signed the miners that control the majority of hashing power."  Everyone's holding just tanked and there's nothing you can do about it.

I think Batshit is correct, and you're wrong, Rannasha.  My mining equipment has paid for itself - every BTC I've mined in the last year has paid for it's replacement.  My HD5870 paid for my HD6970, which paid for the first HD7950, and the 6970 and 7950 together paid for the second 7950.  The three GPUs paid for my 11 Block Erupters.  I then sold the GPUs for either what I paid for them, or more than I paid for them, and that paid for my two Blades.  They're just about to ROI on the power used since I started mining (helped by my PV array).

During the summer my mining rig will be making BTC and costing absolutely nothing to run, thanks to the solar panels.  During the winter the heat from the mining rig is heating two rooms in my house, saving heating oil, and using less than 500W from the wall.

So, I'm pretty happy to continue mining for as long as I can, and will probably invest more of my mined BTC in to new hardware in the future.  I'm keeping my eye out for used Jalapenos and Blades all the time...

yes, you are right for old mining equipment bought in the past months, that extensively worked, and made profit, it is fine to keep it still working (now and for the following months).

But if someone plans to buy "today" a new mining equipment, and he will put it working "this evening", considering actual difficulty level and that difficulty will go up 30-40% every 10 days, he cannot pay more then 0.03~0.04 bitcoins for 1 GH/s otherwise he will certainly make a very low profit, and over 0.09 bitcoins per GH/s he will lose money. At this point, if he has to spend more then 0.09 bitcoins for 1 Gh/s it is better just "to buy" some bitcoins, and to wait price goes up.

Please consider that if someone put today 100GH/s to work, mining hardware will produce in 1 month ~ 4.35 bitcoins, and in successive 8 months, ~ 5.58 bitcoins

So, if someone pays today 4.35 bitcoins for the 100 GH/s mining equipment, he will earn 5.58 bitcoins in a total of 9 months. After 9 months, for the next 24 months, 100 GHS will produce not more then a total of 0.10 bitcons

if someone pays today 9.98 bitcoins for the 100 GH/s mining equipment, he will earn 0 bitcoins for the following 9 months

Sincerely I do not understand people that is actually buying on auction web sites sites, asic mining equipment, paying for 1 gigahas more then 0.10 bitcoins (~14.5 usd).
If someone wins an auction for a 5.5 Gh/s mining equipment and pay more then 79.75 usd (0.55 bitcoins) he is just making a very bad business and who sells him the asic equipment, is mining from buyer's wallet a lot of money ;) with a very low difficulty rate ).
Probably, in these cases, it is better to buy 0.55 bitcoins, and wait some months for a probable increase in value

People are irrational. I demonstrate this myself in that I have *not* put my 7.25gh Jally up for auction. They seem to go for $300-$400, and there is no way in God's green heaven that I will make that much in bitcoin going forward. My decision not to put it up for sale *NOW* is equally irrational.

Ah well.

C

all those mining things, remembered me this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBDi0iM2kcU

@Puppet: First of, I believe that I have right:
http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-small-lin-10k.png

The thing IS stabilizing and I have a perfect understanding for it. Small range miners just have to quit. The gap will be filled with bigger, better, faster TH/s rigs but; NOW it's getting lower. I find it interesting.

@Amph: Insanity and genius are separated by a thin (pretty thin) line... keep that in mind.  ;)

Well, if you want to see the impact of the "small miners" (I'm thinking FPGA and lower) take a step back in time and look at that report from say March/April, before the ASICs hit.

That level of hashing should be all of the inefficient miners, and in an optimal world if they all quit total hashing would drop by that amount. Yes, it's significant, and yes you can finally get a BFL FPGA for your collection (that's why they are all over Ebay), but it's not that much compared to emerging ASICs.

So difficulty will not slow down from that. Nailing all the BFL ASICs might make more of a difference (my Jally will age out in Jan or so) but by then the 500-600gh things should be out.

We shall see. Block creating might be slower due to the doubling of difficulty, but it will probably recover. I wonder when the 10gh/s erupters will go out of style. Probably Jan/Feb as well.

@lightfoot: True story; and nicely put. Thing is that this time there's a HUGE amount of erupters out there that will (probably) quit. I don't count the VGA rigs, those in perfect sanity should have packed and sell them half a year ago. As you've said:

"We shall see"

Well I found a wallet.dat on an old HD and it had 2BTC I had bought @ $.97.  I used them to Buy USB erupters. Yes my max profit would have been to trade them for USD ~$125 when I restored the wallet. But am having alot more fun this way. And have gotten a lot more than $1.98 worth of fun out of it.

No where near the leveling off point, to think that is already happening before jan pre orders are met makes me laugh. We haven't even seen them start to deliver mass amounts of 1th/s systems.

Reguarding the mining I'm all for people running their rigs until profitability disappears, of course you could bank on a rise in btc but then you saw more appreciation from owning in before hand due to there being no sunk hardware costs besides the fee on buying from an exchange or maybe variance at local bitcoin exchanges.

However after looking at the return on machines that might've got here on preorder before November, I've yet to find one that returns.

http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/ for example what I was thinking of buying into. ( cointerra )

however I'm now set on buying BTC, imagine today I bought the equiv hardware cost in BTC (3500/147.71 = BTC23.6950 ) bitstamp avg price from bitcoinity @ 6:23pm est. That amount of BTC is without exhange costs so knock of another .46% (bitstamp fee sched @ <2k  usd volume). The fact the money has to sit in pre order while the BTC could be appreciating or depreciating would drive me insane at this point.

Estimates from the gensisblock calc link gives me 1340 usd in revenue before incurring costs instead of profit, so 1340/147.71 = BTC9 mined before unprofitability. BTC9 isn't priced at the future possible price of btc @ Jan 2014 but if my logic is correct it doesn't matter, unless the difficulty drops out like a hidden floor. Buying into btc now would net you 23.6950 - 9.07 = BTC14.6231 meaning you be better able to take advantage of a price gain.

My calculations project leveling at ~1.2-1.5 B difficulty sometime Dec/Jan.  It will flatten until the ASIC gen2s hit the market mid-2014, but the impact of those will be incremental, not dramatic as we have seen when the technology has lept from CPU to GPU to FGPA to ASIC. 

Call me crazy now, but mark this post and call me a prophet in Jan/Feb when the leveling is proven.

...And it popped again (this time to 3PH/s)...

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-small-lin-10k.png

sigh...

Blame KNCminer for shipping their products on time :).

Holy cow. I think they're going to start rating returns on the position you are in the US Postal guy's delivery route plus the speed of her truck.....

This is hilarious. And Eclipsemc has had the worst luck (45% and spent the last 22 hours doing a block) in the world. Would have been much better to mine PPS, but Oh well, no time machine.

C

well, we are at bitcoin difficulty rate of 390,928,788 now.

some numbers:

46.02% increase from last difficulty increase;
4.80% increase every day

Historical difficulty variations, here
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6a17Qe3LReURF91ZE1HdTFsRE0/edit?usp=sharing

Be careful when buying an asic mining equipment. Considering actual difficulty increases, I suggest you to avoid to pay more then 5 USD per Gigahash. Besides, consider that when you buy an asic mining equipment, delivery times, are very important, cause every 10 days difficulty will increase by around 40% (or more).

This web site can help you in taking a decision before losing your money in buying asic mining equipment
http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/

No Rannasha is correct.  If a mining rig won't mine as many BTC as it cost, then it's a bad investment vs just buying the BTC.  If your graphic cards minted more BTC than you would have gotten by buying BTC then you are in agreement with Rannasha and you made a good investment calculating ROI in BTC terms.

You are 100% right: "If a mining rig won't mine as many BTC as it cost, then it's a bad investment vs just buying the BTC"
People would check http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/ before buying an asic mining equipment.

if the difficulty continues to go up in the 40% range every 10 days its the end of the average joe mining fortunes. BTC is a business and we small guys have not been invited to the party. I'll personally continue to mine with my army of erupters I can afford $20 a month in power but I will not be paying anything over $500 just to stay competitive, probably the price of BFL 60 gig in a couple of month

Pretty much. This weekend I spent some time building 12 volt buck converters for my shed's 24 volt power system. At the next jump I'm moving my JP out to the shed with the laptop. Then it can mine on the batteries+solar panels through the winter; 50*24=1200 watts per day, panels can put out 1,500+ watts in the winter, so it should be able to run on 100ah of batteries through the evening/night/rain.

Never dull.

C

Pretty much this, people are quitting this mining game but the rate is too slow comparing to the one entering the market..

At one point I will think that the one leaving the market is faster then new miners...

That's why you should consider mining alternative cryptos like Betacoin

Ah, the days of 390. Life was so simple then....

I don't think it's ever going to stop going up by 20% a shot.