Bitcoin Forum

Well...... all the while when price was dropping, we could still see the hash rate that moves steadily up on an increasing trend. But this time round it is different. You could clearly see the dip. Check out the blockchain info stats.

Question is have we finally reached the point where miners will no longer be able to sustain their operation?

Looks like it. The great shakeout has begun. I think when the dust settles we'll have a more stable platform to build Bitcoin up again, but this round of pain became necessary to correct the excesses of the "gold rush" initiated in late 2013.

Resale value of mining equipment decrease dranatically overtime as difficulty increases. I think mining farms have no choice but to keep going and hold bitcoin until prices recover. Switching them off is not very cost effective in a different perspective.

mining farms can switch off to create panic by dipping the hash rate, then pick up cheaper coin and turn back on.

not true. if they switch off they make even less money if they leave it on they lose even more they have zero options right now but as Mr. Bell aka Andresen has pointed out mining farms are a plague and they should go away ;) coincidentally crashing the BTC price will end up crushing mining farms.

Can anyone recommend a good site to learn about hash rates?

No, not yet. Big mining farms must have very cheap power, say $0.05. If a mining rig is using about 1kwh per TH/s, that's $1.2/day for power for 1TH miner. At this difficulty, 1TH mints 0.01144 btc/day, or $2 if bitcoin is $175. So they can go as low as $100/btc.

In different words, but my views exactly. People only in it for the profit, not the concept and the responsibility that comes with it. We're still a long way to adoption, mainly due to the volatility, for that reason, this isn't good...

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

alot of cloud mining outfits are  starting to turn em down, since they already sold and profited from the hardware , the customers takes the loss.  they dont need to mine at a loss  type of deal, win win for them, they prepared for this.

The new miners are more efficient, double the efficiency you mentioned, so the break even price is about $50. That does not include the cost of the miner. The total cost could be $100 if we include plant, labour and miners.

Wow...what type of mining equipment is that? Is it custom made? Any hint?
If what you say is true, there will be even more downward pressure on bitcoin price.

Bitmain S5:
Chips   60x Bitmain BM1384 Gen3
Hashrate   ~1150GH
Power.Consumption   600W
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=910967.0

And the new AsicMiner BE300 chip, <0.3 W per GH/s, chips expected in february.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=888260.0

Spondoolies has a new chip coming, also.

hash rate looks fine to me, been around the same for a while, perhaps waiting for next technology jump

They can continue to mine at prices that low, however they may not want to invest in additional hardware if the price is reaching a point where they would only have a small amount of net mining revenue (after electric expenses) and the ability to achieve ROI is less then certain

I never really understood the whole speculation side of it.  Of course I took advantage of it, but I spend bitcoins for things!  That's what it's designed for.  What I've noticed is that the folks that used to preach and price things in btc have now back peddled and price their stuff in $.  That again defeats the purpose and doesn't attract spending of btc.  If you are going to price me something for .25btc, then it needs to be .25btc whether btc/$ is $1 or $1,000.


edit: I just ran a quick calc and with my SP20s & S5s, I can go down to $65/btc before electricity cost are more than earnings (currently).

Anyone who thinks that between $150 per BTC down to $50 per BTC, is the break even number for miners, is delusional.
We are around that number now, IMO.
At those numbers (between $150 per BTC down to $50 per BTC) you'll see end of many mining pools, and the beginning of the two or three Mega Pools.

some miners with old mining rig already out from the game by now
even cex.io already halted their cloud mining services temporarily
This good news for miners with new mining rig since they can got more BTC

https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate (https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate)

It really depends on how efficient the miners are that makeup the overall network. It was only recently (within the past few months) that people were able to miners that consumed less then 1 watt per ghs. When these miners were available their total hashrate was really not that much greater then previously available miners.

This would lead me to conclude that a good portion of the network is made up of miners with efficiency above 1w per gh

That's also the only good news about this development ;D

OP is clearly wrong, the hashrate didn't really "dip", it has stabilized at around 310-315 PHS which is a jump from 280-290 a few weeks back. Next diff will be around 0%, after that we will see another 0% diff, followed by about 10% increase due to btc price recovering and more people buying S5's and SP20's.

IF the price recovers, which I hope it will :)