I'll add my two cents to the discussion on the current ASIC pricing, BTC price, and difficulty. While I agree with Phil that the industry can't support the combination, that doesn't mean that won't continue. Round #1 of crazy investors buy gear from Bitmain at whatever Bitmain is asking. After some months bills come due, and the venture figures out that it isn't going to fly. They sell their gear at a major discount to the original price to Round #2 or somewhat less crazy investors. The round # 2 folks might make it, BTC price might go up, or after several more months, the Round #2 guys throw in the towel. They then sell what gear is still working at a discount to their cost to the Round #3 guys. Eventually the price of that once new gear has now gotten down to a more reasonable price and the Round #N guys are able to continue for a while. The various investors in first few rounds take a loss, which is essentially "paying down" the original price of the hardware.

I think eventually the push back up the chain to Bitmain happens and they drop the price. Hard to tell at what point, if ever, their costs for developing a new generation of gear becomes too high.

All of this happens within the context of difficulty changes, and BTC price changes. But nobody doing actual mining can actually get rich for very long. Something will adjust to essentially negate their advantage over time.

This overall process seems to be repeatable for an indefinite period of time. If for some reason BTC won't rise enough, then the hash rate and difficulty will have to adjust downwards to support whatever the rest of the industry is willing to provide in terms of blockchain processing.

Just out of curiosity, has there ever been s stretch of 507 days where difficulty has NOT risen, much less 700 or more days?

It seems to me that as long as BTC price trades within a small range (say roughly $9100), it will take gear that is lower priced to replace less efficient gear. Most of the hash rate will move to the most efficient producers which include gear efficiency and electricity cost. Hig priced electricity pretty much precludes any significant mining in those areas, even with massively efficient. An upswing in BTC price will also push hash rate and hence difficulty over time.

The whole combination of BTC price, difficulty, electricity cost all come together to make the most efficient mining operations produce a SMALL profit. If they were to make a large profit, then others would join which pushes up hash rate and hence difficulty. Gear vendors can only charge a premium on more efficient gear for a while until thing settle.

There is no long term plan to make big profits with BTC (IMHO) mining. It's only done on the margins and for a short (i.e. a few months maybe) period of time. After the system will settle, with possibly a slightly different set of marginal profit makers. Folks with high electricity cost are effectively unable to mine.

Well over halfway through the current epoch, witch a SMALL decline in difficulty predicted.

BTC price certainly isn't going to push difficulty: $9300/BTC

BTC price isn't going to help any at this time: $9357.

Nice while it lasted: BTC price is $9462

The difference between a BTC price drop and a reward halving is that the halving is "permanent" (until it halves again). BTC prices go down , they go up. To offset the impact of halving to a miner, requires a price doubling, a efficiency improvement , or an electricity cost reduction.

A little bit of relief: BTC price is $9414. Still going to drive all be the most efficient mining operations out the market.

No relief on the price front: $8790 per BTC coin.

No particular relief on the BTC price front: $9095 at the moment.

I will also add one small caution. From a purely economic point of view, if you could actually use the solar power you have to reduce your other non-mining electricity usage, then you are still paying $.24/Kwh for your mining. Think in terms of your "marginal" cost of electricity.

I know that electricity rates and rules are complex, so maybe there really isn't any way to actually offset any of your non-mining electricity usage, but that seems unlikely. Most (not all) folks don't invest in solar that can't be tied into the grid to at least reduce some of their usage from their power company.

While I always enjoy Phil's numerical analysis, I will add throw one small bit of sand in the gears. I think the projections are great in terms of difficulty and hash rate are likely more accurate than the price of BTC. My personal feeling is that the $10,000 BTC price is a kind of "resistance" barrier from a human perspective. I expect that there is a much larger set of people that are willing to sell BTC at $10,001 than at $9999.

Kinda like why things are priced at XXX.95 and not XXX+1.

One small thing to remember: Difficulty falls more slowly than it rises. Since the epoch is always 2016 blocks, if it comes in at less than 14 days, difficulty rises, If it takes longer than 14 days, then difficulty falls. What this means is that a larger decline will take longer to actually realize.

No big change in BTC price: $9102

Looks like it happened. I personally didn't feel anything but my minuscule mining operation has been off for months ($.10 power cost). Interesting to see what happens from here. If miners behave rationally, we should expect to see lengthening block solve times as hash rate disappears over the next week or so.

The surge in coin price appears to have evaporated: $8471 now.

This thread makes me wonder if perhaps "mining pools" will end up undergoing something like what the hardware universe is seeing. The actual hardware mining is clearly moving towards an "industrial scale" in terms of the size of a miner, which has largely crushed the small "home" miner. Will there be a similar move towards "industrial" sized pools to survive?

I think it's time for me, and Searing, to think of ourselves as "coal miners" where we are being put out of work by the march to automation, or in this case "industrialization".

Maybe we should appeal to Bitmain to "End the war on home mining!" 

One small point. I think the whole small/home is rapidly evaporating. The only current (e,g, efficient) mining hardware comes in the form of a hot, loud, higher voltage (i.e. not 120V) box. With the exception of sidehack's efforts, there are NO highly efficient miners that exist at less than 25 TH, are there?

Remember when there was talk of "mining light bulbs", "mining routers", or mining "appliances"? Almost sounds funny doesn't it? As Phil said all Bitcoin mining is "industrial" in nature, and I don't see that trend changing in any significant way going forward.

Think things will change much based on a recent BTC price of $9526/coin? I kinda wonder if there is now FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) on the manufacturing side (not charging enough for new gear).

Where Crypto meets the "real" world, and not just currency exchange rates.