I agree, it took 3 months for the difficulty bomb to start to hurt my mining profit back in 2017. The bomb started exploding in early May, but it wasn't until August that revenue noticeably declined.

To me, whether or not the devs defuse the bomb is like a 'groundhog day' for PoS. If they defuse it, PoS will come later. If they don't, PoS will happen this summer.

Can't believe Darwinism is literally at work when it comes to crypto. It's stunning how many people never learn not to put all their eggs in one basket.

I don't believe that.

Here is the command line of the 'black.x' process:



Proof that the IP address '51.15.89.69' is Nanopool's server:





The Pill keeps communicating with Nanopool EU1 (which I don't use for ERG) long after The Pill has been started up and my own client (T-rex) has been mining for 20 minutes.



After I closed The Pill, the connection to Nanopool was terminated. After I re-opened it, the connection was re-established. This proves that The Pill is connecting to Nanopool, not T-rex's devfee mechanism.

Any explanation, _sp or TeamBlack?

P.S.: I can install a man-in-the-middle SSL certificate to try to look into the actual data being sent (such as 'mining.submit'), but that will take more time.

I just noticed that The Black Pill charges a devfee. I can see in Task Manager that the process command line has pools and wallet addresses that are not mine. I don't know what the devfee is, and I haven't seen an increase in ERG hashrate on my RTX 3080 Ti (LHRv2), so I stopped using it.

Neither the Github repository nor this forum thread nor the program mentions a devfee or what percentage it is. This is deceptive marketing and TeamBlack needs to be transparent. Every single mining software states what the developer fee is. I don't know why this pill doesn't do the same.

You have the right to charge a fee, since this is capitalism, but not to hide the fee.

I have a similar issue with my RTX 3060 12GB rig on v41.4 & v41.5, where all nine cards will mine at 47 Mh @ 110w for a few hours. But then, one of them will drop to 16-17 Mh @ 110w until I reboot the rig. Restarting NBMiner doesn't work. At least Minerstat supports auto-rebooting when the hashrate drops.

I have confirmed this isn't a memory clock or stability issue with the hardware itself. It happens even when mem clock is +0 MHz. The underlying OS is Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS while the driver is 510.60.02

I agree that this is the most likely scenario. According to the HODL price model (just because it was correct so far doesn't mean it is a crystal ball), we've already crossed the lower boundary. We could stay below that yellow line for a few months, but not for 1-2 years. My prediction is just a little higher than yours. I think we'll have a ~$30k crab market for the rest of the year.

Great job summing it up accurately in just 1 sentence. It's not even 'capitalism' anymore. The U.S. economy should be called 'cronyism' or 'corporatism'. I had to spend weeks researching the tax code, watching videos and talking to accountants to figure out the tricks that the rich use. These tricks are important because they can lead to 20%+ more profit or 10-20% cheaper capital cost.

It doesn't matter to us smaller miners whether Marathon stock goes down 70% or Whitstone declares bankruptcy. The only thing that matters is the price of ASICs and network difficulty. The corporate equipment will keep mining, regardless of who owns it, and network difficulty won't go down by much unless BTC goes < $15k for months.

If they can barely pay their operating costs, why would they sell the miners and then owe income tax for depreciation recapture? They paid $6000 for an Antminer S19 and wrote it off, it's worth $2000 now, so they have to cough up $420 to the Feds, even though that S19 is making just $3/day of profit. It'll take them 6 months to even afford the tax bill if they sold it. I doubt they would sell the miners even if BTC is $8k. They'd probably seal the warehouse like an Egyptian mummy tomb, hoping for BTC price to rebound.

Many of these corp-o-mines, especially the U.S ones, don't even sell the coin. They HODL it. So they aren't motivated by short-term profit.

In the U.S. most corporations can choose a 'Chapter 11 bankruptcy' if they default on their bills/debt owed. The lenders/investors get a fraction of what they're owed while the company continues to operate. That would include ASIC collateral lenders. Some corporations have been bailed out/went bankrupt multiple times but have been propped up by the (corrupt) government, at the expense of smaller competitors (like the people on this forum).

A corporate mining farm can restructure their operations or their debt. Somebody would be willing to buy some of their assets, at the right price. The company that gave them the ASIC-backed loan could even take ownership of some of the equipment. The profit motive is to keep the miners mining, not to sell them or shut down (unless revenue < power cost). So the hashrate will still remain on the network, even though the warehouse(s) or ASICs changed hands.

I disagree with Philip when it comes to corporate welfare, because an "energy hogging power sucking company" is the least likely to get a bailout from Big Gov't. They would bail out the motor companies/airlines/big banks first. The Chapter 11 stuff is more than enough to keep the farm operating anyway.

How do the corp-o-miners get the money in the first place?? Simply by finding billionaires who are uneducated on the risks of crypto mining, have no experience operating a mining farm, but have cash that has no other outlet. Where do these millionaire investors get the cash from in the first place? You guessed it... from government handouts like PPP loans, printed money that inflates stock/real estate prices (thus giving the rich more margin to borrow), and profit from closing down small businesses in 2020 while big box stores stayed open.

I don't think we'll see those kinds of ASIC prices ever again. Hashrate has become more centralized and corporatized. They are in it for the long run and don't care if their investment is a total loss.

I forgot to mention that I realized sending crypto to the trust as a 'contribution' is not allowed. You need an alternate way of putting it into the Solo 401(k), like selling it on an exchange, then contributing the cash to the Solo(k); or putting the cash in a new Traditional IRA, then rolling that over into the Solo(k).

Every single contribution, loan or withdrawal must be in the form of fiat. This means if you want to take a loan/withdrawal, the trust needs to have enough liquid assets (stocks, bonds, crypto, cash).

I'm happy with the provider I chose so far. They handle all the paperwork, IRS filings, etc. for a flat $49/month fee. All I had to do is sign a few papers that they prepared, open a bank account, open an E-trade account, then open a Kraken account. No transaction fees. I can PM you my referral code if you like.

The beauty of a Solo 401(k) is that it's truly 'solo', which means you can invest in whatever you like while your business partner can choose their own investments. So I can see it working for your situation. Whenever you think ASIC or GPU prices are too high, or a bear market is coming, you can contribute your share of profits to the Solo(k). No need to buy more equipment if you want a tax deduction.

I appreciate the advice I've received from you as well as the other long-time miners. It saved me thousands of dollars. Thank god I cancelled my plan to open an ASIC mining warehouse in Texas. I would've been in deep trouble by now, with customers quitting in the beginning. It would've been a repeat of my failed 2018 ETH warehouse.

Instead I'm developing this Stratum software that can distribute hashrate among many customers, switch pools, boost revenue with profit switching, etc.

I will still stick to my Q4 2022 prediction. The ETH developers are the 'used auto salesmen of tech'. They have delivered late on their promises 90% of the time. The problem this summer is the difficulty bomb, not PoS.

Does the Black Pill increase hashrate for Zelhash or other Equihash variants? I don't think NV LHR v1/v2 affects Equihash, but maybe the newer versions do.

My experience with the SATA/Molex PCIe risers is they are actually safer for higher-power video cards like RTX 3080's or RX 6800's. The danger is the low-end GPUs with only a 6-pin power connector. Back in 2017 I attempted to build a Radeon RX 470 rig with Molex PCIe risers. When it started mining ETH, the cables started billowing smoke. I figured out the cards were drawing the full 75W through the PCIe slot. 6A of power was going through a single sucky 20AWG wire. From then on, I only bought risers with a 6-pin power connector. I buy cables with a 18AWG thickness at minimum, with 16AWG preferred.

It looks like you are correct when it comes to New York. Other states have similar exemptions for equipment used in producing products.

What is the advantage of using this pill vs. using T-rex or NBminer, which already include an unlocker? How would your pill work on Linux rigs?

I lost money on Cryptsy in 2014, which I never got back
I lost money on Bitfinex in 2016, which they did pay back after a few months
At least I didn't use Nicehack

The mindset of these mega-corporations is that mining is a speculative investment that they will hold onto for years, even if BTC goes to $10k. They or their investors are used to losing money for 10 years in other business models then making up the difference later. That is how most tech startup companies work. They are perfectly happy with breaking even during a bear market.

They probably can't sell the equipment or close up shop because they usually buy the land, pay to build the warehouses, and depreciate the miners. It's extremely hard for them to liquidate even if they wanted to, not to mention 'admitting defeat' to the investors.  So they aren't upset as long as they can pay their power bill, which is already very low at 3-4 cents.

So as miner prices go down, they will buy even more and build more warehouses, which will put a damper on the price declines. I won't be surprised if new S19 95T units cost $5000 each if BTC is worth $15k. I think this time will be different from the past, where miner prices did react to profitability.

The only market that would have more reasonable prices is the used video card market. There are very few GPU mega-mining farms. The average GPU miner has 2 or 3 rigs and they're much more sensitive to profitability. It's easy for them to liquidate to starving gamers who still need cards.

I say 'NGreedia' just for fun. I can call AMD 'AMDumb' on this forum if you like. 80% of my mining rigs are GreedForce RTX because they do well on non-ETH coins. So I definitely buy more NGreedia than AMDumb.

The difficulty of these coins balances out eventually to the point where mining is slightly more profitable than buying the coin.

I hope I am not cherry-picking, but I looked at historical ETH revenue data. Let's assume one bought a Radeon RX 570 card for $180 of capital cost ($130 card + $50 rig) and depreciated it over 3 years, while power cost was 7 cents. I also assumed the depreciation + power can be deducted at a 20% tax rate. That is $0.33/day of total expenses per card.

In 1H 2020, the revenue for that card was $0.60/day while Ether price was $200 on average. The cost to mine 1 ETH was $150, while the cost to buy it was $200. I also used data from the entire year of 2019, where it was also 20-40% cheaper to mine the coin than to buy it. Even though revenue was 25% lower than 1H 2020, video card were cheaper too. That same RX 570 would only cost $150 ($110 card + $40 rig) in early 2019.

If you bought a Geforce GTX rig during the bear market and mined, like I did, GRIN/RVN provided double the revenue of ETH. The return was higher than an RX 570 mining just ETH.

I already have spreadsheets showing that the ROI from 2019-2020 was 20-40% per year. That is a phenomenal return compared to the stock market. That's why when RTX 3060's cost just $200 or RTX 3080 12GB's cost just $500, I will buy as many as I can. It's most likely going to be much cheaper to mine altcoins than to buy them, just like with Bitcoin.

Yes, I have two EVGA RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 cards. But they are very unstable on T-rex or NBminer when the hashrate is > 50 Mh. Maybe because the driver is old. So I don't think T-rex is at fault.