might be interesting once the fabs move to a new process entirely (hybrid or whatever, ie not silicon based any more) as that will leave the current state of the art silicon fabs with lots of exess capacity. i cant see all those old tech fabs shutting down (or converting as that would mean basically all new equipment for the new process, so new fabs may be built instead, or existing ones being expanded, leave most old tech in place as its still useful) as lots of mainstream chips will still use them for run of the mill parts that dont need the extreme speed/power savings that the new process will offer. but those run of the mill chips wont take much capacity.

some asic makers will move to the new process but they will again be competing with the big boys and their cost will be substantial, amounting to what we more or less have now.. small runs, high price, low availability.. although they will be faster and more power efficient. so not a lot will be made at 1st.

so current fabs that have 90%+ of their capacity currently used by apple/amd/samsung/arm whatever will now be able to offer large runs of custom wafers at much cheaper prices. this may let asic makers (perhaps new ones as well at the few we have now) churn out "old tech" asic chips at much lower cost and much higher volume, as right now asic makers are competing for fab capacity. at the transition to a new process apple/samsung etc will move to those, leaving old fabs with excess capacity.

this may drive the prices of asics down to the point where asic miners are much more affordable and available. power efficiency will not be much better but the absurd cost of the chips will be lower, allowing new players into the the asic party.

this would mean lots more asics on the network. difficulty would start to climb again just from the sheer numbers of new machines based on silicon, which should still be competitive if the price is right..

current farms are mainly limited by price per unit and power capacity. lower the price per unit and those who are not hugely power limited (small farms/home/hobby miners) can start to build out bigger farms. for example i have extra power capacity (125 spare amps with no upgrades) but cost of asics (mainly), plus somewhat limited availability prevents me from buying.

after all what keeps most asic miners in check besides power? price and availability. fix those and watch out.

just me guessing out loud, love to hear of any other thoughts on this.

thats a shame. old thread was mainly for fun even with the prize. lots of chatter etc.

hope this ones goes in that direction too.

not sure if you were around 2011 or so but btc was very experimental (i did it for the geek/tech fun) so when it turned out you could actually buy stuff with the suddenly vastly increased value (cents to many dollars per coin) it was hard not to celebrate and do something "real world" like buy stuff. back then there was mtgox and dwolla to get btc to fiat. still new stuff at the time. after all if no one spent btc and proved it had real world value it would of most likely died. and there was no real reassurance it would last.

the stuff i bought for my wife and myself were a demonstration that the tech chain worked. that in itself was valuable. it wasnt till later when its worth and longevity were proven that i started to consider it a long term investment.

now i still buy things with btc to help with its adoption (overstock, steam) but generally replace what i sold.

HODL is the name of the game now. hoping it will help with retirement, which is edging close for the wife and i.

course if i had kept all i mined/bought and cashed out now we would be on our own private island right now. but regardless it was and is a fun ride. learned a lot and its hard to place a monetary value on that.

oh yeah played with lots killer hardware which i would not of otherwise done. bought with profits of course

i remember selling around 100 btc when the price hit $30 (whoohoo! $30!!) paid for a vacation. did the same at around $300, bought lots of toys.

ah well it was fun at the time

home mining is viable but mainly as a hobby. GPU/alt mining seems to be best bet. can make a decent supplemental income (or not; make sure to do the math).

gpu miners that are properly set up are largely "set and forget." just need a place to set them up. basement/attic/garage.. some place with decent ventilation.

now that would be epic.

this for sure. ssds are practically a must have for blockchains. i actually run 2 in RAID 0 for eth and btc blockchains. i back them up to NAS nightly, just so i dont have to go through the pain of a complete redownload if something goes off into the weeds or ssd failure.

USB flash drives are susceptible to bit rot/memory loss. they need to be powered every so often. do not count on one lasting years.

keep at least several thumb drives and refresh them periodically. i think just plugging them into a stand alone usb power supply (not a computer, just a charger) may do it but am not 100% sure on that. may depend on the drive.

but paper wallet and hardware wallets are best. i use use paper and a trezor myself.

you could probably come up with something that may not be memorizable (so technically maybe not a brain wallet per say as you would need reference material if your memory is not perfect) but is easily reconstructed.

take you favorite author, and take sentences from each book on some order you can remember. 1st sentence in chapter one in 1st book, 2nd sentence in 2nd chapter of 2nd book, etc. maybe use chapter/sentences based on some set of number you value, math functions, dates, home addys, phone #s. perhaps reverse every other word/sentence, skip every 3rd word, whatever. can be elaborate as you like as long as you can remember the format, or write it down in a format only you can figure out as in hints.

point being you would not have to write anything down that is the actual phrase, but you would need access to the books to reconstruct it.

over 13% yikes.

spoke too soon ,guess i shouldnt of opened my big mouth 

Banned. He is still working on Bitnet (along with other projects, I believe). He is on steemit and github.

when that happened to me i had an msi card that was shorted at the peg socket, whenever i plugged the cards  peg connector in the psu would not turn on (shorted VRM?).

check (again) the cards peg connectors as well a the psu sockets and cables for burned/shorted connectors,  and test each card by itself with different psu peg wires/sockets. i know youve already done some of that, but never hurts to check again.

also see if the mobo is maybe flexing when the cards are in it, possibly the mobo traces are grounding?

all the psu cables are for that psu right? different psu can have different cable pinouts even when the plugs match. i accidentally mixed a season and evga psu peg cable and it would not turn on. no damage; i was lucky.

yeah i remember your old contest, it was hard to pick a number towards the end as most everything was taken.

guess we are all so rich we dont need contests anymore

heh

wonder if its allowed to mail bars of soap carved into hashlet shapes to him in prison.

Which are most likely then sold for fiat.

i may unload some btc for usd/eth/ltc, but not a lot.  i also have some cash reserved for picking up on any good dips however it goes.

figure if btc  splits ill see whats up at that point.

1.1 = vapourminer

the numbers on this new "guess the difficulty" thread are soooo different from the old contest. lotsa double digit increases at the old thread vs the low single digit ones here.

times be changing? the asic makers just dribbling miners out this time and that limits the difficulty growth?

might be hitting a power limit.

undervolt it and make sure power limit is high enough.

now that amd has miner edition cards i think they would want to fix this. otherwise they are handing nvidia customers as nvida has ming cards also.