So, on November 16, some pools are going to be mining bitcoin2x.  If the weather permits, not running miners unless it's cold as I do, I'd like to point a miner at a bitcoin2x pool.  Wonder how the difficulty is going to start.  After all, the difficulty on bitcoin is pretty high but there are a lot of pools mining bitcoin.  Will the initial difficulty likely be higher than warranted for the limited number of miners starting?  Unless they're pegging the starting difficulty low so those miners who are there at the start get a good take before the first difficulty rise.  A good reward for those who start will attract more miners and that increased hashing power, will make the higher difficulty warranted.  This is all guess work.  Will someone who actually knows what to expect give us the 411?  Thanks.

soy39

Also there's the issue of energy cost in the US. Why produce a bitcoin ASIC that can only afford to be run at a profit and ROI elsewhere than the US?

And so it goes.  The energy it takes to manufacture products in this country in many cases costs more than elsewhere and is likely more than any tax incentives given to attract business, e.g. the PCB manufacturing company that moved down here to Georgia, largest employer in the county, out of business, electrolysis.

If a pool goes to 2x, will my Block Erupter or Jalapeno be able to mine satoshi on that pool?

So, the hardware for each of the forked Bitcoin chain would be different?

What I had considered is like what I do with two pools currently.  I change the pool address, login and password, mash Save and Apply and Bob's your Uncle you're on the other pool.  But if 2x will require different hardware, e.g. Bitcoin Cash, then it wouldn't work.

I maintain two blockchains but my mining is with pools and don't bother with my blockchains except as a destination for payouts. 

I wonder.  Now that bitcoin is getting begrudging acceptance by Wall Street will Intel produce a state of the art ASIC with Wall Street's blessing or is it verboten to rock China's boat?

I understand.  Besides I've no mining involved with the blockchains I maintain.  I do however mine with pools when it's cool enough and that's off and on now.  

If the difficulty proves 2x is the Coinbase choice as Bitcoin, failing to have the higher difficulty will see it called Bitcoin2x there, if 2X, will it require any change to my miners other than where they're pointed at?  Could I have one blockchain as a primary and the other as a secondary?  Work is dumped when one updates choices so why not if the machine can do either or?

I'm also curious about the Nov. 16 fork.  I run two copies of Bitcoin-QT and one is a full node.  I see Coinbase is going to be calling the chain with the highest difficulty Bitcoin.  So, if one needs or wants to change to 2x after the fork how would one convert?  Thinking each of my Bitcoin-Qt's to run a different chain.

soy39

Right you are.  My mistake.

Wouldn't even consider trying.  I changed a few IC2's on Block Erupters and knew then that with such limited success I could work on nothing smaller.  And time goes in one direction.

Exactly.  More expensive then I expected.  BTC=$6312 now by the ticker I use.  Cost basically 0.45btc=$2840.  By my calculations I'd pull down $3.69 worth of btc/day right now.  So the $2840 is too rich for my blood, taking over 2 years to equal price if all else remained the same and it won't.  And that's not including the cost of electric.

So the S9 uses a BM1387.  The S5 is a BM1382.   The S7 is a BM1385.  So, were the BM1385's sold in limited quantity or other ASICs of that generation and available on third party hashing boards?  Since that generation is no longer cutting edge, the price would be considerably better.

Which forum/threads to follow for developments in the ASIC and populated boards?

Lots of forums on bitcointalk, so where should I look for information on ASICs in production and for sale to those who make and populate their own construction PCBs?  Would that forum also follow ASIC development?  Getting old but I remember a widely circulated ASIC hoax from a former Eastern Bloc country, which I could remember its name, Primeasic or something?

soy39

What I'm really looking for are hashing boards with any brand modern low power ASCI chips that fit up to the heat sinks of an S3 or C4.  Reasonably priced, I might want to spend Bitcoin2x after the fork or Bitcoin Cash early next year.

Some months ago I briefly scanned an article about replacement boards I think for the S5 manufactured somewhere in Europe or Russia.  Today I looked and couldn't find it but anyway my S5 runs okay if a bit inefficiently.  I haven't fired up my heating system this year yet, keeping the living room warm with the S5 when it gets chilly.

I have two S3's, two S3+'s, and two C4's gathering dust.  I'd consider ripping these down to replace the boards if something good was available and not overly expensive.  I understand the norm is to sell the miners and upgrade but I wouldn't be able to handle the angst of a newbie unhappy that he's not pulling down great profits with a used piece of equipment.

What are my options?  Thanks.

soy39

So, there's that very nice flow chart of where the bitcoins stolen from MtGox went.  I understand that MtGox didn't keep track of from whom the bitcoins came after they were pooled so tracing anyone's individual lost bitcoins isn't possible.  But there are records of what when in and what when out and what was stolen.  BTC is figured to eight digits after the decimal.  Even if lots of dust in the form of satoshi were part of the stolen bitcoins, it wouldn't be impossible to identify each and every one I suppose.  Heck, they can trace the genome back to when branches of the human tree split from other primates.  So, every bitcoin stolen from MtGox can be identified to down to satoshi.  Why not inform all exchanges having any of those bitcoins that might have reached the exchange through innocent users, that they are in possession of stolen property and not to trade those because they may have to be returned.

soy39

My opinion is that the bitcoins I owned which were ripped off at MtGox, at present value are many times that of my home and property, are worth getting upset about.  The previous estimated settlement looks like about 1/25th their current value.  I feel BTC-e should lose all their bitcoins and those added to the settlement.  And any other stolen bitcoins properly traced back to the theft from MtGox should be returned.  Like Naxi stolen art returned to rightful owners.

soy39

I read that Segwit would prevent some kind of extra profitable block composition formulation that almost all pools denied using because it's unfair.

Will we see that effecting the block discovery rate or cause a drop in hashrate?

Okay. 

Also, one of the arguments that Bitcoin is better than fiat is that there's a set number of bitcoin that will ever exist. 

But, altcoins do an end run on that argument.  The idea of crypto currency versus fiat, that a government can just 'print money' or allow huge debt spending tomorrow's fiat today while bitcoin can't is somewhat defeated when there's any number of altcoin.

There were posts of how mining BCC was getting much more profitable than mining BTC.  I have a medium power cost I suppose and can't afford to mine in the summer - my best miner is an S5.  My power costs more above 1000kw and my billing period end was a week away.  I saw that I could run the S5 for a week and just reach the breakpoint so I did.  Net hashrate in that week had gotten up to 8,215.  I sent a couple of sawbucks to coinbase and extrapolated my mining results only to find it was ~86% efficient as buying the bitcoin outright.  So of course I shut down mining.  There were some unconfirmed rewards and when all was said and done the 86% moved up into the 90 percentile efficiency.  Since then BTC hashrate has dropped to 4,804 today and the next difficulty will be 885.9 down from 923.2.  But that news about BCC becoming so much more profitable to mine than BTC appeared so I looked.  I couldn't find a US BCC mining pool.  A pool in China wanted my cell phone number but that was a no starter.  So, I got nowhere fast.  I tried Bitconnect pool but although the S5 appeared to be hashing there were rejects galore and no hashing stats on bcc.coin-miners.info so I shut that down.  An email asking if an S5 can mine there went unanswered.

I do plan on mining this winter to offset heating costs.  Perhaps the BCC mining will shake out by then.

soy39