Experts, ehh? I then assume those same experts bought in just before the rise and made a nice profit of $1000 per BTC then?

Sounds just like all those expert economists who are so good at their job instead of sailing around the world in their 150 foot yachts they sit around on talk shows in their cheap suits trying to tell everyone what is going to happen. The best advice is usually to do the exact opposite of what these so called experts tell you. They are always 100% right after an event but maybe only 5% before. This is like a weatherman after predicting sunny sky's the day before, reporting that there must have been some strong winds in that storm due to all the uprooted trees all over town.

Not really seeing much in the way of cheap GPUs in my area either, the few that are listed are still going for close to $150% premium over the MSRP. I expect more, and cheaper, listings to appear closer to the shipping date of the E3 miner.

Keep in mind that Bitmain now makes as much money annually as does Nvidia. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/secretive-chinese-bitcoin-mining-company-may-have-made-as-much-money-as-nvidia-last-year.html

With an annual profit of between $3 to $4 Billion dollars, it is not hard to imagine that in an alternate universe such a company might just send off some "donations" to key developers for the several coins they make hardware for mining, thus keeping any proactive changes to stop them at a minimum.

Now before anyone gets all riled up, note that I said in a hypothetical alternate universe and I am not accusing anyone of anything. I am sure in our universe things are not that way and everyone is open and honest about their intentions. It wouldn't really be bribery anyway, just more a form of lobbying for their preferences as to which direction the coin goes.

Actually, their stock is up and running right now "testing" the units before shipping. Why do you think it is coincidence that they will be shipping out around the same time the profitability on them drops to where the ROI is almost non-existent. They been playing this game for some time and know what they are doing.

The people who order and pay for them 3 months in advance are using today's calculations on profitability. This is the same reason so many people are still buying overpriced GPU rigs, not realizing that the difficulty will keep going up and profits will keep going down.

Bitmain 1, foolish customers 0 once again.

The thing is everyone is comparing it to the current (highly inflated) price of GPUs. If it wasn't for the run-up in GPU prices because something like this wasn't available last year those RX580's would probably be going for $150 each by now, so this would actually be more like the cost of 5 of them.

Sure you have the mobo and other stuff to add to the price, but then again that GPU based rig is more flexible in that it can mine other alogs, including new ones that may come out. Also, as others have pointed out, the GPU rig can be parted out and resold if need be, whereas the ASIC is just a paperweight.
 
So long-term I think this is actually great news, as it isn't quite the GPU killer everyone had feared. It beats out GPU rigs on price alone, but as I stated only because GPU prices are so over inflated right now. Once the E3 hits the market GPU prices will come back down to normal and probably become bargains. At that point I expect you can put together a 6x RX580 rig for closer to $1,100 by then, so it will be a even match considering the GPU rig will have other uses and resale value so worth the extra $300.

This. I still see plenty of new posts of people who have just bought or want to buy a new mining rig. It will take a lot longer than a few weeks to shake off a significant amount of hashrate to make things noticeable. Too many people believe a rebound is right around the corner to give up just yet.

I predict miners will need at least 6 months of no profits before we start seeing any meaningful hashrate drop, and even that will depend on how efficient the F3 turns out. If the F3 is very efficient, difficulty will never recover and GPU miners will be toast as no other coin(s) will be able to adsorb all the hashrate and remain profitable.

I agree that the slight drop in difficulty means nothing in this short of a time frame. Even your chart shows we are back to what, the March 20th hashrate? I do not call that a drop at all and this "fluctuation" could be anything.

Also notice the highest ever hashrate at the top, 270957.8644 GH/s was recorded on Monday, March 26, 2018, 4 days ago, not really anything to write home about,

Wake me up when hash-rates are back to pre-January levels, or at least it hasn't risen in a month, that will be the type drop off I will want to know about.

Hopefully the weak hands type are gone, they mainly jumped in at the last minute anyway just to catch the wave up and planned to cash out quickly and weren't going to stick around in either event.

Now is a good time for people who really believe in Bitcoin's future to start to get in while the price is more reasonable. It very well may drop lower, but then it will be an even better buy. How many people were saying I wish I would have got in at 5k when it was above $10k, now is the chance.

For people who bough high and are still holding, your journey is a bit more painful, but long-term Bitcoin has always rallied to surpass previous highs, it just may take some time to get there.

I also think this will be the case and go so far as to predict Amazon will eventually become the Umbrella corporation from the Resident Evil series.

For those who don't know the reference, it means Amazon will become so big and intertwined with the government that they become essentially one entity controlling everything. They will probably at some point either buy-up or merge with Facebook, Google, all the news outlets, hollywood, healthcare, banks , etc. and basically own everything, including politicians. They will become our rulers and providers of literally everything.

I think you are getting your terminology mixed up a little. For one, no Bitcoin is not bubble, but it is in a bubble, or at least it was until it started to deflate (pop).

Just because something is in a bubble doesn't necessarily mean it is illegitimate, a scam, or worthless. The economy can be in a bubble at times, the US housing market was in a bubble in the early 2000's, some stocks can be in a bubble.

A bubble simply means that something's price, such as an asset like Bitcoin, is trading way too high above its intrinsic value. Of course, some could argue what Bitcoin's intrinsic value is all day long, some have even went so far as to claim it has no intrinsic value.

I do think it has intrinsic value, but at the same time I do not think it is worth $10k or $20k at this point in its life.

This means it was in a bubble during that run-up in price to $20k, it is now deflating to what it's true price should be considering the stage of its development, current adoption, and the usefulness it provides over alternatives. I am sure over the next few months we will discover what its intrinsic value is to the market, but I do suspect it is going to be closer to $2,500-$4,000 range.

$20k will come again, but it is way to early now for such a high valuation. Maybe another 5 years we will get there and be standing on solid ground, where everyone is not worried the (price) floor is going to disappear out from under them at any second like we were a few months ago.

You can but the difficulty has risen to the point that you are better off joining a pool. Yesterday a GPU miner was released causing the hashrate to skyrocket in just a few hours. Two days ago you could solo mine it on your cpu, but now you need a mining rig, it is just the way these things go.

If it was savings I am assuming it isn't money you have an immediate need for anyway. Just have some patience. I am sure if the money was tied up in a low interest rate bank account (maybe 2% APR if you are real lucky) you won't be logging into the bank's website everyday obsessing over the change in interest rate or why you earned a few cents in interest, would you?

Like your opening words said, you "invested", so now you need to do what all investors do, sit back and have some patience. I know it isn't easy knowing your paper losses seem to be mounting, but keep in mind that is all they are at this point, paper losses. Nothing changes your initial investment ideas and goals unless, and until, you sell. If you sell now you guarantee yourself a loss.

My advice would be to quit looking at the price charts for a few months, as I do think we will go lower yet. But I also believe that within 12-24 months your investment will be back in the green and maybe for a lot more than you expect.

This is not a lot different than the bitcoin crash in 2014 when it went from a high (at the time) of $1200 or so all the way down to almost $100 again. A lot of people who bought at or near the high were selling under $200 just to "get out with something" as the gloom and doomsters were out in full force proclaiming the end. The thing people selling didn't realize at the time, is that those pushing the gloom and doom the hardest, were the very same ones scooping up the cheap bitcoin for sub $200 prices. The same thing is happening now, but I think we still have more down to go.

You may think you could sell now and buy lower, which might be good advice, but since it is hard to pick the bottom there would also be the chance of it making a rapid recovery and you losing out even more. However, if you really are feeling that terrible, it might be best to take the loss and just move on.

In the end it is up to you to decide, but no matter what happens it is just money. That may be painful to read, but you need to realize life truly is about more than money and learn to quit obsessing over it and go enjoy things that do make you happy.

Anything is possible, but I don't see things changing much over the rest of spring and into summer. Maybe this fall we will start to see a rise again, but for the next 6 months I see us trying to find a solid bottom to settle into before starting to take off again.

Too many people seem to forget, especially newcomers who recently bought at or near the all time high, that just 12-14 months ago, Bitcoin was struggling to break $1,000 again after 3 years, so I think as long as we stay above that point we will be doing great. Myself I can see Bitcoin sinking to or near the $2k mark over the next few months before taking off again.

The rise to $20k we just seen was too premature and it will take some time for the market to naturally grow and adjust to get back on track to reach that point again, but it will take some time to recover.

Yeah that make sense, using a probably $3k rig to heat your house all the while you are causing wear and tear to those expensive components. A $50 space heater would work just as well, and if you burn it up instead you aren't out 3 grand. If profits are that tight that you need to justify its expense by heating your house to offset the electrical costs, it is time to unplug it and sell the components while they are still worth something.

If you act quick you might be able to sell the components to the next sucker for close to what you paid new, but another month or two of this downturn, you will be lucky to get half or less of what your paid for them.

I would say no, we will be lucky if it gets back above $10k this year the way things look now. The price needs to settle down first and all the get rich quick type either need to leave or learn to hodl longer.

The run up to $20k was premature and the market would have been better off rising a lot more slowly. If you look at it from that perspective (in your mind just pretend the $20k never happened) the current $7k-$8k range looks pretty good considering we were just trading right around $1,000 on this day last year (March 27th, 2017). Ask any stock broker if "just" a 7 or 8 X return in 12 months is any good or not.

There have been threads like this the entire way down, "we won't see under $17k again", then 16, 15, and "$13k will hold for sure", then it was $10k, then $8k, now $6k and $5k threads. It will do what it will do, myself I think we may even drop down into the $2k territory and it wasn't too long ago that we were all elated when it crossed past $1k again, which was the first time in 3 years. It will need to hit a solid bottom wherever that may is before recovering, but just throwing out arbitrary price points isn't helping anyone.

Well, I stopped by Meta to see if there was a post such as this and here it is. It is the same thing for me and I think it has been happening for the past several days, but the lag is especially bad today.

I actually ran some speed-tests and restarted my computer the lag was so bad that I thought it must have been on my end, but everything else runs fine except the Bitcointalk forum. I know there is only so much you can do against a DDoS, if that is what it is, but any improvement would be a help at this point.

EDIT: Took about 20 seconds from when I hit the save button on this post originally to when it finished, definitely the lag is getting worse.

That is a curious response considering the price is another $300 lower than when he originally posted that. Plus, it looks like the price is going down further, @ $485 as I type this so I do not think it is that stable either.

Yes, profitability in mining is currently down and will probably head even lower in the short term. If you already have gear you are still making a little money, but forget about investing in new equipment as the payback period is now going to be measured in years, and not weeks or months anymore.

For one I seen many consumer grade, or "home" as you put it, PSUs that didn't shutdown automatically, and some of the cheaper ones actually caused the fire to begin with.

Please share a link where you can show that server PSUs do not have built in protection if you are going to make that claim. Most server PSUs retail for $500 on up when new and I doubt they have any less protection than the far less costly home units. I sure as hell don't want my $7k+ server busting into flames any more than you do your home computer.

Secondly, once you go the route of server PSUs, you almost certainly are going to be running many of them and with 240V power. Since you will be running 20 or 30 amp circuits, you are going to need a PDU to break this power out and distribute it to many different rigs. These PDUs range from low cost to expensive units, but they all come with built-in protection as well, that usually limits the maximum current each outlet on the PDU can deliver, which is a fraction of the units total current rating. So no, a server PSU isn't anymore likely to continue pumping current into anything than a consumer PSU is, both because of its design and because of the extra protection often placed in front of it.

Also when a short circuit situation does occur, no matter the wattage, or current available, a voltage drop will occur and it is this that the PSU circuitry detects, when this goes outside of acceptance limits it shuts the unit down, whether a home or server PSU. Can this circuitry fail, yes, but again I would wager most components in a consumer versions are actually less reliable and robust than those found in a server counterpart.

Mining can be a dangerous activity if done improperly, this is the case whether with a consumer or server grade PSU, but just because you are not familiar with one aspect of it don't go around spreading misinformation about the subject.

I agree with you somewhat on this, but the thing is times have changed a lot since then. Mining has always entailed risk, the biggest of which is that the coin(s) your mine may become worthless some day and you are out your expenses.

In the earliest of Bitcoin's days, mining was simply running your CPU when you weren't using you computer, so you might be out a few extra dollars per month if nothing became of it, no big loss. Then came the GPUs, again during the earliest days people used mainly what they already had, probably on their gaming PC, most people had one or two and simply mined with them adding maybe $20/mo to their electric bill. Again no big deal as it was simply a hobby and hobbies sometimes do cost money.

Another fact is that even back then some people had multiple rigs with multiple GPUs already as they like to turn their old computers in rigs for projects such as Seti@home, or other similar shared computing projects. So these people may have switched some of these rigs over to mining full time when the profitability started to increase.

This period was the beginnings of the arms race as more and more people started building fresh rigs for the express purpose of mining. This is also where the real risk started as you were no longer using equipment you already had and limiting your power usage to just a few dollars extra, but were instead investing significant money in hardware and power bills in the hopes your strategy paid off in the future. Then eventually came the ASIC's which raised the bar even higher as once they became obsolete, you couldn't even resell them, so the risk was even larger.

Even with all this the risks were fairly low as Bitcoin had not yet reached the magical $1,000 point that changed everything. Once this point has been breached, even though short-lived, it brought a lot of awareness and significant investment into the space. Since that time, and especially over the past 12 months, equipment prices have gone up 150-200% above their previous suggested retail prices. Coin difficulties have skyrocketed to the point that unless you are running a farm with 100's of GPUs you probably are just wasting your time trying to mine.

We are now on the downturn coming off a 12 month bull-run and there currently is no solid bottom yet in sight, however both mining difficulties and hardware prices are still at their all time highs. So this is the major disagreement I have with your statement, is that now more than ever before is investing in mining as huge risk. This is not to say that mining won't ever be profitable again, just that investing now when upfront costs are so high tips the risk reward ratio too far over into the risk side where it doesn't make sense at this point in time.