How does the ransomware actually work?

I cannot see how the payment could be connected back to the person who paid it, as all payments seem to go to just 3 Bitcoin addresses.  Also $300 means different amounts of Bitcoin would be sent by different people.  

It looks as if you pay up you have done your money.  There appears to be no way the ransom people can connect a PC to the payment.  

Couple of comments.

SegWit does not change the actual block size.  It stays at 1 MB.  That is why SegWit is a soft fork.  Nodes running older versions will still accept it.

SegWit moves some data out of the block so that more transactions can fit into a 1 MB block.

The various versions of Lightning need SegWit to fix transaction malleability.  It will be very difficult to introduce a version of Lightning if this is not fixed.  

Considering the cost of electricity in Germany, as in most of the world, I would suggest the best software to create a Bitcoin Mining Facility in Germany is Minecraft.  You should be able to construct quite a good setup.

The Powerwall 2 is still only 13 kWh.  You would need two Powerwalls to run one single Antminer S9 overnight. 

Miners use a lot of power.  They are not like normal domestic appliances.

Settle down.  Nowhere is there anything saying this is a giant Bitcoin mining center.

It is described as a "data center".  Presumably there are lots of users of different types including crypto currency miners.  

The S7 is not even worth turning on if you pay more than 9 cents per kWh for electricity.   

Your 8 cents per kWh is so close to not even covering electricity that I would not touch an S7 if I was you. 

To generate 5,000 Bitcoins per month at current difficulty you would need to be running 170,000 terrahash/s.

This is the equivalent to about 13,000 Antminer S9s.

These would draw about 17 Megawatts.  The miners would also cost about $20 million to purchase.

So the first thing you will need to do is to travel the world looking for a hydro plant or similar that is capable of providing say 20 megawatts or more of cheap power.  Then you need to construct somewhere to house the miners and call BitmainTech with your $20 million dollars in hand.

If you only want 500 Bitcoins per month divide everything by 10.

Mining requires cheap electricity.  Most large scale mining occurs in areas with surplus hydro electricity.  Think western China, Washington state in USA, Georgia or parts of Canada.

Any mining in the UK would be very small scale by hobbyists or people with free electricity (renters of apartments and so on).  UK is not likely to be considered by serious mining investors.  

For Bitcoin, serious investors are after bulk electricity at under 4 cents per kWh.  This normally means near a hydro dam with surplus power.

It could be done but you would earn nothing.  You are many years too late.

It would take 100,000 PCs running continuously to equal a modern miner such as the S9.  Forget about mining on a PC or a mobile phone.  It is just no longer feasible.  

Anywhere electricity is under about 5 cents per kWh.

I believe the transaction output values are always stored as 8 bytes, technically as a signed number of satoshi (int64-t).

So the transaction value makes no difference to the transaction length or priority.  Miners don't care if the transaction is for 1000 Bitcoins or 0.001 Bitcoins.  All that matters is the fee and transaction physical size.  

Also a minor point for some later posters.  When talking about transaction length please just say the transaction length is 227 bytes rather than 227kb.  kb normally means kilobits (or sometimes kilobyte) making the transaction 227,000 bits (or sometimes 227,000 bytes) in length.  

As far as I know coin age is no longer relevant.  It is just fee divided by transaction size.

Of course it is ultimately up to the miner which transactions are selected.

Puzzled how you get 3400 miners.  

Assuming an 80% average electrical load just for miners you have 4 Megawatts to play with.  This ignores power for fans, cooling etc.

This means your average power consumption per unit is 4000000/3400 = 1176 watts.  But miners such as the S9 draw more than this.

Just how do you get 3,400 miners? 

Probably the Antminer S5.  It is now not uneconomic for most people if they have to pay for the electricity.  You may be able to get an S5 plus psu for $150-180 USD.

The exact answer will depend on what miners are available in your area.   You should be researching your local area as the cost of shipping is likely to be excessive if you cannot pick up the miners yourself.  

You also need to make certain the PSUs are included in the purchase price.  The PSU is likely to represent about half of the miner cost.

Currently you would make about 6 dollars a week per S5 with free electricity.

To work out your ROI use a calculator such as http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/bitcoin-mining-calculator

Also see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=75.0

 

Interesting exercise.

5 MW would give you about 30-40 Petahash.  This assumes around 0.1 Joule/Gigahash, as for the Bitmain S9.

Capital cost would be about 5 to 10 million USD depending on building availability, miner hardware cost and what electrical infrastructure  (high voltage transformers etc) is needed.   See
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1512967.0

If you don't have the capital to purchase your own miners the other approach to earning money is to just build and wire the building, and then host hardware.  But this is labor intensive and requires a support infrastructure.  To keep costs down you would need to limit mining users, say to just those who will pay for at least 50 Killowatts.

I'm not surprised the hash rate continues to climb as S9 type miners trickle out. If S9 type systems were available to the public tens of thousands would be sold. The last batch of 999 sold out in hours.  

Each S9 has the hash rate of at least 10 S5s.

Currently the S9 is profitable to power up even if you pay 20 cents per kWh.  If you have cheap electricity the profit margin is huge.  

It is quite possible the network hash rate will come close to doubling by the end of the year.   The limit is the availability of 14/16 nm miners.

I would expect the difficulty increase this period to be at least 5% and probably close to 10%.    

There may be a short term small drop over the next few weeks as any high electricity cost systems turn off.

But over the next 12 months I would expect to see a large increase in difficulty.  The hash rate should double or triple over the next year as the S9s and similar 14/16 nm systems come on line.

The S9 currently has a variable cost break even of 30 cents per kWh.  They would still be profitable to run for large miners even if the network hash rate was 4 times higher.  

Over the long term electricity cost and Bitcoin value are the two factors driving the hash rate.  They determine when miners are turned off.  Anyone paying under say 5 cents per kWh can expect their S9 to have a very long life.

So expect a small fall in hash rate now, and a climbing hash rate over the next few months even if the Bitcoin value stays unchanged.  

You have assumed miners are still using the same technology as last year.

You need to take into account that mining hardware is now far more energy efficient.  The S9 is 5 or 6 times more energy efficient than last years S5.   So the hash rate per unit of electricity is now far higher.

The hardware is 5 times faster and bitcoin has twice the value yet the hash rate is only three times higher.  Even with the halving, running an S9 is more profitable now than an S5 12 months ago.

I would not look for mining to drive any price increase.  Mining will follow any price change, not drive it.

Are you certain you earn "$1/day NET of electric"?  It would be interesting to know your electricity rate.

Even if your electricity is free you would currently only earn about 90 cents a day with an S5 (Bitcoin at $660).

Are you proposing Samsung should set up its own giant mining farms? 

Do you really think they would sell the chips cheaply to the general public.