Happy new year, but to be historically accurate, Jesus was never born on 25th of December, there is an ancient religion of sun worshippers, they used to celebrate the winter solstice as a sign of their sun god rebirth, unfortunately they have managed to slide their beliefs into the beliefs of christianity. Just saying FYI.

Good afternoon guys- weird problem any ideas?
I have been running 3 old T15s on the pool for over a year and a few months ago I upgraded and got a used S19j Pro 96T and been running that instead for better power efficiency. Just for fun I popped over to a SHA256d MAZA Solo pool yesterday so I get the thrill of seeing a few blocks of something get found by my miners. The Difficulty was only 9M and the time to find for my ~100 TH was supposed to be less than 2 minutes but I let it go for 3 hours with nothing to show   and other miners with only 20 ish TH were catching all the blocks-it was showing correct hash rate and millions of shares accepted... I switched to my old test-unit T15 with only one hash board (7TH) and BAM I hit a block ... then after 20 minutes another, and another. I put the S19 back on and nothing again for hours... never hitting anything.
>>Now I am worried that this S19 miner can't or doesn't report found blocks...The T15 has CGMINER version 4.1.11.1 rwlhr, But i can't see the version in the S19.  I upgraded to the newest stock firmware but no help.
I know this issue didn't happen directly on this pool BUT I don't want to run a miner on this pool that can't report a found block.. Is there a test pool using CKpool software I can try to test my unit? Do I need to setup a CKpool instance for testing?
I want to verify that the miner does report blocks found-

>CK does the CGMINER software running in unit report found blocks above the target  or does it report everything and let the pool figure it out and report it?

Thanks

I see the end-of-year pump as something that comes earlier. Let's not forget the recent price jump that just happened, which pushed bitcoin to the place it settled right now, which is $43k and above.
 
We still have time until the end of the year; even if it's just a few hours until 2024, we can still experience some positive price increases. It's happened, so it's not something to worry about, but then again, we can also see a drop in the price as we can't tell what face the market might come with; it's never always certain of what we might expect.
 
With Bitcoin regulating within the $40k range, it's a good sign that if it breaks that $43 price, we might be seeing $50k in price. Even if it's not this year again, early January might be a good time to hit that price.

Honestly, I was afraid of the risk but when I came to my right senses, I then realized that there is nothing in life that is not about risk (mostly
when one wants to make money but not quick money). That's why I have to zero my mind and risk $1400 worth of 1.7 million in my corrency, at first, I didn't want to buy such a huge amount but as I have zero my mind to risk it, there is no going back (I have risk what I can afford to lose) so there is no going back.
One of the reason why I was afraid to invest was because I was, I don't know if I should say scammed or something, I deposited $2k on stepwork, and I was so frustrated because I invested with what I can not afford to lose.

This what keep showing anytime I try to access my account.

Bro. calling most of the Altcoins Crap coins is not fair. I understand there are a significant amount of shitcoins out there in the crypto market. but there are tons of Altcoins which are very good. Ethereum, Dogecoin, Altcoin, and many more.

I don't recommend to buy used mining equipment. it is much better to buy brand new mining rigs because used rigs don't have any guarantee and you would not know how long would they last.

Price list update 18/12/2023

Whatsminer:

M50 118-120TH 12.5 U/TH
M50s 132-138TH  23.U/TH
M50s++ 21w 154-162 25.5 U/TH
M60 170-174TH  26U/TH

Antminer:

Stock

S19kpro 115T        16U/T

Future:

January Batch  S21  200T         $23.5/T

If I buy directly from the manufacture is there a 30% import tax to be paid from importing it from China to the USA?

Well majority of the comments here choose Electrum Desktop wallet well it's a very good wallet, however you have to be very careful when using it for transactions and protect your PC with a very strong Antivirus else it's very risky, let me share one of the experience of using Electrum wallet on my laptop unknowingly I was exposed and  vulnerable to some phishing links it took my extra effort to be aware of the attack on laptop I discovered that whenever I wanted to send Bitcoin to another person after coping the receiver BTC Address while pasting on my Electrum wallet I discovered that it's another unknown BTC Address was pasted hadn't it been I was unaware or notice it I would have send the Bitcoin to an hacker so be careful when performing your BTC transactions.

https://newhedge.io/terminal/bitcoin/difficulty-estimator


Latest Block:   822519  (a few seconds ago)

Current Pace:   106.7520%  (2008 / 1881.00 expected, 127 ahead)

Previous Difficulty:   67957790298897.88                           
Current Difficulty:   67305906902031.39                           
Next Difficulty:   between 71949968207257 and 71950046384725
Next Difficulty Change:   between +6.8999% and +6.9000%
Previous Retarget:   December 9, 2023 at 10:31 PM  (-0.9592%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Today at 1:16 AM  (in 0d 1h 14m 56s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Today at 1:16 AM  (in 0d 1h 14m 57s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 2h 44m 53s and 13d 2h 44m 54s

You suggested that everyone should still continue to look on even as damaging as things are now. Even the fees demand and supply you envisaged have already been hijacked the way I see it and this has nothing to do with halving but greed and selfish interests. As much as I love Bitcoin and what Satoshi planned and proposed, it's not perfect, we can see it evidently with the insane fee we witness these days. This year alone, Bitcoin users have paid insane fees many times, to the point that it has been discouraging people from dealing with the coin thereby finding alternatives.

Should we continue to look on and let it continue this way? It might affect the coin in the future, we should stop thinking that because it's the number one it can ever remain like that if there is a lot that discourages businesses around it. I believe that something should be done about this, a thing that would discourage spamming and encourage/compel the miners to accept transactions that are of a certain size/age, something to make them accountable. Leaving everything to work anyhow is what led us to this mess and it's insane and annoying to see transactions this morning at about $25 just because I want to deal with Bitcoin. That is discouraging, a decisive solution is needed at this time.

yea, you can always found more favorable dates (I always look at 5-10 years, in this case 8 years):
bitcoin $284 July 2015 to $44150 Dec 2023 155X
NVDA $4.9 July 2015 to $489 Dec 2023 100X

TL;DR both bitcoin and Nvidia had more than 100X in the last 8 years (in both cases starting that period with more than a $billion valuation).

I'm looking to get back into mining in 2024 and was considering NerdMiner as a an option to get started with.

What are peoples experiences with USB miners and small miners like this?

Is this a waste of money, should I be looking elsewhere?

If the lightning network is not the second layer solution to Bitcoin, then what is the 2nd layer solution that exists at the moment?
Nothing I guess 

Though the miners may be liking the situation as they get a higher reward on every blocked mine but for the end user (most of us ) would be waiting for the mempool fee to normalize to transact using Bitcoin or some may switch to other coins (for the time being) for cheaper transactions? Unless it is necessary to send Bitcoin, or those rich bodies to whom high fees do not matter,  no one would be using the Bitcoin network at the moment.

At $20/th even assuming al goes into gear and not in wages, legal expenses, datacenter build, fees and many more you will get 25exas, that's 4% of the current hashrate.

 

You're forgetting that by Foundry not mining those blocks increases the epoch time, so their other gear will mine a lot more time for the same result with diminished returns, so if there is no real power savings here, you're forcing 90% of the network gear to find the same stuff as 100% would have done normally, so you're going to have to spend more time doing it, burning more power, 15 instead of 14 days but not gaining proportionally extra blocks with the remaining online hash.

Sorry Phil, doesn't make sense to force fees up and earn more by not earning at all and spending more on power.
Besides, block data doesn't match that scenario all
https://explorer.btc.com/btc/pool/29

show us dec 2017 to dec 2023

btc is 19 to 43 so 1000 would be around 2300

google
facebook
amazon
tesla

do the math bro


or better do btc dec 2012 to dec 2023

10 dollars to 43000

or

1,000 to 4,300,000

so btc is godlike 2012 to 2023

and great 2013 to 2023

and good 2017 to 2023

This would be better than treating transactions differently, in my opinion. However, it has to be implemented similarly to how XMR does it. Raising the block size would result in a reduction in the block subsidy; otherwise, whatever the max cap is will always be activated by greedy miners. This would lead to larger pools absorbing all available well-paying transactions, leaving smaller transactions with almost nothing.

If we have three pools—A (45%), B (45%), and C (10%)—block C, with the current protocol, is almost always guaranteed to mine 10% of the transactions. So, if there are 100 transactions paying 0.1BTC each, and each block can only take 10 of them, it would, on average, make 1 BTC out of that. However, if pools A and B can increase the limit from 10 to 15, pool C (which only finds 1 in 10 blocks) will be left with nothing but dust. The current way relies solely on luck; a small miner may hit a 5 BTC fee block, whereas large miners who find twice as many blocks may not get 5 BTC combined.

In other words, as of now, potential rewards from fees are based more on "luck and market conditions" than your hashrate. The other model will shift that, making it more about your hashrate and leaving little room for luck.

However, looking at Suzanne5223's comment above this one, if you read what user Kiba wrote right below Satoshi's post, he said:

Reading this 13 years later, it certainly makes a whole lot of sense; it's pretty difficult to do now.

@philipma1957

I agree that leaving a small amount of BTC for emergency cases like this in somebody else's custody may not be a bad idea. My only issue is with the KYC part; I know many people are okay with KYC-ing themselves, but I try to avoid that as much as I possibly can.

that's prorbably because poeple dont HODL these coins, they just use them to send value around fast and cheep.