Block halving

[Minerjoe]

I am really curious what will happen at halving.   With miners it will be a big loss in income, just wonder if price will follow.

Guess we wont know for sure for a while

You know what will happen. Block interval would increase till difficuly adjust and after a few adjustments difficulty will roughly be halved.

I dont expect the block halving to have much effect on the price, but only on the difficulty.

I disagree. Block halving is the only way which actually reduces supply of coins. If diff goes up, this does not change the amount of coins being produced, just redistributes them. With halving, the actual number of BTC produced per day ll go down to about 1500-1700 BTC per day.

[sidehack]

Yeah, difficulty will only be halved if half the miners (which is to say, half the farms) turn off their machines when the halving happens.

I don't expect the halving to have much effect on the price either, given that it'll reduce the already fractional supply of new coins to a smaller fraction. The vast majority of trades are using extant coins, not new. Farms not immediately cashing out as much daily take might shift the exchange supply/demand curve a bit in the positive dollars direction, but given that 1600 coins per day is about a hundredth of a percent of the available coins it likely won't change things much. Perceptions and speculations will have a much greater effect on price, but who knows where that'll be in a year.

I think a lot of places will go under without seeking outside investments, so probably a lot of industrial hashrate will find itself on the secondhand market in the months immediately before and after the halving as some farms prepare for it and others react to it. It will have a good effect of redistributing the difficulty, which will probably go down but only temporarily as machines disseminate to the people able to keep their bills paid despite the drop in coin revenue. This might even end up having a centralising effect, unfortunately, as a few who were prepared enough to ride it out end up buying out some of the many who were not and consolidate even more hashpower under their various belts.

[Alley]

For the miners sake i hope daily transactions go up 10 fold.  We need to start getting decent income for miners through transaction fees. 

[goosoodude]

Yeah, difficulty will only be halved if half the miners (which is to say, half the farms) turn off their machines when the halving happens.

It might not half, but the price will be more or less indifferent. As such miners have to gradually switch off unless some other factors drive up the price.

[Minerjoe]

Yeah, difficulty will only be halved if half the miners (which is to say, half the farms) turn off their machines when the halving happens.

It might not half, but the price will be more or less indifferent. As such miners have to gradually switch off unless some other factors drive up the price.

The difficulty will continue going up what will he halved is the number of coins per block, instead of 25 now, it ll be 12.5. So in fact, less BTC will be mined and delivered to the market while the diff s gonna stay more less the same. This means either the price must go up or some people re gonna start turning down their miners. I think the price will pick up.

[sidehack]

Given that the flow of new coins is a tiny fraction of the existing coins (meaning coin supply vs demand is almost unaffected), the machines will likely turn off much more quickly than the price will go up. Mining profitability will take a big hit immediately, but overall coin supply won't change perceptibly so the market will be very slow to shift without manipulation and/or media hype - which we've already seen take coin up over $1100 for no apparent reason so it is possible.

[mrhelpful]

Despite the block halving situation, the blocks needs to found which is the miners job to go find it for us and takes a cut.

So you shouldnt worry too much because eventually, if it does halv then how will all those gambling transcation deposits be found which will still take a small cut. I dont know the exact #`s, but primedice alone needs all those miners to find the transactions.

Or you`d see a long line of people stating where the heck is my deposit?

[Minerjoe]

Anyway, there s still 15 months till block halving. Lots of things can happen during this period.

[philipma1957]

Anyway, there s still 15 months till block halving. Lots of things can happen during this period.

This is true and makes perfect sense.  ½ block size in 15 months won't do much of  anything currently towards price change. 


Maybe 8 months from now with 7 months to go it will have some affect towards planning what to do with coins and gear.

[sloopy]

I think the block halving will have an impact on both price, and the number of miners who turn off, both at different times.
Leading up to it, maybe as Phillip states 7 - 8 months the price will increase somewhat, and I believe the price will raise significantly towards the end of this year. Media attention and next gen products with big money on advertising will see people who have still never heard of mining jumping in, but the real price increase will come from people buying the coin to hold for the future. Not counting liquidity from the major industrial miners looking to cash in.

Unfortunately many more home miners trying to make a go, along with small to medium places who have rented buildings will fold. They will stay hobby miners, but won't be able to compete with the industrial scales coming. While the hobby aspect of people like me who have a few miners and enjoy the community will flourish, for us, break even or lose we still do it for the fun, the challenge. 

I have no doubts the big industrial guys will either merge or lose their ass. The companies with deep pockets will ride anything that comes in preparation for the real adoption phase which is oh so close. The next halving will make and lose millions for some. It is whoever is positioned with the right hardware, the right reputation, the right contacts, and  who show the average Joe he can buy a money making box.

Just my 2 satoshis, but I believe the halving will coincide over a 12 month period with a great boom to the Bitcoin community, both amazing and not so amazing. The cloudmining is a fad, hardware will be what people want, I just hope it isn't hardware ran for a few months or more before it is released. Ala Bitmain.

I sincerely hope SP are positioning in the vein of putting out something home or small business miners can at least afford to buy and run as I do not trust centralization and fully believe the original true decentralized concept is what made this all happen. If the arena was somehow made level again for every mom and pop buying a small device in every home in the world versus a "Big Three" which is where we almost are, and certainly will be, well, we would all be better off. Unfortunately there is nothing else ont he horizon but the big three...

[philipma1957]

   My long term mining plans are very little in house.

   Maybe a few avalon 4.1's (soooooo very quiet).

  Once they become losing gear  power wise I will turn them on as winter space heaters and mine them 100 days a year.

I am in NJ and it is really hard to mine at a profit due to 13 cent winter price ant 16.9 cent summer price.

The winter adjusts to 10 cents with heat benefits. The summer jumps to 18 cents with cooling costs.

I may buy 100 coins and sit on them. I am really thinking to go that route.

[alh]

I just don't see the long term (multiple years) business model for mining. After the halving that's expected sometime in the 1st half of 2016, there will be another one. Eventually a block will deliver 1BTC or less. How will "transaction fees" support hundreds of Petahash requiring 100 Megawatts of power? It just doesn't add up to me that a supposedly small sliver (i.e. transaction confirmation) of Bitcoin activity can support even 1/10 of what we have today.

[sidehack]

It can't unless the price of coin goes way up. As the number of coins available approaches its final value, coupled with wider adoption of bitcoin as a utility currency, the market price will increase to the point where transaction fees do pay the bills.

[Mikestang]

When the next halving occurs the sky will turn dark, fire will fall from the clouds, the earth will shake, and floods will ravage the surface of the Earth.  Yes, it will be the end of days.

Or some large farms will shut off some of their gear and resell it to "the little guys", and we'll hopefully start to see a shift of mining occurring in large scale commercial facilities back to home miners.

[sidehack]

I really do hope that happens. What I fear is more likely, though, is that a few industrial players better positioned to ride out the halving will buy up the dying farms and consolidate even more hashrate under fewer and fewer roofs.

[notlist3d]

When the next halving occurs the sky will turn dark, fire will fall from the clouds, the earth will shake, and floods will ravage the surface of the Earth.  Yes, it will be the end of days.

Or some large farms will shut off some of their gear and resell it to "the little guys", and we'll hopefully start to see a shift of mining occurring in large scale commercial facilities back to home miners.

I think at this point there will always be large scale miners.    I do think home miners is not dead as some like to think.  No doubt with btc price we are in a little slump.  But part of being a miner is mining whenever there is a profit.  And if it's small hope one day we go back up in price as we were.

I will be very interested to see what miners do when it gets close to halving.  I don't see it overnight shooting up 2x the price.  But I'm hoping it is still profitable. 

[zekarsalih]

The more I read, the more I feel like a small fish ready to be eaten by the whales !

[Mikestang]

I really do hope that happens. What I fear is more likely, though, is that a few industrial players better positioned to ride out the halving will buy up the dying farms and consolidate even more hashrate under fewer and fewer roofs.

I don't think that it will be possible to support a mega-farm like you're describing (+100PH) in the future, I think it will be cost prohibitive.  But who knows what the future holds in store for us...