In looking at all the variables, I must be missing something.
Variables:
- Hash rate
- Difficulty
- Hardware cost
- Electricity cost
- Block reward
- BTC to fiat currency exchange rate
If all of the existing trends hold true (except for the BTC exchange rate - that cannot continue) I don't see how any of the hardware currently on the market (including the S9) could ever pay for itself. With the continually increasing difficulty/hashrate, a S9 would never pay for itself (unless you have free electricity, and even then you will have a LONG road). After the halving, your S7 is going to make less than a dollar a day, with decreasing profitability. An S9 will make under $7/day on day 1 ($0.11/kWh). The potential exists for a new S9 to never pay for itself.
The way I see it, the only potential mitigations are that transaction fees increase
dramatically, or a
lot of hardware is shut off. I MUST be missing something, because it doesn't make any sense. If the profit margin becomes razor thin, only
large huge operators will survive, and you have the potential very quickly for two operators to collude on a 51% attack.
I'm really open to being corrected here, as people are still buying hardware, so they must see something I don't.
http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/So I was interested in hearing peoples' perspectives on what they think will happen on block halving day ( I'm actually excited about it -_-
) my own personal theory is that the price of Bitcoin itself and the fees from the trading volume rising so much will actually balance everything out and miners will either make the same as they did before or perhaps more because trade volume isn't limited in the way that block rewards are. What do you think will happen? Do you think I'm right? Do you think maybe we'll see a severe drop short term? Give me your reasoning, it's just interesting seeing the panic around block halving because we've seen all the hysteria surrounding ASICs and Scrypt mining and so on which makes me wonder if people aren't overreacting to the whole thing.