Difficulty drop

[rupy]

Since reward halving might come before ASICs, how much do you think difficulty would drop in November if thats the case?

Meaning how many of the GPU miners will have to stop if their revenue halves with current price/difficulty?

EDIT: Ok, wrong forum, I reposted this in Hardware!

[ice_chill]

Gazifilion GPU miners.

[DobZombie]

It would knock out everyone GPU mining except for people who don't pay for electricity (colledge students, people who live with their parents, and people who leave em plugged in at work)

This would probably knock out 95% of GPU miners that mine >2GHs.

Anybody paying less than $0.10 per KW/h would either still be making decent coin or just breaking even.

[Shadow383]

It would knock out everyone GPU mining except for people who don't pay for electricity.

Not really.
I mine with a bunch of 7970s, ~3.2Gh/s @ 790W at the wall on my main rig.

I pay £0.0959 (~$0.155) for power, and I'd be profitable at much lower reward-per-share than we have currently.

[organofcorti]

It would knock out everyone GPU mining except for people who don't pay for electricity.

Not really.
I mine with a bunch of 7970s, ~3.2Gh/s @ 790W at the wall on my main rig.

I pay £0.0959 (~$0.155) for power, and I'd be profitable at much lower reward-per-share than we have currently.

You aren't the average miner though. The average miner will earn substantially less than you and even at the same energy costs may find it unprofitable.

OTOH, I think most northern hemisphere GPU miners will continue for a while yet - GPUs heat up a room quite nicely.

[ice_chill]

Why would you want to mine on 2xHD7970 at 1200Mhash, if you can sell them for $700 and buy an ASIC that will mine at 30Ghash   

[cdb000]

It would knock out everyone GPU mining except for people who don't pay for electricity (colledge students, people who live with their parents, and people who leave em plugged in at work)

I think I will continue mining with my watercooled 5870s as long as they manage to break even - after all, I can't heat the bathwater with ASICs.

[Shadow383]

It would knock out everyone GPU mining except for people who don't pay for electricity.

Not really.
I mine with a bunch of 7970s, ~3.2Gh/s @ 790W at the wall on my main rig.

I pay £0.0959 (~$0.155) for power, and I'd be profitable at much lower reward-per-share than we have currently.

You aren't the average miner though. The average miner will earn substantially less than you and even at the same energy costs may find it unprofitable.

OTOH, I think most northern hemisphere GPU miners will continue for a while yet - GPUs heat up a room quite nicely.

Yeah, I'm probably not, but what he was saying is that the reward halving would knock out most >2Gh/s miners, when those of us with that sort of GPU hashrate typically have fairly efficient setups. I think we're more likely to see a lot of the smaller (<1Gh/s) miners give up.

Also, I live in scotland and my heating bill over the winter is awful, so with any luck the ASICs will get delayed a couple of months so I can have effectively free heating all winter  

It would knock out everyone GPU mining except for people who don't pay for electricity (colledge students, people who live with their parents, and people who leave em plugged in at work)

I think I will continue mining with my watercooled 5870s as long as they manage to break even - after all, I can't heat the bathwater with ASICs.

You could with enough of them 
Multi-terahash under-floor heating system anyone? 

[DobZombie]

It would knock out everyone GPU mining except for people who don't pay for electricity.

Not really.
I mine with a bunch of 7970s, ~3.2Gh/s @ 790W at the wall on my main rig.

I pay £0.0959 (~$0.155) for power, and I'd be profitable at much lower reward-per-share than we have currently.

You aren't the average miner though. The average miner will earn substantially less than you and even at the same energy costs may find it unprofitable.

OTOH, I think most northern hemisphere GPU miners will continue for a while yet - GPUs heat up a room quite nicely.

Yeah, take into account the heating element.  I had my main rig in the lounge room at the tail end of winter, the MRS was hogging it most of the time

My I recon your average pro miner has maybe 2-5GH/s worth of radeon 5850-5970s, the reward half would probably kick em right out.

[ice_chill]

Regarding heating, if you sell the GPU and buy ASIC, you will be able to afford even more electricity and heat your house even better

[Meatball]

Difficulty is not going to drop at all.  We've seen in the past that most miners keep mining even after it's no longer profitable in the hopes it's just a glitch.  Add in the fact that on ASIC minirig coming online will more than make up for 300 5GH/s GPU miners going offline, we're not going to see anything drop.

[molecular]

This depends on wether or not (or to what extend) the reward drop will affect exchange rate.

I think most are underestimating the effect of x% of 3600 BTC (x being the percentage of mining reward having to be sold for paying power bills in fiat) suddenly missing from the supply-side on exchanges.

[Bogart]

Related speculation:

http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=673

http://betsofbitco.in/search?q=difficulty

[Raize]

At present prices, pre reward-halving, I make ~$4.18/day. After reward halving, I will make ~$1.37/day with just my GPUs. The price would have to dip under $10/coin after the reward halving and stay there in order for me to lose money. As others have stated, GPU mining does keep a room warm. It also helps provide a steady drone/hum so I can sleep at night.

I also have plenty of FPGA and I'll keep those going for quite some time, too.

Like molecular, I have suspicions that the block-reward halving seems to have not been priced in for most of the people purchasing ASIC at this point. They would have been better served purchasing coin, letting ASIC mature, letting the block reward halving kick in, then selling coin to buy stable and reduced-price ASIC miners.

I think the first wave ASIC miners are going to get screwed as the price spikes cause of exponential difficulty increases, then falls as the older miners start collecting on our mine-and-hold strategy by selling our piled coin. I'm pretty sure the global fiat economic atmosphere post-election is going to be unfavorable to everyone, and the ASIC manufacturers are going to be lowering prices no matter what to compensate for this. With a low price/difficulty ratio, it might be like the August 2011 GPU scramble, where Europeans and Californians sold their GPUs in masses. Only this time it'll be all the ASIC miners trying to compete for lower prices with the companies that originally sold them the devices.

Just a guess, I obviously could be wrong, but this is my assessment from the GPU craziness of last spring/summer.

[kano]

Difficulty is not going to drop at all.  We've seen in the past that most miners keep mining even after it's no longer profitable in the hopes it's just a glitch.  Add in the fact that on ASIC minirig coming online will more than make up for 300 5GH/s GPU miners going offline, we're not going to see anything drop.

It's currently at -3.4% since the last change ...

[rupy]

At present prices, pre reward-halving, I make ~$4.18/day. After reward halving, I will make ~$1.37/day with just my GPUs. The price would have to dip under $10/coin after the reward halving and stay there in order for me to lose money. As others have stated, GPU mining does keep a room warm. It also helps provide a steady drone/hum so I can sleep at night.

I also have plenty of FPGA and I'll keep those going for quite some time, too.

Like molecular, I have suspicions that the block-reward halving seems to have not been priced in for most of the people purchasing ASIC at this point. They would have been better served purchasing coin, letting ASIC mature, letting the block reward halving kick in, then selling coin to buy stable and reduced-price ASIC miners.

I think the first wave ASIC miners are going to get screwed as the price spikes cause of exponential difficulty increases, then falls as the older miners start collecting on our mine-and-hold strategy by selling our piled coin. I'm pretty sure the global fiat economic atmosphere post-election is going to be unfavorable to everyone, and the ASIC manufacturers are going to be lowering prices no matter what to compensate for this. With a low price/difficulty ratio, it might be like the August 2011 GPU scramble, where Europeans and Californians sold their GPUs in masses. Only this time it'll be all the ASIC miners trying to compete for lower prices with the companies that originally sold them the devices.

Just a guess, I obviously could be wrong, but this is my assessment from the GPU craziness of last spring/summer.

Is it 100% that higher difficulty = higher $ price? I agree that higher price = higher difficulty!

I'm thinking about voltmodding my FPGAs to squeze some extra juice out of them before ASIC hits. Just reasoning if that would make sense: now, after reward halvation or not at all... basically I'm lazy/scared to mess the chips up...

About fiat, isn't that why we all have bitcoins? So isn't that a null game: deflation in fiat + scared of fiat implosion = prices are stable for everything concerning bitcoin? Just like gold?

[Raize]

Is it 100% that higher difficulty = higher $ price? I agree that higher price = higher difficulty!

100%? No. But I do think there is pretty strong evidence that new miners hoard/speculate on coin, thus decreasing supply. When I first got my set of GPUs the price of BTC was $14 and rising. It hit $30, or an ROI of around/under one month on my GPUs, but I still wasn't selling. I wasn't paying attention to my ROI and I should have known better.

I have to imagine that if demand stays the same and supply from miners is decreasing because new miners typically hoard, the price will, in fact, increase. I've said this before, but a drug addict that wants $100 worth of Silk Road goods doesn't care if he gets 10 BTC at $10 or 1 BTC for $100. (or 100 BTC for $1, for that matter). It seems natural that the price will increase because new ASIC miners won't sell. Shorter supply means higher prices. At least, for a while.

[BobbyJo]

Will there be such a thing as new ASIC miners?  Will people who have never mined before want to invest money in ASIC?  When GPU mining was profitable, anyone could do it, people got interested and upgraded.  I think the advent of ASIC makes it a niche sport now.

[Unacceptable]

Will there be such a thing as new ASIC miners?  Will people who have never mined before want to invest money in ASIC?  When GPU mining was profitable, anyone could do it, people got interested and upgraded.  I think the advent of ASIC makes it a niche sport now.

Why??

Its gonne be even easier dude!!!!!!!!!!!!! No high end PC or vid cards to buy & maintain.No issues with vid drivers,OC'in,drawing too much current from your PSU OR your outlet.

ANYONE can buy one & hook up a USB cable,DL the miner software,join a pool & boom your mining on an old P.O.S. PC..............

Hell,my mom is 72 years old & she could do it 

[legolouman]

Will there be such a thing as new ASIC miners?  Will people who have never mined before want to invest money in ASIC?  When GPU mining was profitable, anyone could do it, people got interested and upgraded.  I think the advent of ASIC makes it a niche sport now.

Why??

Its gonne be even easier dude!!!!!!!!!!!!! No high end PC or vid cards to buy & maintain.No issues with vid drivers,OC'in,drawing too much current from your PSU OR your outlet.

ANYONE can buy one & hook up a USB cable,DL the miner software,join a pool & boom your mining on an old P.O.S. PC..............

Hell,my mom is 72 years old & she could do it 

This is true, however, I anticipate that after ASIC's are about and hashing publicly, the difficulty will rise so high that owning a Jalepeno will be like using a X750 or X770 ATi card.