Difficulty drop

[kano]

Well, unless someone else has some inside information that I don't know about

The first public ASICs will be the week after 22 November from bASIC - Tom's specifically stated in his thread that week and I'd be surprised if he wasn't quite accurate in his statement (give or take a week)

As for BFL - still no sign of a reliable estimate update ... but that gives them only 6 weeks to equal or better Tom.
Yes I said 6 weeks, not 4-6 weeks

[Jack1Rip1BurnIt]

I would be surprised to see any REAL amount of asic devices hit the streets before Thanksgiving.

[molecular]

I would be surprised to see any REAL amount of asic devices hit the streets before Thanksgiving.

All I know is: when ASICs start being delivered, there will be a lot of thanks-giving.

[Cablez]

I am just wondering if it will be as big a boon as people hope/claim being it is so close to halving. There will still only be 7200/2 coins available no matter what ASIC you have. Maybe if there were deliveries in October but that seems unlikely.

[firefop]

I am just wondering if it will be as big a boon as people hope/claim being it is so close to halving. There will still only be 7200/2 coins available no matter what ASIC you have. Maybe if there were deliveries in October but that seems unlikely.

I was under the impression that difficulty can only increase by 4x per adjustment... so if we're scaling up to 10x or 20x difficulty, it could take awhile before the difficulty scales up to where it should be.

[Cablez]

With the halving and one 4x difficulty adjustment from current levels 120GH/s should only produce around 5BTC a day if my math is right. Not really burning it up.

[organofcorti]

I am just wondering if it will be as big a boon as people hope/claim being it is so close to halving. There will still only be 7200/2 coins available no matter what ASIC you have. Maybe if there were deliveries in October but that seems unlikely.

... so if we're scaling up to 10x or 20x difficulty, it could take awhile before the difficulty scales up to where it should be.

If the network hashrate changes significantly, the difficulty period will be very short. Scaling up won't take very long.

[firefop]

I am just wondering if it will be as big a boon as people hope/claim being it is so close to halving. There will still only be 7200/2 coins available no matter what ASIC you have. Maybe if there were deliveries in October but that seems unlikely.

... so if we're scaling up to 10x or 20x difficulty, it could take awhile before the difficulty scales up to where it should be.

If the network hashrate changes significantly, the difficulty period will be very short. Scaling up won't take very long.

Not long in the sense of 'time taken' but if it's limited to 4x per adjustment that means 3 adjustments to get to between 40x and 50x.

During that time, the folks with asics will take the majority of the coin generated... that's what 6048 blocks? that's 302400 btc going mostly to the people with the new asics. or aprox. 3.6 million USD. If that happens in a day, we're going to see massive de-valuing at all exchanges and a steady climb back to pre-asic rates.

Suppose it is aprox 200 th/s after asics. running your 60gh/s single will bring in aproximate 1000 USD - which meets ROI on upgrades =P

[Monkey1]

Other thread tastes BFL now think shipping cold slip by a couple of weeks, meaning mid November. Add to that at least a week for international orders and its unlikely any non US residents will be mining on BFL ASIC gear until December at best!

I haven't been following the other offers so couldn't comment on them!

[abbeytim]

i think a lot of gpuminers will switch to litecoin mining, some already have

[Sitarow]

i think a lot of gpuminers will switch to litecoin mining, some already have

Problem is lets say you move 23GH/s worth of mining power from BTC to Litecoin and your aggressive in your settings you may make almost 4000 Litecoins a day at present difficulty give or take a few hundred.

Those that have been mining Litecoin's are going to try to cash in on the recent popularity. So you have to hope the speculators that opt to use BTC to purchase their speculative share of Litecoins are more then those moving their mining infrastructure over to  Litecoin.


I can see speculative pressure moving Litecoin value up to the mid 0.0100 when valued against BTC. However if more "miners" join the network the returns will diminish quickly as there is no use for Litecoins apart from mine and dump at this time.

To sum up I'll point out the obvious. Unless more speculators buy up the pre-existing Litecoin available on the market. The popularity of moving mining infrastructure to Litecoin will in turn put pressure on the present value of Litecoin as early adopters choose to cash in their earnings and moving them to BTC and other potential fiat currencies such as USD.

[gmaxwell]

As soon as it hits 2016 blocks, it resets it back to make 10 minutes a block.

Well… not quite. It's only linear for sane changes— though it does have quartic convergence even in crazy cases.

[molecular]

During that time, the folks with asics will take the majority of the coin generated... that's what 6048 blocks? that's 302400 btc going mostly to the people with the new asics. or aprox. 3.6 million USD.

You can't claim something like that since you don't know how much THash will ASICs add to network, per batch. It's not like current
hashrate share situation is 50% GPUs + 50% FPGA and it will change to 25% FPGA + 75% ASIC in under few months, or even years.

I beg to differ. If BFL delivers, that's exactly what will happen.

There's a thread where people publish the orders they placed with bfl. These amount to 37TH. This would account for 61% of total network hashing power already if added to the network right now. Of course that list is incomplete, so you can probably at least triple that to 111 TH (82%).

[Keefe]

Why are you guys still wildly guessing? Josh already said indirectly that they'd sold ~200 TH as of a few days ago. And if anything, I'd expect him to understate that figure, as a higher number discourages additional sales. I believe that by the end of the year, the network will be composed 90% of ASICs.

[organofcorti]

During that time, the folks with asics will take the majority of the coin generated... that's what 6048 blocks? that's 302400 btc going mostly to the people with the new asics. or aprox. 3.6 million USD.

You can't claim something like that since you don't know how much THash will ASICs add to network, per batch. It's not like current
hashrate share situation is 50% GPUs + 50% FPGA and it will change to 25% FPGA + 75% ASIC in under few months, or even years.

I beg to differ. If BFL delivers, that's exactly what will happen.

There's a thread where people publish the orders they placed with bfl. These amount to 37TH. This would account for 61% of total network hashing power already if added to the network right now. Of course that list is incomplete, so you can probably at least triple that to 111 TH (82%).

Careful how you quote molecular. That's not me you quoted, that's firefop. Mind editing your post?

[molecular]

During that time, the folks with asics will take the majority of the coin generated... that's what 6048 blocks? that's 302400 btc going mostly to the people with the new asics. or aprox. 3.6 million USD.

You can't claim something like that since you don't know how much THash will ASICs add to network, per batch. It's not like current
hashrate share situation is 50% GPUs + 50% FPGA and it will change to 25% FPGA + 75% ASIC in under few months, or even years.

I beg to differ. If BFL delivers, that's exactly what will happen.

There's a thread where people publish the orders they placed with bfl. These amount to 37TH. This would account for 61% of total network hashing power already if added to the network right now. Of course that list is incomplete, so you can probably at least triple that to 111 TH (82%).

Careful how you quote molecular. That's not me you quoted, that's firefop. Mind editing your post?

yep, I should be more careful. Sorry 'bout that. Edited.

[molecular]

Why are you guys still wildly guessing? Josh already said indirectly that they'd sold ~200 TH as of a few days ago. And if anything, I'd expect him to understate that figure, as a higher number discourages additional sales. I believe that by the end of the year, the network will be composed 90% of ASICs.

Maybe we're not as up-to-date as you are. Thanks for the info.

[Meatball]

Why are you guys still wildly guessing? Josh already said indirectly that they'd sold ~200 TH as of a few days ago. And if anything, I'd expect him to understate that figure, as a higher number discourages additional sales. I believe that by the end of the year, the network will be composed 90% of ASICs.

90%?  Ah, if they actually start shipping in volume, I bet it's closer to 100%.  The difficulty is going to skyrocket and within a month or two anyone doing anything other than ASIC will probably find out they're spending a dollar to make a nickel.

[Keefe]

I think the X6500 is the most power efficient miner on the market today, at 16.4W for 400 MH/s. But when the block reward is 25 BTC and the network hashrate is 500 TH, which may happen by the end of this year, you'll need to be paying less than $0.09/kwh to break even. I'm assuming $12/BTC. And even if your power is free, you'll be making a piddly $1/month. Is it worth the time to keep it running? And what's the value of a mining device that makes you $1/month? $10? Maybe $20? The device may be worth more for scrap or recycling at that point. I believe most rational GPU and FPGA owners will quit by then.

[kano]

...
Yes, that's the real problem of having system dependant on profit oriented people - once profit is gonne, system goes down as well.

A monetary system that's affected by profit.
Wow that's gotta be so fucking unexpected ...