ASIC's hitting later than expected = Good thing?

[tvbcof]

Later than expected by whom?  Probably a year ago when I was pondering things, I figured that ASIC would be probably be between 2014-ish and never.  I figured that there were probably ways of burning hard-copies of FPGA, but that they probably would not be particularly optimal in either price or performance.  I knew (and know) close to zero about the technology however.

One thing I have and do take an interest in are the various 'free energy' machines.  How they have sprung up and faded away, how they have been marketed, and the personality types who tend to get swindled.  The little bits of marketing I've seen associated with ASIC mining gear reminds me of the 'free energy' stuff a lot.  The main difference between the victims is that in the case of 'free energy' they seem to be of the naive do-good variety; in the case of Bitcoin they seem to be often characterizable as greedy assholes.

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[rupy]

Ok, seems I was right, revenue per block stays the same or better it seems?! So that must mean about half of miners stopped?! It's increasing block by block so happy days for FPGA!

This is so weird, must mean all miners on deepbit use FPGA or keep GPU going?!

But block speed should be half and its been ~3 hours and 28 blocks mined so that doesent make sense? Can somebody please explain whats going on?

Random variance. Block 210041 was ~39 minutes long.

Hm, ok stats have been corrected, I now earn half..

So that means no GPUs have been taken offline...

[n4l3hp]

LTC network hashrate have already doubled but the estimated next difficulty of BTC is still higher than current.

Probably the ones who have "free electricity" have overclocked their GPUs to the max or the BTC pools are very lucky lately.

So that means no GPUs have been taken offline...

In fact, the GPUs of my 1.7gh/s rig have already found new homes in my 2 sons and nephew's gaming rigs.

[rupy]

Seems difficulty is exploding?!

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

Hm, so GPUs are NOT taken offline (even though unprofitable, at least the hashing power is not going down).

What could cause this increase in hashing power, ASIC?

[Gomeler]

Exploding? It appears to be growing at 0.5% per day give or take a bit. That's pretty typical for the last couple of months.

[bitboyben]

Maybe miners are playing chicken. They know if the other guy quits it will make them more profitable so no one wants to pull the plug.

[bcpokey]

Exploding? It appears to be growing at 0.5% per day give or take a bit. That's pretty typical for the last couple of months.

Not really true... or even partially true.



Only passed ~.5% in Sept and lasted a little over a month, after which the rate of growth has been steadily decreasing from Mid-Oct until Late Nov (where it was down to about .35%/day) when there was a sudden reversal and seeming surge of new hardware right around block halving.

The reasons remain mysterious, super-coincidental crazy network-luck, miners turning on to grab the last 50block and forgetting to turn off, asics, who knows? But it definitely bucked the trend right at halving, when many people have claimed to be switching off. Mysterious.

[rupy]

Playing chicken only works if your not loosing money. Heating is a good argument of course; until loss becomes larger than difference of heat between regular electric heater and GPU, and thats a long way away = summer, just like the 12.5 difficulty increase needed for me to stop mining with FPGA.

I think most GPU miners are speculative in their loss now, they are so certain of BTC longterm success that they rather keep paying electricity, at a net loss today, to create BTC!

[bcpokey]

I think this graph says it somewhat better:



Largest spike in the past 2 months at halving. Looks like whatever caused it is dying down now though.

[RyanRed]

Im still playing chicken. But every day I wake up asking myself why. Im trying to convince myself to just take it all offline, but I cant seem to do it yet.

[michaelmclees]

Get out and buy BTC with your dollars.  If you think ASIC's are coming at all soon, you'll soon be outgunned by not only all the buyers of ASIC's... but the ASIC companies themselves mining with their stock.  Imagine if AMD put all their unsold GPU's to work mining BTC?  Imagine if for every GH you buy from some ASIC manufacturer, they create 3 and use 2 to mine for themselves.  This is what you'll soon be up against.

[420]

Get out and buy BTC with your dollars.  If you think ASIC's are coming at all soon, you'll soon be outgunned by not only all the buyers of ASIC's... but the ASIC companies themselves mining with their stock.  Imagine if AMD put all their unsold GPU's to work mining BTC?  Imagine if for every GH you buy from some ASIC manufacturer, they create 3 and use 2 to mine for themselves.  This is what you'll soon be up against.

the only benefit is getting the btc now and paying the electricity cost later, but at a loss it is mostly worth just buying btc with usd instead

[abeaulieu]

Seems difficulty is exploding?!

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

Hm, so GPUs are NOT taken offline (even though unprofitable, at least the hashing power is not going down).

What could cause this increase in hashing power, ASIC?

Check again (http://bitcoin.sipa.be/) people are certainly removing GPUs from mining as of lately. It should be reflected in a couple blocks by a *slight* decrease in difficulty.

[michaelmclees]

Get out and buy BTC with your dollars.  If you think ASIC's are coming at all soon, you'll soon be outgunned by not only all the buyers of ASIC's... but the ASIC companies themselves mining with their stock.  Imagine if AMD put all their unsold GPU's to work mining BTC?  Imagine if for every GH you buy from some ASIC manufacturer, they create 3 and use 2 to mine for themselves.  This is what you'll soon be up against.

the only benefit is getting the btc now and paying the electricity cost later, but at a loss it is mostly worth just buying btc with usd instead

But you don't get your BTC now.  You get them later, in diminishing amounts, and you have to pay for the electricity in constant amounts with diminishing returns.

If you buy BTC now, you just get them.  Done deal.  Nothing further needed.

[joshv06]

I didn't know there would be a 2 month delay, I wish the ASICs would've been released before the block halving.

[abeaulieu]

I didn't know there would be a 2 month delay, I wish the ASICs would've been released before the block halving.

And another month to go at the least.

[420]

I didn't know there would be a 2 month delay, I wish the ASICs would've been released before the block halving.

And another month to go at the least.

42 days minimum

[ewhenn]

Yup, I'll get more profit from my GPUs.  As far as I'm concerned I'd be happy as a pig in slop if ASICs got delayed another 6 months, lol.

You're kidding right? Or do you have free power? With the reward halving - I am shutting down. Use the bitcoin profitability calculator and see if you are actually making money after Wednesday with 25 BTC:

http://bitcoinx.com/profit/

No, I'm not kidding.

I have a HTPC that's on all the time anyways so I don't count the "idle" motherboard power usage as that part of the power consumption would be on my monthly bill, bitcoin mining or not, houses 2 cards.  I have an atom board with 1 core disabled, only uses 20W, have 2 cards on that one.

The calculator is roughly in line with my quick match calculations:

Coins per 24h at these conditions   0.1418 BTC
Power cost per 24h   0.73 USD
Revenue per day   1.92 USD
Less power costs   1.19 USD
System efficiency   2.79 MH/s/W
Mining Factor 100 at the end of the time frame   0.17 USD/24h@100MHash/s
Average Mining Factor 100   0.19 USD/24h@100MHash/s
Power cost per time frame   89.41 USD
Revenue per time frame   215.94 USD
Less power costs   126.52 USD




Also, where I live (Canada) it's winter now, and it's cold here, temps in winter typically range from -5C to 2C on average. So the heat generation is not wasted, so it's profitable to mine AND I get a lower heat bill too (which is more profit, though harder to measure).

[firefop]

Maybe miners are playing chicken. They know if the other guy quits it will make them more profitable so no one wants to pull the plug.

That's not it at all.

Some of us were actually smart and did research before we got involved in mining.

I for example run some fpgas, and a bunch of 5770 (most power friendly mining card there is if you configure it correctly).

My incomes gone from ~2btc per day to ~1.2 btc in recent weeks. My power bill for my whole place offset by solar (which is junk in winter) but right now I'm heating via mining and paying about $90 per month on an electric bill, which is only slightly more than I'd pay for firewood or gas heating.

Price of btc is still rising, and should continue to rise until the release of ASIC. By my speculation, it's going to stabalize around 15-16 usd per before march (which is when I think asic's are landing).

[mrb]

I for example run some fpgas, and a bunch of 5770 (most power friendly mining card there is if you configure it correctly).

Hum, no. A 7970 beats the 5770 any day in terms of Mhash/Joule. It does 3.1 out of the box. 4+ when undervolted/underclocked.

If you think your 5770 beats that, you must be incorrectly measuring its power consumption (eg. you measure at the wall and only measure the difference between idle and load, and incorrectly assume the card draws 0W at idle).