Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[machasm]

.... but bitcoins aren't destroyed. You can recycle them.

I wonder how many coins are in actual circulation? I.e. There could be a large number sitting in wallets that are no longer accessible. People have forgotten passwords or lost their wallet identifiers etc.
So, although there will eventually only ever be 21mill in existence (unless there is a hf or similar), I wonder how many are in active circulation?

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[Andre#]

Is China going to drive another big BTC jump? Some think it is.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-26/why-hedge-fund-manager-who-made-killing-subprime-buying-bitcoin

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[8up]

Currently, I am underestimating the upside potential of bitcoin.  

^^

You'll have to be patient. Next rally will not happen before mid/late Q1 - 2016.

Until then expect one or two re-tests of the $315/$300 zone. Prices will slowly creep up, but stay in a close and boring trading range.

Wow, you seem to be pretty sure about it...Can you please give me a contact on the crystall ball dealer you bought it from?

This line on the weekly dates back to the ATH (8000).

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[billyjoeallen]

Blocks are full again. I think this will now probably happen any time the market tries to pump.

I don't see much upside but there's a lot of potential downside.

What's your source for this apparently pure conjecture?

Looks like we are generally down in the last days by nearly 15%, and even at 85% full, transactions were still going completely through with nearly no fees in less than 10 hours, and with fees in about an hour or so.

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=60days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

With less room to grow, there will be less growth. I don't see how that is avoidable.

[billyjoeallen]

[An update on the solar solo mine would be groovy too.]

When building a Solar power grid or using microhydro one must plan for peak electrical use. I prefer Microhydro, but the cost of solar is getting much cheaper every year. Normally, one would float charge batteries and than burn off extra electricity to heat water , but I find that solar water heaters are better suited for this task, and excess electricity that would normally be discarded is used to mine bitcoin.

What would be the best of all worlds is using those ASICs to heat water as well to close the loop and recycle the waste heat.

Originally and all the way up through the GPU era, mining was something that could be done profitably part time, so taking advantage of off-peak cheap electricity was an excellent use case. Now however, miners are so damn expensive, that if they are not running 24/7 you can run a real risk of never being able to recoup your capital investment.

It is a race to break even before your miners are obsolete, halving cuts revenue, or the market crashes. I guess if you live somewhere cold, you could still run obsolete mining equipment as a space heater, sell them as a curiosity or mine some altcoin with a SHA256 hashing protocol and a much lower difficulty, but other than that, it's a race.  

WE HAVE A CHICKEN AND EGG PROBLEM. Miners outside of China are reluctant to invest substantially in new mining gear because they face an uphill battle competing with Chinese mines with electricity and labor cost advantage.

Miners are also reluctant to build up because the code development uncertainty and scaling uncertainty.  It's hard to make long term plans with so many unknowns. So mining concentration may not be corrected until there is code development decentralization.

Then we have the problem that code development centralization (with Core) is an established practice, something that will not be easily changed, if at all.  Miners do not want to switch to Classic or other alternative because they fear (rightly IMHO) that a switch will cause market volatility or an outright crash.
They can't do something even if they know or suspect it is in their long-term best interest if they need to keep mining revenue high enough to pay for their gear operations in a shorter time period.

The vaccine could cause the death of the patient before it cures it. I think this is a risk worth taking, but I'm not a miner. It is up to them.  Without taking the medicine, there is limited potential for growth and price appreciation.

Any miners want to weigh in on this?

Mining concentration in China harms security, censorship resistance and network performance (due to limited bandwidth) It makes Bitcoin a less attractive investment. Only substantial changes to the code will change this, IMHO. Classic is really the only alternative, given Core's bias towards the status quo.



 

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[bargainbin]

[An update on the solar solo mine would be groovy too.]

When building a Solar power grid or using microhydro one must plan for peak electrical use. I prefer Microhydro, but the cost of solar is getting much cheaper every year. Normally, one would float charge batteries and than burn off extra electricity to heat water , but I find that solar water heaters are better suited for this task, and excess electricity that would normally be discarded is used to mine bitcoin.

What would be the best of all worlds is using those ASICs to heat water as well to close the loop and recycle the waste heat.

Originally and all the way up through the GPU era, mining was something that could be done profitably part time, so taking advantage of off-peak cheap electricity was an excellent use case. Now however, miners are so damn expensive, that if they are not running 24/7 you can run a real risk of never being able to recoup your capital investment.

It is a race to break even before your miners are obsolete, halving cuts revenue, or the market crashes. I guess if you live somewhere cold, you could still run obsolete miners as a space heater, sell them as a curiosity or mine some altcoin with a SHA256 hashing protocol and a much lower difficulty, but other than that, it's a race.  

WE HAVE A CHICKEN AND EGG PROBLEM. Miners outside of China are reluctant to invest substantially in new mining gear because they face an uphill battle competing with Chinese mines with electricity and labor cost advantage.

Miners are also reluctant to build up because the code development uncertainty and scaling uncertainty.  It's hard to make long term plans with so many unknowns. So mining concentration may not be corrected until there is code development decentralization.

Then we have the problem that code development centralization (with Core) is an established practice, something that will not be easily changed, if at all.  Miners do not want to switch to Classic or other alternative because they fear (rightly IMHO) that a switch will cause market volatility or an outright crash.
They can't do something even if they know or suspect it is in their long-term best interest if they need to keep mining revenue high enough to pay for their gear operations in a shorter time period.

The vaccine could cause the death of the patient before it cures it. I think this is a risk worth taking, but I'm not a miner. It is up to them.  Without taking the medicine, there is limited potential for growth and price appreciation.

Any miners want to weigh in on this?

Not a miner, but someone who had to deal with off-the-grid (due to ...no grid being available) power (wind, solar, diesel, hydro) and water cooling (well... machined my own waterblocks, at least):

First, the reason that non-subsidized alt energy is not used more often is because -- yeah, it's a tremendous pain, and is far more expensive than being on the grid. The most practical off-the-grid power sources are gas/diesel generators. There even were some portable gas turbines, lol.  
Second, there's no need to convert electricity into heat to store it, because see here. Granted, you need a legal hookup & power meters.
Micro hydro is basically a joke, because you need head. like so:

It's great when there are no alternatives and you're lucky enough to be in *just the right place,* but it's not a paddle wheel in a stream hooked up to an car alternator.

Using hot water from waterblocks (how many commercial miners are currently water-cooled? Yeah, water cooling's expensive, that's why.) is a non-starter - think about plumbing farm, think how useful warm water is (not hot, if your chip's running at 120C, the water entering your water block is ~35C & exiting @ ~60C) , etc., etc.

TL;DR: Most people advocating shit like that don't know which end of the screwdriver to stick in a screw.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

In the quoted link Anonymint or whatever claims sidechains are technically not viable (presumably because of his altcoin-in-progress). All I did was ask for an explanation.

Guess I oughta check it out. Anonymint is obviously a very bright person. But very troubled. I gave up on him (her?) a couple years back. Always with the plan for the anonymous crypto that will bury all other cryptos. Yet somehow ... ... ... nothing ever delivered. Medical issues, you know.

Very bright, very paranoid. He fits in nicely around here.

(You heard me, Fatty.)

[billyjoeallen]

[An update on the solar solo mine would be groovy too.]

When building a Solar power grid or using microhydro one must plan for peak electrical use. I prefer Microhydro, but the cost of solar is getting much cheaper every year. Normally, one would float charge batteries and than burn off extra electricity to heat water , but I find that solar water heaters are better suited for this task, and excess electricity that would normally be discarded is used to mine bitcoin.

What would be the best of all worlds is using those ASICs to heat water as well to close the loop and recycle the waste heat.

Originally and all the way up through the GPU era, mining was something that could be done profitably part time, so taking advantage of off-peak cheap electricity was an excellent use case. Now however, miners are so damn expensive, that if they are not running 24/7 you can run a real risk of never being able to recoup your capital investment.

It is a race to break even before your miners are obsolete, halving cuts revenue, or the market crashes. I guess if you live somewhere cold, you could still run obsolete miners as a space heater, sell them as a curiosity or mine some altcoin with a SHA256 hashing protocol and a much lower difficulty, but other than that, it's a race.  

WE HAVE A CHICKEN AND EGG PROBLEM. Miners outside of China are reluctant to invest substantially in new mining gear because they face an uphill battle competing with Chinese mines with electricity and labor cost advantage.

Miners are also reluctant to build up because the code development uncertainty and scaling uncertainty.  It's hard to make long term plans with so many unknowns. So mining concentration may not be corrected until there is code development decentralization.

Then we have the problem that code development centralization (with Core) is an established practice, something that will not be easily changed, if at all.  Miners do not want to switch to Classic or other alternative because they fear (rightly IMHO) that a switch will cause market volatility or an outright crash.
They can't do something even if they know or suspect it is in their long-term best interest if they need to keep mining revenue high enough to pay for their gear operations in a shorter time period.

The vaccine could cause the death of the patient before it cures it. I think this is a risk worth taking, but I'm not a miner. It is up to them.  Without taking the medicine, there is limited potential for growth and price appreciation.

Any miners want to weigh in on this?

Not a miner, but someone who had to deal with off-the-grid (due to ...no grid being available) power (wind, solar, diesel, hydro) and water cooling (well... machined my own waterblocks, at least):

First, the reason that non-subsidized alt energy is not used more often is because -- yeah, it's a tremendous pain, and is far more expensive than being on the grid. The most practical off-the-grid power sources are gas/diesel generators. There even were some portable gas turbines, lol.  
Second, there's no need to convert electricity into heat to store it, because see here. Granted, you need a legal hookup & power meters.
Micro hydro is basically a joke, because you need head. like so:

It's great when there are no alternatives and you're lucky enough to be in *just the right place,* but it's not a paddle wheel in a stream hooked up to an car alternator.

Using hot water from waterblocks (how many commercial miners are currently water-cooled? Yeah, water cooling's expensive, that's why.) is a non-starter - think about plumbing farm, think how useful warm water is (not hot, if your chip's running at 120C, the water entering your water block is ~35C & exiting @ ~60C) , etc., etc.

TL;DR: Most people advocating shit like that don't know which end of the screwdriver to stick in a screw.

There are some remote locations where it may be possible to build this kind of setup profitably due to lack of regulations, lack of competition from the grid, constant demand due to cold climate, etc. but those areas also suffer from a lack of bandwidth that makes capitalizing on them for Bitcoin mining a non-starter.

[Fatman3001]

[An update on the solar solo mine would be groovy too.]

When building a Solar power grid or using microhydro one must plan for peak electrical use. I prefer Microhydro, but the cost of solar is getting much cheaper every year. Normally, one would float charge batteries and than burn off extra electricity to heat water , but I find that solar water heaters are better suited for this task, and excess electricity that would normally be discarded is used to mine bitcoin.

What would be the best of all worlds is using those ASICs to heat water as well to close the loop and recycle the waste heat.

Originally and all the way up through the GPU era, mining was something that could be done profitably part time, so taking advantage of off-peak cheap electricity was an excellent use case. Now however, miners are so damn expensive, that if they are not running 24/7 you can run a real risk of never being able to recoup your capital investment.

It is a race to break even before your miners are obsolete, halving cuts revenue, or the market crashes. I guess if you live somewhere cold, you could still run obsolete miners as a space heater, sell them as a curiosity or mine some altcoin with a SHA256 hashing protocol and a much lower difficulty, but other than that, it's a race.  

WE HAVE A CHICKEN AND EGG PROBLEM. Miners outside of China are reluctant to invest substantially in new mining gear because they face an uphill battle competing with Chinese mines with electricity and labor cost advantage.

Miners are also reluctant to build up because the code development uncertainty and scaling uncertainty.  It's hard to make long term plans with so many unknowns. So mining concentration may not be corrected until there is code development decentralization.

Then we have the problem that code development centralization (with Core) is an established practice, something that will not be easily changed, if at all.  Miners do not want to switch to Classic or other alternative because they fear (rightly IMHO) that a switch will cause market volatility or an outright crash.
They can't do something even if they know or suspect it is in their long-term best interest if they need to keep mining revenue high enough to pay for their gear operations in a shorter time period.

The vaccine could cause the death of the patient before it cures it. I think this is a risk worth taking, but I'm not a miner. It is up to them.  Without taking the medicine, there is limited potential for growth and price appreciation.

Any miners want to weigh in on this?

Not a miner, but someone who had to deal with off-the-grid (due to ...no grid being available) power (wind, solar, diesel, hydro) and water cooling (well... machined my own waterblocks, at least):

First, the reason that non-subsidized alt energy is not used more often is because -- yeah, it's a tremendous pain, and is far more expensive than being on the grid. The most practical off-the-grid power sources are gas/diesel generators. There even were some portable gas turbines, lol.  
Second, there's no need to convert electricity into heat to store it, because see here. Granted, you need a legal hookup & power meters.
Micro hydro is basically a joke, because you need head. like so:

It's great when there are no alternatives and you're lucky enough to be in *just the right place,* but it's not a paddle wheel in a stream hooked up to an car alternator.

Using hot water from waterblocks (how many commercial miners are currently water-cooled? Yeah, water cooling's expensive, that's why.) is a non-starter - think about plumbing farm, think how useful warm water is (not hot, if your chip's running at 120C, the water entering your water block is ~35C & exiting @ ~60C) , etc., etc.

TL;DR: Most people advocating shit like that don't know which end of the screwdriver to stick in a screw.

There are some remote locations where it may be possible to build this kind of setup profitably due to lack of regulations, lack of competition from the grid, constant demand due to cold climate, etc. but those areas also suffer from a lack of bandwidth that makes capitalizing on them for Bitcoin mining a non-starter.

You can run a farm on a mobile broadband connection if you're mining on a pool. And that won't change.

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

https://twitter.com/jgarzik/status/703311907093143559
Bullish?

@Lambie Sorry I called you a bully. That was uncalled for.

[bargainbin]

.@Billy Joe: What Fatman said, and...
Possibly, though I doubt (as in 99.9% sure) that sunk costs of a hydro plant in such an area will ever be recouped (as in "the cost of the electricity, amortized, would be less than, say, 20 cents kWh).

It's all pretty hardcore to keep operational 24/7, as in "beyond Mom's Basement Anarchists." You can't afford to mine just *most of the time, when the sun shines/the mill ain't broke,* because IRL industrial miners are mining *all of the time,* and the window to recoup sunk costs is very short.

[billyjoeallen]

You can run a farm on a mobile broadband connection if you're mining on a pool. And that won't change.

If there are cell towers 200 miles from Gnome, Alaska, I am not aware of it.

We NEED to adjust the code so high bandwidth is more of an advantage or China will continue to dominate mining, and we will never regain mining decentralization or censorship resistance. The alliance between the two entranched special interest groups Core and Chinese miners is a death sentence. At some point, scaling limitations will mean Bitcoin will lose it's first mover advantage and if that doesn't happen, eventually price appreciation will make Bitcoin a threat to PRC monetary/economic policy and there will be (another) crackdown, this time accompanied by possibly a series of 51% attacks. Then we'll lose first mover advantage anyway.

The Staus Quo is a time bomb. We just don't know when the counter is set.

[bargainbin]

You can run a farm on a mobile broadband connection if you're mining on a pool. And that won't change.

If there are cell towers 200 miles from Gnome, Alaska, I am not aware of it.
...

Mobile broadband was probably used as in "slow."
Quick search tells me that there are at least 2 internet providers in Nome, Alaska.
In my (unlerned) opinion, "decentralization" is no longer an issue, that bird has flown.

>We NEED to adjust the code so high bandwidth is more of an advantage or China will continue to dominate mining
Again, as Fatman & Cconvert2G36 pointed out, bandwidth is irrelevant for mining, because pools; becomes an issue only for solo mining/running a node.