When will the $15 barrier be broken?

[twist3d1080]

As long as price > $2.66, I am profitable to mine.

You are a lucky one then who must have a huge amount of rigs and free access to power. This is not intended a an offensive statement.

Excuse my ignorance, but if the price continues to drop will the difficulty to mine BTC drop as well?  I mean if the the difficulty is increased next week, how on earth could anyone make any money on mining vs. electricity cost?  CPU mining has been rendered obsolete and soon it will be uneconomical to mine with GPU's.  It seems soon that only the rich will be able to profit from BTC mining.

[SgtSpike]

As long as price > $2.66, I am profitable to mine.

You are a lucky one then who must have a huge amount of rigs and free access to power. This is not intended a an offensive statement.

Excuse my ignorance, but if the price continues to drop will the difficulty to mine BTC drop as well?  I mean if the the difficulty is increased next week, how on earth could anyone make any money on mining vs. electricity cost?  CPU mining has been rendered obsolete and soon it will be uneconomical to mine with GPU's.  It seems soon that only the rich will be able to profit from BTC mining.

I have some of the more efficient GPU's, yes.  5830's, 5850's, and 5870's.  Only 1950MH/s total though.  But my electricity is cheap here... $0.10/kwh at the highest tier, and I don't think I'm there yet.

[hello_good_sir]

So now we're all trying to buy low and sell high.  There is always a winner and a loser in these sorts of trades.  Oh and MtGox wins too.  Anyway, the current price doesn't matter.  We aren't going to see growth until we finally get the software ecosystem correct.  I'd give it two years.

[justusranvier]

You can bet they are trying to profit with inside information if they can. Why wouldn't they? They are not subject to any laws or insider trading rules like stock exchanges right?

I hate to break it to you but the big players on Wall Street aren't subject to any laws or trading rules either.

[Jack of Diamonds]

You can bet they are trying to profit with inside information if they can. Why wouldn't they? They are not subject to any laws or insider trading rules like stock exchanges right?

I hate to break it to you but the big players on Wall Street aren't subject to any laws or trading rules either.

Like Madoff? Or insider trading regulations?

[MoonShadow]

  It seems soon that only the rich will be able to profit from BTC mining.

<sarcasm>

That would be a wonderful development, get all this low brow mining trash out of the way.

</sarcasm>

Somehow, I doubt that mining will ever be an endeavor exclusive to "only the rich".

[justusranvier]

Like Madoff? Or insider trading regulations?

Madoff wasn't a big player.

The big players get to launder 1/3 of Mexico's GDP for the drug cartels and suffer only a token fine equal to a single digit percentage of their profits.

[Jack of Diamonds]

Like Madoff? Or insider trading regulations?

Madoff wasn't a big player.

The big players get to launder 1/3 of Mexico's GDP for the drug cartels and suffer only a token fine equal to a single digit percentage of their profits.

Considering he made off with $65 billion which is almost 8% of all liquid US dollars in existence, I'd say he was a big player.
His bank accounts contained more money than those of the measurably richest man in the world.

[twist3d1080]

<sarcasm>

That would be a wonderful development, get all this low brow mining trash out of the way.

</sarcasm>

Somehow, I doubt that mining will ever be an endeavor exclusive to "only the rich".

Lol.  What I mean is that soon its gonna take a room full of GPU's to make any amount of profit worth mining.  I haven't done the math but it would take a lot of money to get that started, and even more money to keep it going. It could talk a few months to make your money back at the prices that where happening at 17:00 utc.  Prices have rebounded but I still wonder at what point the casual miner will be squeeze out of the market.

[MoonShadow]

<sarcasm>

That would be a wonderful development, get all this low brow mining trash out of the way.

</sarcasm>

Somehow, I doubt that mining will ever be an endeavor exclusive to "only the rich".

Lol.  What I mean is that soon its gonna take a room full of GPU's to make any amount of profit worth mining.  I haven't done the math but it would take a lot of money to get that started, and even more money to keep it going. It could talk a few months to make your money back at the prices that where happening at 17:00 utc.  Prices have rebounded but I still wonder at what point the casual miner will be squeeze out of the market.

It's just as profitable for a city full of people mining on one card as it is for all of those cards in one room.  Likely more, because if the cards remain distributed, then the waste heat can still be used to offseat home heating needs in winter.

[grod]

No, economies of scale apply.

With current mainstream technologies you can get a hefty competitive advantage by getting industrial rather than residential power rates.  In my neck of the woods that cuts the power cost nearly in half (less if you shut down during peak times).

Developing hardware specifically for bitcoin mining would have a massive upfront capital outlay but would then result in an equally massive operational competitive advantage (read: 1/10th the power use per Mhash).  There are already rumors and theories that this has already happened.

In the grim future of bitcoin there are only pros.  Mostly because the casuals won't be able to compete with transaction rates required to sustain the envisioned high transaction rate bitcoin network financed through small transaction costs * massive amount of transactions.

[MoonShadow]

No, economies of scale apply.

With current mainstream technologies you can get a hefty competitive advantage by getting industrial rather than residential power rates.  In my neck of the woods that cuts the power cost nearly in half (less if you shut down during peak times).

The residential user in some areas can get electric rates lowered if they are willing to intergrate their demands into the power company's smart network so that they can directly reduce demand.  For a time, I had a programmable thermostat that would do exactly that.  It would be trivial for such an input to control the residential miner as well. 

That aside, the professional miner is certainly going to dominate, but mining will never be an exclusively professional endeavor.  If I use a small miner as a heater in my garage, linked to a thermostat or not, but only during the heating season for my area, the cost of electricity for mining is, at worst, only the difference in the cost between electric resistive heating and the least expensive alternative available in my area.  This is exactly why I say that Icelanders are uniquely well suited to owning small, personal mining clusters. 

[iamzill]

No, economies of scale apply.

With current mainstream technologies you can get a hefty competitive advantage by getting industrial rather than residential power rates.  In my neck of the woods that cuts the power cost nearly in half (less if you shut down during peak times).

The residential user in some areas can get electric rates lowered if they are willing to intergrate their demands into the power company's smart network so that they can directly reduce demand.  For a time, I had a programmable thermostat that would do exactly that.  It would be trivial for such an input to control the residential miner as well. 

That aside, the professional miner is certainly going to dominate, but mining will never be an exclusively professional endeavor.  If I use a small miner as a heater in my garage, linked to a thermostat or not, but only during the heating season for my area, the cost of electricity for mining is, at worst, only the difference in the cost between electric resistive heating and the least expensive alternative available in my area.  This is exactly why I say that Icelanders are uniquely well suited to owning small, personal mining clusters. 

Excellent point on the home heating arguments. If I'm not mistaken all resistive heaters have the same efficiency. So ignoring the kinetic energy used to turn your fans for a moment, all electrical energy going into your computer is turned in heat energy. In instead of buying a 1000w heater, you might as well make a 1000w mining rig.