Mining Namecoins is now 2x more profitable than Bitcoins

[JohnDoe]

I like the former route better (merged mining). Any pool planning to offer this starting at block 24000 nmc? I'd definitely use that pool. It means quite some work for pool ops, though, so I assume pickup will be slowish.

Nodemaster has a merged mining pool running on testnet so he'll probably move his real pool to merged mining shortly after block 24000.

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[Iyeman]

I probably missed this bit of info somewhere along my cramming of btc/nmc knowledge in the past month but why block 24000?

[pennytrader]

hopefully deepbit will switch at then. It'll take a month to get the next diff level (based on the stats now). Then hopefully a party again to reach another diff level in a few days, then we will at block 22176 and the remaning 1824 blocks probably will take another month to mine (assuming history repeats).

[grod]

It'll be interesting to see the value of namecoins in 2 months then.  Since they are basically a bonus for anyone mining in a combined pool  why would they keep any sort of a price relative to bitcoin difficulty?

I think anyone accumulating namecoins over the next 3 difficulties (whether through buying or mining) speculating based on an NMC difficulty runup and historical NMC to BTC price/difficulty parity may be in for a rude shock once block 24000 rolls around.  I know I'll only be mining during the subsidized periods and selling as soon as the NMC are available.

[dentldir]

After about 3 difficulty changes after block 24000, NMC and BTC will have the same difficulty it seems.

So what's the relative value of two coins that have exactly the same difficulty to produce?

[grod]

After about 3 difficulty changes after block 24000, NMC and BTC will have the same difficulty it seems.

So what's the relative value of two coins that have exactly the same difficulty to produce?

You're looking at it from a strange perspective.  After NMC block 24000 BTC will have their normal difficulty to produce and suddenly for a vast majority of namecoin miners NMC will have an effective difficulty of 0 -- they will be produced as a free side effect of existing BTC mining. Their value will be based purely on their utility (and demand), and should no longer have any bearing on their relative difficulty compared to BTC.

Their relative value could go either way, of course.  But I suspect the shift from current namecoin miners to bitcoin miners won't have a positive relative price impact in the short term.  Long term depends heavily on whether 7200+ namecoins are consumed every 10 days or not.

[imperi]

It'll be interesting to see the value of namecoins in 2 months then.  Since they are basically a bonus for anyone mining in a combined pool  why would they keep any sort of a price relative to bitcoin difficulty?

I think anyone accumulating namecoins over the next 3 difficulties (whether through buying or mining) speculating based on an NMC difficulty runup and historical NMC to BTC price/difficulty parity may be in for a rude shock once block 24000 rolls around.  I know I'll only be mining during the subsidized periods and selling as soon as the NMC are available.

You thought Namecoins would immediately decrease in value, but instead they increased by 50% when the difficulty dropped. Your predictions aren't the most accurate.

[smoothie]

It'll be interesting to see the value of namecoins in 2 months then.  Since they are basically a bonus for anyone mining in a combined pool  why would they keep any sort of a price relative to bitcoin difficulty?

I think anyone accumulating namecoins over the next 3 difficulties (whether through buying or mining) speculating based on an NMC difficulty runup and historical NMC to BTC price/difficulty parity may be in for a rude shock once block 24000 rolls around.  I know I'll only be mining during the subsidized periods and selling as soon as the NMC are available.

You thought Namecoins would immediately decrease in value, but instead they increased by 50% when the difficulty dropped. Your predictions aren't the most accurate.

I agree. I was expecting a sell off too but it appears that those who mined NMC (the majority) have held on to them based on the price ratio.

[grod]

It'll be interesting to see the value of namecoins in 2 months then.  Since they are basically a bonus for anyone mining in a combined pool  why would they keep any sort of a price relative to bitcoin difficulty?

I think anyone accumulating namecoins over the next 3 difficulties (whether through buying or mining) speculating based on an NMC difficulty runup and historical NMC to BTC price/difficulty parity may be in for a rude shock once block 24000 rolls around.  I know I'll only be mining during the subsidized periods and selling as soon as the NMC are available.

You thought Namecoins would immediately decrease in value, but instead they increased by 50% when the difficulty dropped. Your predictions aren't the most accurate.

Almost.  I was predicting a drop to below .02, yes.  But they DID drop.  From .25 to .20, before climbing back to currently .027.  The direction was correct, but not the magnitude.  Predicting direction, magnitude AND timeframe would require omniscience.  That I'm not.  I'll settle for being mostly right.

Not complaining about the bonus bitcoins I got mining NMC during the last 2 and likely coming difficulty drops either.

[simonk83]

Oof, taking a while to confirm the last block I found just before the difficulty increased.  Still only half done

[grod]

That too could be affecting prices.   Like a fool I waited until AFTER the mining bonanza to withdraw namecoins.  At this rate it'll take me 2-3 days to send them to the exchange to sell. 

Ah well, live and learn.  There's still 4x typical hash capacity on the NMC network but dropping in real time.  Next difficulty I cash out AS I mine, transfers should be very quick then.

[smoothie]

It'll be interesting to see the value of namecoins in 2 months then.  Since they are basically a bonus for anyone mining in a combined pool  why would they keep any sort of a price relative to bitcoin difficulty?

I think anyone accumulating namecoins over the next 3 difficulties (whether through buying or mining) speculating based on an NMC difficulty runup and historical NMC to BTC price/difficulty parity may be in for a rude shock once block 24000 rolls around.  I know I'll only be mining during the subsidized periods and selling as soon as the NMC are available.

What are you implying?

[dentldir]

After about 3 difficulty changes after block 24000, NMC and BTC will have the same difficulty it seems.

So what's the relative value of two coins that have exactly the same difficulty to produce?

You're looking at it from a strange perspective.  After NMC block 24000 BTC will have their normal difficulty to produce and suddenly for a vast majority of namecoin miners NMC will have an effective difficulty of 0 -- they will be produced as a free side effect of existing BTC mining. Their value will be based purely on their utility (and demand), and should no longer have any bearing on their relative difficulty compared to BTC.

Their relative value could go either way, of course.  But I suspect the shift from current namecoin miners to bitcoin miners won't have a positive relative price impact in the short term.  Long term depends heavily on whether 7200+ namecoins are consumed every 10 days or not.

I'm just taking the other side of the trade out loud.  Consider merged mining with Namecoin as a dilution of the new overall "Coin" market.  Given the same difficulty and hash rate, miners are simply given twice as many coins.  If you don't presume a bias towards either type of coin, then you've just diluted the market by adding twice as many coins over the long run. 

The ratio of Bitcoins to Namecoins will approach 1 to 1 in the long run.  Both equally scarce.  Both having required the 1/2 of the same investment to create.  Using that admittedly incomplete analysis, then long term Namecoins are worth about the same as Bitcoins.  Plus, both are worth half as much as one would have been before the dilution.

If you are building a trade plan around this idea, then you are trading from the long side of the currently thin Namecoin market.

[smoothie]

After about 3 difficulty changes after block 24000, NMC and BTC will have the same difficulty it seems.

So what's the relative value of two coins that have exactly the same difficulty to produce?

You're looking at it from a strange perspective.  After NMC block 24000 BTC will have their normal difficulty to produce and suddenly for a vast majority of namecoin miners NMC will have an effective difficulty of 0 -- they will be produced as a free side effect of existing BTC mining. Their value will be based purely on their utility (and demand), and should no longer have any bearing on their relative difficulty compared to BTC.

Their relative value could go either way, of course.  But I suspect the shift from current namecoin miners to bitcoin miners won't have a positive relative price impact in the short term.  Long term depends heavily on whether 7200+ namecoins are consumed every 10 days or not.

I'm just taking the other side of the trade out loud.  Consider merged mining with Namecoin as a dilution of the new overall "Coin" market.  Given the same difficulty and hash rate, miners are simply given twice as many coins.  If you don't presume a bias towards either type of coin, then you've just diluted the market by adding twice as many coins over the long run. 

The ratio of Bitcoins to Namecoins will approach 1 to 1 in the long run.  Both equally scarce.  Both having required the 1/2 of the same investment to create.  Using that admittedly incomplete analysis, then long term Namecoins are worth about the same as Bitcoins.  Plus, both are worth half as much as one would have been before the dilution.

If you are building a trade plan around this idea, then you are trading from the long side of the currently thin Namecoin market.

This is assuming everyone mining bitcoins does submit hashes to the namecoin network.

[molecular]

This is assuming everyone mining bitcoins does submit hashes to the namecoin network.

Which does not sound too unlikely, since pools will probably compete on "merged mining feature". Some pool ops might also decide to silently cash in on namecoins using their unsuspecting miner's hashpower

[talldude]

After about 3 difficulty changes after block 24000, NMC and BTC will have the same difficulty it seems.

So what's the relative value of two coins that have exactly the same difficulty to produce?

You're looking at it from a strange perspective.  After NMC block 24000 BTC will have their normal difficulty to produce and suddenly for a vast majority of namecoin miners NMC will have an effective difficulty of 0 -- they will be produced as a free side effect of existing BTC mining. Their value will be based purely on their utility (and demand), and should no longer have any bearing on their relative difficulty compared to BTC.

Their relative value could go either way, of course.  But I suspect the shift from current namecoin miners to bitcoin miners won't have a positive relative price impact in the short term.  Long term depends heavily on whether 7200+ namecoins are consumed every 10 days or not.

I'm just taking the other side of the trade out loud.  Consider merged mining with Namecoin as a dilution of the new overall "Coin" market.  Given the same difficulty and hash rate, miners are simply given twice as many coins.  If you don't presume a bias towards either type of coin, then you've just diluted the market by adding twice as many coins over the long run. 

The ratio of Bitcoins to Namecoins will approach 1 to 1 in the long run.  Both equally scarce.  Both having required the 1/2 of the same investment to create.  Using that admittedly incomplete analysis, then long term Namecoins are worth about the same as Bitcoins.  Plus, both are worth half as much as one would have been before the dilution.

If you are building a trade plan around this idea, then you are trading from the long side of the currently thin Namecoin market.

This analysis is flawed - you cannot assign worth to something without making an assumption about the demand for that good. You're assuming that namecoins will have the same demand as bitcoins, which is certainly not going to be true unless namecoins will become a general purpose currency instead of being limited to registering domain names. As a result, there will be no dilution of bitcoins. Since namecoins will essentially be a byproduct for most miners after merged mining, NMC might experience depreciation. Depends on whether the miners hold onto the NMC or dump them on the market.

Also, difficulty is completely arbitrary as far as price is concerned. The only things that matter are supply and demand. Supply will not change because the network adjusts difficulty. Demand - who knows what it will do.

[smoothie]

After about 3 difficulty changes after block 24000, NMC and BTC will have the same difficulty it seems.

So what's the relative value of two coins that have exactly the same difficulty to produce?

You're looking at it from a strange perspective.  After NMC block 24000 BTC will have their normal difficulty to produce and suddenly for a vast majority of namecoin miners NMC will have an effective difficulty of 0 -- they will be produced as a free side effect of existing BTC mining. Their value will be based purely on their utility (and demand), and should no longer have any bearing on their relative difficulty compared to BTC.

Their relative value could go either way, of course.  But I suspect the shift from current namecoin miners to bitcoin miners won't have a positive relative price impact in the short term.  Long term depends heavily on whether 7200+ namecoins are consumed every 10 days or not.

I'm just taking the other side of the trade out loud.  Consider merged mining with Namecoin as a dilution of the new overall "Coin" market.  Given the same difficulty and hash rate, miners are simply given twice as many coins.  If you don't presume a bias towards either type of coin, then you've just diluted the market by adding twice as many coins over the long run. 

The ratio of Bitcoins to Namecoins will approach 1 to 1 in the long run.  Both equally scarce.  Both having required the 1/2 of the same investment to create.  Using that admittedly incomplete analysis, then long term Namecoins are worth about the same as Bitcoins.  Plus, both are worth half as much as one would have been before the dilution.

If you are building a trade plan around this idea, then you are trading from the long side of the currently thin Namecoin market.

This analysis is flawed - you cannot assign worth to something without making an assumption about the demand for that good. You're assuming that namecoins will have the same demand as bitcoins, which is certainly not going to be true unless namecoins will become a general purpose currency instead of being limited to registering domain names. As a result, there will be no dilution of bitcoins. Since namecoins will essentially be a byproduct for most miners after merged mining, NMC might experience depreciation. Depends on whether the miners hold onto the NMC or dump them on the market.

Also, difficulty is completely arbitrary as far as price is concerned. The only things that matter are supply and demand. Supply will not change because the network adjusts difficulty. Demand - who knows what it will do.

You will likely have (even a small amount) a spill over in the money that goes into bitcoin into namecoin. Yes they may not be at parity but keep in mind namecoins have a usage that bitcoins do not but at the same time have all the properties that bitcoin has. There are likely outcomes that namecoin could become a competing crypto currency on a higher scale than you can imagine.

Should be interesting because in 6 months, at the most, if you own a namecoin you will be able to purchase a 1000 times more domain names than you can today. Currently it takes 11.1 NMC to purchase a domain name. With that same 11.1 NMC in 6 months you will be able to register 1,110 domains.

Sound familiar? The exponential growth is very similar in that of bitcoin.

After the last difficulty adjustment and the price overall rising in the ratio of NMC to BTC I'd say people are hanging on to them NMC's.

[dentldir]

This analysis is flawed - you cannot assign worth to something without making an assumption about the demand for that good. You're assuming that namecoins will have the same demand as bitcoins, which is certainly not going to be true unless namecoins will become a general purpose currency instead of being limited to registering domain names. As a result, there will be no dilution of bitcoins. Since namecoins will essentially be a byproduct for most miners after merged mining, NMC might experience depreciation. Depends on whether the miners hold onto the NMC or dump them on the market.

Also, difficulty is completely arbitrary as far as price is concerned. The only things that matter are supply and demand. Supply will not change because the network adjusts difficulty. Demand - who knows what it will do.

The analysis was biased, but it was intended to be.  You present the short side of the argument.  Namecoins become a free by product of something that already has value.  Since they are produced for free, Namecoins have no correlated value and the price should drop to whatever their intended demand supports for them, possibly zero if people stop caring about them.

So really, the difference between the two positions is just an interpretation of what Namecoin is.  Outside of a handful of commands added to the software, Namecoins are essentially Bitcoins.  They have the same real world costs to mine at the moment.  The same would be true of any new coin added to the market.  Its the history and intent of the two coins which drives the bias, both of which the NMC/BTC exchange doesn't care about.

In support of the long argument:

If you are mining Bitcoins and you now receive 1 NMC for every 1 BTC you mine, would you give away the NMC for free since they cost you nothing to produce?  

I suspect not.  You'd probably want whatever the market would give you.  So the sellers valuation for NMC comes from the cost of production, the psychology of having worked to create them, and a multiplier value provided by participants in the exchange.  In other words, its valued the same way as BTC adjusted for some amount of historical bias.

[talldude]

Should be interesting because in 6 months, at the most, if you own a namecoin you will be able to purchase a 1000 times more domain names than you can today. Currently it takes 11.1 NMC to purchase a domain name. With that same 11.1 NMC in 6 months you will be able to register 1,110 domains.

Sound familiar? The exponential growth is very similar in that of bitcoin.

After the last difficulty adjustment and the price overall rising in the ratio of NMC to BTC I'd say people are hanging on to them NMC's.

I don't know where you're getting your numbers from. The cost goes down by 50% every 8192 blocks. Once merged mining happens, it'll take at most 4 difficulty updates to bring difficulty to parity with bitcoin. That's just over 10,000 blocks. After that, cost goes down by 50% every 2 months. So in ~2 months merged mining will become a reality, then difficulty will shoot up in a matter of days to adjust to the new processing power. At this point we're about 16,000 blocks from now. That's 2 halvings of cost, so cost is 1/4 of what it is now. Then every 2 months we'll get another 50% decrease. So that's 1/16th of current cost to register a domain in 6 months. Hardly 1/1000th.

[smoothie]

Should be interesting because in 6 months, at the most, if you own a namecoin you will be able to purchase a 1000 times more domain names than you can today. Currently it takes 11.1 NMC to purchase a domain name. With that same 11.1 NMC in 6 months you will be able to register 1,110 domains.

Sound familiar? The exponential growth is very similar in that of bitcoin.

After the last difficulty adjustment and the price overall rising in the ratio of NMC to BTC I'd say people are hanging on to them NMC's.

I don't know where you're getting your numbers from. The cost goes down by 50% every 8192 blocks. Once merged mining happens, it'll take at most 4 difficulty updates to bring difficulty to parity with bitcoin. That's just over 10,000 blocks. After that, cost goes down by 50% every 2 months. So in ~2 months merged mining will become a reality, then difficulty will shoot up in a matter of days to adjust to the new processing power. At this point we're about 16,000 blocks from now. That's 2 halvings of cost, so cost is 1/4 of what it is now. Then every 2 months we'll get another 50% decrease. So that's 1/16th of current cost to register a domain in 6 months. Hardly 1/1000th.

Currently we are at block 18242 and a domain costs 11.08 NMC currently. Now the following link states that at block 24,000 and on the cost of a domain will decrease by 4 times the current rate.

http://dot-bit.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=151&start=10

So if we generate an average of 6 blocks per hour 24 hours a day for 180 days we get:

6 * 24 * 180 = 25920 blocks

Now let's subtract the remaining blocks until 24,000 from now:

24000 - 18242 = 5758 blocks

Now subtract that from the 25920 blocks to get the total blocks that will be at a 4 times decrease in NMC to buy a domain:

25920 - 5758 = 20162 blocks

Now since we are moving at a rate of 4 times faster after block 24,000 it is accurate to say that using the domain cost calculator at http://www.namecoin.us/tools.php the actual "block" we will be at will be:

20162 * 4 + 24000 = 104,648

So if we just used the average 6 blocks per hour over the next 6 months (180 days) the cost of a domain will be less than 0.01 NMC in 180days based on the calculator and using block 104648 as the "block" value we are going to be at.

Maybe 5 months was more accurate given that a price of 0.01 NMC occurs around 90k to 100k blocks.

So my math is that since it takes 11.08 NMC currently to buy a domain and in less than 6 months a domain will cost 0.01 NMC it is safe to assume that the price of NMC to buy a domain has decrease 1108 times.

Originally your math would have been correct but since the new updates to NMC network at block 24,000 will likely take place the prices for domains will go close to 0 NMC very quickly.