Was just looking at this chart:
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/ethereum-hashrate.htmlThe mining boom started around spring 2017.
Spring 2017 - Summer 2017: ~40T increase
Summer 2017 - Autumn 2017: ~40T increase
Autumn 2017 - Winter 2018: ~60T increase
Winter 2018 - Spring 2018: ~110T increase
Oook. IMO the height of the average joe mining boom was around late summer 2017, that's when the hardware was most expensive, mining most profitable and that's when I'd expect the biggest increase.
However the increase since winter 2018 has been more than double of that. That just seems unlikely based on mining profitability and also it would have required GPU manufacturers to double their production.
I'm 98% convinced ASIC manufacturers started bringing first ETH asics online at around december 2017 and have been steadily building and mining with them ever since.
ETH PRICE jumped more in the 3Q/4Q timeframe in absolute terms than in the 2Q (2Q was a much higher PERCENTAGE increase).
Also, availability of GPUs to mine it WITH became a major issue for a while in 2Q - don't you remember AMD high-end Polaris cards selling for more than Nvidia 1070 and even some Nvidia 1080 cards for a month or so?
It takes TIME to aquire parts and build rigs, as well as a chunk of cash - pretty much across the board ALL altcoins ran into that issue.
Then the second bit spike hit in early January, fueling ANOTHER explosion of hashrate for a while, 'till coin prices started dropping seriously.
110 THash is less than 4 million GPUs (presuming RX 470/480/570/580 or GTX 1070) - given AMD and Nvidia extreme shortages that started right after Christmas and did NOT get better 'till a couple weeks ago, there is no need to blame a large number of ASIC for the jump - GPUs can EASILY account for it.
THE KILLER to your theory - Bitmain announced their E3 ASIC unit TODAY but it doesn't ship 'till mid-July indicating THEY DON'T HAVE MANY OF THEM ON HAND.
It turns out to be a little LESS EFFICIENT AND LOWER HASHRATE than a well-tuned Nvidia 1070 6-card rig and about the SAME hashrate and efficiency as a VERY well tuned AMD RX 480/580 6-card rig.
The E3 is NOT a GPU mining killer - Bitmain would have to sell over ONE MILLION of them to achieve 50% of current ETH total network hashrate, but there's no way they can get enough CHIPS to manage that in a significantly short timeframe.
For perspective, it has taken them almost 2 *YEARS* to sell ballpark ONE MILLION of the S9 units (there is some question as to the actual number due to competition from the Avalon 721/741, the unknown number of miners BW.COM uses in it's internal farm, the number of eBang miners sold or used internally, but *probably* a majority of the Bitcoin total network hashrate is from S9 units) - this is despite the S9 being the unquestionable "most efficient miner for SHA256 made" (a title it STILL holds at this time given reported Halong ACTUAL performance).
I seriously doubt the E3 will manage to achieve 50% of all ETH mining hashrate before ETH goes POS.
There's a REASON Bitmain is pricing it so cheap - it won't SELL if it wasn't cheap.
ETH over the last 2 weeks or so has been flat (give or take luck varience) on total network hashrate - if folks are still building new rigs, they're being matched by folks shutting down rigs or moving them to other stuff.
I can believe Bitmain had "engineering test" units online as early as December 2017 - but I do NOT believe they had "production" units online anywhere near that early, or in significant numbers before VERY recently.
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