Total hashrate falls considerably

[oakpacific]

And difficulty factor growth slows down. Seems that people are hanging up their rigs.

[fastandfurious]

And difficulty factor growth slows down. Seems that people are hanging up their rigs.

Even more pressure on the price then when the big rig investors get more coins to sell, they will probably not hoard any before they have made back their initial investment.

[Serge]

not many WTS hardware in the marketplace section

[enmaku]

not many WTS hardware in the marketplace section

Still, we have lost 3 TH/s since yesterday. No small amount of power...

[fastandfurious]

From where are you getting your data?

[Serge]

not many WTS hardware in the marketplace section

Still, we have lost 3 TH/s since yesterday. No small amount of power...

maybe it was just a luck factor?

[Xephan]

not many WTS hardware in the marketplace section

The current price and difficulty may mean it's not operationally profitable due to electrical costs in some areas. But it doesn't mean all miners will dump their hardware immediately. Those who expect prices to go up again may continue or just rest their rig until difficulty drops and/or prices swing up.

or maybe they switched to mining namecoin

[Serge]

From where are you getting your data?

I look at the top of
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/
and
http://bitcoinwatch.com/

[Xephan]

maybe it was just a luck factor?

Luck affects blocks found, not the total network hashrate.

[oakpacific]

From where are you getting your data?

I look at the top of
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/
and
http://bitcoinwatch.com/

The same for me.

[afro25]

Doesn't the total hashrate on BitcoinWatch usually fluctuate by that much anyway? I'm pretty sure people have mentioned it before and it has jumped all over the place.

Another note, DeepBit seems to have gone up by 100ghash/s in the last day

[Serge]

maybe it was just a luck factor?

Luck affects blocks found, not the total network hashrate.

and how is total network hashrate calculated?

it calculates by the speed of produced blocks, so if the network is more lucky overall, you will see total network's hashrate higher than it actually is.  

[fcmatt]

Can you imagine being a person who made a large investment making the assumption that
BTC would be around 15-20? In my opinion that was truly a poor decision. I would have done
that math based on a price of 5-7 and that would still have been pushing it a bit far with pricing.
Plus I work for an ISP and do not have to pay for electricity and cooling in the data center (thank
you very much kind owner).

I put about 2000 dollars into hardware that gets me about 2450 mh/s. And some of that money
was buying higher quality parts to replace an aging computer at home once I am done with mining.
Two computers were bought used for 400 each that contains two 5830s that I have overclocked
ridiculously to get 620 mh/s out of them per box. The other nicer setup contains 2 reference 6950s
and 1 used 5850 doing 1240 mh/s. All over clocked to the nuts.

Since June, about the 12th I was starting to get setup with the first box. I realized this could make some
money with the high BTC price and still somewhat low difficulty level. I quickly found a person in my state
getting out of bitcoin mining and bought two of his rigs used. The sooner the boxes were running for me
the better. Delaying was money lost obviously.

So.. here I am today and have made about 1050 dollars and some change (BTC). I have pretty much paid
off my new rig that will replace the one at home if I sell the rest of my BTC. The other two machines have
not even started being paid off yet. Naturally I could sell them for about 400 each and break even but I
will still plug along due to no elect/cooling costs.

BUT.. if I had to pay for elect/cooling this quickly makes less and less sense to do. My state's elect cost
at home is higher on average, it is pretty darn hot out right now so cooling would be nonstop, and watching
over these 3 boxes takes more effort then 40+ freebsd servers (go figure).

So to get back on topic of my first paragraph.. the people who made large investments and have large bills
to pay must be crapping their pants. The ROI just keeps getting further and further away and difficulty will
not fall that much in my opinion. So what you make back in more BTC will probably be eroded by a falling
price for the rest of the year (my opinion).

[fastandfurious]

Can you imagine being a person who made a large investment making the assumption that
BTC would be around 15-20? In my opinion that was truly a poor decision. I would have done
that math based on a price of 5-7 and that would still have been pushing it a bit far with pricing.
Plus I work for an ISP and do not have to pay for electricity and cooling in the data center (thank
you very much kind owner).

I put about 2000 dollars into hardware that gets me about 2450 mh/s. And some of that money
was buying higher quality parts to replace an aging computer at home once I am done with mining.
Two computers were bought used for 400 each that contains two 5830s that I have overclocked
ridiculously to get 620 mh/s out of them per box. The other nicer setup contains 2 reference 6950s
and 1 used 5850 doing 1240 mh/s. All over clocked to the nuts.

Since June, about the 12th I was starting to get setup with the first box. I realized this could make some
money with the high BTC price and still somewhat low difficulty level. I quickly found a person in my state
getting out of bitcoin mining and bought two of his rigs used. The sooner the boxes were running for me
the better. Delaying was money lost obviously.

So.. here I am today and have made about 1050 dollars and some change (BTC). I have pretty much paid
off my new rig that will replace the one at home if I sell the rest of my BTC. The other two machines have
not even started being paid off yet. Naturally I could sell them for about 400 each and break even but I
will still plug along due to no elect/cooling costs.

BUT.. if I had to pay for elect/cooling this quickly makes less and less sense to do. My state's elect cost
at home is higher on average, it is pretty darn hot out right now so cooling would be nonstop, and watching
over these 3 boxes takes more effort then 40+ freebsd servers (go figure).

So to get back on topic of my first paragraph.. the people who made large investments and have large bills
to pay must be crapping their pants. The ROI just keeps getting further and further away and difficulty will
not fall that much in my opinion. So what you make back in more BTC will probably be eroded by a falling
price for the rest of the year (my opinion).

Nice conclusion.

+1

[SgtSpike]

Good!  During the summer, I'm only profitable starting at $7/coin with the current difficulty.  I need some difficulty droppage here!

[Xephan]

and how is total network hashrate calculated?

it calculates by the speed of produced blocks, so if the network is more lucky overall, you will see total network's hashrate higher than it actually is.  

My bad, I assumed they actually monitored all the major pools and estimated from there. Turns out they are just estimating from the number of blocks found. Which is then badly affected by changes in difficulty.

[Xephan]

Can you imagine being a person who made a large investment making the assumption that
BTC would be around 15-20? In my opinion that was truly a poor decision. I would have done
that math based on a price of 5-7 and that would still have been pushing it a bit far with pricing.
Plus I work for an ISP and do not have to pay for electricity and cooling in the data center (thank
you very much kind owner).

Same here, I figured it wasn't going to be profitable to invest in new hardware as I expected it would likely slide to 8~10 before 3 months' up.

Unfortunately I know some people who invested in tens of new cards just in the past month.

[Oldminer]

Unfortunately I know some people who invested in tens of new cards just in the past month.

Yea thats just insanity.

[evoorhees]

So to get back on topic of my first paragraph.. the people who made large investments and have large bills
to pay must be crapping their pants.

Many people who may have spent between $1-3k on equipment are not "poor" and thus aren't going to freak out just because the investment hasn't paid off quickly. Those who will freak out are young, poor people who bought more than they could afford on credit cards and have no income from jobs etc.  Who knows what percentage of miners fall into that category? Maybe a lot, maybe very few?

But it's not like many people spent tens of thousands of dollars on mining hardware. These are generally not "big scary investments."

[Philj]

whenever the difficulty changes, the total hashrate skyrockets because of how it's calculated. this same thing happens every time. you have to wait 24-36 hour for that total hasrate calculation to get back to normal. It's not people buying rigs the day difficulty changes, or getting rid of them 2 days after a difficulty change, its just that the calculation is too basic to calculate the total hashrates when there are 2 different difficulties worth of solved blocks.