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[mike678]

$3.50 is my break even point at $0.091 kw/h. i think anything below $5 for a sustained period and i might shut it down, unless difficulty also keeps creeping back down as well.

since my mining hardware is paid for, i've just been sitting on my BTC.

I'm pretty sure 90% of miners would be losing money to electricity at anything lower then $5. If that happened I'd expect a mass difficulty decrease.

[minero1]

what could happen if the price hits $1? scary, looking at the all-time charts it really looks like it is collapsing, a mass difficulty decrease could clog the system as the user base leaves

[Beta-coiner1]

It's actually now 6.8 it is obvious that the issues concerning BTC is just not attracting investment from people with actual money.BTC requires actual MONEY,despite all the BS people talk about the currencies,BTC simply cannot be sustained without it.

[Meatball]

Unless something drastic changes in the next 6-9 months and some really big players (Amazon, Newegg, etc) start accepting BTC, I think we're going to see BTC become more and more niche.

Sup /B/

Silk's is a pretty big player. Not as big as Newegg, of course.  I saw a little survey someone did on 4chan about how many people have used Silk Road. If the number is only half true then it must be in the tens of thousands that regularly buy. I guess Chronic is kinda popular worldwide. LOL

What we need is a few more Silk Road type retailers to shore up BTC so that main stream retailers have a chance to increase in number.

Ah, I wouldn't consider Silk as a help to mainstream adoption.  If anything, it probably hurts the image of BTC as a viable currency b/c it's being used for what's 'illegal' activity in many countries and news articles paint it as a bad thing.  

[stergium]

Dang... It hit almost $6 today.... will this drop ever end?  ~$2 in 2 days .... what the heck is going on?  Is everyone pulling out?  This feels like a big sham!

well imo its better for ppl who don't want to support all of this to go now, when it is a bit unprofitable.
For ppl like me (i hope that there are more) bitcoin isn't about profit.
i didn't "invest" on rigs.I have nothing to lose.
Even if its price is -1$ (just like when it started) i'm still going to be around.
Its a financial burden i can take.
Just like seti/folding and a whole lot of projects that you didn't expect anything in return..

[caston]

If you look at the chart it went up very quickly and has come down much slower. This is a good sign that the much longer trend will continue to be up.

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#vztgSzm1g10zm2g25

[Transisto]

Once winter kicks in difficulty will rise hard and when next summer come ASICs will be around the corner.

For the average people that don't have 100k $ to invest in an ASIC setup, I'd say the current price is a good opportunity.

One factor to the actual cost of mining not to forget is that managing a farm take a lot of time and people with the know-how to run a 100+ GPU operation can usually be paid as much per Hours than what they can mine in a day.

[Meatball]

Once winter kicks in difficulty will rise hard and when next summer come ASICs will be around the corner.

For the average people that don't have 100k $ to invest in an ASIC setup, I'd say the current price is a good opportunity.

One factor to the actual cost of mining not to forget is that managing a farm take a lot of time and people with the know-how to run a 100+ GPU operation can usually be paid as much per Hours than what they can mine in a day.

Eh, I agree and disagree.  Yeah, it takes some work, but once things are going, you can pretty much leave it running on it's own.

[eldentyrell_old]

when next summer come ASICs will be around the corner.

For the average people that don't have 100k $ to invest in an ASIC setup, I'd say the current price is a good opportunity.

Keep in mind that for a full-custom chip, $100k only buys you the smallest possible die size (e.g. MOSIS and TSMC shuttle runs).  That's about 5% the size of a GPU.  Obviously a full-custom chip will be more efficient than a GPU.  I doubt it will provide twenty times the hash/sec -- though consuming less than 5% of the electricity for equivalent hashspeed is perhaps believable.

I'm extremely skeptical about full-custom chips ever being an economical way to mine.  Probably the only way they matter is if some entity's goal is to sabotage bitcoin ("national security concern") and they're willing to spend amounts of money on par with the total market cap.

[AngelusWebDesign]

Dang... It hit almost $6 today.... will this drop ever end?  ~$2 in 2 days .... what the heck is going on?  Is everyone pulling out?  This feels like a big sham!

Actually, people are forgetting that this is a large percentage drop.

Dropping from $14 to $12 is NOT the same thing as dropping from $8 to $6!

$8 to $6 is a 25% drop.
$14 to $12 is only a 14.2% drop.

[ElectricMucus]

And $6 to $4 will be a 33% drop, big whoopings 
 

[Transisto]

Keep in mind that for a full-custom chip, $100k only buys you the smallest possible die size (e.g. MOSIS and TSMC shuttle runs).  That's about 5% the size of a GPU.  Obviously a full-custom chip will be more efficient than a GPU.  I doubt it will provide twenty times the hash/sec -- though consuming less than 5% of the electricity for equivalent hashspeed is perhaps believable.

I'm extremely skeptical about full-custom chips ever being an economical way to mine.  Probably the only way they matter is if some entity's goal is to sabotage bitcoin ("national security concern") and they're willing to spend amounts of money on par with the total market cap.

There is a lot of scrap wafers and old equipment being replaced.  Also to note ; an SHA-256 specific chip is not a "full-custom chips", some exist already and a cheaper one could be enviable enough in the crypto/security/gov space to create significant demand beside mining.

[ElectricMucus]

Keep in mind that for a full-custom chip, $100k only buys you the smallest possible die size (e.g. MOSIS and TSMC shuttle runs).  That's about 5% the size of a GPU.  Obviously a full-custom chip will be more efficient than a GPU.  I doubt it will provide twenty times the hash/sec -- though consuming less than 5% of the electricity for equivalent hashspeed is perhaps believable.

I'm extremely skeptical about full-custom chips ever being an economical way to mine.  Probably the only way they matter is if some entity's goal is to sabotage bitcoin ("national security concern") and they're willing to spend amounts of money on par with the total market cap.

There is a lot of scrap wafers and old equipment being replaced.  Also to note ; an SHA-256 specific chip is not a "full-custom chips", some exist already and a cheaper one could be enviable enough in the crypto/security/gov space to create significant demand beside mining.

[Transisto]

@ElectricMucus

Hey I'm not suggesting someone is to make his own for 100k, just that equipment from Pentium 3 era equipment still exist and It may be cheaper to run a batch on them than some may think.

[kokojie]

That doesn't make any sense at all. Why mine while unprofitable? when you can just buy the coins if you wanted to invest in them?

For example:
to mine 30 btc, you'll need to pay $200 in electricity (roughly)
why mine, when you can just buy 30 btc, for $195 (@ $6.5 per coin)?

...or you could mine even if the price went under $7... just waiting selling off until a higher price.
if the price is under $7 for a longer time, the difficulty would even be lower.

[mike678]

For example:
to mine 30 btc, you'll need to pay $200 in electricity (roughly)

That's completely wrong. Let's take one of the most inefficient cards when it comes to electricity the 5830. A 5830 at most requires 200 watts and at the current diff it mines 0.1867 BTC a day. That means it would take 160.68 days to reach 30 btc. Using the average electricity cost for the united states which is 15 cents per kwh it would cost $115.69 dollars not $200.

If you use a more efficient card on electricity it would be even lower. If your electricity costs less then 15 cents per kwh it will be lower.

Get your facts straight before you start spewing bullshit.

[molecular]

ofc investments have risk but there also is point where you decide you stop investing if i dint risked i did not continue mining under 10$ because the margin(ROI was crap) was low all the btc mined under 10$ is a poor investment if i sell them now so if i keep then i take the risk of losing all/part the value put into their fabrication
there is a point where feelings/desires collide w/ cold hash math  and math will always win

(emphasis mine). I gotta write that down... "cold hash math", awesome.

[kokojie]

lol, yeah everybody is on 15c electricity, what a happy world. Except u r full of BS. My own electricity is 19c, and I'm in US. The poster ALREADY SAID $7 is his equilibrium point (if his equilibrium point is $7, that means he's paying $210 in electric for 30 BTC), guess what? now the price is $6.5, that means he's mining unprofitably if he's still mining, which makes my analysis completely correct. So unfortunately you are the one spewing BS.

For example:
to mine 30 btc, you'll need to pay $200 in electricity (roughly)

That's completely wrong. Let's take one of the most inefficient cards when it comes to electricity the 5830. A 5830 at most requires 200 watts and at the current diff it mines 0.1867 BTC a day. That means it would take 160.68 days to reach 30 btc. Using the average electricity cost for the united states which is 15 cents per kwh it would cost $115.69 dollars not $200.

If you use a more efficient card on electricity it would be even lower. If your electricity costs less then 15 cents per kwh it will be lower.

Get your facts straight before you start spewing bullshit.

[mike678]

lol, yeah everybody is on 15c electricity, what a happy world. Except u r full of BS. My own electricity is 19c, and I'm in US. The poster ALREADY SAID $7 is his equilibrium point, guess what? now the price is $6.5, that means he's mining unprofitably if he's still mining, which makes my analysis completely correct. So unfortunately you are the one spewing BS.

I said the average is 15c which is true. It costs me 8.5 cents so people do live below the average. You and I are in the minority hence why I said 15. For the average American it still makes sense to mine.

Just to prove you wrong some more. Ill use the same calculations as before except switch 15 to 19c a kwh.

it requires 91 cents per day to run a 5830 at 19c per kwh
160.68/91=$176.51


You make .1867 bitcoins a day with a 5830.

(.1867*6.5)-.91=30 cents per day if you sell today

[Transisto]

lol, yeah everybody is on 15c electricity, what a happy world. Except u r full of BS. My own electricity is 19c, and I'm in US. The poster ALREADY SAID $7 is his equilibrium point, guess what? now the price is $6.5, that means he's mining unprofitably if he's still mining, which makes my analysis completely correct. So unfortunately you are the one spewing BS.

I said the average is 15c which is true. It costs me 8.5 cents so people do live below the average. You and I are in the minority hence why I said 15. For the average American it still makes sense to mine.

Just to prove you wrong some more. Ill use the same calculations as before except switch 15 to 19c a kwh.

it requires 91 cents per day to run a 5830 at 19c per kwh
160.68/91=$176.51


You make .1867 bitcoins a day with a 5830.

(.1867*6.5)-.91=30 cents per day if you sell today

Why don't Mr "MySelf" give information on his setup, kw/$, and how he arrive with this 7$ figure.

On a strictly power cost POV, I'd say 2.50$ per btc is the average cost for an efficient GPU at 8.5c/kwh