The Value of BTC, in terms of Hardware Purchased and Installed

[jermwerty]

... No miners have ever lost money with Bitcoin, unless they converted to $US as soon as the BTC was minted.... but who does that?

WRONG.  Nearly ALL miners have lost money.  Many ASICs were BTC-only pre-orders only do you think the HASHFAST guys are psych'd that it cost them 50BTC per rig and they *may* recover 5BTC of that?  Even Avalon Batch3 was 100 BTC for rigs that returned 50 BTC.  Lets not even get started on BFL if you had paid in BTC 13 months before they delivered...

The only actual "profitable" BTC ASIC was Avalon Batch1, all other gains were due simply to the price increase.  

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[Keyser Soze]

... No miners have ever lost money with Bitcoin, unless they converted to $US as soon as the BTC was minted.... but who does that?

WRONG.  Nearly ALL miners have lost money. (...)

The only actual "profitable" BTC ASIC was Avalon Batch1, all other gains were due simply to the price increase.  

My point exactly!  Patience is a rewarding virtue!   Bitcoin is not a short-term flip market, as most people would like to think - it is more like: mine, wait 6 - 12 months, then sell.

If the mining equipment will never produce more bitcoin then it costs to purchase and operate (in bitcoin), then it is better to just buy (or hold) bitcoin instead. Your profit/loss from mining should always be calculated in bitcoins as you do not know what will happen to the price in the future.

Just because you profited in fiat from bitcoins appreciating, doesn't mean that the mining generated a profit.

[jermwerty]

...the network speed will increase by another 100 fold by October (ref TheGenesisBlock)...

 ...conceivable that BTC will be worth $5 000 to $10 000 by the end of 2014.

Yeah because the Genesis block has been soo accurate before    When moving up generations that have 100X more power (CPU>GPU or GPU>ASIC) the growth is insane for a bit but it HAS to slow down eventually as power isn't free    

Think about it this way.  I used to spend 4KW to generate 3GH back in the day with GPUs.  Today I spend 6KW to get 3TH (55nm).  The new 28nm chips are still 2KW for 1.6TH (cointerra) - we are beginning to hit that curve where the power draw improvements are starting to taper off...

I don't think we will hit 100 times faster than we are today this year - maybe next year  

But yes $5K to 10K coins is believable.  Why?  Because its been growing by a factor of 10 every year.  $1, $10, $100, $1000 whats next?   The bigger question in my mind is the adoption curve, and where might we be on that?

[johnyj]

Miners have no significant effect on exchange rates. Newly mined bitcoins are only a small fraction of total exchange volume. Furthermore, you have no evidence that miners act the way you say they do, which by the way is irrational.

No need to guess, you can make a poll, or look at my signature. I did those polls long time ago, basically majority of miners /traders will never sell more than 10% of their holdings each year. And based on that poll, I calculated daily fresh coin supply on market is around 5000 coins, forever

The exchange volume is not really useful, since a trading bot can sell and buy one coin 1 million times in a day and generate 1 million volume, that does not mean anything

[johnyj]

Mining cost set a ceiling for the exchange rate, so it never rise much higher than mining cost. Because you can always mine at a lower cost if the exchange rate is too high,  no matter how much more money are waiting to be invested in bitcoin, the exchange rate will never rise above the mining cost too much

When the exchange rate falls, mining become more expensive than buying, so many investors will give up mining and go to exchanges to buy. However, existing machines won't be shut down, since their only use is to mine bitcoins, their owner now no longer be able to acquire enough coin through mining, they will also go to exchanges to buy (Suppose that miners are the main driver for bitcoin economy, they will buy as much as they can)

So the mining cost act as a mean point of price fluctuation

A very important contribution of mining is to guard the security of the network. Since it is a international decentralized network, there is no centralized authority to protect it, the only way to protect itself is through hash power. Those money invested in mining infrastructure might not see a return, but they are helping to build up the safety of bitcoin network

And, I still don't understand why people are giving up a currency with limited supply for a currency with unlimited supply, this has nothing to do with price, since a currency with unlimited supply means it should worth 0

[zerk89]

You guys act like the price effect from this relationship would only happen for one day? Once again with that linear and horrible problem solving thought process. What about 7 days? what about 1 month? What about 6 months?

[odolvlobo]

I did a quick correlation graph today, see below:  

The red line is the Bitcoin Hashrate over the last 4 years (on a log scale - values are on the left of the graph).  The hash rate can also translate in $$$ injected in the Bitcoin economy.

The blue line is the Bitcoin market price over the last 4 years (also on a log scale - values are on the right of the graph).  

Which one is leading which?

PS:  It is interesting to see the rise and saturation of the GPU era (until early 2013) - and then the ASIC era, later in 2013.

My opinion?  I believe the hash rate knows where it is going (miners) - the market follows, or tries to keep up with the pace, and gets distracted along the way by good/bad news, by market manipulation attempts, heist on websites, etc.

That's a bunch of nonsense.

1. Correlation is not the same as causation. Having written that, ...
2. It is obvious from the graph that price is leading hash rate. However, ...
3. You can manipulate the visual relationship by adjusting the graphs vertically. If you lower the the hash rate graph it is obvious that price is leading hash rate. If you raise the hash rate graph then it will appear that the hash rate is leading the price.

[phr0stbyt3]

I did a quick correlation graph today, see below:  

The red line is the Bitcoin Hashrate over the last 4 years (on a log scale - values are on the left of the graph).  The hash rate can also translate in $$$ injected in the Bitcoin economy.

The blue line is the Bitcoin market price over the last 4 years (also on a log scale - values are on the right of the graph).  

Which one is leading which?

PS:  It is interesting to see the rise and saturation of the GPU era (until early 2013) - and then the ASIC era, later in 2013.

My opinion?  I believe the hash rate knows where it is going (miners) - the market follows, or tries to keep up with the pace, and gets distracted along the way by good/bad news, by market manipulation attempts, heist on websites, etc.

That's a bunch of nonsense.

1. Correlation is not the same as causation. Having written that, ...
2. It is obvious from the graph that price is leading hash rate. However, ...
3. You can manipulate the visual relationship by adjusting the graphs vertically. If you lower the the hash rate graph it is obvious that price is leading hash rate. If you raise the hash rate graph then it will appear that the hash rate is leading the price.

The first major price jump was shortly after the reward halving.
Second major price jump was when the difficulty went up x100.

[Feri22]

If you are correct, then Robert Shiller, 2013 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, is also right, and Bitcoin has no "value" and is indeed a "bubble".  Therefore, worthless.

If I am correct, Bitcoin has a value, as much as gold that had to be extracted from the ground with hardware, and labor.  The value of Bitcoin is, I believe, built-in every coin minted - maybe not equally, but as a group.  Again, I believe that it is the amount of work required (and hardware resource) that gives it its value.  It doesn't have to have a day-to-day immediate correlation, but over a year or two - it must.  Otherwise, it will just go away and not be valued by anyone.  The coins miners are mining today at values of tomorrows price, not today - otherwise, they are all dumb.  I believe that one or two person can be that dumb, but not thousands.

Similarly, gold itself, is just plain metal, like copper or aluminum. The value of gold is given by its rarity, by the amount of work to find it, and mostly by the cost to produce it in sufficient quantities to meet the demand - and also in part by its esthetic and cultural significance (which makes Dogecoin so attractive in crypto currency...)

I sure hope I am right and he is not.  But I have never studied at Yale, so, not being as educated, he will probably win - sadly for us.  Let's then enjoy the bubble while it last!


 

"Those who can't do, teach..."

He is winner of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel established by Sweden national bank ...Alfred Nobel has nothing to do with this, as by the will he established Nobel Prizes in 1895...Swedish national bank established memorial prize in economics in 1968...thus, i don't really care much what he says...he has some opinion, sure, but he has no crystal ball to claim like its 100%, when nobody really knows yet...he can be totally wrong or totally right...we'll see in few years...maybe you have not Yale university, but if you invested in BTC, for me you are much smarter than all the educators in the world...

[Undone]

But yes $5K to 10K coins is believable.  Why?  Because its been growing by a factor of 10 every year.  $1, $10, $100, $1000 whats next?   The bigger question in my mind is the adoption curve, and where might we be on that?

But adoption is wedded to new people buying bitcoin on the exchanges, because we can't all mine. As we're seeing, merchants adopting bitcoin is actually the easy part, contrary to what many people believed previously. Getting new people to trade their fiat for bitcoin is the hard part.

Buying bitcoin = adoption. And more people buying bitcoin = a price increase in bitcoin.

That's why I think that when we "sell" the idea of bitcoin to noobs, we need to sell it as an investment and not just a revolutionary technology/currency.

[sphere]

I think it's important to note that the Bitcoin price is not controlled by the amount of hash or network difficulty but the free market.

Those selling BTC in the exchanges does not necessarily have to be miners they can be anyone maybe some business who accepts BTC at their store and want to convert into USD etc. Most of those buying BTC, speculators, believers etc don't look at the network hash or network difficulty. They look at a variety of different things ,including speculative events, future adoption etc.

However, to say that mining has no effect on the price would be wrong. As the cost of ASIC's etc and the investment made by miners increases the prices they are willing to sell at are higher. E.g. in the mind of the miner he has just invested $1000 USD in ASIC's and he does not want to sell at a cheap price as his costs of production are higher, Not to mention that his new ASIC is now generating even less BTC because of the high network difficulty. In effect, two psychological reasons why he would want to sell at a higher. Of-course, their are more psychological effects of a miner e.g. Price crashes he wants to sell in fear of the price crashing further etc.

So really, Bitcoin price is not controlled by the hash and network difficulty but miners do have an effect on the price because undoubtedly they are a considerable % of the supply within the exchange market. 

[Abdussamad]

If it was the mining cost that decided the price of bitcoin, bitcoin would be over $1000 now because most miners are losing money.

BTW:  the Bitcoins I mined last summer, that I didn't sell until the price reached $1000 were profitable - very.  No miners have ever lost money with Bitcoin, unless they converted to $US as soon as the BTC was minted.... but who does that?

Compare like to like. Compare buying and holding coins with fiat vs. buying mining gear with fiat, mining coins and holding those coins. Which is more profitable? Please do the math and tell us if you would have made more money if you had just gone out and bought bitcoins with your fiat.

OT: This quote by Satoshi is relevant:

In the absence of a market to establish the price, NewLibertyStandard's estimate based on production cost is a good guess and a helpful service (thanks).  The price of any commodity tends to gravitate toward the production cost.  If the price is below cost, then production slows down.  If the price is above cost, profit can be made by generating and selling more.  At the same time, the increased production would increase the difficulty, pushing the cost of generating towards the price.

In fact that whole thread is worth reading.