First 6990's now 7000 + series ... what does all of this do to the market ?

[Xplic1T]

I'm fairly new to bitcoin mining but I have read enough now to understand many of the ins and outs of mining.

One big question stands out in terms of long term gains with mining. Since this is an actual currency, every time a new generation of cards is released we see effectively the newer version having 2x the horsepower of a card from the previous generation. So lets assume the 7000 series comes out and we all swap our 6990's for 7000 ... great ... that means we're able to make more processes per second, with less power, so in a sense it becomes cheaper to perform these processes which means the overall value of a bit-coin goes down ...

Is this a correct interpretation of how mining works  ?

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[Jepito]

Just jump in and dig  I have 8 machines    as long as i have cash going into my bank acc I'm good - when it cost more in electric to mine Im done lol 

TILL THEN GeTErDone

[nmat]

we're able to make more processes per second, with less power, so in a sense it becomes cheaper to perform these processes which means the overall value of a bit-coin goes down ...

Is this a correct interpretation of how mining works  ?

That means that difficulty will go up, which means that people who invested in the current cards generation will earn less bitcoins because there are bigger players in the network.

We have not found a strong relation between difficulty and price yet. The price could go down because sellers are willing to sell for less, but speculators may not have the same opinion.

[Dargo]

every time a new generation of cards is released we see effectively the newer version having 2x the horsepower of a card from the previous generation.

The 6000 generation did not have 2x the hashing power of the 5000 generation, so what are you basing this claim on? The 6000 generation is in fact not as good for mining as the 5000 generation. And from what I understand, it is still an open question as to whether the 7000 generation will be better for mining than the 6000 generation. We won't know for sure until the 7000s come out and miners try them. Even if the 7000s have 2x the hashing power as 6000s (and/or are more efficient), it isn't clear to what extent they will be purchased and used for mining, given how difficult it is to make a profit. At current price and difficulty, I probably would not buy a bunch of new cards even if they have twice the hashing power of the cards I have. I think FPGAs and ASICs are really the next generation of technology that people should be concerned about. But the widespread use of these is probably still a ways off.

[Sock Puppet]

Nope.  Faster (or more importantly, power efficient) cards push up the hash rate which drives up the difficulty.  It will give you a temporary advantage until they become widespread, but don't expect it to change the basic economics in the long run.