Will btc difficulty go sideways for rest of the year?

[TheYankeesWin!]

In looking at the chart the grey line is below the blue one  which means we  will have another drop if it continues.

[philipma1957]

@ yankees  if we drop 15%  to a diff of about 5,600,000,000,000

hash for that is around 40,000,000,000

Our current hash rate is about 36,600,000,000   that would mean a 10% drop  say to a diff of 5,000,000,000,000


but we know that current rate of 36,600,000,000 could go in any direction  so next jump is still a mystery.

Still a follow up jump/drop  down to 4,900,000,000,000  with 36,600,000,000 gh  would mean 

the peak of 53,600,000,000 gh would now be down to 36,600,000,000 gh

about 17,000,000,000gh/14,000gh =   1,214,285 s-9s pulled off the market  pretty amazing

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

Following the hashrate trends I would say what @philipma1957 is saying is right we could see it continue to fall as there is no sign of the hashrate bouncing back right now.

above is a chart from 01/10/18 to 02/12/18.

[Norm MacDonald]

$BSV need to pump his price to be more profitable to mine than $BTC or $BAB
Godzillatoshi and friends are crashing BTC prices to make it happen.

Juhan and Roger make sure they have the longest chain, need to drain hashrate to support BAB.

BTC vs BAB vs BSV mining profitability

https://cash.coin.dance/

This is simply not true. It was an idle threat. The good "Dr." shorted BCH through swaps on the OTC market. This was all a very selfish and greedy, ego driven game of "whose weenie is bigger". Perpetrated by some of the worst actors in the space. They knew from the jump that all three would survive. It was an easy way to create another "shitcoin" and make an easy killing on Swaps trades. Here's how it works; I ( Dr. doufus ) lend you my long BCH position at $600.00 with an agreement to purchase them back at a later date. ( Post Nov 15 ). Mant hedge funds and speculators welcome the other side of this as Dr. Doufus's broker must give them a fat edge in order to take it. EG; if BCH is bid strong at $600,00 then we structure the swap to sell the asset to the buyer at $575.00. This gives the buyer the ability to hedge to position or slowly feed it to the guppies in the open market. Then Dr. Doufus starts spouting off like an insolent child about crushing BTC and a "fight to the death". BCH down over 60%. Boom. Free money and a brand new shiny shitcoin to call his own. Yes he should be arrested.

[philipma1957]

yeah there is that  and then there was bitmain  running s-7's along side s-9's in hashnest.

At one point  I estimate they had 200000 s-7's charging power rates at s-7.  With no way to know how many of them were actually s-9's.

since  1 s-9  is 100 watts a th
and 1 s-7 is 250 watts a th.  the math is  150 x 24 = 3.6 kwatts  x 0.08 = 28.8 cents extra profit on every s-7 every day  or

28,800 a day if 100,000 of the 200,000 s-7s were indeed s-9's  this went on from May of 2016 to  Feb or march of 2018

say 20 months x 30 days = 600 x 28,800 = 17 million plus.

to compound this  have the s11 for sale on chinese website  it pulls 70 watts a th vs 100  so they could have done this from Feb of 2018 to Dec of 2018  less of a score maybe 2 million  all in 20 million plus.

Not saying they did it  but they had the opportunity to do it and it would be undetected  without proper accounting proceedures  of which I have scene zero evidence of existing.

So yeah a lot of shit is happening now.  Still look to be down around 15%  and maybe another down after that.

This also means price drop will not hurt 4 cent power guys.

So I now see -15% then  -10%  with a dip to 2800 usd a coin.

4 cent power at current diff breaks even at 2600

and turns a 11 cent a day profit at  2800 with current diif

but drop diff to 5,653,303,141,405  and  an s-9 makes 37 cents

drop diff to 5,000,000,000,000 and an s-9 makes 60 cents

many power plants  can sell commercially at 4 to 5 cents they use s-9s when they have excess power rathe then shut down the plants.

so 4 cent profitability is worked into the bitcoin system ie dropping to a loss at 4 cents is not acceptable for these power plants.

So with diff of 6.6 now the floor price has big support  in the low 3,100-3,400

but a diff of 5.5 will drop floor price to   2,900- 3,100

and a diff of 5.0 will drop floor price to 2,500-2,700

does not mean  we will drop in price to those floors  but those floors work for big 4 cent miners.

[Norm MacDonald]

This is the best and most useful analysis on Diff, Coin Price and Profitabilty I've seen to date on any forum. Thanks Philip, your work is much appreciated.

[...]

So I now see -15% then  -10%  with a dip to 2800 usd a coin.

4 cent power at current diff breaks even at 2600

and turns a 11 cent a day profit at  2800 with current diif

but drop diff to 5,653,303,141,405  and  an s-9 makes 37 cents

drop diff to 5,000,000,000,000 and an s-9 makes 60 cents

many power plants  can sell commercially at 4 to 5 cents they use s-9s when they have excess power rathe then shut down the plants.

so 4 cent profitability is worked into the bitcoin system ie dropping to a loss at 4 cents is not acceptable for these power plants.

So with diff of 6.6 now the floor price has big support  in the low 3,100-3,400

but a diff of 5.5 will drop floor price to   2,900- 3,100

and a diff of 5.0 will drop floor price to 2,500-2,700

does not mean  we will drop in price to those floors  but those floors work for big 4 cent miners.

[philipma1957]

A lot of miners run deals with power plants.

I worked on a 100 megawatt build out involving 5 power plants

the farm acts as a power leveler for 5 plants.  They get a good deal under 4 cents more then 3 cents.

It is a real need for power plants to be able to shunt excess power> I can't name the plants or the city they support.

But I live in New Jersey which does not have a city big enough to use 5 power plants.

Of course NJ is Near

Philadelphia
New YorK City
Wilmington

any of those Cites Have a power grid that would need to be able to shunt power during low demand.

So the support floor does exist for low numbers. It is real and it is world wide as many power plants use farms to shunt power  rather then turn down  the generator as it is costly to do that.

I could do a really long complicated set of reasons of why bitmain would lower diff but the simple one is they would love to dump every s-9 they can dump to power companies that want to shed off peak load.

To me we get the -15%
 we get the -10%
and price has downward pressure very close to 3000.

Then in 2019 we get a good bounce.

[philipma1957]

widespread here  -2.6 to -18.6
the important thing to see is we are down 29 blocks
we are 25 hours in  should be 6 x 25 = 150  actual made is 121

Latest Block:   552504  (7 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   80.6159%  (121 / 150.09 expected, 29.09 behind)
Current Difficulty:   5646403851534.721XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Next Difficulty:   between 4591717672560 and 5499325209464
Next Difficulty Change:   between -18.6789% and -2.6048%
Previous Retarget:   Yesterday at 6:46 AM
Next Retarget (earliest):   December 17, 2018 at 4:10 PM  (in 13d 8h 23m 28s)
Next Retarget (latest):   December 20, 2018 at 3:33 PM  (in 16d 7h 46m 32s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 9h 24m 25s and 17d 8h 47m 29s

As Agent Mulder would say "the truth is out there"

Well in the case of mining BTC the gear is out there.

Thats is why  the prediction above has a big range.  yeah we are really down  around 18%  but lots of gear could be turned back on.  So -2 or even +1 could happen.

I still see a price drop  with this downward diff movement.

[stompix]

Seems like as usual, I'm going to be almost entirely wrong...

I'm probably 99 times wrong out of 100 when trying to predict stuff but no way a 20% drop will happen if the price will stay at least the same or in a 5% range from 4500. No way!

It was just 15% last week but if it goes down even the minimum anticipated I'll be proven wrong again

Current Pace:   78.6372%  (129 / 164.04 expected, 35.04 behind)
Next Difficulty Change:   between -20.7339% and -3.1387%

But still, I can't really believe this is happening, I'm amazed that there was so much gear that was mining at such low-profit margins and with at least over 5 cents per kWh.

Really I need to ignore this whole mining stuff, I feel so tempted get some miners right now

[sidehack]

Give yourself some credit. It's been about twelve days since the price was at best barely tapping "within 5% of 4500" margins.

[Norm MacDonald]

I have run into three separate situations where I was buying gear from " Hosting " facilities and or Colo set ups. Each time I was shocked at how little these operations knew about basic cooling and infrastructure. Their "floor costs" or infrastructure costs were astronomical. I believe a lot of these miners that are for sale on the secondary market in US and Canada are coming from these poorly planned build outs, that just threw large amounts of capital at them without understanding the metrics of the operations. Even at the most basic level. I believe there are still many more to follow. Not only did "fast money" over speculate BTC itself, it went "All In " on Colo, Reselling of Gear and every other facet of this business. I suspect the shake out will continue until all the Wheat is separated from the Chaff.

[rifleman74]

I have run into three separate situations where I was buying gear from " Hosting " facilities and or Colo set ups. Each time I was shocked at how little these operations knew about basic cooling and infrastructure. Their "floor costs" or infrastructure costs were astronomical. I believe a lot of these miners that are for sale on the secondary market in US and Canada are coming from these poorly planned build outs, that just threw large amounts of capital at them without understanding the metrics of the operations. Even at the most basic level. I believe there are still many more to follow. Not only did "fast money" over speculate BTC itself, it went "All In " on Colo, Reselling of Gear and every other facet of this business. I suspect the shake out will continue until all the Wheat is separated from the Chaff.

I would agree yes, quite a few farms have gone up and busted. 

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

Lot of miners suffering right now power cost being a massive factor while the diff drop is helping some I do fear the smaller mines 10-200 machines range are on the chopping block unless your supplementing with renewable energy or have a really competitive rate.  We were paying 12.5P here in the UK and we have been told we will now pay 22p via the facility resellers. :/  So we're out.

[philipma1957]

we may drop 10% to 15% again which is very interesting if we do.

Frankly  with real luck  we  do a -15 say dec 16 and then a -10 jan1

which will get us down to around 33,000,000,000 gh and a diff of 4,800,000,000,000

for jan  of 2019

a diff of 4,800,000,000,000 works for around a 2500 price point for a 4 cent miner

[Biffa]

Lot of miners suffering right now power cost being a massive factor while the diff drop is helping some I do fear the smaller mines 10-200 machines range are on the chopping block unless your supplementing with renewable energy or have a really competitive rate.  We were paying 12.5P here in the UK and we have been told we will now pay 22p via the facility resellers. :/  So we're out.

At 12.5p/kwh which is 16c/kwh you should have been out a long time ago.

At $4000 you would have been losing $3 a day per S9
At $8000 it would have been $0.45 a day loss.

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

At 12.5p/kwh which is 16c/kwh you should have been out a long time ago.

At $4000 you would have been losing $3 a day per S9
At $8000 it would have been $0.45 a day loss.

Hey I was still running my S3's.  
Those puppy's alone were sinking the juice.
I think in the long run even with running at a loss come few years who knows where the price will go, it could turn into a very nice amount.
Happy to throw some fiat away to gain some coins for the long run.

Though now at 22p it's a 100% no mine situation.

[Norm MacDonald]

If BTC stabilizes and chops around North of $3,500.00, I speculate we will see some marginal Hash Power come back online. I'm not expecting another whopper drop at the next jump. Of course with any new lows, that completely changes. We seem to be nearing a major shake out for many miners. That's why I think it will likely happen. Markets like to go on "seek and destroy" missions. Finding the pockets of the most pain and administering that without prejudice.

[Raymond_B]

As a comparison, LPM firmware and diff adjustments down have been keeping me just *above* break even. But there does come a point in time where simply buying BTC might be better unless you're heating your house or something.

[agente]

Hey I was still running my S3's.  
Those puppy's alone were sinking the juice.
I think in the long run even with running at a loss come few years who knows where the price will go, it could turn into a very nice amount.
Happy to throw some fiat away to gain some coins for the long run.

Though now at 22p it's a 100% no mine situation.

So.. do you prefer to pay 100usd to energy company for 50 usd of BTC indeed buy directly 100usd of BTC? wow

[philipma1957]

So.. do you prefer to pay 100usd to energy company for 50 usd of BTC indeed buy directly 100usd of BTC? wow

Not sure he does but mining at a loss on an affordable scale is not so dumb

Ie loss of a few hunderd usd  a month for a year.  lets say  you spent 4800 this year mining and have 1 btc.

It can be in a wallet  that no one knows about but yourself  so paying  4800 for a 3900 asset is not so dumb  if it goes up to 20000 in a few years.

and you could sell the coin for 19000 cash  to a guy that has a fresh core wallet  and he now has a hidden asset.