It is 2020 time for a new diff thread.

[philipma1957]

That is funny. It looks like 2021 will see a huge diff jump.

MY guess is someone is building a 100 megawatt solar farm combined with wind.

So deployment may take until May-June-July

lets pretend it is a correct spec.

if it does a usable 50 megawatts 24/7/365 that would be

3.3kwatts x 15 =      50 kwatts
3.3kwatts x 150 =    500kwatts
3.3kwatts x 1500 =  5megawatts
3.3kwatts x 15000 = 50 megawatts

so 15,000 s19 pros = 1650000 th or 1650ph or 1.65eh

if you got a good deal on the gear 2000 x 15000 = 30,000,000 million
if you got a bad deal on the gear 3000 x 15000 = 45 million.

the power plant I describe would be 150 million to build

so under 200 million with maintenance 200 million gets you 20+ years of power and the gear.

So I am thinking this is getting done in multiple places. It just takes time to happen.

[1713934499]

1713934499

[1713934499]

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[mikeywith]

, it's hovering around -0.9%. Considering Christmas and New Years Eve it's highly unlikely that some mining farm will suddenly bring to live a batch of 10k miners in the next epoch, so, another 14 days of happy mining?!?

I'd say the majority of miners who matter don't really care about any of that, so New Year or not, they couldn't be bothered, however, I do agree that we are likely going have another good epoch simply because not much gears are getting delivered in the coming a few days.

So, where the * is that gear?

They start shipping in January, all the way to July, the 8000 mining gear order from Riot will be done in April, with 2k miners every month.

I'm pretty sure a lot of people would love to hear it's on the bottom of the ocean

Couldn't agree more  .

With that being said, it's probably the last few weeks of happy mining, the past couple of weeks have been so kind to us miners, I'd guess nobody expected the profitability in fiat would be this much.

[philipma1957]

Tiny drop of -0.3%

coins were over 27k.

let the good times roll

I am thinking big jump and a crash in price.

Hope I look like a stupid moron with those picks.

[Searing]

I'm thinking that there 'may-be' a lot of Institutional Investment Trusts on the 'sidelines', like GrayScale now...looking for that long term 'inflation hedge' from all the money printing of the pandemic and recession etc. Thus we 'could' (man this is hard, I'm afraid I'm gonna jinx it) be in a position on 'every' frigging 10%/20% or whatever correction that is when the 'rest' of these guys 'pile into' the FOMO of price and BTC! Indeed when the Elephants dance the mice get off the dance floor kind of FOMO surge in adoption and price by such traditional Investment Trusts as a 'hedge' like GrayScale! Again, bonds won't beat inflation with all the money printing and potential stock market correction and future inflation..so the choices are 'property' er...hard to dump out of that quickly with a recession... the tail end of such you may be ok. but definitely long term HODL...gold...meh! that seems silly and likely only to go sideways in price at best anyway, likely 'barely' beating inflation over whatever years you are holding such. Also, bonds just can't pay any interest if banks are not allowed to fail and printing of $$$. I mean at worst they used to at least payout at the annual inflation rate or a bit more. That boat may have sailed.

So whatcha gonna do? Buy/HODL/try to get on board with your Investment Trust and start fighting for BTC in a tug of war from GrayScale and others may be the plan? Every frigging dip from now till 2022 you FOMO the price higher and higher. (I'm giving myself a small BTC woody with my fantasy here). An 'adoption' of BTC/Crypto in such a manner as to again be an 'upward' crash of price and FOMO for a year rather than the reverse? for the above reasons...and hell, things stock market-wise and inflation wise are not even really bad as of yet. So hell, maybe $100K BTC is frigging likely in the next year. I'm pretty befuddled on all this. But again, what if 'everyone' of a GrayScale like Investment Traditional Trust looks to BTC/Crypto..sh*t....things could get really really wild in 2021!

But for inflation hedging vs bonds, gold, and property in an economic recession or downturn or hell just a regular series of corrections till the country is back on track. I really can see a lot more of GrayScale like Traditional Investment long term funds piling into BTC/Crypto and 'massive' scooping of coins, if anything I say above is the 'least bit' likely. Now I have to 'sit down' I got all 'excited'

knock wood

Brad

[philipma1957]

I have two take aways here.

1) Norway 🇳🇴 purchased 2 dollars in Btc for all of its 5 million nations. Total of 10 million now worth 13.5 million. If companies are going to grab coins what happens if countries start grabbing coins.

2) Mining ⛏ will become large scale industrial. A single antbox with 15 ph may be minimum buy in.

These will result in very high difficulty. price of 100k means diff can be 4x what it is now.

[du5tin]

I have not been into bitcoin for very long but watching the difficulty this past week it sure seemed like the large miners want to keep the difficulty where it is... hash rate of the network dropped as we got closer to the difficulty switch yesterday.

Hard to say what is happening overall. I figured network hash rate would be increase to match price increases but it seems like that is not happening. There are a few trends: New gears are slow to ship (Bitmain internal power struggles?). Last gen gears have a high failure rate. Read somewhere China is in the dry season so cheap hydro power might be unavailable. Also, rumors Chinese gov't interfering in some mining operations there to interrupt fraud and money laundering. Mining hash rates dropping off towards the difficulty adjustment yesterday. Maybe the system is stabilizing and trying to find a new profitable normal? Works for me!

[mikeywith]

These will result in very high difficulty. price of 100k means diff can be 4x what it is now.

For bitcoin to be worth a 100k it just needs an extra 1.5 trillion of investment, that is about 20% of the market cap of gold, in other words, it's easily doable, but for difficulty to go 4x the world needs to find a brand new way of making asic chips, it doesn't seem like mining manufacturers can make 100EH worth of gear in a single year, let alone 300EH, I believe that in 2021 we will have a maximum of 260EH which is double the current hashrate, regardless of how high the price goes.

[philipma1957]

Well we could see some serious earnings  for miners if your numbers are correct.

BTC will be worth more than all of these combined.

https://i.imgur.com/Z1tCpYQ.png

The top ten companies have more than enough to lose 15% each and make btc gain bigly

1)  2.244t
2)  1.684t
3)  1.592t
4)  1.174t
5)  0.763t
6)  0.669t
7)  0.627t
8 ) 0.600t
9)  0.550t
10) 0.531t
total of 10.43t 15% is  1.5645 trillion

11) BTC .464t

btc would be 2.0285 trillion

apple if it lost 15% would be 1.9074

so BTC could possibly be Number one and over 2 trillion in a year

if Mikey is correct that diff goes 2x. us miners will have an outstanding 2021 year.

[mikeywith]

Well we could see some serious earnings  for miners if your numbers are correct.

My theory behind that maximum hashrate increment being 2x at most is that the fact that it gets harder to double the hashrate the larger it gets, if the whole network has 10 asic miners you just need 10 more miners to double it, if it has a million miners you will need a million miner.

The current hash rate is 130EH, every 1EH is about 10,000 of the 19 series (we say 100th is the average of T19,S19 and S19 pro) so to get 130EH we need 130*10,000 = 1,300,000 S19 series mining gear, now we will just assume that all the mining manufacturers will join forces to make that 1.3M gears, is that even remotely possible? I highly doubt it, current order list from Bitmain isn't even at 100k S19 miners and they are sold out until August, the best deal Riot managed to get is 1000 miners monthly, and Riot is one of the largest clients bitmain has, so even if Bitmain was to facilitate the same amount of order for 9 other clients, we assume their maximum capacity is 10,000 S19 miner per month, way too much for Bitmain to make over a million mining gear.

Keep in mind that it isn't only Bitmain's limitations, it's also semiconductors shortage that can't keep up with this demand, you have an increasing demand from other components that need those semiconductors which is outside of the mining world, and semiconductor makers like Samsung and TSMC won't be willing to lose their regular clients knowing very well that this mining thing is just a temporary business before the next halving or two make it hardly profitable.

With that being said, mining gears manufacturer could turn back to 12 or 16nm chips since those will be profitable too, so that will help the hashrate increase, but with all of these factors combined, it's very difficult to make 130EH worth of mining gears in 12 months.

Again, all of this is based on the assumption that Bitcoin's price keeps going up non-stop, and that is a theory that is subject to failure.

[stompix]

it's also semiconductors shortage that can't keep up with this demand, you have an increasing demand from other components that need those semiconductors which is outside of the mining world, and semiconductor makers like Samsung and TSMC won't be willing to lose their regular clients knowing very well that this mining thing is just a temporary business before the next halving or two make it hardly profitable.

You've mentioned this previously and I thought this was a passing thing due at that time do the surge in demand for electronics during the first total lockdown in Europe and US and seeing how once unavailable laptops have come back to the shelves (you have no idea what crap you could barely afford around here with 1k$ during that times) that the worse was over. Well, seems like I was mistaken, for the uncountable n time.
Global chip shortage threatens production of laptops, smartphones and more
So Huawei stockpiling chips for their production but with market share eroding others are stepping in demanding more also, normal growth in demand for other industries, a series of accidents, and the perfect storm has been created in which small players like Bitmain will simply be tossed aside.

I refrained yesterday from saying anything about the projected difficulty since it was just the start and the numbers were clearly inaccurate (1.5%-11%) but it seems like there will be no explosive growth as we all imagined, already down to 0.7-4.2. Now, if we don't see any growth beyond the 1% that can be triggered by luck or simple power failures even during this epoch I think we're at a point when we can safely say that this is the maximum hashrate you can make with the existing gear, there is no gear left in this world unplugged that can change anything in a significant percentage.

Also, something funny, I wonder why I didn't check this earlier, with the price increase, I can turn a profit right now with an S17 !!!! Hurray!!! Don't ask about the ROI time cause it's by next halving 

For bitcoin to be worth a 100k it just needs an extra 1.5 trillion of investment, that is about 20% of the market cap of gold, in other words, it's easily doable

One small thing, you would need that money if everyone would sell now their coins and new investors would buy, if nobody sells but one satoshi you could do it with a few hundred $. Of course, that's the extreme scenario but just Satoshi's coins are cutting close to $100billion out of that sum.

[mikeywith]

... clearly inaccurate (1.5%-11%) but it seems like there will be no explosive growth as we all imagined, already down to 0.7-4.2. Now, if we don't see any growth beyond the 1% that can be triggered by luck or simple power failures even during this epoch I think we're at a point when we can safely say that this is the maximum hashrate you can make with the existing gear, there is no gear left in this world unplugged that can change anything in a significant percentage.

The location of those "sleeping" mining gears is important, old gears in Europe and countries with 10 cents per kWh or higher are still not profitable "yet", but I tend to believe that there aren't much and could be ignored.

As far as the overall difficulty, don't worry, we will get there, I believe this epoch will be +(maybe 3-5%), and then things will get worse the further we move from here, many new generation gears are coming online next month, but the production is kind of slow, so I doubt we will see those 15-20% increments, they should be small and steady.

Also, something funny, I wonder why I didn't check this earlier, with the price increase, I can turn a profit right now with an S17 !!!! Hurray!!! Don't ask about the ROI time cause it's by next halving  

Next halving is just a couple of years ahead, no rush.

[philipma1957]

Latest Block:   663836  (47 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   112.3226%  (573 / 510.14 expected, 62.86 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   18670168558399.59
Current Difficulty:   18599593048299.49
Next Difficulty:   between 19653022028749 and 20896392700697
Next Difficulty Change:   between +5.6637% and +12.3487%
Previous Retarget:   last Sunday at 7:01 PM  (-0.3780%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   January 9, 2021 at 6:09 AM  (in 8d 22h 6m 55s)
Next Retarget (latest):   January 10, 2021 at 1:02 AM  (in 9d 17h 0m 2s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 12d 11h 8m 18s and 13d 6h 1m 25s

Andddddd the gear is waking up. +12%

best case for the diff is a +15%. Say on Jan 9th.

Then a hard price crash to 17k.

All the effort to fire up that gear will be wasted.  Prices of gear drop.

Or next best case is BTC says fuck this shit and passes 40 k by my birthday on Jan 27.

Diff just rocks upward but slower than the price rises.

[mikeywith]

12.3% isn't realistic by any means, I doubt these numbers can be sustainable for the remaining 8-9 days of this epoch, the average hashrate for the past epoch was 133, so 12% of that is 16EH, how is it possible that a whooping 16EH came online now and not 10 days ago? but well, btc mining is crazy so you may never know!

With that being said, I still believe that we won't go past 5% by much, maybe 6-7% in the worst-case scenario, but not 12% or more, the reason why I tend to make my predictions a bit more flexible is that fact that BTC dominance is going higher and thus hashrate from other coins is migrating to bitcoin right now, so all the new hashrate we see now isn't exactly fresh hashrate, a good portion of it was already there, and when those other Sha256 coins start picking up, that hashrate will go back.

[philipma1957]

maybe maybe not.  it is + 11.8% plus 79.5 blocks

a day ago + 12.3%. plus 62.86 blocks

Latest Block:   664016  (3 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   111.8058%  (753 / 673.49 expected, 79.51 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   18670168558399.59
Current Difficulty:   18599593048299.49
Next Difficulty:   between 19876536514266 and 20799070697751
Next Difficulty Change:   between +6.8654% and +11.8254%
Previous Retarget:   last Sunday at 7:01 PM  (-0.3780%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   January 9, 2021 at 7:32 AM  (in 7d 20h 16m 22s)
Next Retarget (latest):   January 9, 2021 at 9:27 PM  (in 8d 10h 11m 52s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 12d 12h 31m 16s and 13d 2h 26m 46s

At 29.5k price

an s9 set to 10th using 800 watts makes 2 bucks and uses .8 x 24 = about 20kwatts a day. In my garage with 13.5cent power in the winter I would get around 3 or 4 cents heat.

so my power from now to may1 is around 10 cents.  So I am breakeven running s-9's

An s-15 set to low is 900 watts and 18th or  3.60 power in my case of adjust 10 cent from now to may is 22 kwatts or 2.20

so 3.60-2.20 = 1.40 profit on a s15 set to low.

in my garage an s17pro set to low on vnish soft ware is about 40th and 1000 watts. or

8 usd - 2.40 = 5.60 usd a day from now till may

I won't go into gpus or l3+. but they are all good for me in my garage from now till may 1.

So my guess is lots of people turned on idle gear.

Also a farm that was on the edge but turning profit. May now have cranked gear up.

My s17pros  on stock firmware do
42th
5th
57th

If I was on the border at 52th or if it was a bit too hot at 52th.  it is now cold. so my gear gets set to 57th.

42 to 57 is a huge increase % wise  35%

51 to 57 is an increase of 11%

So I can see this jump doing over 10 % on Jan 9

Will it hold and do a second 10% next jump like Jan 22 only if bitmain sends out the Jan batches on time.

After these jumps we may slow.  But if we are under 205T on feb 1 I will be stunned.

I think we will be close to 212t on feb.

I also think this month could be a very rare Jan in that btc could move up over 10% in price.

[stompix]

how is it possible that a whooping 16EH came online now and not 10 days ago? but well, btc mining is crazy so you may never know!

Well, it was pretty obvious it was going to happen   Just a few days prior I've said :

Considering Christmas and New Year's Eve it's highly unlikely that some mining farm will suddenly bring to live a batch of 10k miners in the next epoch...

Best contrarian indicator ever, says it's not going to happen, proved wrong in days, I need to start throwing a few satoshis at horse racings, looks I'm nailing the opposite with quite the accuracy.

That aside I was curious to see how much of this is luck and if some serious spike happened to distort the projection but to me, it doesn't look like it,  looking at the number of blocks in 24h intervals we have 137 and 149 two days before the retargeting then 159,152,172,166 too well-timed <insert conspiracy theory here>

I tend to make my predictions a bit more flexible is that fact that BTC dominance is going higher and thus hashrate from other coins is migrating to bitcoin right now, so all the new hashrate we see now isn't exactly fresh hashrate, a good portion of it was already there, and when those other Sha256 coins start picking up, that hashrate will go back.

You could blame a bit of the growth on other sha256 coins but looking at bcash it has barely 1.5 exa, all its hashrate wouldn't be able to move the diff more than 1%, bsv went below 1 exa at the middle of December down to 750ph right now so even gathering all of of them it wouldn't amount to the change happening. As I said,  <insert conspiracy theory here>  

Anyhow, Happy New Year, and happy mining to everybody!

[mikeywith]

... looks I'm nailing the opposite with quite the accuracy.

Looks like we are on the same boat for this epoch.  

You could blame a bit of the growth on other sha256 coins but looking at bcash it has barely 1.5 exa, all its hashrate wouldn't be able to move the diff more than 1%...

I calculated the hashrate migration earlier on, looked into all SHA256 coins, and it seems like a little over 1EH migrated from those coins into BTC this epoch, so you are right, it's hardly 1%, but keep in mind 1EH is a truck full gears.

As it stands right now.

Current Pace:   109.9014%  (917 / 834.38 expected, 82.62 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   18670168558399.59
Current Difficulty:   18599593048299.49
Next Difficulty:   between 19858852719174 and 20444111712954
Next Difficulty Change:   between +6.7704% and +9.9170%
Previous Retarget:   last Monday at 2:01 AM  (-0.3780%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   January 9, 2021 at 7:44 PM  (in 6d 22h 39m 52s)
Next Retarget (latest):   January 10, 2021 at 4:44 AM  (in 7d 7h 39m 37s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 12d 17h 43m 42s and 13d 2h 43m 28s

The current pace is 9.9% which just double what I initially predicted, . still, however, many things can happen in 7 days, and with bitcoin price at 33k, anything can happen.

[philipma1957]

I never thought that I would see 33k this quick.

damn!  lets hope for more!

[windjc]

I don't think anyone is prepared for what is coming.  Mining may have a period of time in 2021 where its as profitable as its been since early 2013. Seems like most new equipment is backlogged. Apple bought all the N5 chips and Bitmain and other manufactures don't have access to chips for months.  Miners have a chance to stack sats over next 6-10 months. Hope you guys take advantage. Hope you don't sell cheap.

Bitcoin at Gold MC is not an if. Its only a when at this point.

[philipma1957]

I am projecting 120k in earnings  of which I would sell 50k and keep 70k.

Or it will all crash and burn.

[windjc]

Great because that $70k can become $1 million in less than 5 years.