It is 2020 time for a new diff thread.

[philipma1957]

Yeah down by 6, up by 10, down by 10  just a lot of variance early on.

Meanwhile:

Coins are solid prices of:

 10,329  BTC     109.28 eh    16.32 cents a th
      469  BCH        4.84 eh    17.00 cents a th
      363  BSV         3.54 eh    16.35 cents a th

https://explorer.viawallet.com/halving

these are from link above:
BTC ½ ing in 89 days
BCH ½ ing in 55 days
BSV ½ ing in 57 days

Like it or not  all three are needed to be looked at  to understand  diff numbers since all three use sha-256.

[citronick]

1 have small 1ph farm hosted somewhere in China at 6c.

Almost all of the miners at 30ths ASICS.

With 14k insight with the increasing diff and halving - should i keep and addon, OR sell/replace to better ASICS 60ths or wait for 5nm ASICS.

When price eventually hits 100k and above..... I think even an S7 probably will be worth powering up.

Am I making sense?

[TheYankeesWin!]

I would only buy  s17pro gear don't buy a lot.

1 ph is  1000 x .16 = 160 a day

If it is 70 watt gear and fully paid off  it burns 101 usd a day  your profit is 60 a day  or 1800 a month  about 5000-5400 so you can buy 3-5 s17pros from now till 1/2 ing .

Buy 3 is low risk  Buy 5 is medium risk.

You are close to Malaysia you should be able to get s17 pros...   you want them because they can go from 42th to 57th via stock firmware  also  from 1500 watt to 2750 watt via stock firmware.  You can add gear more aggressive the 3-5 s17pro  from now til ½ .  But your setup  should work  doing the above.

Tough call  ,but with 3nm  and 5nm mentioned  adding a few s17pros should be good for you to do.

A big crash  you don't get killed just shut off the 30th and mine the 3-5 s17pros.
A middle move  the 30th gear turns a very small profit and the s17pros make a profit.
A big run up   the old gear make money along with the new gear.

Lots more to think of  how much power do you have.  If you have 70kwatts  burning now and can go to 140kwatts  adding some s17 pros  should be good. Then if new gear comes out cheap s17pros could occur.  Thats why  3-5 over nex three months is better then 10-15 right now.

[mikeywith]

At zero

Those who have free power can simply buy used S9s for 80$ and call it a day but that won't happen.

Speaking from personal experience as most of you know I have 0 cents power rate in some places, but that is pretty limited quota, and the same goes to everyone else with super cheap or free power.

For 30kw of free power i can only have about 22*s9s, even if i mange to ROI before the halving, the profit i will potentially make every month will not be enough to cover the time i spend monitoring all of them.

There might be newbies who don't go through the numbers the way I do, but i am pretty sure that those who do will most likely stop buying 16nm gears unless bitcoin price does something out of the ordinary like reaching 30k in a week.

With that said, looking at the new generation miners, even with free power, ROI is not tempting enough with current numbers, we know 50% drop in mining rewards is coming, we have no clue how will difficulty or price will react to that, with only 90 days left and 5nm might hit the marker at any point, it takes balls of steel to actually buy those expensive gears now only to get them two months later.

[philipma1957]

Right now no asic builder offers fast ship.  You need a reseller's gear.  The s17 pro  in malaysia is more then 1500 from a reseller.  I would argue a guy like you or citronick should buy 1 or 2  maybe even 3 to 5.  Depends on your available power and how many lessor units you have now.

Ie if you are clearing 160 usd a day  that is 4800 a month buying 3-5 s17pros from a reseller is okay.  Buying 20 s17pros is not.

If you are clearing 60usd a day that is 1800 a month buying 1-3 s17pros from a local reseller is okay buying 5-10 is not.

In both cases I am assuming you have spare power to add the gear.  I also assume your power is 4-6 cents.

If you are 1-3 cents You can play waiting game.

Heck I have 3 s9's  costing me 145 a month to run  they earn me 185-200 a month  I just let them mine and at the end of each month I decide if I will go pay host for a month more mining. So far they have been with the host for 16 months and made some profit each and every month.

[mikeywith]

Phill, just like bitcoin, buying mining gears whenever one and their grandmother is doing so has always been a terrible idea  , I have enough gears at the moment, I am not taking a lot of risk by selling all gears and Hodling only BTC/USD, but I am also not going to trade my BTC for mining gears at current prices since the halving is certain and 5nm is certain- I rather gamble on gears' prices dropping hard right after the halving, that might be the best time for me to actually go balls deep in mining gears.

When price eventually hits 100k and above..... I think even an S7 probably will be worth powering up.

Am I making sense?

If that happens next month, you make sense, if that takes 8 years you don't, more halvings to come, more efficient gears are probably going to show up, by the time we hit 100k and if things keep growing slow and steady, chances of S7 becoming profitable are slim to nothing. But hey, this is BTC after all.

[philipma1957]

You are preaching to the choir.  there is no way  you should go all in right now.

But dipping your foot into the water  (1 or 2 s17pros )  should not be all in.

My self I pushed hard back in OCT-NOV.

I ordered 10,200 in  bitmain gear using paypal to pay it.

I have until June 2 to pay it off.  I owe under 4500.
I will have it paid by April 1.

I then will own 1.4ph in btc gear
I will own 11gh in ltc gear
and a few gpu rigs  with buysolar

along with 7 cpu rigs.

[mikeywith]

My foot is in the water already, got S17 pro up and running for a while now, got T17e, T17, and s17+, I have yet to try the T17+ and the normal version of S17, the main purpose of getting these different gears is to see which one is most durable in terms of heat, in 3-4 months from now temps here will get to as high as 40 degrees celsius (104F) or even slightly higher sometimes. whatever runs cooler will be my favorite gear to stack, I am also thinking (and of course hopping) that prices then will fall and I will be able to buy more of them.

Here are the latest prices in Malaysia:

S17 pro 50th = $1550
S17 pro 53th = $1650
S17 pro 56th = $1730

In the U.S:

S17 pro 56th = $2000

These are bulk prices, so it would be a bit higher for smaller quantities, 50th = 8.5$ daily before power bill or 255$ a month at current prices, $1550+$150 for shipping = $1700 / $255 = 6.6 months, at 6 cents per kWh $1700/(5.5*30) = 10 months to ROI.

with the halving approaching and if you don't have free power and BTC price does not go to the moon, you looking at over a year to actually ROI a gear like that, so don't dip your foot too deep

[philipma1957]

The pros when working have tremendous range in power usage around 1500 to 2750 watts. They can be nice if things go south.  But like you say one or two to start is okay.

More on topic coins floating at 10,150 to 10,300

diff is about -2%   but only 358 blocks in and 1658 to go.

Innosilicon still has delays in shipping due to corona-v

Notice: Due to the coronavirus disease, the logistics and transportation are affected to some extent. Delivery will be arranged based on actual situation, and shall be subjected to our official website.

issues with pangolin miner shipping

Latest Delivery Arrangement during Coronavirus Outbreak

Laurent
1 day ago Updated
Follow
Due to the effect of Coronavirus, we (Pangolinminer) will continue closing our office and warehouse in China. In this period, we will not collect or deliver any repair packages. We will inform you on pangolinminer.com once we get back to normal.

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and understanding.

Team PangolinMiner

[stompix]

The coronavirus shut down a farm?

Wow, I admit at first I was saying like, no, that's not possible but it seems like you were right again. Second thing, I can confirm that getting things from China is slowing down, my father just got a letter from one of our suppliers that he is unable to deliver the merchandise since the company in China told him they can's ship anything from their normal port and will have to reroute it, it's going to take some extra 14 days.

More possible shutdowns, the time needed for the actual shipment, customs, time for the actual installation, all things are lining up for a flat hashrate till halving.
Who would have believed this 3 months ago...

Those who have free power can simply buy used S9s for 80$ and call it a day but that won't happen.

Speaking from personal experience as most of you know I have 0 cents power rate in some places, but that is pretty limited quota, and the same goes to everyone else with super cheap or free power.

Of course, I was talking about an extreme situation where by luck you have all the stars aligned. But, don't you think that the current situation with cheap old gear (which can still be plugged in a home) is more advantageous to bring back the truly decentralized home mining that we were discussing in another thread? A cheap miner (what's 80$) it consumes as much as the air conditioning and it does pay something back....

The days into this epoch... flat!!!

Next Difficulty Change:    between -0.0007% and -0.0003%

[mikeywith]

Of course, I was talking about an extreme situation where by luck you have all the stars aligned.

Aligned enough to hit a block solo?

But, don't you think that the current situation with cheap old gear (which can still be plugged in a home) is more advantageous to bring back the truly decentralized home mining that we were discussing in another thread?
A cheap miner (what's 80$) it consumes as much as the air conditioning and it does pay something back....

a great point Indeed, when I talked about home miners I did not imagine a situation similar to this, I was imagining that new gears would be geared towards home miners but turns out that old gears could also be used at home, especially with geat ideas like Phill s9 heater version (can't find the link) and
thierry4wd amazing idea of altering the miner's case by making a hole on each side of the miner to allow for better cooling with much less noise, and with the right firmware, you can get the setting to as low as 70-75w/th, which is good enough for many home miners given the price of the gear is below 100$ and the miner consumes less than 1kw.

[philipma1957]

S-9 1 board mod

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5160194.0

which was riffed on and improved by thierry4wd

here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5213936.0

I did some work on a whatsminer m10

here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5221489.0

very good numbers 2 boards on low speed

14.0th at 845 watts or 60 watts a th.

this now earns 2.25 a day say 21 kwatts  at 5 cent power = 1.05

2.25-1.05 = 1.20 net

I think a lot of very interesting moves have happened here.

3 ½ ing's  for sha-256

BTC Halving Countdown
87 days :12 hours : 59 mins

Estimated time to halve:
2020-05-12
Current block reward:
12.5
Block reward after halving :
6.25
Remaining blocks until halving:
12,608
Block generation time:
10min
Blocks left to mine (BTC):
2,782,600

BCH Halving Countdown
53 days : 12 hours : 29 mins

Estimated time to halve:
2020-04-08
Current block reward:
12.5
Block reward after halving :
6.25
Remaining blocks until halving:
7,712
Block generation time:
10min
Blocks left to mine (BCH):
2,721,400

BSV Halving Countdown
55 days : 01 hours : 09mins

Estimated time to halve:
2020-04-10
Current block reward:
12.5
Block reward after halving :
6.25
Remaining blocks until halving:
7,929
Block generation time:
10min
Blocks left to mine (BSV):
2,724,112.5

I see a shake up  in 46 to 60 days  due to BSV and BCH ½ ings.

[mikeywith]

I see a shake up  in 46 to 60 days  due to BSV and BCH ½ ings.

Let us do some calculations, I love Maths.

BCH hashrate =4.8E (Current and highest in 12 months)
BSV hashrate =3.7E (Current and highest in 12 months)
BTC hashrate =106.2E (Current and NOT highest)

4.8+3.7= 8.5E

8.5E is 8% of 106.2E

In the grand scheme of things, nobody actually mines those two coins, so even if they were to vanish for whatever reason, and every gear pointed towards those coins joins the Bitcoin blockchain, it's just a matter of 8% added to the network, 106.2E + 8.5E = 114.7E, Bitcoin has done higher than that just a month ago.

So let's assume the following, those coin's profitably drops by half while their prices do nothing, half the hashrate migrates to BTC, and then what? I really see nothing coming up in 60 days, it's the 87 days that actually matter.

[wndsnb]

I don't see BCH and BSV halvings making a very noticeable impact. Like mikeywith said, we're only talking 8.5eh. And how much of that is directly controlled by Roger Ver/Jihan Wu and Craig Wright and co? They are both essentially centralized since they are pretty much controlled by a few players. I wonder if now that Jihan is back in charge Bitmain is going to start requiring payment in BCH again when they release the 5nm miners...

Maybe we'll see a little diff bump.

Looks like we're in another diff plateau. Still in slightly negative territory.

[HagssFIN]

I think it might be better for bitcoin if Micree Zhan wins Jihan Wu in the Bitmain power battle.

[philipma1957]

the two combined at 8 to 9 %  if they don't rise in price   they will create a 4.5% shift over night in btc or miners will lose money sticking with them.

If we are to believe corona-v has stopped shipping for all of feb we will be flat -2 to +1 this jump which means we are good until march 11

Latest Block:   617654  (6 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   97.3167%  (759 / 779.93 expected, 20.93 behind)
Current Difficulty:   15546745765529.37XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Next Difficulty:   between 15150782817924 and 15302299781188
Next Difficulty Change:   between -2.5469% and -1.5723%
Previous Retarget:   last Tuesday at 1:59 AM
Next Retarget (earliest):   February 25, 2020 at 7:39 AM  (in 8d 19h 40m 29s)
Next Retarget (latest):   February 25, 2020 at 11:15 AM  (in 8d 23h 16m 35s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 5h 39m 46s and 14d 9h 15m 52s

lets say -1 on feb 25 next jump is march 10  it may be -1 to +1

gear finally ships and we get the better jump march 24

but  bch and bsv  could do pre ½ ing price rise causing a 4 or 5 % drop in btc mining and no new gear in site.

Last week the   earning spread was 16 for 100 th btc and as high as 18 for 100 th bsv

if this grows to a big enough number  btc could stay flat longer.  even when gear ships.

look at these numbers

btc  15.31 100th
bch  14.21 100th
bsv   13.75 100th

that is a big shift

it was

btc   16.25 100th
bch   17.25 100th
bsv   18.03  100th

yeah they are 9% of all the hash

but if    btc is 91%

they can  shift btc 3% up or down  which is 6% difference.

This could be pretty cool to figure out.

[TheYankeesWin!]

I guess the corona-virus has really slowed up shipping of new gear.  This is not how I want the difficulty to stay stable.  I do not see any info to show it stopping at this time.

Here are a few websites with some info:

https://www.coronavirusupdate.com/
https://www.coronavirusupdate.com/coronavirus-impact-map

Shipping delays below

newer one is here: https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/crypto-miner-makers-bitmain-innosilicon-and-microbt-delay-deliveries-due-to-coronavirus/

older is here: https://www.coindesk.com/coronavirus-controls-in-china-are-delaying-crypto-miner-deliveries-firms-say

Latest Block:   618097  (7 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   99.3323%  (1202 / 1210.08 expected, 8.08 behind)
Current Difficulty:   15546745765529.37XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Next Difficulty:   between 15456891290144 and 15471469343371
Next Difficulty Change:   between -0.5780% and -0.4842%
Previous Retarget:   February 11, 2020 at 1:59 AM
Next Retarget (earliest):   Tuesday at 3:52 AM  (in 5d 16h 12m 37s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Tuesday at 4:14 AM  (in 5d 16h 34m 42s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 1h 53m 24s and 14d 2h 15m 30s

There are 814 blocks to go.

Price has crawled back up to 10,100 usd +

[philipma1957]

Not sure WTF is happening in China but this articles says Apple to lose billions in sales


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/coronavirus-could-cost-apple-billions-in-missed-sales-analysts-say/ar-BB108y24


I have to figure Apple has more pull to be able to stay open then asic builders.  Yet Apple can not get goods to ship.


Hmmm I wonder if this corona-v slow down of building and shipping is China trying to manipulate the trump tax trade war.

Fuck you Trump and your import tax we got no gear to ship anyway.

could it be?

[mikeywith]

Not sure WTF is happening in China but this articles says Apple to lose billions in sales
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/coronavirus-could-cost-apple-billions-in-missed-sales-analysts-say/ar-BB108y24

I think the main reason Apple will lose money because of the decrease in demand for its products rather than the production itself, China is a major market and once they stop buying, Apple's value drops, look at crude oil prices, they dropped from $68 to $52 in no time, simply because China is the largest buyer for Crude oil, Apple's revenue in China was about 45 billion dollars last year alone, that's a big hit for them.

As far as mining is concerned, I don't know about other companies, but Bitmain seems to be operating normally, I get replies to my emails normally, they shipped the s17+ control board faster than I thought, the slow in production and the long waiting periods might have been caused by the virus, but it has been this way since the last year-end, maybe not as bad as today, but most certainly nothing too strange.

Bitmain should ship S17+ and T17+ next month, let's see how they do.

Next Difficulty Change:   between -0.2224% and -0.1906%
Previous Retarget:   February 11, 2020 at 8:59 AM
Next Retarget (earliest):   Tuesday at 9:53 AM  (in 5d 7h 34m 42s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Tuesday at 10:02 AM  (in 5d 7h 43m 41s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 0h 53m 32s and 14d 1h 2m 31s

Price fell hard $10,170 to $9,290 in less than an hour, currently back at $9599.

[philipma1957]

That is almost 10% in an hour  that is  big $$$   you know if we do a drop to 8500  over the next 24 hours I think the diff takes a  strong hit.  8500  is pretty hurtful to all 80 watt gear.