It is 2020 time for a new diff thread.

[philipma1957]

So we peaked at about 18500 last night.

A sell off to about 17200

and we are now at 18000 or so.

diff is surging up 14%.

If price holds or goes up diff will go up.

My garage is no longer a mining spot as my summer power is 17 cents and add 2 cents for extra cooling.

In the winter price is 14 cents and subtract 4 cents for heat benefit so 10 cent net.

I am test running 2 units aBout 90 th pulling 5k-watts

This comes to 3600 kwatts a month or 360 usd for power.

At .13 cents a th this gear makes 11.70 a day or 351 a month.

So if a 10 cent place is right on the border of break even with 55 watt a th gear.

People will simply turn gear on.

[mikeywith]

So if a 10 cent place is right on the border of break even with 55 watt a th gear.

People will simply turn gear on.

Indeed, and my reference for this has always been the S9 and the equivalent to it, those gears make the majority of the idle/standby hashrate, once they go online the impact is huge.

Right now S9j at the default settings of 14.5th and 1350w makes about 70 cents profit per day, with custom firmware it can get a bit more efficient and can easily make 80 cents a day, that is $24 a month + the benefit of the heat since it's wintertime in most places that matter for mining, so a long story short, there are no more difficulty drops as long as Bitcoin price is above 15k.

[philipma1957]

Well the price drop is 19200 to 16800 over 15%

and the diff is moving up about 8.3%

there goes my nice profits.

Latest Block:   658761  (4 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   108.3518%  (1546 / 1426.83 expected, 119.17 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   16787779609932.66
Current Difficulty:   17596801059571.43
Next Difficulty:   between 18981124856720 and 19067339126348
Next Difficulty Change:   between +7.8669% and +8.3568%
Previous Retarget:   November 16, 2020 at 12:01 PM  (+4.8191%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Sunday at 10:07 AM  (in 3d 0h 17m 43s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Sunday at 11:31 AM  (in 3d 1h 42m 10s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 12d 22h 6m 3s and 12d 23h 30m 31s

I wonder if this will shut down some more gear if we drop to 14.5k?

[mikeywith]

We maintained almost the same pace for days which is good news as far as miners are concerned at least given how high prices climbed.

Current Pace:   108.5939%  (1941 / 1787.39 expected, 153.61 ahead)
Current Difficulty:   17596801059571.43
Next Difficulty:   between 19107494074211 and 19109767814545
Next Difficulty Change:   between +8.5850% and +8.5980%
Previous Retarget:   November 16, 2020 at 7:01 PM  (+4.8191%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Today at 4:25 PM  (in 0d 11h 30m 38s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Today at 4:28 PM  (in 0d 11h 32m 51s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 12d 21h 24m 34s and 12d 21h 26m 47s

So we sure are going back to the 19T region of difficulty in less than 20 hours, let's hope the next jump will be as reasonable so that we can stay profitable until the new year, January and February will have massive difficulty pumps, so buying gears now isn't something I would want to do.

So we had 8.8% spike in difficulty, bitcoin price is back to 18.5k levels, what is next except for up?

Next year is going to be interested, the Antracks should be ready by then, a lot of S19/S19pro and T19 will hit the market around Jan and Feb, the new S19j and S19j pro will start shipping around June/July, assuming BTC price doesn't tank, we can effortlessly hit a 50% difficulty increment in 2021.

Will leave the current status here to see how we do in the next few days.

Latest Block:   659374  (8 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   80.6470%  (143 / 177.32 expected, 34.32 behind)
Previous Difficulty:   17596801059571.43
Current Difficulty:   19157154724710.14
Next Difficulty:   between 15465367613664 and 18551198435250
Next Difficulty Change:   between -19.2711% and -3.1631%
Previous Retarget:   Yesterday at 3:39 PM  (+8.8673%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   December 14, 2020 at 2:41 AM  (in 13d 5h 28m 49s)
Next Retarget (latest):   December 17, 2020 at 12:17 AM  (in 16d 3h 4m 40s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 11h 1m 58s and 17d 8h 37m 50s

[favebook]

I haven't seen any official info about Antracks for power usage and hashrate, however I just read this and I am not sure where they got these numbers but they MUST be wrong:

The AntRack will house around a 1000 TH/s, in a modular, flexible and efficient design at 6000 to 7000 W

If S19j is doing 110TH at 3kW Antracks seem to be 5x more efficient than that, which is almost impossible. I do not remember a single generation of antminers that had such an improvement in efficiency. Just saw a post from mikeywith, hashingfarms seem to be missing one zero in their power usage. Rack Style Mining (AntRack).

The demand for miners in Serbia is crazy right now. Mostly due to bullish run we've had for path few months. New miners are hard to come by here. There is also a part of our country (Kosovo) where they do not have to pay electricity bills, so all old miners are being sent there. I'd say there's at least 600PH there running on free electricity.
That is almost 0.5% of total bitcoin hashrate. I am not 100% sure about the number (600PH) but I do know that at least 30 000 of S9 miners are running there and I do know a few people that are running newer ones there as well.

[Searing]

Why is there no electric costs in that part of Serbia? Are the miners simply doing like China in the rainy season and swapping 1/2 coins a month for free electricity per the

the month off of hydro/dams or something? How tough is it to get Bitcoin/Crypto Miners into Serbia? Is there a VAT or Tariffs or both? Man, I'd love to get in on such action,

but utterly clueless American and have heard bad stories about sending miners to far off places never to be heard from again to the 'supposed' far away data hall. I'd have

to be married to your Sister or something...hmmm....ya got a Sister? (damn, I miss BTC/Crypto mining..all the little bright LCDs and whirly fan noises) sigh!

(It's cold up here in the sports stadium in the bleaches watching you play...also 'splinters' in my ass..I miss my miner 'newbie' youth)

brad

[mikeywith]

The demand for miners in Serbia is crazy right now.

Not just in Serbia, it's everywhere, A few months back S9i was going for 30-35$ in China, now it's $75, which is just about 1 month to ROI for the free-power guys, so it makes sense why S9 price doubled.

If we take 20k out and keep going up, T9 and even S7 will come back to the market, the difficulty will, of course, go up but it can't beat the speed of the price which means all those old gears will become profitable again.

[HagssFIN]

Hmm.. I wonder if it actually would at the moment make sense for me to take my low power -fw A841 to my summer cottage and use it as a heater during winter time. 

[favebook]

Why is there no electric costs in that part of Serbia? Are the miners simply doing like China in the rainy season and swapping 1/2 coins a month for free electricity per the month off of hydro/dams or something? How tough is it to get Bitcoin/Crypto Miners into Serbia? Is there a VAT or Tariffs or both? Man, I'd love to get in on such action, but utterly clueless American and have heard bad stories about sending miners to far off places never to be heard from again to the 'supposed' far away data hall. I'd have to be married to your Sister or something...hmmm....ya got a Sister? (damn, I miss BTC/Crypto mining..all the little bright LCDs and whirly fan noises) sigh!

(It's cold up here in the sports stadium in the bleaches watching you play...also 'splinters' in my ass..I miss my miner 'newbie' youth)

brad

Without going much in politics, let's just say that part of Serbia is no man's land right now. Households are pulling power from electric company that is situated in other part of Serbia and they cannot enforce payments due to politics. And I am not sure why electric company is not cutting the power to that part but let's assume it's to not start a war.

I am not in that part nor will I ever think of going there. Free electricity is not worth for me THAT much.

Once politicians settle on something, electricity prices there will surely rise and probably even more than our usual tariff. This is just "temporary" situation which has been going on for 3 or more years now... Miners have started settling down there since 2018 and they are bringing in more and more gear by the day.

Yes, we do have to pay 20% VAT on importing any miner, and only companies can import 3 or more miners per time.

Individuals like me can only import 1-2 miners per order.

[mikeywith]

Hmm.. I wonder if it actually would at the moment make sense for me to take my low power -fw A841 to my summer cottage and use it as a heater during winter time. 

Avalon 841 does 13.6th and consumes 1290w in power, assuming you pay 8 cents per kwh (which is the highest I can think of) so you pay a total of 2.4$ per day, as of now it makes 1.9$ per day, so IF

Difficulty goes up 50% it makes, it makes $1.28, bitcoin price goes to 40k, it makes $2.65, BTC at 50k it makes $3.3, BTC at $4, even if difficulty goes 100% up, you still make 2.7$ per day, so if 8 cents becomes profitable with about 100w/th gears, I assume many miners will be so happy.

[philipma1957]

The diff never ceases to amaze me. We are -11.7 % granted only three days in but really low.

327 blocks made  vs 370 due.  Down 43 blocks.

[stompix]

The diff never ceases to amaze me...

You're not the only one,  I had to send a transaction and to get it confirmed fast, and when I looked at the fees I was like, wtf is wrong with that mempool, not to mention Viabtc managing to not mine a block for 10 hours on Monday.

@mikeywith, what I was just telling you, no drama happening anymore?

So, can somebody come with a plausible scenario why with the prices going up, people supposedly grabbing every piece of S9 they can find and plugging it in we're down right now at 89% pace compared to the normal? The site is pointing towards:

Next Difficulty:   between 17230786133317 and 18428884287538

Which is below the 17,596,801,059,571 of the last adjustment. Is this true then? Authorities shut off electricity to Bitcoin miners in China’s Yunnan province.

[philipma1957]

we were at 19.99 we dropped hard to 16.78 came back (17.59 then 19.15) and are now dropping

https://www.blockchain.com/charts/difficulty

Latest Block:   659634  (a few seconds ago)
Current Pace:   91.0860%  (403 / 442.44 expected, 39.44 behind)
Previous Difficulty:   17596801059571.43
Current Difficulty:   19157154724710.14
Next Difficulty:   between 17456592469145 and 18508353289552
Next Difficulty Change:   between -8.8769% and -3.3867%

Only explanations for this drop are retooling or government shut downs.

We have had really good prices so a drop makes no economic sense.

Fees are going up a bit

block...............  fees
659636           0.4903
659635           0.8918
659634           0.6499
659633           1.1592
659632           1.2509
659631           0.8632
659630           0.5937

Still not as high as they were back in the big October drop

found this article

https://crypto.co/technology/power-supply-for-yunnan-china-bitcoin-miners-shut-off-by-authorities/

[mikeywith]

Which is below the 17,596,801,059,571 of the last adjustment. Is this true then? Authorities shut off electricity to Bitcoin miners in China’s Yunnan province.

It is true, I initially thought these were fake news and clickbaits, but I confirmed from a Chinese miner, who happen to also send me this:



I sadly don't understand Mandarin, but he said almost ALL miners in Yunnan have been shut-down, now since Yunnan has a bit above 5% of China hashrate, that's at least 4% of the world total hashrate, the current pace is 94.6% so this could be it, however, this isn't the question, the question is, why aren't miners coming back online?

There are many theories I shall say, one that makes a lot of sense is that most miners are already online, the majority of the recent hashrate came from the old gears coming online, there were not many 19 series gears shipped, the world is facing chips shortage, chips price is at sky high and hard to get, there isn't any considerable amount of gears that are shut-down and waiting to come back online, nothing will happen until next year when S19s start to deliver, but even then, the difficulty might really not spike as much as we all think.

There are many reasons why I am not longer a perma bull in regards to difficulty, I think 2021 will be a great year for miners.

[stompix]

So, if that is true then maybe this one, picked from a topic in discussions: China is cracking down again on bitcoin mining, might be also true? I translated it with google translate after extracting it via OCR as the author just threw it in a topic and was gone after that, so I assumed it wasn't real and was just some random stuff people create to troll on Twitter and Reddit. But since you have some info about a region, then, who knows?

... the question is, why aren't miners coming back online?

And the golden answer would be, we don't really have a clue.

If gear wasn't picked up at 30$ per miner but prices have doubled it means somebody is buying, probably not enough gear, probably not yet with the buyer, maybe some miners in China cling to it in the hope they will get better tariffs again but I seriously doubt the real answer will be made just out of two or three situations. If there was gear available at 135exa during September it makes little sense for all that to not mine now, unless people that hold it can't mine right now and on top of that, no delivery since September? Bitmain unable to produce gear even for its own farms at the current revenue they are looking at?  As I said, I assume it was some sort of perfect storm where all the planets aligned at the most unexpected moment ever.

[mikeywith]

Here is an interesting read https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/84781/bulk-preorders-bitcoin-miners-spring-2021

This is the most important part:

We are still working hard to try to get more chip capacity from Samsung to satisfy more preorders for future stocks," the MicroBT spokesperson said in a WeChat message. Bitmain, on the other hand, sources silicon chips from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)

My guess is that both TSMC and Samsung don't see mining as a sustainable long-term business, so it would make sense that these silicon providers will favor supplying other businesses, Bitmain vs Apple Nvidia or AMD is a clear lost-competition, and then we have Intel who has now turned to TSMC.

Here is another interesting article https://www.supercryptonews.com/bitmain-introduces-smaller-5nm-chip-with-new-mining-rig/

In short: Mining manufacturers can't get their hands on enough chips - Great news to all miners who already have mining gears bought at decent prices, the difficulty should stay within the 20T-25T range up until mid-2021 unless bitcoin price goes past 40-50k whereby the average joe can fire up his S7 and S5 then we MAY go to 30-35T, and keep in mind that difficulty of 25T with Bitcoin price at 18-20k is much better than how things were post halving, so the majority of miners should be mining happily for months to come.

[MZ4]

[...]

Could you please give me more information about this place of Serbia? Thank you in advance.

[stompix]

Could you please give me more information about this place of Serbia? Thank you in advanced

He already mentioned it's Kosovo, and since you're a few hundred miles away you should know better than trying to build a business there, if there are two zones in Europe I would avoid at all costs those are Kosovo and Tiraspol, no point investing in a barrel that is already on fire. Besides, to answer two weeks later the who's paying the bill question a bit, we (the EU) were supposed to fund that, one thing I know is we paid for it, if the Serbs have received any, that's a different story.

Back to the difficulty I see were slowly back on track, if we take into account the start of a period which was a huge drop that is getting erased bit by bit I think there are high chances we end this one with close to zero.

Meanwhile, Titan Mining is paying for a lot of PR Releases, claiming to be "first enterprise-grade Bitcoin mining pool in North America", I would have ignored it if it weren't for one name, Jeff Garzik. Any takers?

[vapourminer]

Meanwhile, Titan Mining is paying for a lot of PR Releases, claiming to be "first enterprise-grade Bitcoin mining pool in North America", I would have ignored it if it weren't for one name, Jeff Garzik. Any takers?

From that PR release:

The inaugural partners of the Titan Pool include:

   CoinMint, operator of one of the world’s largest digital currency data centers; and
    Core Scientific, a leader in infrastructure and software solutions for Artificial Intelligence and blockchain.

core scientific.. isnt that where ohgodagirl aka the ethlargement pill..  kristy whatshername..  yes

“This is a powerful example of the value proof-of-work blockchains can provide,” said Kristy-Leigh Minehan, CTO of Core Scientific

eeeeeeewwww     but maybe shes not there now? i didnt see her on the about us -> team page: https://www.corescientific.com/team

but thats the same company

stay away is my take - everything she touched seemed to turn to a steaming stinky nasty pile of.. stuff.. after the ethlargemen pill thing from what i remember (admittedly i have not kept up).

[mikeywith]

@stompix , i skimmed through it real quick.

Greater efficiency — Bitcoin miners are in a global race to submit a block before any other pool or miner once solved. Based in North America and with nodes all over the world, Titan Pool members have a greater chance of submitting and propagating solved blocks in a timely manner, increasing their chances of earning rewards.

Bullshit, first of all most miners are on PPS, so a block is submitted or not isn't something they really care about, secondly and most importantly the majority of the nodes that matter is owned by Chinese pools, having your node in the U.S is nothing special, plus it is not like all these pools don't have servers in the U.S anyway.

Greater simplicity — The Titan Pool reduces jurisdictional and support issues for North American miners, who previously may have entered into potentially complicated, trans-national agreements.

I am not a north American miner, but what issues would one have with a Chinese pool that would urge him to migrate to an American mining pool?

The most important thing would be their fees, the rest is really just noise.

With that being said, I am happy to see non-Chinese mining pools joining the game, it is good for Bitcoin in general, after all, they can't be worse than the Antpool.