Anybody else watching Mtgox Live?

[Crypt_Current]

S3052 said if it doesn't break 2.8 (which it hasn't yet), it should fall well below 2.

Who's going short from here?

[phorensic]

I'm watching Mtgox live and I see nothing that would get the price up to 2.8.  In fact I can't believe it hasn't gone below $2.0 yet.  Well, it did for a millisecond earlier.

[Crypt_Current]

If that wall gets pulled out, it'll be in free fall

[Jonathan Ryan Owens]

There's around 7200 coins mined a day to consider going forward, owned by many miners worldwide. Very probably those coins will start to enter the market soon, as we are coming toward the end of the month. Because of electric bills, and a lack of bounce back in the BTCUSD price, many will have no choice but to sell and cover mining costs.

Some of those coins will end up short, but with only 1:2.5 leverage and non-USD positions exposed to the underlying value loss when it comes to margin requirements, even at 10% the volatility is going to wipe some of those guys out as well.

Healthy $1 - $1.25 range here we come. GPU mining en mass is going the way of the dinosaur. Does anyone want/need really cheap rendering farms? You're about to get your chance with the coming fire sales.

[Crypt_Current]

There's around 7200 coins mined a day to consider going forward, owned by many miners worldwide. Very probably those coins will start to enter the market soon, as we are coming toward the end of the month. Because of electric bills, and a lack of bounce back in the BTCUSD price, many will have no choice but to sell and cover mining costs.

Some of those coins will end up short, but with only 1:2.5 leverage and non-USD positions exposed to the underlying value loss when it comes to margin requirements, even at 10% the volatility is going to wipe some of those guys out as well.

Healthy $1 - $1.25 range here we come. GPU mining en mass is going the way of the dinosaur. Does anyone want/need really cheap rendering farms? You're about to get your chance with the coming fire sales.

I mine, and I sell only when I think I can buy back more coins cheaper relatively soon.

Also, 5x leverage is still available on bitcoinica, you just have to contact zhou and ask for it.  10x coming soon.

[Crypt_Current]

There's around 7200 coins mined a day to consider going forward, owned by many miners worldwide. Very probably those coins will start to enter the market soon, as we are coming toward the end of the month. Because of electric bills, and a lack of bounce back in the BTCUSD price, many will have no choice but to sell and cover mining costs.

Some of those coins will end up short, but with only 1:2.5 leverage and non-USD positions exposed to the underlying value loss when it comes to margin requirements, even at 10% the volatility is going to wipe some of those guys out as well.

Healthy $1 - $1.25 range here we come. GPU mining en mass is going the way of the dinosaur. Does anyone want/need really cheap rendering farms? You're about to get your chance with the coming fire sales.

Also, as long as I'm in the living situation I'm in, I will NEVER stop mining.   

[phorensic]

Healthy $1 - $1.25 range here we come. GPU mining en mass is going the way of the dinosaur. Does anyone want/need really cheap rendering farms? You're about to get your chance with the coming fire sales.

Actually, mining power has found an equalization point in the last two difficulty changes.  Nothing like the huge drops the 4 changes before it.

[Jonathan Ryan Owens]

Healthy $1 - $1.25 range here we come. GPU mining en mass is going the way of the dinosaur. Does anyone want/need really cheap rendering farms? You're about to get your chance with the coming fire sales.

Actually, mining power has found an equalization point in the last two difficulty changes.  Nothing like the huge drops the 4 changes before it.

Most miners are operating at an unsustainable loss. The appearance of equilibrium from the past 2 drops isn't indicative of anything more than a race to the bottom. The miners that will quit first are those with high electric costs / MH/s, and it will be a rapid drop. Just because the network didn't take a dive on previous drops does not mean that $1 - $1.5 isn't a breaking point. It most certainly is. Overall, the network is underwater on electric costs by about 30% of daily revenue. Over a month, that equals about $200k in loss overall. That is most certainly not going to continue.

[Edward50]

I think most people have been holding off selling when the price dropped to around $3.00. But now that it has been dropping slowly from that price point, I think it will be very soon that people will start to dump their coins.

[proudhon]

I think most people have been holding off selling when the price dropped to around $3.00. But now that it has been dropping slowly from that price point, I think it will be very soon that people will start to dump their coins.

The next drop will be interesting to watch.  I don't think there's any question that we're heading for $1.xx coins.

[Crypt_Current]

I think most people have been holding off selling when the price dropped to around $3.00. But now that it has been dropping slowly from that price point, I think it will be very soon that people will start to dump their coins.

The next drop will be interesting to watch.  I don't think there's any question that we're heading for $1.xx coins.

Hey I thought (MOSTLY FROM YOUR NEW PIC) that you are a bull now

[proudhon]

I think most people have been holding off selling when the price dropped to around $3.00. But now that it has been dropping slowly from that price point, I think it will be very soon that people will start to dump their coins.

The next drop will be interesting to watch.  I don't think there's any question that we're heading for $1.xx coins.

Hey I thought (MOSTLY FROM YOUR NEW PIC) that you are a bull now

Oh, yeah, <cough>, right, <cough>.  Damn, I hope the price goes up.  Er, I mean, the price is going to go up, up, up!  Get ready for it!

[evoorhees]

Because of electric bills, and a lack of bounce back in the BTCUSD price, many will have no choice but to sell and cover mining costs.

I see this statement often, but I question the validity of it. Many people who mine have jobs, and money is fungible. Just because they have an electric bill, and that bill is higher with mining, it doesn't mean they will necessarily sell mined coins to pay that bill. Personally, mining almost doubled my electric bill, but I've never once sold a mined coin. I simply pay the bill with USD and keep the valuable stuff.

[Jonathan Ryan Owens]

Because of electric bills, and a lack of bounce back in the BTCUSD price, many will have no choice but to sell and cover mining costs.

I see this statement often, but I question the validity of it. Many people who mine have jobs, and money is fungible. Just because they have an electric bill, and that bill is higher with mining, it doesn't mean they will necessarily sell mined coins to pay that bill. Personally, mining almost doubled my electric bill, but I've never once sold a mined coin. I simply pay the bill with USD and keep the valuable stuff.

There's a mistake people make when correlating the outside world with their own version of reality. While you may have the resources to pay 2x your regular electric bill, and while you may see bitcoin as valuable in the long term and choose to hoard, there's far more people who have sunk costs and ongoing bills to pay, often on borrowed money, who will be exiting from mining altogether within the next few weeks. It's going to be a good test of Bitcoin to see how well it fares with such a steep drop off in network hashing power.

[bittenbob]

There's around 7200 coins mined a day to consider going forward, owned by many miners worldwide. Very probably those coins will start to enter the market soon, as we are coming toward the end of the month. Because of electric bills, and a lack of bounce back in the BTCUSD price, many will have no choice but to sell and cover mining costs.

Some of those coins will end up short, but with only 1:2.5 leverage and non-USD positions exposed to the underlying value loss when it comes to margin requirements, even at 10% the volatility is going to wipe some of those guys out as well.

Healthy $1 - $1.25 range here we come. GPU mining en mass is going the way of the dinosaur. Does anyone want/need really cheap rendering farms? You're about to get your chance with the coming fire sales.

If GPU mining en masse becomes a thing of the past given current BTC prices then Bitcoin is dead. There is no way anyone would shell out the big bucks for a FPGA board if there is no return. With remaining FPGA boards doing the only mining then a 51% attack becomes a very real problem and then prices will be near zero. Maintaining a minimum $1-2 BTC is essential for the health of the Bitcoin community and centralizing the power in the hands of a few miners would go against everything Bitcoin stands for. This should not be anything anyone should be wishing for.

[trogdorjw73]

Ding ding ding! We have a winner! I suppose we could characterize JRO's statement as him merely wanting BTC to fail, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Really, we should want prices *above* $3, because at that point mining is viable on a scale that would make hacking BTC very difficult. We're nearly there, but only because we have a lot of GPU miners; if they disappear and CPU mining comes back, BTC is dead.

[bittenbob]

Ding ding ding! We have a winner! I suppose we could characterize JRO's statement as him merely wanting BTC to fail, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Really, we should want prices *above* $3, because at that point mining is viable on a scale that would make hacking BTC very difficult. We're nearly there, but only because we have a lot of GPU miners; if they disappear and CPU mining comes back, BTC is dead.

This is why I said in other posts that prices should really be around $3/BTC. Let's hope people start to regain faith in BTC again and start pushing the price more in that direction. You might even wonder if this effort to bring BTC so low is an attempt by some government who dislikes it to bring the currency to halt (ie USA). For those of you cheering for $1 BTC you need to give your heads a shake. Considering the reward per block doesnt drop until 2013 there is a long way to go before the number of bitcoins entering the market starts to drop and theoretically should drive the price up for that reason. If you care about bitcoins you should be encouraging everyone to buy them right now.

On another but possibly related note has there been any discussion on what the effect of the botnet viruses for BTC mining would be and what the hackers purpose with those coins could be?

[RyNinDaCleM]

We're nearly there, but only because we have a lot of GPU miners; if they disappear and CPU mining comes back, BTC is dead.

This will never happen! A CPU uses over half the power (i7 @130w+)and hashes at something around 1/30th the speed. It would be so inefficient it would be pointless.

[ElectricMucus]

The whole mining viability thing for a particular price is bogus. We financed a gpu arms race that's all there is to it.
Security isn't an issue at the current project stage. An attack by any highly funded entity is in the realm of paranoia.  

If any attack were to be attempted it would be a media campaign which is less expensive than a technical attack at this point. As for people investing in power hungry rigs too late: That's the rules of the game, in a gamble someone's gonna pay.

[Cluster2k]

The beautiful design of bitcoin ensures that people dropping out of GPU mining wouldn't kill bitcoin.  The block generation rate remains the same regardless of how many people are mining or what they're mining with.  The only significant danger is miners dropping out en masse in an instant, with a large number of blocks to go before the next difficulty reset.  Unless bitcoin's price drops well under $1 from today's levels I don't really see that happening.  There are enough people mining with 'free' or stolen electricity to keep it going anyway.