2021, time for a new general & diff speculation thread...

[NotFuzzyWarm]

using a 300mm wafer with 5x5mm die w/0.25mm scribe lines & default edge loss and excellent 97% good yield produces 2,248 usable dies per that yield calculator.

Given the still short good-enough-for-production age of 7-5nm tech and increasing defect rate to 5 per sqcm still gives 88% yield and 2,017 usable chips per wafer. Not bad but do remember that calculator and most others do not predict speed performance which can vary quite widely. The calculators only account for hard faults.

Regarding how much real estate the chip has: Like gpu chips that is because they DO contain a massive amount of transistors used as cores. Unlike gpu's, mining ASIC cores are far more simple as they cannot be programmed on-the-fly - that translates into fewer connections to now unneeded different intermediate circuits. Space that would have been used by the intermediate circuits now goes to more identical cores so just a few litho masks needed to create and connect the logic circuits. For some reason for the T15 chips, 256 cores per chip rings a bell... Odds are the s17 & 19 pack in even more. Good part about that is that a chip can have many dead cores from a hard defect but the chip is still usable, just lower number of cores cycling per clock.

End result is why I can see the chips being what I consider amazingly inexpensive. I can also see why TSMC and other Foundries have now given the <7nm mining chips a lower priority over much more complex and ergo higher value chips. Not exactly fair considering that from what I've seen, since around start of the 16nm node miner chips have been rather excellent mass-production testbeds for the Foundries. Yeah, Apple et al paid for the research and equipment used to do it but making the simple and very fault tolerant miner chips gave TSMC and Samsung the process expertise to use those nodes to produce more complex and more valuable chips en-masse.

That said, there is still very limited production capacity for chips using the still at cutting edge <7nm nodes. That will not change for several years. Only 1 company makes the EUV stepper/scanners used for the photolithography and they are very massive and complex beasts that cannot be mass produced. The handfull of foundries that can produce the chips - Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and Global all need them. I'll have to find the article but as I recall they can make only a couple dozen per year,

[philipma1957]

So, for the s17 chip (bm1397AD), package dimensions are 8x8 mm, die looks like about 5mm x 5mm. Still seems like a lot of wafer real estate for a chip you can buy for $6. S19 chips are going for about $25.

https://i.imgur.com/rfb8W4v.jpg

mmm 25  a chip  and 2000 or so a wafer is 50 k a wafer.

[mikeywith]

So, for the s17 chip (bm1397AD), package dimensions are 8x8 mm.

So it's the exact same size as the S9 chip, maybe they just used the same format since there is no real benefit in increasing the chip size?

Still seems like a lot of wafer real estate for a chip you can buy for $6.

Keep in mind that this $6 chip burns 17 watts to hash at 0.34th a day, that's only 9 cents a day before the power bill, the BM1398BB (S19 chip) makes even less sense at $25.

In other news, just sent a wire transfer to my mortgage company to pay off my house using coin I cashed out at $25k late December

I would have loved to sell higher but it is what it is and I can live with that. No matter what I still have a tidy sum of BTC left for a retirement nest egg plus no more mortgage to pay off

That's great news, I am really happy for you. When people say bitcoin is financial freedom they only think we call it that because you can spend it without anybody's permission, but it does more than that, it increases your wealth, it's a great hedge against the unlimited amount of money banks can make out of thin air.

That said, there is still very limited production capacity for chips using the still at cutting edge <7nm nodes. That will not change for several years. Only 1 company makes the EUV stepper/scanners used for the photolithography and they are very massive and complex beasts that cannot be mass produced.

If you had to put this in simple English terms, what is the likely hood of bitmain to be able to obtian 200,000,000 7nm from TMSC in 2021? that means roughly a 1 million S19 or 100EH worth of hash power, if that is possible then difficulty will double, if that isn't possible - it won't, and of course this assumes that getting the chips is the only bottleneck bitmain faces.

[wndsnb]

If you had to put this in simple English terms, what is the likely hood of bitmain to be able to obtian 200,000,000 7nm from TMSC in 2021? that means roughly a 1 million S19 or 100EH worth of hash power, if that is possible then difficulty will double, if that isn't possible - it won't, and of course this assumes that getting the chips is the only bottleneck bitmain faces.

So that would be about 100,000 wafers. A few articles in early 2020 I found indicated that TSMCs 7nm capacity is about 140,000 wafers per month.

TSMC's 7nm production capacity is fully booked. Relief may only come when Apple migrates to 5nm in 2H'2020. TSMC's 7nm capacity will increase to 140,000 wpm in 2H'2020. By order proportion, the ranking of customers using 7nm will be re-shuffled. AMD's orders are set to double, replacing Apple as the largest customer [for 7nm]. Huawei's HiSilicon and Qualcomm are similar by order proportion.

If that capacity is accurate, then Bitmain would have needed to secure 6% of TSMCs total production capacity for the whole year to get their 100,000 wafers worth of chips. So possible I guess, but with the Apple and AMD fighting over the 7nm capacity, don't know what scraps are left.

[philipma1957]

Well if coins go higher, 41.4k as I type, a bidding war could happen.

[wndsnb]

I think the manufacturing capacity is already booked ... so I don't think there's anything left to buy or bid on.

I suppose if the price goes high enough they'll just start manufacturing old tech again ... If the price goes up to 100k and the diff can't go up that far, they could just start selling S9s again at a profit.... Maybe even take the S9,S11, or S15 chip and put it in the S19 form factor.

[HagssFIN]

Funny and cool thing for us Finns,
Finland gets richer because of the btc price rise,
since the Finnish Customs is finally now going to sell the btc they have confiscated during narcotic crime investigation  
https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finnish_customs_plans_to_cash_in_on_confiscated_bitcoin/11726858

[mikeywith]

If that capacity is accurate, then Bitmain would have needed to secure 6% of TSMCs total production capacity for the whole year to get their 100,000 wafers worth of chips. So possible I guess, but with the Apple and AMD fighting over the 7nm capacity, don't know what scraps are left.

So it isn't as bad I thought it would be, even though 6% is a lot and hardly unlikely, we still have Samsung that supplies MicroBT with it's 8nm chips, they don't get a huge portion of it but still.

If the price goes up to 100k and the diff can't go up that far, they could just start selling S9s again at a profit.... Maybe even take the S9,S11, or S15 chip and put it in the S19 form factor.

I mentioned this before, I thought they could back to the 16nm chips which should be more available than the 7nm, but then when I think about it, it might not make sense, you see timing is everything, while BTC has a potential of going past 100k for this bull run, chances are it won't remain above it for long enough, so those crazy times of plugging an S9 on a 10cent per Khw yields profit won't last for more than 2-3 months,  by the time Bitmain is done with its 7nm orders from T19 to S19 pro, it will be too late.

Mining gear makers have another problem, every gear they make today brings the value of the next gear they make tomorrow down, this theory is 100% accurate unless someone thinks that price can keep going up forever without going into years of bear markets.

Looking at the profitability chart, it's has been forever in a downtrend, even with prices at 40k now it was more profitable to mine back in June 2019 when the price was at about 10k, so in the long run, the difficulty goes up more than the price does, yes price goes up a lot faster, but difficulty goes up slow and steady and it doesn't do a 70% drop every other year, so we can safely ignore the price factor in the long run and rest assured that difficulty is only going to go up, which makes mining bitcoin more difficult, each gear makes less bitcoin and thus worth less the further we move.

I also think that these manufacturers are well aware of the market cycles and that their sales will only be hot when there is a massive bull market like the one we have now, so I doubt that they will push their production capacity a lot further since eventually, there will be times where bitmain mining gears are spot orders with next day delivery, listed for very cheap and nobody wants to buy them.

[philipma1957]

As I miner soon to be 64 years old I can see the hand writing on the wall. I have seen wealth cycles

2024  = 3.125
2028  = 1.5625
2032  = 0.78125
2036  = 0.390625   I think that at this point the lets recycle 'frozen' coins movement will start.

2040
2044
2048

It would have been nice if they did the ½ ing every 5 or 6 years, but they did not.

Do I really think coins reach 1 million usd  maybe but at current diff. depending on your gear's efficiency 41k is not better than 2019 July at 13k price.

If you were all s9's the July 2019 profits are better then today if you are still all s9's and paying 5 cents a k-watt.

right now the market cap for btc is around 730 billion.  There is enough wealth to push it to 1.8 trillion or 100k a coin. the top ten stocks are worth more then 9 trillion so  pulling 1 trillion away from them could happen this year.

I do not see enough wealth to push it to 18 trillion or 1 million a coin any time soon.

I am simply sitting back and enjoying the ride for now.

[mikeywith]

2028  = 1.5625

perhaps that's when miners start to feel the heat, I mean even with 6.25BTC mining has been really tough, it's only recently when BTC price went up exponentially -  those who held coins made some nice profit, the few months following the halving were the worst months for many miners, rewards cut in half, the difficulty didn't drop, and the price wasn't going up, I can only imagine that many miners capitulated at that point in time.

When rewards are 3.125BTC mining would still be somehow okay to many miners, even if the price was below 100-200k, but when the rewards are at 1.5625 BTC price needs to be beyond those levels for mining to stay as decentralized, if not, then only those with free power will be able to mine at a profit.

With the being said, there might come times when bitcoin holders will need to mine for no profit just to keep the blockchain running the way it is, sort of like how many people run full nodes now without any financial benefits, but I guess it's too early to judge since we don't know how will the mining fees become like since they will be more important than the block reward soon.

I do not see enough wealth to push it to 18 trillion or 1 million a coin any time soon.

I agree with the logic, 1M before we both (and perhaps most of the people that are in this discussion) are dead isn't a logical expectation IMO, but I don't think the term "wealth" is accurate here, money, as we know it, is merely a digit in a centralized database which is owned by the federal bank and the like, 18 trillion is a lot compared to what does it weight against real-world products and services today, but with the never-ending printing, one day it will sound and be small enough.

[windjc]

[...]

Humbly disagree. We have 3 resistances left before $1M per coin.  $56k or 1 Trillion MC approx.  100k (six figures).  MC of gold or $640k per BTC. After that, inflation rates themselves can get us to $1M. I'd say there's a least a 50/50 chance of $1M during the next bull cycle in about 4-5 years. If not that one, definitely the one after. But I know, you like to be bearish

This is based on the assumption that this current bull cycle takes us to between $100k and $288k.

[stompix]

Some really nice detective work on the chip capacity, I think we could get an idea on how much it can grow if all the stars align, but what it is possible without that, is something different we can only guess.

Probably the outcome will not change even with a bidding war as I don't think bitmain and the others have a real chance, revenue for miners might have quadrupled, expenses barely went up for the same portion of reward and they could also pass an increase in chip price to the demanding customers. Can bitmain raise the price by 1000$? it will sell all the gear on pre-order with no problem, while I doubt Xiaomi would afford to pass to the consumer even a 10$ price increase. But in the end, even if they could win a price war I doubt they will win a negotiation war, there is a trade war going on, there is a change of power in the US and nobody has a clue he things will go so I doubt not only TMSC but others too will nor risk to drop longterm clients for a Chinese company that tomorrow might not be here. That being said, I doubt also we will see anywhere soon a 2x, but, I don't doubt we will get there in the end. And even to the 4x.   (me and my predictions)

With the being said, there might come times when bitcoin holders will need to mine for no profit just to keep the blockchain running the way it is, sort of like how many people run full nodes now without any financial benefits, but I guess it's too early to judge since we don't know how will the mining fees become like since they will be more important than the block reward soon.

This was of my theories too, in the end in order to protect a trillion in assets large bagholder will need to subsidize mining in order to keep the chain secure, but how this will affect decentralization and what war for control it might trigger, paints a really ugly picture,  but we're far from that right now, fortunately or unfortunately, god knows which.

Meanwhile, we're heading for:

Latest Block:   665248  (4 minutes ago)
Next Difficulty Change:   between +11.1427% and +11.1456%

Just 4 hours to go so this will be for the start of the year. As for what's coming next, if we go another 11% or we drop -5% it wouldn't amaze me one bit! +25% or minus 10%, that's another story.

[philipma1957]

Latest Block:   665305  (8 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   101.9286%  (26 / 25.51 expected, 0.49 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   18599593048299.49
Current Difficulty:   20607418304385.63
Next Difficulty:   between 20630503918790 and 21548314402346
Next Difficulty Change:   between +0.1120% and +4.5658%
Previous Retarget:   Today at 10:18 AM  (+10.7950%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   January 23, 2021 at 3:56 AM  (in 13d 13h 23m 28s)
Next Retarget (latest):   January 23, 2021 at 10:08 AM  (in 13d 19h 35m 8s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 17h 38m 33s and 13d 23h 50m 13s

10.759% jump

at the moment we are under 2% for new jump

and coins are over 40k

my coinbase balance is scary

Wallet balance: 0.01631455 BTC ($666.65)

[alh]

Your coinbase balance will now be a little less scary (as is mine). As of 2:54PM CT (in the USA):

BTC: $37482.

I don't know if this is transient or not, it's just a bit surprising given the relentless trend upward of the last 3 weeks or so.

[mikeywith]

I'd say there's a least a 50/50 chance of $1M during the next bull cycle in about 4-5 years. If not that one, definitely the one after. But I know, you like to be bearish

I don't like to be bearish, I "hope for the best and expect the worst" I also learned to lower my expectations with the things I have no control over, I am heavily invested in bitcoin with both money and time, it's for my best interest that bitcoin goes to 1M or even 10M before I leave this world, but I don't see that happening simply because I believe bitcoin follows logarithmic growth rather than an exponential one, and this makes me think that 1M bitcoin will need at least 10-15 full cycles, that adds up to about 50 years, I don't know how old you are, but I certainly won't live for another 50 years.

[NotATether]

Funny and cool thing for us Finns,
Finland gets richer because of the btc price rise,
since the Finnish Customs is finally now going to sell the btc they have confiscated during narcotic crime investigation  
https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finnish_customs_plans_to_cash_in_on_confiscated_bitcoin/11726858

Off topic but I propose the USA should stop HODLing their $1billion+ worth of BTC confiscated from the Silk Road wallet guy and other crime syndicates and use it to pay off part of its massive $27 billion dollar debt (Christ, look how fast that total is increasing!  )

So that would be about 100,000 wafers. A few articles in early 2020 I found indicated that TSMCs 7nm capacity is about 140,000 wafers per month.

TSMC's 7nm production capacity is fully booked. Relief may only come when Apple migrates to 5nm in 2H'2020. TSMC's 7nm capacity will increase to 140,000 wpm in 2H'2020. By order proportion, the ranking of customers using 7nm will be re-shuffled. AMD's orders are set to double, replacing Apple as the largest customer [for 7nm]. Huawei's HiSilicon and Qualcomm are similar by order proportion.

If that capacity is accurate, then Bitmain would have needed to secure 6% of TSMCs total production capacity for the whole year to get their 100,000 wafers worth of chips. So possible I guess, but with the Apple and AMD fighting over the 7nm capacity, don't know what scraps are left.

Chip scarcity is one of the reasons orders for Bitmain miners are stalling right? I really can't wait for Apple and AMD to make new 5nm CPU chips and move their production over to that. Then it should be easy for Bitmain to secure a 6% share of 7nm wafers since their R&D won't catch up as quickly. I don't see this happening earlier than 2022 though, it looks like 2021 will see TSMC's 7nm availability to clients completely full.

I wonder what's the state of Samsung's 7nm capacity though. Not that it's going to help Bitmain since they already entered into contracts with TSMC, and Samsung may be getting a huge slice of capacity taken by Intel in the future.

[stompix]

Off topic but I propose the USA should stop HODLing their $1billion+ worth of BTC confiscated from the Silk Road wallet guy and other crime syndicates and use it to pay off part of its massive $27 billion dollar debt (Christ, look how fast that total is increasing!  )

Those are trillions not billions. 

Meanwhile, the estimate says between 2,5% and 10% but the current pace is 10%, so how is the script approximating the outcomeas it makes little sense to see it go down to let's say 3% if we're already that far away in front!
And I doubt it knows how to compute bitmain and Cannan shipments into the equation 

Next Difficulty Change:   between +2.5094% and +10.2373%
Current Pace:   109.9646%  (286 / 260.08 expected, 25.92 ahead)

So, ready for another 10% increase? And this time, no offense taken, but don't tell me this one is also because of gears being switched to turbo mode or another batch of 1 million S9 suddenly getting back alive, for god's sake just how many of those would be out here?
Somebody is shipping gear and somebody is plugging it in, new gear!

this makes me think that 1M bitcoin will need at least 10-15 full cycles, that adds up to about 50 years, I don't know how old you are, but I certainly won't live for another 50 years.

If I'm really lucky and pushing the top of life expectancy in my country I might barely make it another 40, but even so, I'm on the same page with you, not everybody can wait for decades, I'm always telling people who keep saying hold, hold, hold, what's better $100k now or $100 million when you're too old to be able to enjoy anything? I'm no Mr. Burns.

[philipma1957]

my uncle pete died at 93.  he was the oldest male on either side of my family.

So I will be 64 this Jan 2021.

This gives me 29 or less years.

So I don't worry past the next ten.

That said Jan was a big delivery date. For S19 pros.

And I did think we were going to get 3 x 10% jumps.

It would be good to see them along with stable coin prices in the 30k range.

But as we all know it is BTC and you never know.

I do feel 3x 10% diff jumps  and prices at 30k to 35k means a strong rally fall of 2021

[mikeywith]

... so how is the script approximating the outcomeas it makes little sense to see it go down to let's say 3% if we're already that far away in front!

Well I would argue it's the opposite, simply because the earlier we are in the epoch the sensitive the change is, 10% has more likely to fall than to go up, this is where the expected lower value of 2.5% comes from, but anyway, we are still very, very early, let's wait for a couple of days before judging this epoch, we know this month will be the first month of s19 series and some M30/31 gears, but it's still the 11th, not sure if some batches are delivered and going online, I'll check with some of the folks who are expecting gears this month to see where things stand.

[philipma1957]

I expected three 10% jumps in a row. But quite a few people  made a case for that not happening. We are up 7%. we were up 11%.  I say that drop could be clockers lowering some old school gear due to the price drop.  Which means if coins go back to 42k we will go close to 10-11%. time will tell.  It also means s19pros and m30's are getting delivered.

Latest Block:   665650  (8 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   107.6461%  (371 / 344.65 expected, 26.35 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   18599593048299.49
Current Difficulty:   20607418304385.63
Next Difficulty:   between 21121018654819 and 22224571906883
Next Difficulty Change:   between +2.4923% and +7.8474%
Previous Retarget:   last Saturday at 10:18 AM  (+10.7950%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   January 22, 2021 at 10:26 AM  (in 10d 14h 41m 33s)
Next Retarget (latest):   January 23, 2021 at 2:19 AM  (in 11d 6h 34m 58s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 0h 8m 1s and 13d 16h 1m 27s