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

[stompix]

@mikeywith

I think it's a mixture of those two scenarios with poeple that ended up trapped in every kind of situation, with gear not profitable on anything other than low mode, facing increased energy prices, some might even experience problems with their electric company. Already here I've seen poeple talking about companies forcing poeple to abandon fixed contracts and go on a fluctuation plan so it might be possible some miners that were happy mining at 4-5 cents suddenly got a bill for 12. Probably the hashrate is a mess right now with poeple on one side cutting off miners and some others who have just received their gear putting it online desperate to get some mining done. And to make things worse, this China news comes now, but the pace is still at 99.2.

Speaking of October, that is going to be a pain in the ass.
We need a lot of power for the brikett presses and the grinders all month so I need to look carefully at the consumption to stay under the plan.

Oh, one more thing, since I know you have way better info on this
How is the price of used gear, is it finally going down? I haven't tracked the market for months so I don't know if it's flat or finally falling.
 

[1714969788]

1714969788

[1714969788]

1714969788

[mikeywith]

And to make things worse, this China news comes now, but the pace is still at 99.2.

A few hours before the news from China when BTC was at 44k, the pace was positive it was at about 101.5%, right now it's 99% flat, could be "luck doing it's thing" but I am leaning towards the fact that price drives those mining profiles as explained in my previous post.

How is the price of used gear, is it finally going down? I haven't tracked the market for months so I don't know if it's flat or finally falling.

Used gears prices in China fell by a tiny percentage in the past few weeks, nothing major, I believe this is based on the fact that right after the mining ban prices dipped a lot for a short while due to the increase in supply, and then in a few weeks prices started to rise due to demand, this crazy shift in the ratio of demand-supply ratio made the level of impact of bitcoin price on mining gears a lot less.

Usually, gear prices are determined by profitability,  lower diff / higher bitcoin prices = increase in gear prices, the exact opposite is also true, but recently due to the ban, you will find that gear prices go up with profitability going down or the opposite, so it will take a while for things to settle and go back to normal.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

<snip> And to make things worse, this China news comes now, but the pace is still at 99.2. <snip>

For those who missed it, the news is that China has banned ALL crypto trading. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58678907 and https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-24/china-deems-all-crypto-related-transactions-illegal-in-crackdown

That includes Chinese citizens using foreign exchanges.

Crypto-related transactions will be considered illicit financial activity, including services provided by off-shore exchanges, the People’s Bank of China said on its website. It added that cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Tether, are not fiat currency and cannot be circulated.

Along with that, authorities are on the hunt for illegal mining https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-16/china-said-to-intensify-hunt-for-cryptocurrency-miners-in-hiding

Interesting that (at least so far) the news seems to have not affected the exchange rate for BTC at all. If anything, it went up a hair vs yesterday.  

[stompix]

Oh, wait a minute...or a bit more....

Does this mean that bitmain and inno will have to switch to fiat-only payments?
That if they will be even allowed to sell gear from inside China?

The J-Pro at 100th are for sale at 9300 with the same 3 days advertised shipping

Checking back my messages, two weeks ago,1700$ discount for 17days:

S19j Pro for $11k, 3 days shipping, directly from bitmain, still not sold out!

And at the payment info:

1. USDT(TRC20), USDT(ERC20), USDC and USD are accepted in this batch.

This is similar to the latest batches so no surprise here yet, same for Inno as it still has the BTC option.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

An interesting thing to consider is how this will affect miner production in China. Bitmain, Inosilicon and MicroBt are not only Chinese-owned but also do all their assembly of miners in China (ja BM also assembles some in Malaysia but that's moot for this) which raises the question: How do they do burn-in testing?

Burn-in requires mining and there are good odds are that during testing at least *some* of the miners will hit a block. If they hit a block they get paid or they might be in a PPS pool where they always get paid. Um, either way that is now illegal in China...

Canaan I'm not sure about. While their headquarters is in Beijing I *think* their assembly operations is in Hong Kong. If so then due to HK's 'Special Administration' status they might still be ok. Canaan still currently has 958.80THs pointed at KanoPool.

My guess is that BM, Inno, & Canaan et al may end up having to divest themselves of all direct production of miners, startup new independent companies headquartered outside of China and then license their designs to said companies for the miners to be produced and sold from outside of China.

[mikeywith]

My guess is that BM, Inno, & Canaan et al may end up having to divest themselves of all direct production of miners, startup new independent companies headquartered outside of China and then license their designs to said companies for the miners to be produced and sold from outside of China.

My guess is that nothing is going to change for Bitmain and the other mining manufacturers, they might stop accepting crypto payments to comply with the new regulations, but I highly doubt that they will be forced to leave China, the Chinese government only has a problem with crypto and mining, I don't see why would they want to shut down mining gears manufacturers that feed tens of thousands of Chinese.

But if what you think actually ends up happening, it will be good for the difficulty I suppose, the making of these gears anywhere outside of China mainland will without a doubt make them a lot more expensive.

As for burn-in, maybe they can use a bogus Bitcoin address such as "1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE" and they will rest assured that nobody can spend it.

[Biffa]

Wonder what affect it will have on pools in china? They take crypto payments as a percentage cut from every miner. Some have pretty obvious links to exchanges and some also exchange crypto types from one to the other.

[philipma1957]

as seen below the diff has risen as we all know the diff was as high as 25.01. so any diff rise right now could be old gear.

My partners and I have $40,000 in gear on order with bitmain due to ship in Nov. So we do have some concerns.

This is a complex issue since other coins use non ASICs ie gpu's will this cause a simple shift to gpu mining of other coins?


diff went up a bit

https://www.bitrawr.com/difficulty-estimator ...

Latest Block:   702139  (33 minutes ago)

Current Pace:   102.3391%  (572 / 558.93 expected, 13.07 ahead)

Previous Difficulty:   18415156832118.24                            
Current Difficulty:   18997641161758.95                            
Next Difficulty:   between 19247869567062 and 19518733273055
Next Difficulty Change:   between +1.3172% and +2.7429%
Previous Retarget:   last Tuesday at 10:12 AM  (+3.1631%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   October 5, 2021 at 2:31 AM  (in 9d 19h 9m 56s)
Next Retarget (latest):   October 5, 2021 at 6:28 AM  (in 9d 23h 6m 21s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 16h 19m 12s and 13d 20h 15m 36s
...

Hmmm maybe this is a move to help asic builders.

We all know USA is taxing the shit out of asic gear  a 10000 dollar s19 ends up being 13000 and defending on the state yo live in add uo to 1300 more .

I am in NJ. so the 10000 becomes 3000 more for trump tax or maybe Biden tax and NJ sales tax is 7 percent or 700
10000
  3000
    700
13700

make bitmain 'leave' china

that 10000 just adds nj sales tax and is  10910

So by making the building of gear not legal in china   all that import tax vanishes.

China could simply  let it be built in China on the down low ship it to a nearby country such as

Vietnam and boom no import tax.

Just saying a good way to get back at the USA

It could ship to Hanoi as they have a nice port.

The fun continues

BTC is 42,400 at the moment.

[stompix]

Burn-in requires mining and there are good odds are that during testing at least *some* of the miners will hit a block. If they hit a block they get paid or they might be in a PPS pool where they always get paid. Um, either way that is now illegal in China...

Testnet? Private-owned secret coin?

As for the manufacturing, they can always ship the miners not fully completed to another country, put 4 more screws there and export the finished product and everyone is happy. Bitmain as it keeps selling stuff, china still keeps the majority of workers and revenue, the country involved as it gets a few bucks more, and miners overseas as they avoid tax. Trump might not be happy with his tax being avoided but, he's long gone.

Some have pretty obvious links to exchanges and some also exchange crypto types from one to the other.

I think it will all depend on how much the government and local authorities want to catch them, if they're serious about them in 24 hours all is gone if they are simply banning it as in having a motive to arrest someone they don't like things will go on as they have till now.

But, this is good for the difficulty 
If this "ban" doesn't brings the price down to 30k I'm pretty happy with it.
The guys at riot waiting for 100k miners might have some really bad dreams for a few weeks

[mikeywith]

Current Pace:   102.3391%  (572 / 558.93 expected, 13.07 ahead)

We dropped

Current Pace:   99.8402%  (757 / 758.21 expected, 1.21 behind)

It does seem like some miners can't do with current prices which is great news, I am not expecting a drop by any means, but not going up much is probably all that I could hope for from now on.

I am in NJ. so the 10000 becomes 3000 more for trump tax or maybe Biden tax and NJ sales tax is 7 percent or 700
10000
  3000
    700
13700


Vietnam and boom no import tax.

I am afraid the cost of the mining gear will be higher than or equal to the tax reduction you get, I highly doubt Bitmain can afford to sell you the same gear for the same price outside of China, the 10k gear in China will most likely cost them more to make which will be enough to offset the tax thing, moving outside of China won't make mining gears Cheaper in the U.S, it will just make them more expensive for the rest of the world.

[philipma1957]

Current Pace:   102.3391%  (572 / 558.93 expected, 13.07 ahead)

We dropped

Current Pace:   99.8402%  (757 / 758.21 expected, 1.21 behind)

It does seem like some miners can't do with current prices which is great news, I am not expecting a drop by any means, but not going up much is probably all that I could hope for from now on.

I am in NJ. so the 10000 becomes 3000 more for trump tax or maybe Biden tax and NJ sales tax is 7 percent or 700
10000
  3000
    700
13700


Vietnam and boom no import tax.

I am afraid the cost of the mining gear will be higher than or equal to the tax reduction you get, I highly doubt Bitmain can afford to sell you the same gear for the same price outside of China, the 10k gear in China will most likely cost them more to make which will be enough to offset the tax thing, moving outside of China won't make mining gears Cheaper in the U.S, it will just make them more expensive for the rest of the world.

s19 sold at 2500 when we got the first one

it is marked up to 9000 or so to reflect the profits it makes.

I know they are making a huge amount of $$$ on a $9000 since it used to sell at $2500

So the question is how much did the $9000 unit cost them to build same as the $2500 unit

not likely I expect they had to over pay a bit for the parts.

Also the $9000 unit is a 100th unit the $2500  unit was 110th

I do agree it will cost them a bit more to build it out of china then inside china.

but they already have a huge markup at the 9000 price note 9300 price not 9000

 https://shop.bitmain.com/product/detail?pid=00020210920124332765Ffe211v80644

[kano]

...
s19 sold at 2500 when we got the first one

it is marked up to 9000 or so to reflect the profits it makes.

I know they are making a huge amount of $$$ on a $9000 since it used to sell at $2500

So the question is how much did the $9000 unit cost them to build same as the $2500 unit

not likely I expect they had to over pay a bit for the parts.
...

The issue to understand here is that for an extremely long time BM has sold miners at around the projected return on them without any costs running them. Nothing to do with the production costs.

i.e. BM mines (and cloudmines) with their miners and also sells them for the future BTC they expect to make (or probably more) so they are effectively getting all the blocks the miners sold 'would' mine in the future, right now in advance with no running costs.

So basically you'd never have any idea of the cost of production based on the sell price.

The majority of the hardware in the miner would probably be less than $100, but someone with current experience in wafer production would have to chime in with the BM13xx mining chip costs on top of that.

[philipma1957]

...
s19 sold at 2500 when we got the first one

it is marked up to 9000 or so to reflect the profits it makes.

I know they are making a huge amount of $$$ on a $9000 since it used to sell at $2500

So the question is how much did the $9000 unit cost them to build same as the $2500 unit

not likely I expect they had to over pay a bit for the parts.
...

The issue to understand here is that for an extremely long time BM has sold miners at around the projected return on them without any costs running them. Nothing to do with the production costs.

i.e. BM mines (and cloudmines) with their miners and also sells them for the future BTC they expect to make (or probably more) so they are effectively getting all the blocks the miners sold 'would' mine in the future, right now in advance with no running costs.

So basically you'd never have any idea of the cost of production based on the sell price.

The majority of the hardware in the miner would probably be less than $100, but someone with current experience in wafer production would have to chime in with the BM13xx mining chip costs on top of that.

Yes I agree which is why building the gear in vietnam or Malaysia to avoid the Chinese 'ban' likely won't make the gear cost a lot more. They ratchet the price of gear up when mining is good and they drop it when mining is bad. So I suspect that the 2500 usd price when mining was bad still made $$ for them. Since they simply could have held the gear in storage till mining got better. Based on the s17 which is similar to the s19 in physical size. They got well under 2 k with it during tougher mining times.

It will be interesting to see if all miners are made in "vietnam" in the next six months. As the Trump 'tax' is now the biden 'tax'

or should I say the 'usa' tax on china



btw the diff moves on at 100.29 which is okay by me

we are 897 blocks in and 1119 to go.

[alh]

We are now well past the halfway point of the current epoch:

Latest Block:   702609  (5 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   102.0264%  (1042 / 1021.30 expected, 20.7 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   18415156832118.24                           
Current Difficulty:   18997641161758.95                           
Next Difficulty:   between 19323066024175 and 19424381844000
Next Difficulty Change:   between +1.7130% and +2.2463%
Previous Retarget:   September 21, 2021 at 9:12 AM  (+3.1631%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   October 5, 2021 at 2:32 AM  (in 6d 15h 6m 33s)
Next Retarget (latest):   October 5, 2021 at 4:05 AM  (in 6d 16h 40m 0s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 17h 19m 35s and 13d 18h 53m 3s

Since BTC price is currently $41,629 that doesn't seem to be any driving factor here. I think as North America cools down, we'll see some dormant miners come back to life for the winter.

[mikeywith]

Since BTC price is currently $41,629 that doesn't seem to be any driving factor here.

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", one could argue that IF price was indeed not a factor, we would be at +4% or so instead of just +2%, of course, there is no way to prove the second theory is correct either, but as it stands, I believe price plays a major rule in suppressing the difficulty rise.

I think as North America cools down, we'll see some dormant miners come back to life for the winter.

That's a good point, when those folks start mining in the winter, power factor and BTC price will make less sense to them, so they will likely just mine regardless of everything as long as it's cold outside just to heart their houses, however, thankfully, I highly doubt any major farm is waiting for the winter, it's just a few guys with probably 1-2 gear each, so they won't have a huge impact on difficulty IMO.

With that said, winter will surely help difficulty rise, in many warm/hot areas mining gears have been downclocked to pass the wave heats of the summer, I have some good hashrate on standby waiting for the cold weather, and then you have the overclockers who push their gears to the limit when it gets cold, so in general, winter will help increase difficulty on most levels.

[stompix]

In this weekend we're hitting 0 Celsius in a nearby resort, not that high up (around 700m) so cooling will not be a problem pretty soon for anything north of the Alps. But electricity prices scare the *** out of me, here we rely on coal and gas, prices are through the roof, the oil barrel has jumped to 75$, home miners are done for at the current rates, unless you have brand new gear it makes no sense to even use them for heating, not with that noise. Not that Europe was ever to be considered a hub for mining but I didn't expect things to go downhill that fast, let's see how long before even US home mining will be dead.

The pace is 1.7% above the normal, price is hopping around if things keep like this there will be no major from the last period, I see a quote of 28 cents per TH, well damn..on average in August seems like I was getting >~35....good things don't last long.
I'm turning bearish again! 

[mikeywith]

The pace is 1.7% above the normal,

Back to almost 1% flat as I type

Latest Block:   702777  (6 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   100.9908%  (1210 / 1198.13 expected, 11.87 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   18415156832118.24                            
Current Difficulty:   18997641161758.95                            
Next Difficulty:   between 19185044265251 and 19221117362525
Next Difficulty Change:   between +0.9865% and +1.1763%
Previous Retarget:   September 21, 2021 at 4:12 PM  (+3.1631%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Tuesday at 12:54 PM  (in 5d 13h 0m 55s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Tuesday at 1:26 PM  (in 5d 13h 32m 32s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 20h 42m 12s and 13d 21h 13m 49s

I see a quote of 28 cents per TH, well damn..on average in August seems like I was getting >~35....good things don't last long.
I'm turning bearish again!  

When was the last time you were bullish?

Anyway, we got some updates from Chinese vendors.

To all who may concern:

First, Along with the Chinese government's ban on mining and crypto trading, the domestic market has been very unstable recently. we can still accept crypto as the payment option, but usdt price to USD rate has changed , 1 USDT=0.95 USD only now.  As a result , the miner price in usdt/usdc will be higher than normal USD price, same for all the other usdt-related coins.  so bank transfer is much preferred right now.

Second,  for Mid-Autumn festival reason , many goods we shipped several days ago still stuck at airport, especially the DDP UPS shipping line. thanks for the kind patience

Third,  Our Chinese National holidays is coming from 1st to 7th, Oct, during which, we can still take orders,  but not able to ship anything out. Tomorrow is the last working day for shipping couriers before holiday,  if you have any order in , pls come to us earlier before holiday starts.

Fourth, China is now forcing their citizens and companies to ration power. Factories have been majorly affected by this power rationing.Many factories have now stopped working entirely or they have dramatically cut back on their labor force and hours of operation from 6 days per week down to only 2-3 days per week. If you need to buy anything from China, it is my opinion that you should do so earlier than later because it will take a much longer time to manufacture items in the coming weeks and months. especially for future orders.


Kind regards

For anyone who is already positioned, that is just some good news, alongside the gas price increase and all, that's all good news to those who are not affected.

[philipma1957]

The pace is 1.7% above the normal,

Back to almost 1% flat as I type

Latest Block:   702777  (6 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   100.9908%  (1210 / 1198.13 expected, 11.87 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   18415156832118.24                            
Current Difficulty:   18997641161758.95                            
Next Difficulty:   between 19185044265251 and 19221117362525
Next Difficulty Change:   between +0.9865% and +1.1763%
Previous Retarget:   September 21, 2021 at 4:12 PM  (+3.1631%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Tuesday at 12:54 PM  (in 5d 13h 0m 55s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Tuesday at 1:26 PM  (in 5d 13h 32m 32s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 20h 42m 12s and 13d 21h 13m 49s

I see a quote of 28 cents per TH, well damn..on average in August seems like I was getting >~35....good things don't last long.
I'm turning bearish again!  

When was the last time you were bullish?

Anyway, we got some updates from Chinese vendors.

To all who may concern:

First, Along with the Chinese government's ban on mining and crypto trading, the domestic market has been very unstable recently. we can still accept crypto as the payment option, but usdt price to USD rate has changed , 1 USDT=0.95 USD only now.  As a result , the miner price in usdt/usdc will be higher than normal USD price, same for all the other usdt-related coins.  so bank transfer is much preferred right now.

Second,  for Mid-Autumn festival reason , many goods we shipped several days ago still stuck at airport, especially the DDP UPS shipping line. thanks for the kind patience

Third,  Our Chinese National holidays is coming from 1st to 7th, Oct, during which, we can still take orders,  but not able to ship anything out. Tomorrow is the last working day for shipping couriers before holiday,  if you have any order in , pls come to us earlier before holiday starts.

Fourth, China is now forcing their citizens and companies to ration power. Factories have been majorly affected by this power rationing.Many factories have now stopped working entirely or they have dramatically cut back on their labor force and hours of operation from 6 days per week down to only 2-3 days per week. If you need to buy anything from China, it is my opinion that you should do so earlier than later because it will take a much longer time to manufacture items in the coming weeks and months. especially for future orders.


Kind regards

For anyone who is already positioned, that is just some good news, alongside the gas price increase and all, that's all good news to those who are not affected.

so based on the bolded section we should see a drop in hashrate from now until at least Oct 8 or 9.

So if we see a 10% drop over that time China still had a lot of gear online.
If the drop is 5% China was reduced quite a bit and did not have much online.

Of course if there is a gain this was a pack of lies or a lot of gear already off line is deploying outside China.

The good thing is the mad arms race (hashrate race is accurate) seems to be put off for a while.

[stompix]

When was the last time you were bullish?

When I didn't own one hash, remember how enthusiastic I was then, the hashrate will reach 300, 400 exa, who cared?!
I'm turning bearish and bullish keeping my bear form, prom panda to brown, there is a slight difference but there is one

When it comes to bitcoin price I'm more relaxed, a bump now, a bump there, I can afford to wait, with this there is always the pressure of something that might happen, or even if things go well at the end of the year, finishing the sheets and finding out keeping the coin would have been better. Fortunately, this starting to look less and less possible every day.

For anyone who is already positioned, that is just some good news, alongside the gas price increase and all, that's all good news to those who are not affected.

Am I a bad man for hoping Bitmain to close shop too (including manufacturing) for a while?
So manufacturing might be down, transport might be delayed, exchange rates are making gear more expensive.I'm turning bullish!
Besides, I'm keeping an eye on Foundry and Mara pools, nothing extraordinary happening so the BMC alliance isn't getting gear either.

[mikeywith]

When I didn't own one hash, remember how enthusiastic I was then, the hashrate will reach 300, 400 exa, who cared?!
I'm turning bearish and bullish keeping my bear form, prom panda to brown, there is a slight difference but there is one

The pressure of being a miner is a lot harder to endure compared to just holding some bitcoin in a cold wallet, even for folks like me who don't care about the power rate, I always have to worry about hash boards dying, the farm catching fire or anything else that can go wrong at any given second.

Mining however is a lot more fun, and in days like this when bitcoin isn't making any price gains, mining outperforms holding, it's just how it always been.

With that said, I am more bearish than bullish regarding the mining industry as a whole, I believe the past couple of months were the best we will ever get, the average profitability of 2022 will be a lot less than 2021, I think we got to the top of the mountain and going forward will only be a decline in profitability.