I'm not sure if there's a connection, even a weak one, between S19 prices and the difficulty increasing...
If you are asking this question based on the interpretation of my post then that wasn't really what I referred to, I meant that IF price makes new highs in the coming months, the difficulty won't be to able catch up, gear profitability will skyrocket, S19s will go to 13k-15k, and what would be around the peak of the cycle.
To answer your question, in a normal world and with everything being equal, there is no doubt that the price of mining gears affects the difficulty, if I can buy S19 pro for $10, I will be able to double the difficulty by the next epoch.
... but people getting loans on miners doesn't sound smart to me unless it's long term for a couple of years (still I am not sure how a lease for that long can be justified by mining rewards).
You are right, it's far from smart, but most people I have seen don't always make smart decisions, a few months ago I was telling my friends who have free power to buy S9s for $40-60, many of them are buying them now for $300, some will buy them for $500 if bitcoin price hits 60-80k, eventually people will pay even more of an S9, a lot more of the more efficient gears.
Usually, when we get close to the peak, those "dreames" will look back at those who entered before them, and say " If they doubled their money in 3 months, I should be able to do the same", so they all start buying gears, bitcoin, anything crypto-related, right around that time, smart miners have already ROIed and smart money is getting ready to leave and wait for the bear to go home, the dreamers will be stuck with their expensive gears which will drop 50-90% in price long before they manage to ROI.
It's amazing to see how quickly the difficulty reacts when someone turns on their mining farm. It had barely been 12 hours and the pace is already up by about 4%.
There are many more factors involved, luck, auto-profit switching between the different alts or Jihan wu testing a few "S21s" in his basement
. Tt doesn't make sense that 4% or even 2% of the hashrate simply went missing in 12 hours, they were probably never there in the first place and the pace is effected by the reasons mentioned and more, this is likely the case especially when the price has not changed, which it didn't, the price range for this epoch has been almost static.
you spoke too soon we are now over 6%
You should have not repeated the same mistake.
Phill, I think we are even now for the prediction awards, as much as I love to win every bet, this topic is an execption, I would be more than happy to lose if you were the one predicting lower difficulty increments instead.
