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

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Btw. why was the production cost question reported and deleted?

T'wasn't me who did it. Despite being a self-moderated thread sometimes mods feel left out? Plus it *is* a combined general speculation & Diff thread. Maybe they felt it could be a stand-alone question?

I do think that production cost of a miner does fit it in with diff simply because cost is one of the things that determines how much gear is sold which in turn affects diff.

[philipma1957]

in 2014 or 2015 spondoolies and bitmain had a price war cutting gear prices a lot and making a ton of sp20 units along with s-5 units/. Diff shot up and coin price dropped. It took a long time for it to settle.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Having survived the brief dip to $28.7k so far it's looking like the low to mid 30k's is going to be our new 'normal' exchange rate for a while. Me likey a lot.

Decent price swings up & down from there will make for a good trading environment. Hell, if this keeps up I might even start doing some buy low/sell high trades which would be new for me as so far all my BTC has been earned through mining.

[mikeywith]

Decent price swings up & down from there will make for a good trading environment. Hell, if this keeps up I might even start doing some buy low/sell high trades which would be new for me as so far all my BTC has been earned through mining.

I'd say "there's more to this than meets the eye" when it comes to trading, this is how bull/bear traps are generally created, the market gives you an illusion of some levels where you start to think they can't be broken and the moment you make your entry, kaboom.

As it stands bitcoin has been making lower highs and lower lows since the 8th of this month, in the A,B,C of chart analysis this suggests more movement to the downside and at least one lower leg below the 28k is more likely, I do believe that this correcting is nothing but markets paving their way for more upside movement, which I believe to happen in a few months, new highs, new glory for a couple of months and then we enter another bear market for a year or two, the bear market is the time when people should be buying mining gears not the top of a bull cycle.

As a result of this price "prediction", I expect gears prices to surge even higher in the next few months, S19 would probably be going for 13-15k, the difficulty will sure rise almost every epoch from now until the end of the year, around July the difficulty spikes will be larger due to the monsoons in China, people will be spending their student loans on mining gears, just a few months before the big crash.

Current Pace:   102.9238%  (376 / 365.32 expected, 10.68 ahead)
Next Difficulty Change:   between +0.9844% and +2.9675%
Next Retarget (earliest):   February 6, 2021 at 4:22 AM  (in 11d 1h 34m 7s)

Looks like we are looking at a small increase in difficulty, despite the fact that RIOT alone received 2500* S19 pro, it's funny that even 5000 S19s pros don't scare the difficulty anymore if we were to assume that Bitmain delivered 10 batches of the 2.5k S19 pros, that's only 2.75EH which is not even 3% of the total hashrate we have at the moment, this is why I wrote in the other post earlier this year, that the spikes will be small and steady, of course, I didn't see that 10.79% of the 9th Jan adjustment coming, but let's just hope that was a single event that isn't going to repeat itself.

[philipma1957]

you spoke too soon we are now over 6%

Latest Block:   667749  (17 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   106.0748%  (454 / 428.00 expected, 26 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   20607418304385.63
Current Difficulty:   20823531150111.52
Next Difficulty:   between 21314312366434 and 22096522347904
Next Difficulty Change:   between +2.3569% and +6.1132%
Previous Retarget:   last Saturday at 6:55 AM  (+1.0487%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   February 5, 2021 at 11:40 AM  (in 10d 5h 25m 27s)
Next Retarget (latest):   February 5, 2021 at 11:13 PM  (in 10d 16h 58m 33s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 4h 45m 27s and 13d 16h 18m 32s

BTW I thought 10 +10 +10

so 10 + 1.5+ 6.5  is better.

[NotATether]

As a result of this price "prediction", I expect gears prices to surge even higher in the next few months, S19 would probably be going for 13-15k, the difficulty will sure rise almost every epoch from now until the end of the year, around July the difficulty spikes will be larger due to the monsoons in China, people will be spending their student loans on mining gears, just a few months before the big crash.

I'm not sure if there's a connection, even a weak one, between S19 prices and the difficulty increasing, 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).

Short term loans for a couple months are a hit&miss gamble given that the network difficulty far exceeds a solo S19's hashrate and it would be crazy to blow your entire student loan on 3-5 of those miners.

you spoke too soon we are now over 6%

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%.

[philipma1957]

and we dropped again to about 2.8%.

[mikeywith]

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.

[philipma1957]

Not sure anymore but so far so good for 2021.

[alh]

At about the halfway point (921 blocks completed), difficulty projection is just shy of 3% using cryptothis. Even more striking though is that BTC price just popped above $37K (again).

BTC price never fails to entertain!

[mikeywith]

At this price range, the price itself has a very little impact on the difficulty, the difference between 37k, and 34k only makes a very small number of mining gears that have a very specific energy cost to be unprofitable, that number is too small to be considered.

Hashrate now is mainly capped by gear delivery and production, in other words, if we wake up tomorrow and find bitcoin trading at 80k, it's highly unlikely that we will have a 20% difficult increment in a single epoch or even two, a sustained drop to the lower 30k or mid 20ks is good enough to send some of the old gears out of the game, but still with the new gears delivery that hashrate will be easily replaced.

So according to my humble analysis, price (both ways up or down) has a very little impact on the overall hashrate, until somebody figures out a way on how to make and deliver mining gears at a faster rate.

[Searing]

Games/Games/Games.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2021/01/30/bitcoin-price-data-reveals-bitcoin-could-be-about-to-become-the-new-gamestop/?sh=b31a89c9cb2f

so it goes FOMO/PUMP then FUD/DUMP then rinse/wash/repeat...though maybe this could be 'different' large amounts of institutional $$$ into BTC will also lead too large amounts of institutional $$$ to short BTC...we will see.

Wish it was not so...I'm 'was' trying to move some 'forked' BTC coins and also some sh*tcoins...now not so much..got to be faster on getting that stuff converted from back in the day.

Brad

[philipma1957]

Dropped to under 1%

so with coins at 33,333.33 and 700 blocks to go we are still pretty good.

[mikeywith]

... too large amounts of institutional $$$ to short BTC...we will see.

There is already a large sum of shorts opened exclusively by hedge funds, but it's decreasing slowly, let's see how it goes.



Source: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/data/crypto-markets/futures/net-positions-of-cme-bitcoin-futures-by-trader-category-weekly?fbclid=IwAR234IRRS-hr9aLEd95ZnNbNQyYJITmi1yUK9pY2qaQQwZ2va1CULxzOB78

Anyway as far as mining is concerned, I think all miners who are well-positioned already will still have a good year regardless of what the price does, it the price goes up, the difficulty will be capped by the limited gear production, on the other hand, if the price goes down, a lot of the old gears will have to go offline, I can't find any rational reasons that suggest 2021 or at least the most of it won't be better than 2020.

Dropped to under 1%

The pace has been slowing a bit too fast to keep a positive adjustment, imagine we get a drop after all this mess? won't that be "ironic"?

[philipma1957]

I simply do not understand the hash rates and diff rates.

I would argue a huge farm is offline. Maybe 10eh maybe more.

Latest Block:   668686  (2 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   100.2053%  (1391 / 1388.15 expected, 2.85 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   20607418304385.63
Current Difficulty:   20823531150111.52
Next Difficulty:   between 20864278535145 and 20868620673073
Next Difficulty Change:   between +0.1957% and +0.2165%
Previous Retarget:   January 23, 2021 at 6:55 AM  (+1.0487%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Saturday at 6:14 AM  (in 4d 7h 57m 11s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Saturday at 6:18 AM  (in 4d 8h 1m 9s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 23h 18m 41s and 13d 23h 22m 39s

Can't complain. More "Money in the bank" for 2 more weeks.

BTC - $33,763+

And Feb 2 is the 32nd day in 2021
and the top 32 BTC prices are all in 2021

so we are 32 for 32
Every price this year is higher than any price at any other year.

If you are mining and the  diff goes sidesways hand in hand with price for 32 more days in a row you will be smiling big time.

Oh Some frozen doge unlocked  for me today sold it at 3 cents.

Looking for more to free up.

[alh]

While the price is still good at $37589, it looks like likely difficulty increase is been creeping up for the last couple of days:

1892 blocks completed, about 43 ahead of expected. This puts the likely increase at roughly 2.5%.

[philipma1957]

Yeah maybe more like 2.75%.

Latest Block:   669226  (2 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   102.5509%  (1931 / 1882.97 expected, 48.03 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   20607418304385.63
Current Difficulty:   20823531150111.52
Next Difficulty:   between 21355510422048 and 21356482049047
Next Difficulty Change:   between +2.5547% and +2.5594%
Previous Retarget:   January 23, 2021 at 6:55 AM  (+1.0487%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Today at 10:33 PM  (in 0d 13h 48m 51s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Today at 10:34 PM  (in 0d 13h 49m 44s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 15h 38m 31s and 13d 15h 39m 25s

Price is a solid 37K just under 38k

Jan 2021. 31-0 every day was higher than any day from any other year.
Feb 2021   4-0. every day was higher than any day from any other year.

This is quite a remarkable streak

Only matched by the first year back in 2009

pretty sure of this but I am having trouble finding a good chart to back it up.


edit

So with two blocks to go we are +2.8%

38.9k

[mikeywith]

The last couple of blocks were mined really fast, and we got a 2.9% adjustment, which isn't bad at all given that bitcoin price managed to get back to the 40k levels, which might also result in a slightly higher adjustment if it was to maintain these levels, current status:

Current Pace:   107.0920%  (198 / 184.89 expected, 13.11 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   20823531150111.52
Current Difficulty:   21434395961348.92
Next Difficulty:   between 21708305436850 and 22987254880360
Next Difficulty Change:   between +1.2779% and +7.2447%
Previous Retarget:   Yesterday at 4:22 AM  (+2.9335%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   February 19, 2021 at 6:07 AM  (in 11d 18h 56m 3s)
Next Retarget (latest):   February 20, 2021 at 12:13 AM  (in 12d 13h 1m 45s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 1h 44m 56s and 13d 19h 50m 38s

The current pase is at 7% but obviously, we are still very early into this round, let's see how February treats us.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Lovin' these prices! Coinbase showing $44.9k 24hr high and currently at $43.39k.
Sold a bit the other day at 38k and now just waiting for the dip hopefully back to around 30-32k so I can buy in with more
Looks like this is why todays prices is so good https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5315588.msg56298335#msg56298335

[philipma1957]

Lovin' these prices! Coinbase showing $44.9k 24hr high and currently at $43.39k.
Sold a bit the other day at 38k and now just waiting for the dip hopefully back to around 30-32k so I can buy in with more
Looks like this is why todays prices is so good https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5315588.msg56298335#msg56298335

yeah coins are up and hash is moving up.

I feel a big player by big 10ph or 20 ph. raises and lowers the gear hash rate.

much like vnish software which allows the s17pro to go back and forth from 39th to 56th.

it is one explanation why we get a good uptick for first 500 blocks and then a drop off.

we are up 11% lets see if it drops off.