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

[philipma1957]

Dec 31st 2020  hashrate was 142.725

March 12 2021 hashrate was 155.997

so 13,272,000 th was added this year.

as per this chart.

https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate

13,272,000/100 = 132,720 s19 + s19 pro mixed


https://etherscan.io/chart/hashrate

293,762 or 2,937,620 nvidia 3080's on Jan 1

436,440 or 4,364,400 nvidia 3080's on march 13

this comes to 1,426,780nvidia 3080's added

or 71,339 asic 2000mh units.

my point is per watt if bitmain builds a 3300 watt 2000 mh eth miner

it earns 200 usd for 3300 watts

the s19pro earns 44 usd for 3300 watts.

bitmain has sold a ton of cloud contracts in Jan feb march of this year.

yet hashrate has only jumped 10 percent

I think bitmain is doing what i do mining eth at lower power cost to buy btc.

if i sell you a btc contract that pays you 44 usd worth of btc.

and use the money to mine eth that pays me 200usd i pocket 156 usd in either btc or eth or cash.

the btc cloud guy gets his 44 usd .

this is very likely a factor that is rising btc prices

and lowering eth prices while it slows btc diff and speeds eth diff.

if i am bitmain i can build an eth miner or a s19 pro

both burn 3300 watts.

the eth miner makes 200 a day
the btc miner makes  44 a day.

which miner do i want to build? right here right now the eth miner.

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[vapourminer]

if i am bitmain i can build an eth miner or a s19 pro

both burn 3300 watts.

the eth miner makes 200 a day
the btc miner makes  44 a day.

which miner do i want to build? right here right now the eth miner.

whats the lead time to build an eth miner? this might be flipped 6 months from now.

[philipma1957]

well i would think 🤔 bitmain’s ability to make an eth miner would be under six months.

since there are two actual real eth miners that do

2700mh and 3300 watts
2000mh and 3300 watts

i would be pretty sure they could knock one off quickly.

the massive hashrate increase in eth since jan 1 shows it was done
the 3300 watts gets me 200-270 usd mining eth shows it was done
the slower hashrate increase in btc shows it was done.
i certainly would want to get 200-270 usd for 3300 watts.
rather than 44 usd for 3300 watts.

my mining is gear limited and space limited
i have 700 to 800 amps at 240 volts
soon to be 1600 amps at 240 volts
lots of space starting next sat.

I simply do not have much of any gear.
I will be at 25% capacity once the new power comes on line.

For me I do exactly this whenever I can get “cheap” prices I buy the gear no questions asked.
last week I found 1 highend gpu at msrp. i purchased it.

all gear leads me to btc.
so gpu at msrp mining eth and converting to btc is the exact same as
a cheap 256 asic miner. directly mining btc.

unfortunately the lead mod here does not agree with me on this.
good chance this gets deleted.

but reality is simple.
watts to coin is the heart 💜 of mining ⛏

and 3300 watts to 200-270 usd worth of coin is better than
3300 watts to 44 usd worth of coin.

i do three types of pow mining so I can juggle ltc/doge and btc and gpu/eth

I wish i had 2x
my l3+
my sha 256
my gpu

since i have the power.

bitmain certainly is doing this as it all fits. really well.
I have not purchased an asic for btc since we preordered one s19pro for 2500.

[mikeywith]

Phill as I said earlier, I do like the theory and I see the logic, but with Bitmain stuck in a few contracts to deliver tens of thousands of bitcoin mining gears which they have not delivered even half, don't you think that will make it difficult for them to focus on something else, at least the size you anticipate.

watts to coin is the heart 💜 of mining ⛏

Nicely put, and $ to hashrate is the backbone, no?

[philipma1957]

Well the idea is cool but they may not be doing it at all.

Diff slid a bit to just under 2%

Latest Block:   675063  (12 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   101.8828%  (1720 / 1688.21 expected, 31.79 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   21724134900047.27
Current Difficulty:   21448277761059.71
Next Difficulty:   between 21854094023664 and 21863208213243
Next Difficulty Change:   between +1.8921% and +1.9346%
Previous Retarget:   March 5, 2021 at 9:19 PM  (-1.2698%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Friday at 4:07 PM  (in 2d 0h 25m 17s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Friday at 4:15 PM  (in 2d 0h 33m 19s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 17h 47m 26s and 13d 17h 55m 27s

On march 5 price was 48-49k.

today march 17 (happy St Patrick's day)

price = 57-58k

So once again very good for miners.

also feeds into my mine eth and convert to btc idea. posted on this page.

[alh]

In the final stretch of this epoch: Currently 1882/1849 expected. cryptothis is projecting an increase of +2% on Friday afternoon. BTC price doing well at $57,833.

[philipma1957]

we drifted down just a bit to +1.74%
At the same time Eth network went up to an all time high of

451,434gh or  4,514,349 NVIDIA 3080 GPUs

So my theory that bitmain is building an unknown eth asic miner to mine eth to be converted to btc still works well.

a 3300 watt 2gh eth miner makes 223 usd a day
a 3330 watt 110th s19pro makes  42 usd a day

Load your Huge cloud  operations with both s19pros and eth5pros
Have 2x the gear than power available.
Turn the better gear on that makes more money per watt.
right now it is eth convert the eth to btc.

this raises btc price
this lower btc diff

this lowers eth price
this raises eth diff

that is exactly what is happening from what we can see.

Since bitmain
A) builds both eth and btc asics
B) has huge cloud ops with both eth and btc contracts.
C) can build gear really cheap
D) has no incentive to sell a lot of gear
E) is in a spot that mining is better than selling
F) btc diff is hardly moving upwards
G) btc price has really good support
H) eth diff is moving up like mad
I) eth price is kind of surpressed

It does look like a really good theory

Time will tell.

Latest Block:   675309  (a few seconds ago)
Current Pace:   101.6978%  (1966 / 1933.18 expected, 32.82 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   21724134900047.27
Current Difficulty:   21448277761059.71
Next Difficulty:   between 21821855149417 and 21822089092743
Next Difficulty Change:   between +1.7418% and +1.7429%
Previous Retarget:   March 5, 2021 at 9:19 PM  (-1.2698%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Today at 4:43 PM  (in 0d 8h 11m 39s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Today at 4:43 PM  (in 0d 8h 11m 51s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 18h 23m 26s and 13d 18h 23m 39s

we did the jump at 4:03 pm est at about 2%

well +1.94%

prices floating around 57-59k

on to the next jump.

what a wonderful 2021 for miners up 🆙 to today and hopefully for the next 9-10 months as chips look to stay short for months and months to come.

[mikeywith]

what a wonderful 2021 for miners up 🆙 to today and hopefully for the next 9-10 months as chips look to stay short for months and months to come.

This epoch seems a little bit different than the past five or six.

Latest Block:   675861  (13 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   107.1797%  (502 / 468.37 expected, 33.63 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   21448277761059.71
Current Difficulty:   21865558044610.55
Next Difficulty:   between 22529450864031 and 23450455941570
Next Difficulty Change:   between +3.0362% and +7.2484%
Next Retarget (earliest):   April 1, 2021 at 11:33 PM  (in 9d 19h 25m 48s)
Next Retarget (latest):   April 2, 2021 at 12:14 PM  (in 10d 8h 7m 27s)

While I still believe we won't be able to double the difficulty by year-end, I also believe starting from this epoch or the next, the percentage will be slightly higher than what we saw throughout the year so far, the rainy season in China is about to start, I believe all sort of old dead worthless gears from 2019-2020 have been fixed and are ready to hit the blockchain.

I don't think we will have those crazy 10-20% spikes every 2 weeks as we did before, I think those days are over, but I also believe the negatives and the 0-1% days are over too.

[stompix]

Seems like mikeywith hunch was spot on, things are changing for the first time in months. I saw the spike a few days ago but I said it's better to wait and see, we've seen the estimate drop from 10% to 3%, and 5% looked too fragile but this one seems like is here to stay.

Latest Block:   676374  (7 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   106.2206%  (1015 / 955.56 expected, 59.44 ahead)
Next Difficulty Change:   between +4.6406% and +6.2540%

Half of the period gone, the rate seems a bit constant at around 6%-7% current pace so it might be that finally there is a serious batch being delivered?  Antpool has grown from a 3 months average of 10.2% to 12% last week,  12.9% last 3 days, and 15.9% last24h. Coincidence? Maybe. Also, the guys over at DCG are reaching 2%, that's around 3Exa, so the big guys are getting their planned gear.

[philipma1957]

It is about time and as Mikey said they are ramping up for rainy season.

For price on dec 31 2020 to be 28,800.
and price on march 26 2021 is 52,300.

diff on dec 31 was 18.6 t
diff on march 26 is 21.86 t

those numbers favor miners bigly.

So if we get a 6% and a 5% next 2 jumps it is to be expected.

Also a ton of eth gear was put on line in the dec 31 to march 26 slots.

It is possible that chips for gpus have been locked down more and eth network growth will slow so builders are pushing btc gear more.

[mikeywith]

it might be that finally there is a serious batch being delivered?

It's actually a combination of a few unfortunate events, new gears are being delivered, many old gears have been fixed, the rainy season in China, and perhaps the arrival of gears shipped by sea which takes up to 2 months depending on the origin and the destination.

These events will contribute to increasing the difficulty at a higher pace, and this should last for a few months, however, with the current price of bitcoin, it doesn't matter the difficulty does, 2021 will still be a lot better than 2020 for miners.

[wndsnb]

...
many old gears have been fixed
...

About that, I recently called the new Bitmain repair center that opened March 1st about repairing a bunch of broken APW9s. They told me that they were only doing in-warranty repair at the moment because they already have more requests than they can handle. And HM Tech is only taking business from people with 25 or more dead miners. All these repair centers have a constant backlog of 17 series miners waiting to be put back online.

With most estimates of the 17 series failure rate between 10% and 20%, that's a pretty good chunk of hashrate that could be brought back without any need of TSMC.

[philipma1957]

yeah I estimate having 350-400th in dead hash rate.

along with 1750th in good hash rate.

This has to be pretty common right across the spectrum of gear.

working s9 boards are selling at 250 usd on usa ebay

https://www.ebay.com/itm/BITMAIN-Antminer-S9j-BCH-BTC-Hashboard-v4-2310-Mining-Card-Part-for-S9j-14-5TH/114223935304?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/BITMAIN-Antminer-S9i-BCH-BTC-Hashboard-v4-2110-Mining-Card-Part-for-S9i-13-14TH/114157685285?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Bitmain-S9-hash-board-NOT-FOR-S9I-Working-Perfectly/265102128883?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/BITMAIN-Antminer-S9i-BCH-BTC-Hashboard-v4-2110-Mining-Card-Part-for-S9i/265102095739?

and a board less case for 149

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Bitmain-Antminer-S9-BRAIINS-OS-Partial-Unit-NO-HASHBOARDS-USA-SELLER/353433567582?

[mikeywith]

About that, I recently called the new Bitmain repair center that opened March 1st about repairing a bunch of broken APW9s. They told me that they were only doing in-warranty repair at the moment because they already have more requests than they can handle. And HM Tech is only taking business from people with 25 or more dead miners. All these repair centers have a constant backlog of 17 series miners waiting to be put back online.

and this is only in the U.S, so you can easily imagine the number of gears which have been fixed or in the process of being fixed in China, also the 1-2 cents power rate in the rainy season will allow the Chinese miners to overclock their old gears to the max, and that alone adds up to the considerable amount of hash power, the good news is that the effect of all this shouldn't last long, maybe 2-3 months, the other good news is that it gets harder and harder to move the difficulty to the upside.

When we hit 200EH,  1% of that will be 2000000TH, that's 50,000 T17 or 20,000 S19, so to go from 200EH to 210 which is a tiny 5% (like the current epoch) we will need 100,000 S19, in today's aftermarket price that will be 100,000 * 10,000 = 1 BILLION dollars, it will be extremely difficult IMO to move the hashrate past 200EH, I might be too optimistic, or obviously biased.

[Searing]

I'm selling miners from 2018 I got for ASIC Shelf Art..as an example sold an Innosilicoin A4+ Dominator I had with a price listed on the box from I think 2017? for $69 on eBay...again..

shelf art...it went just the other day for $409.00 usd on eBay. I have a gtx 1080 8gb GPU gamer card I barely used...PNY brand...I saw one supposedly go for $800 on eBay.....so pretty sure this one will go for like $600 or so ? I think I paid $700 for the card....a Baikal 300mh Cube ...again ..shelf art went for $125....BFL monarch card again more or less given... went for $50.

frigging chip shortage is getting serious..trying to get my bitmain s9i out of data hall with bitmain psu..they are going for what? $600 shipping sheesh..but again...nuts on other stuff i'm selling out of my attic....to ebay then to btc dust....just killing it...

anyway, as an aside of what is moving in the world of old asic shelf art...must dig out more asic stuff and 'revive'

brad

[alh]

Into the home stretch for this epoch: 1832 mined / 1726 expected at this point. BTC price is still $59K+ .

cryptothis is currently projecting an increase of roughly +6.1% late tomorrow. This is going to sting a bit compared to the last couple of months.

[philipma1957]

True but on Dec 31 price was 29k and diff was 18.6t

So on April 2 price of 58k-60k and diff of 23.3

is very good.

As a miner the dec 31 price at 28k with a diff of 18.6 meant really good profits.

As a miner the new price of 58-60 k with a diff of 23.3 means better profits .

We are talking basically Dec 1 to April 1 or 31+31+28+31 = 121 days of solid profit this is a rarity in mining.

If prices holds at 58-60k diff needs to go to 37.2 to be equal to Dec 31 profits.  which would still mean really good profits.

I look at this as it unfolds for us all to see.  It looks as if miners will be saying 2021 the golden year of btc mining.

at 1944 blocks we are up to 6.46%

Latest Block:   677303  (23 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   106.4663%  (1944 / 1825.93 expected, 118.07 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   21448277761059.71
Current Difficulty:   21865558044610.55
Next Difficulty:   between 23281347373648 and 23283272770835
Next Difficulty Change:   between +6.4750% and +6.4838%
Previous Retarget:   March 19, 2021 at 4:03 PM  (+1.9455%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Today at 7:39 PM  (in 0d 11h 16m 16s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Today at 7:40 PM  (in 0d 11h 17m 49s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 3h 35m 34s and 13d 3h 37m 8s

price was 58.6k.

[stompix]

This is going to sting a bit compared to the last couple of months.

One little tiny sting, the late February drop to 45k could have been way more damaging to profits and we didn't see much panic then either.

Also, this might not be a continuous growth, one week ago when I posted the changes the pace was 6.2% ahead so it might be that the rise was just one shipment and some farms relocating rather than continuous deliveries, might be possible that after this one we hit again a few flat ones. Unless there were some huge shipments trapped in the Suez Canal and they might just land tomorrow.  

BFL monarch card again more or less given... went for $50.

This brings back memories, not really pleasant memories!

[mikeywith]

Latest Block:   677373  (13 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   105.8172%  (2014 / 1903.28 expected, 110.72 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   21448277761059.71
Next Difficulty Change:   between +5.8338% and +5.8338%

2 blocks left, so in 20 mins give or take we shall have a 5.8x% spike, do I bother? not a single bit.

This is going to sting a bit compared to the last couple of months.

Mining profitability as of today and how it has been for the past couple of months is unrealistic and far from sustainable, if someone feels the heat from a 6% spike then they shouldn't be mining in the first place, I look at the difficulty figures every now and then and think to myself that as long as it doesn't do a 100% increase then I would still make more profit than I did last year.

Will this last forever? absolutely not, we know two things for certain

1- Difficulty will only go up (regardless of how fast)
2- Price can't only go up

This is why I take every chance (including this one) to warn the newcomers that mining isn't all sunshine and rainbows as it seems now, investing 13-15k for a single S19 pro miner is a terrible idea, it isn't going to generate 1k profit every month for the rest of its lifespan, well, it could in theory but there is a higher chance that it gets hit by a lightning strike than you making 1k profit every single month.

[philipma1957]

My thoughts are pretty simple a 100 year pandemic comes around every 100 years.
The list of all the things that have gone right to make this an amazing year is a very long list.

Can it continue on and on and on well personally I think it will continue on for months and months and months.

So 2nd quarter we get a little more gear on line for the Chinese rainy season.  Plus price moves sideways and upwards till 65k by May 1 Maybe 70 k by July 1

At July 1 70k and a diff of 30th looks to be very realistic. I then think we sink back down to earth. So buying a 15k s19pro is a really ballsy risk.

Frankly I only try to buy an occasional gpu if the price is right.  I got this one today

https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-rtx-3070-tuf-rtx3070-o8g-gaming/p/N82E16814126461?Item=N82E16814126461

$831 after tax and shipping. I won the newegg shuffle

On ebay it is $1399.00
https://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-TUF-Gaming-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-3070-OC-Edition-Graphics-Card-SHIPS-NOW/353440140684?

This dynamic is affecting mining difficulty of both ETH and this section BTC.

At 831 that card earns 6 bucks a day and burns 4 kwatts a day. or 20 cents at 5 cent power.

At 13000-15000 the s19pro earns 40 a day and burns 80 kwatts a day or 4 dollars at 5 cent power.

I calculate All my mining using:
price per usd  for the gear.
price at usd for the earnings.
price at usd for the power.

So I can 2x my gear I have space and power.

that gpu if I get 10 for 8310 and burn 2 bucks a day in power I earn 60 usd - 2 = 58 usd which I spilt into usd and BTC

if I get 1 s19 for 14000 and burn 4 bucks a day in power I earn 40 usd - 4 = 36 usd which I spilt into usd and BTC

It is pretty easy to see  I am looking for the gpus and not the s19pros.

MY end result is USD + BTC in both cases.

So why on earth do I spend 14000 to generate less money and btc
when I can spend 8310 to generate more money and BTC via conversions of the coins I mine.

Until this dynamic collapses BTC diff won't skyrocket. (at Least I hope so).