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

[mikeywith]

Which pool are you seeing these figures with? I'm currently using Poolin and the difference is marginal ($0.01 per Th difference between BTC vs BCH)?

You are late to the party, the difference was above 25% for some time and now it's almost even, thanks to smart-mining features on many major pools like Viabtc, they ensure that profit across all Sha256 based coins stays relatively even in the long run.

 

I'd hate to have to start deleting posts because of excessive discussion of alts... 

I believe the discussion was in respect to BTC difficulty which is affected by many factors, other Sha256 coins being more or less profitable to mine are one of those factors, we discuss rainy reason in china, chips shortage and many other things that affect bitcoin difficulty, talking about hashrate migrating from BTC to say BCH is neither different nor off-topic in my oppinion.

[philipma1957]

Well if power available is being dropped to Chinese Miners.

And they have multiple kinds of gear. But 20 percent less power what do they turn off?


A s19pro burning 3300 watts to make 40 usd

or

a  shit coin asic machine  burning 3300 watts to earn 270 usd.

Both units earn money.

but one earns 6.5 x the  money for the same power.

These are real examples of real gear that does exist .

China is short power.

Btc gear is being shut down.

I as a USA miner may soon see a 23% boost in my btc earnings.

[NotATether]

Current Pace:   76.8564%  (282 / 366.92 expected, 84.92 behind)

This current pace number and the difficulty's still going down to the point where even this snapshot is not accurate anymore, so I can only assume farms are still shutting down their BTC gear (the altcoins dump of late did not help either).

Can someone kindly explain to me what these bold numbers are referring to?

[kano]

Current Pace:   76.8564%  (282 / 366.92 expected, 84.92 behind)

This current pace number and the difficulty's still going down to the point where even this snapshot is not accurate anymore, so I can only assume farms are still shutting down their BTC gear (the altcoins dump of late did not help either).

Can someone kindly explain to me what these bold numbers are referring to?

They're highly inaccurate attempts at suggesting what the next difficulty will be based on a too small sample of blocks found vs blocks expected.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

I'd hate to have to start deleting posts because of excessive discussion of alts... 

I believe the discussion was in respect to BTC difficulty which is affected by many factors, other Sha256 coins being more or less profitable to mine are one of those factors, we discuss rainy reason in china, chips shortage and many other things that affect bitcoin difficulty, talking about hashrate migrating from BTC to say BCH is neither different nor off-topic in my oppinion.

That's my call to make and I strongly disagree. When almost 1/2 of a post is about alts that's pushing it.

[philipma1957]

Current Pace:   76.8564%  (282 / 366.92 expected, 84.92 behind)

This current pace number and the difficulty's still going down to the point where even this snapshot is not accurate anymore, so I can only assume farms are still shutting down their BTC gear (the altcoins dump of late did not help either).

Can someone kindly explain to me what these bold numbers are referring to?

sure if we were at 0% diff or flat  we would be at 366 or 367 blocks

since we are -23% we are at 282 blocks about 84 or 85 blocks short.

since bitmain has the largest cloud ops in the world and they now have restricted power availability they have to choose the most profitable miner at watts .

the most profitable gear is not any sha256 know to exist.

so while the s19pro makes money it makes 33 to 35 usd for 3300 watts

there are pieces of gear that make 250 usd for 3300 watts.

if you are bitmain and you are a business you pick the gear that makes the most usd per watt.

so i care fully edited this to not say what gear makes 250 usd for 3300 watts.

but this is why btc diff dropped a lot.

1) a shortage of power in china due to coal
2) bitmain the worlds largest builder of asics choosing to use the gear that earns the most usd per watt
3) bitmain has made three huge cloud mining deals this year.

[mikeywith]

That's my call to make and I strongly disagree. When almost 1/2 of a post is about alts that's pushing it.

Yes, it is your topic - you can do whatever you want, but rest assured many of us won't be participating in your topic if you censorship us based only on what you think is right, and we can always make our own topic to discuss bitcoin difficulty the way we see fit and let the admin decides what is off topic.

I wouldn't want to see this topic fork, i also wouldn't want to see phill's posts deleted for discussing how other coins profit impacts bitcoin hashrate because that is right on topic, but hey, do whatever makes you happy.

  

[philipma1957]

I get why some want the mining section to be for btc. Not alt coins.

But btc is not in a vacuum  so I am trying to create  a way to incorporate  satoshi's  idea of turning power  into why there are multiple

competing coins. All these coins compete the worlds available power.

The genii is out of the bottle. I am going to open a diff thread in alt coins rather then buck the system here.




link

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5331454.msg56812967#msg56812967

[NotFuzzyWarm]

@ Mikeywith, you do know that Frodo and other mods occasionally do their thing even in self-moderated threads. I'd just prefer they not have clear reason to do that. Mentioning the effects that alts have on BTC is one thing, detailed analyses is a whole different matter and that belongs in the General discussion, Economics, or other areas of the Forum. Not here..

@Phil, works for me. Good move and again, that should keep the Forum mods from meddling around here  

Please note that I have never deleted any post here and prefer to not. It's just that things were starting to drift over into what is specifically not allowed in this area of the Forum. "Thin edge of the wedge" and all...

edit: Hmm, I see that Frodo is no longer a mod... Interesting.

[mikeywith]

you do know that Frodo and other mods occasionally do their thing even in self-moderated threads. I'd just prefer they not have clear reason to do that.

I understand your concern, but we have been having these diff threads for over 3 years now, there are a dozen of posts in those topics in which we discuss altcoins in the same manner phill discussed them in this topic, and guess what? none of them got deleted.

In fact, frodcopper who was the most strict mod probably in the whole crypto space merited some of those posts which were talking about altcoins in respect to Bitcoin difficulty, things back then were going smooth and nobody had to fork the topic because they felt like they were harassed for brining up altcoins in the same way they used to, also there was nobody who was afraid to ask a bitcoin difficulty related question.

I know you are not trying to have control over things and that your intentions are good, but this topic will eventually slow and die if it continues this way, and personally, since I don't want to argue with anyone, I'll be posting a lot less frequently here, if ever.

Good luck.

[kano]

you do know that Frodo and other mods occasionally do their thing even in self-moderated threads. I'd just prefer they not have clear reason to do that.

I understand your concern, but we have been having these diff threads for over 3 years now, there are a dozen of posts in those topics in which we discuss altcoins in the same manner phill discussed them in this topic
...

It's the forum rules - you're acting like a noob that has never read them:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2415854.0
Specifically point 2 and 5.
Even phil gave it 3 merits ... I guess he forgot

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Damn sam -- looks like the coal-based power problems in China are really putting the kibosh on BTC mining there! The often wildly inaccurate guestimate based on very few data points is so far predicting the next diff adjustment to be around -22%. Woof!

Difficulty: 23,581,981,443,664
Next estimated difficulty: 18,509,951,733,177 (−22%)
Next readjustment:
in 15 days
Blockchain size: 340.10 GB
Latest block: #679798
Best block time: 2021-04-19 15:39

We'll see how that prediction holds up as end of the epoch approaches in a couple weeks  

[alh]

........

We'll see how that prediction holds up as end of the epoch approaches in a couple weeks  

Yeah, that's the drag about a decrease in difficulty, it take longer to get here. It's interesting that by design difficulty rises more quickly (because the adjustment arrives before 14 days), while a decrease takes longer the larger the decrease.

Unfortunately BTC price has also declined. 

[alh]

The couple of online articles I've read suggest that huge chunks of Bitcoin mining are "offline" due to a coal shortage in China. Whil eit's possible that they are just constrained, it's a pretty massive reduction in BTC hashing. Here's what I saw:

https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/21/04/20674195/power-outage-in-chinas-xinjiang-region-may-have-triggered-bitcoin-selloff

https://coinmarketcap.com/headlines/news/chinas-xinjiang-blackout-and-bitcoin-hashrate-correction-caused-btc-price-crash/

and a few other similar ones. These are fairly current and I not just from December 2020 or January 2021. Either way, the current projected difficulty decrease is real and not just variance (aka "luck). I didn't see anything to suggest how long this will last. While the Bitcoin mining firms may outside pull with Chinese officials, they will likely have to compete for power with residential and other business uses that have a big impact on their populace until their coal situation is fully resolved.

For most of us this is fairly good news, unfortunately BTC price is down to roughly $55K .

[kano]

Sounds like a few people did some did some research and found where the hash rate actually went ... nowhere

Edit: 20% of BTC is ... about 30EH
Total scamcoins that could use BTC miners is about ... 2-3EH - so yeah just looking at those numbers makes it pretty obvious.

[stompix]

Seems like maybe, maybe, power is returning, we had 121 blocks in the last 24 hours compared to 94 yesterday at around the same time.
Of course, it could be nothing but anyhow, it's about damn time they restart all those damn miners, seriously, 200sat/vb?

I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, and even if I label some as possible in theory I don't think most would be tested by any government but, is it possible they just saw an opportunity here to use the power grid failure to see how they can affect the network? Maybe an official got wind of the things triggered by the blackout and when the power was restored they simply said, wait, let's keep those miners in dark for another few days, to see how much power we have over them and how much x,y,x they spend make etc.

I've gone through a lot of articles about the Chinese power grid and if we would listen to the propaganda this outage would have been impossible for so long, they are praising themselves for how much they've done in all the northern region exactly to ensure safety and reliability with thousands of mile of connections and of independent power plants and one accident is crippling a region for 4, close to 5 days already?
It might not be something as serious as that but it's still weird.

[NotATether]

Seems like maybe, maybe, power is returning, we had 121 blocks in the last 24 hours compared to 94 yesterday at around the same time.
Of course, it could be nothing but anyhow, it's about damn time they restart all those damn miners, seriously, 200sat/vb?

Looks like even if they do fully restore operations today the diff's still going to be slashed by at least 10%

Earliest epoch end date was also projected to be yesterday now it's moved up a day.

Current Pace:   75.9675%  (602 / 792.44 expected, 190.44 behind)

Next Difficulty Change:   between -24.0160% and -13.8361%

Next Retarget (earliest):   May 2, 2021 at 4:40 AM  (in 10d 17h 55m 45s)
Next Retarget (latest):   May 4, 2021 at 8:57 AM  (in 12d 22h 13m 13s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 16d 6h 0m 11s and 18d 10h 17m 39s

I wonder how long it will take a full capacity network with Xinjiang miners running to clear 100vMB of transactions, down to 10 sats/vb?

[alh]

The further we get into this "depressed hash rate" epoch, I wonder if maybe some of it won't return until after the next adjustment. My theory is that if there is someone (i.e. an entity) that has been offline for power reasons, maybe they would actually delay their restart until after the adjustment BY CHOICE. In other words why burn the power if you are within a few days of what looks to be a noticeable decrease in difficulty? This would depend on the economic situation of those with the option, but it might be an interesting short term plan to optimize their capture of what is essentially a predetermined supply of coins.

Just a thought since are at roughly what should be the half-way point of 776 / 996 blocks expected. BTC price is roughly $53K.

[stompix]

Three days ago I said maybe, maybe things are getting back to normal, as usual, it wasn't so, or at least not that quickly.

So, let's try again, 24h stats Blocks: 143, common just start your miners already, I'm getting tired of seeing every damn hour a few topics popping up with people screaming how much they have to pay for a tx. But as usual, bad things happen one after the other, we had another dump to $50k, now back at $52k, maybe the news of (if) mining resuming in China would calm the markets and we don't go below 50.

Current Pace:   75.9675%  (602 / 792.44 expected, 190.44 behind)

vs

Current Pace:   79.2763%  (816 / 1029.31 expected, 213.31 behind)

We "lost" only 23 blocks in the last 40 hours.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

we had another dump to $50k, now back at $52k, maybe the news of (if) mining resuming in China would calm the markets and we don't go below 50.

Too late. We already had a dip to $47.46k today.

On a whim, I put in a buy @ $44k last month. Might be a chance we hit that?