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

[alh]

We are now slowly moving to close out the current epoch. We now have about 120 more blocks to go, and are running at about 85% of the normal expected pace. crytothis predicts we will finish tomorrow (Saturday) early in the evening. We are well past 15 days into the epoch and running about 350 blocks "behind". The projection is for a decrease of roughly 15% in difficulty.

On the BTC price front, it's at $35,867. Looks to me like most of the air has been let out of the balloon and will take a while for BTC price to recover (or re-inflate). Don't know what will push BTC price one way or another, but has been in a trading range of $36K to $39K for the last 10 days.

P.S. Looks like @Fuzzy won't get his $30K speculative order filled soon. That's probably a good things.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

P.S. Looks like @Fuzzy won't get his $30K speculative order filled soon. That's probably a good things.

Ja.
We came kinda close but no cigar.
As you said, that is for the best. Large dips are nice for speculative buying but we certainly do not want them to stick around to become the 'normal' baseline price...  Of course just like the last time I bought, a couple days later the price went even lower and again has yet to hit my purchase price of $43.5k

[alh]

We are now at block 849 in the current epoch. That's only slightly ahead of the expected number of 845. Since the last epoch ended on May 29th with a drop of -15.96% we have been pretty well on track. Right now it looks like the difficulty is pretty well matched with actual hashrate. This could be a near zero change on June 12th.

Unfortunately BTC price remains depressed at $37,133. 

[NotFuzzyWarm]

So despite the FUD shoveling of recent days by celebs and other wannabe movers, looks like the new average for rates will be in the mid $30k's for a while. The swings from low 30's to high 30's should keep the day traders happy  

What's puzzling is China cracking down on mining activities. In the areas using coal - it makes sense (to reduce emissions) but in the hydroelectric powered areas it does not. The entire reason so many farms were established close to dams is because China does not have the extensive interconnected national electrical grid system the US and many other countries have.

As a result, the electric producers cannot readily send excess power to other parts of the country that could use it. Not being able to send the excess power to other areas means that the generating capacity is underutilized or in the eyes of the dam owners/operators -wasted. Being so energy-dense crypto mining is (was) the perfect solution to that. With farms being shut down (and probably being moved to say, Kazakhstan) I'm hoping diff drops even more.

[stompix]

What's puzzling is China cracking down on mining activities. In the areas using coal - make sense but in the hydroelectric powered areas it does not. The entire reason so many farms were established close to dams is because China does not the extensive electrical grid system the US and many other countries have.

Well, if we go by what the news is reporting, taking it with the ton of salt as any information that comes from there, that's what's happening:
Sichuan said we don't about your consumption when we have excess energy:
Sichuan takes lenient stance on bitcoin mining amid national crackdown to deal with rainy season’s excess hydropower
Xinjiang on the other hand simply told them to pack their bags and go
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/107707/xinjiang-bitcoin-miner-shut-crackdown-china


We're entering a new period with a  -4% estimated difficulty drop:

Current Pace:   95.4036%  (1737 / 1820.69 expected, 83.69 behind)
Next Difficulty Change:   between -4.4410% and -4.3597%
Next Difficulty:   between 20112994053051 and 20130116174256

and maybe more drops to come. Price is up, hashrate down, happy mining!!!
let's just hopes the fees don't go through the roof again.

[stompix]

The hashrate is still going down a full 1%

Current Pace:   94.1701%  (1968 / 2089.84 expected, 121.84 behind)
Next Difficulty Change:   between -5.6964% and -5.6933%

Since my last post two days ago we went down by another 38 blocks and seems like there indeed something weird happening

Crosspost from the other topic:

686786     00000000000000000001e989be0b875b7426e4ff5c5c068c768711e8ca2d330e    2021-06-08 10:45
686944   000000000000000000024a1558e86d484b7fd01ff65f24eae3d39e76ecd80ecb   2021-06-09 10:48   
687045   000000000000000000090bb122d7a645e09aab266e83dc10b2587818a2f75deb   2021-06-10 10:06
687150   000000000000000000043a9a7fabff084e4f2777902e77e8f9533deeb44af8c3   2021-06-11 10:07   

And right now we are at 119 blocks in the last 24 hours

I think this is beyond randomness, it's either that a lot of farms have shut down or they are relocating, although it's mid-June from what I can see the rainy season has already started quite a few weeks ago so it's a bit late to pack and move now.

Is it possible that finally the news is real and China has really made a move not only press releases as usual?
If this continues we're in for another 10% drop next time, price is recovering,almost everyone is happy

[alh]

....

I think this is beyond randomness, it's either that a lot of farms have shut down or they are relocating, although it's mid-June from what I can see the rainy season has already started quite a few weeks ago so it's a bit late to pack and move now.

Is it possible that finally the news is real and China has really made a move not only press releases as usual?
If this continues we're in for another 10% drop next time, price is recovering,almost everyone is happy

I would also suggest that the "heat wave" being experienced in parts of North America might well have dropped some hash rate. Here in MN my residential electricity provided has switched to it's higher summer rate. My single A841 inside my home basement is now off probably for the summer when I have AC on. It was "fine" during the winter months and a high (well above the current $37,697 price), but the current BTC price, my electric cost, and the heat is a sure sign that my A841 should now be resting.

The outlook so far is for a "warmer than usual" summer here in Minnesota. I expect that will be true for much of the USA.

P.S. We just finished block 2015 so the current epoch will conclude "soon".

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Looks like we got a nice drop in diff

Height               Block Time                          Difficulty                      Change
687,456   2021‑06‑13 13:07:16   19,932,791,027,262 ‑ 19.93 T   ‑ 5.30 %

[alh]

While we are currently short of the mid-point for this (966 / 1152 expected), we are well over a day "behind where we should be. This pointing to another drop in difficulty> This doesn't appear to be just "variance" but a sustained reduction in hash rate. I've seen news about some China based farms looking for a new home. I've also seen Texas (her in the USA) suggesting that they "are open for business". That doesn't seem like a good idea since their electrical grid is under serious pressure due to the heat here across the USA.

No joy on BTC price at the moment: $32,468. I think this qualifies a "Bear" market for BTC given the decline from it's high, and the duration of that decline.

[stompix]

Latest Block:   688427  (a minute ago)
Current Pace:   83.9112%  (972 / 1158.37 expected, 186.37 behind)         
Next Difficulty:   between 16727160261052 and 17481095370036
Next Difficulty Change:   between -16.0822% and -12.2998%

According to btc.com,  if the lower value will be the final one we're going to hit early November level, which is insane, my prediction about the ratio doubling is now almost 6 times off the chart.
Difficulty down means a bit more satoshi at the end of the day but I'm really making my calculation by thinking I've made a profit buying miners at 50k per BTC, so I artificially deflate the sum needed to cover up, I have a feeling the best thing would be to unload them on somebody over eBay but probably the moment I do that mining would turn to be twice as profitable, it always happens.

I've also seen Texas (her in the USA) suggesting that they "are open for business". That doesn't seem like a good idea since their electrical grid is under serious pressure due to the heat here across the USA.

Depends where you're located probably, I know that the last time texas faced problems there wasn't the whole state in a blackout so you might get lucky and not be affected. Anyhow this weather is crazy, western Europe goes through a heatwave and some of our colleagues from Bulgaria are saying they have seen only rain and more rain with a few days of only 13C when usually the average would be well over 26.

Back to the difficulty as I just thought of something
If we assume a lot of hashrate has now moved to Sichuan, when the rainy season end it would (per news!) have nowhere to go in China so we might see another drop? This out be incredible!

[NotATether]

If we assume a lot of hashrate has now moved to Sichuan, when the rainy season end it would (per news!) have nowhere to go in China so we might see another drop? This out be incredible!

They always the option to secretly move operations to Iran. Only the RHY mining farm in Rafsanjan was shut down during the recent Iranian mining crackdown. It's kind of RHY's fault though since they exposed themselves by filming their own mining farm on Youtube. Otherwise, it's straightforward to even register your miners with Iranian authorities and mine legally if you don't want to head towards the smuggling ASICs route, that's what some companies are doing openly.

[Also, get this: the Iran/Chinese group responsible for the building described the mining farm to press as a "1 million terabyte datacenter", sure it would have to be a REALLY large datacenter for a big client to have an exabyte of total storage capacity ]

[NotFuzzyWarm]

I see that BTC hit a low of $28.8k sooo, that means that the buy I set to trigger @ $30k went through.
Here's to hoping that BTC recovers from the fallout of the China mining shutdowns...

[stompix]

They always the option to secretly move operations to Iran. Only the RHY mining farm in Rafsanjan was shut down during the recent Iranian mining crackdown.

But would there be enough energy in Iran to put online all that hashing power that gets stranded?
If we assume the lower boundary of 50Twh, adjust it a bit to the price, split it in half and it's still well over 10% of the entire energy produced by Iran, and most importantly, it's 10% that is added 24/7 even on top of peak hours, Iran alone will never be able to deal with it, probably not even with a quarter of this.

Of course, there are other countries in which you can set up but once you're moving away to regions where laws are starting to become less permissible it will take a lot of time to start your farm, so even if at the end of this we will see all that gear probably mining again I think it's going to take a lot of time, and my bet is on at least a few months time. And the price isn't helping either.

[kano]

Hmm, I wonder how much power 50EH uses ... to be moved somewhere else.
You can double the answer for 100EH

50EH = 50000000TH
I'll assume half of that is recent miners and half of that is S9 power level miners.

so 25000000TH of (roughly) 70TH miners for (roughly) 3000W each
= 360k miners at 3kW = 1071MW

The other half
so 25000000TH of (roughly) 14TH miners for (roughly) 1300W each
= 1.8M miners at 1.3kW = 2321MW

So about 3.4GW for about 50EH ...

Hmm - doesn't seem all that bad
I guess my estimates must be wrong?

P.S. price went back up.

[stompix]

So about 3.4GW for about 50EH ...

Or about 3 of Iran's power plants to supply that energy 24/7 even at peak hours when the Iranian grid is already pushed to the max 
You said 3.4 GW for 50EXA or 30TWh, I was saying 50TWh for the usual 60% people credited China, for a country like the US it's nothing, for Iran it might be something too much.
That's why I'm betting more on miners crossing the border into Russia, but, it's kind of ironic, we're ditching China for Iran and Russia...not really a big improvement considering the authoritarian regime was the main fear factor in China.

 

[NotFuzzyWarm]

The hell with Iran. To me a better choice would be moving the miners to Kazakhstan which not only has ample power but is also extremely friendly towards crypto.

The farms being ran for BTC.com is already moving there

[acquafredda]

https://twitter.com/SinoCrypto/status/1407524150885994497
On the China mining Series, I found these tweets very interesting. Point n5 especially
5) Before resellers and opportunists get way too ahead of themselves for scooping up discounted electrical equipment, they should consider that most of the gear wont be up to code for established Western countries (not UL Listed or CE Certified, aluminum transformers vs copper)
This means that most of all the mining gear will not be legally usable somewhere else.
I like the closing of course, whatever does not kill bitcoin, will make it stronger and this is the case here.
All wanted was mining decentralization, one day we will be thankful to China that helped that coming real.

[DaveF]

...
5) Before resellers and opportunists get way too ahead of themselves for scooping up discounted electrical equipment, they should consider that most of the gear wont be up to code for established Western countries (not UL Listed or CE Certified, aluminum transformers vs copper)
...

Most of it has not been anyway. People have pulled apart many bad bitmain and other miners power supplies and none of them could have had any real certification based on what has been seen.
I would think that most of this stuff is going to be brought in through the gray market anyway.

-Dave

[NotFuzzyWarm]

5) Before resellers and opportunists get way too ahead of themselves for scooping up discounted electrical equipment, they should consider that most of the gear wont be up to code for established Western countries (not UL Listed or CE Certified, aluminum transformers vs copper)

As far as miners go, all of Bitmain, Canaan, and MicroBt's gear *are* UL listed/CE certified. That said, at least for CE certification all that means is that the components are properly rated and the design is not likely to catastrophically fail resulting in a fire or electrocution hazard. UL takes that a bit further in that the assembly factories must also allow periodic 3rd party audits to ensure all guidelines are followed. The fact that whoever makes the PSU's seem to *really* like using glue to insulate and hold parts in place is permitted although certainly not consider a best-practice.

Globally, transformers with aluminum windings are the norm when it comes to large ones used for power distribution and ones using copper are rather rare to find...

Now as to the switchgear, ja they need to check certifications but odds are it is all at least CE Certified.

[Biffa]

Interesting read about what a real CE (European Conformity​) mark is and what a "Chinese Export" (CE) mark is.

https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360008642600-How-To-Distinguish-A-Real-CE-Mark-From-A-Fake-Chinese-Export-Mark