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

[philipma1957]

https://www.bitrawr.com/difficulty-estimator

Latest Block:   711284  (12 minutes ago)


Current Pace:   99.9008%  (1653 / 1654.64 expected, 1.64 behind)


Previous Difficulty:   21659344833264.85                            
Current Difficulty:   22674148233453.11                            
Next Difficulty:   between 22676532090654 and 22676611977151
Next Difficulty Change:   between +0.0105% and +0.0109%
Previous Retarget:   November 13, 2021 at 11:57 PM  (+4.6853%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Sunday at 12:16 AM  (in 2d 12h 32m 57s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Sunday at 12:17 AM  (in 2d 12h 33m 36s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 0h 19m 22s and 14d 0h 20m 1s

price has come back to 59k

we are 1 or 2 blocks off pace and have about 350-360 blocks left.

If we drift to 65k and diff goes to +2-3% it does indicate marginal mining ⛏ coming back on line

A lot of factors in play.

My advice is stack the sats people.

[alh]

.........

price has come back to 59k

we are 1 or 2 blocks off pace and have about 350-360 blocks left.

If we drift to 65k and diff goes to +2-3% it does indicate marginal mining ⛏ coming back on line

A lot of factors in play.

My advice is stack the sats people.

And the Bitcoin gods taketh away: BTC price has now fallen below $55,000

[kano]

Meanwhile today with only 2 days of the diff to go, there's been a sudden drop to below -1%
This of course, as usual, could be random, but also there's been some DNS issues in china today.

It would appear that one or more of the GFW, Aliyun or ? has been intercepting pool DNS requests and returning random results.
One of my 3 pool DNS VMs I manage, the only one that is inside china, would never return the correct DNS data.
I've of course already removed it from the DNS list of any relevant domains, but even running a dig DNS request from it, inside China to an outside DNS server, is being intercepted and changed to a random IP.

For me it is only the pool kano.is requests that were affected, no other domains I have were affected, and of course it would be 1/3 of the requests until I removed the VM being intercepted from the DNS list.
The same is true of pools like viabtc and fupool, of course even if you are connecting to their node outside china, from outside china, since their DNS itself is inside.
So I'm 'speculating' that there's some hash loss today due to this.

[stompix]

It's in the news too:
https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/11/26/multiple-mining-pools-are-facing-connectivity-issues/

So we went down to 12mins per block, 120 blocks in the last 24h, quite the drop. While I doubt all this hashrate was based in China it's still really annoying to have them again screw with us. What's the point at this time to keep anything related to bitcoin inside China?
Price down to 54k, hashrate about 15%, a new virus variant found, damn, this is really a Black Friday!

[philipma1957]

.........

price has come back to 59k

we are 1 or 2 blocks off pace and have about 350-360 blocks left.

If we drift to 65k and diff goes to +2-3% it does indicate marginal mining ⛏ coming back on line

A lot of factors in play.

My advice is stack the sats people.

And the Bitcoin gods taketh away: BTC price has now fallen below $55,000

This is more good news makes stacking sats easier to do.


uppity is when it is hard to stack sats.

[NapHappy]

This is more good news makes stacking sats easier to do.

uppity is when it is hard to stack sats.

But doesn't lower BTC price means BTC denominated electricity gets more expensive?

[philipma1957]

This is more good news makes stacking sats easier to do.

uppity is when it is hard to stack sats.

But doesn't lower BTC price means BTC denominated electricity gets more expensive?

Well only if diff stays flat or raises.
example below with round numbers

Start with
100 dollar price diff of 100

90 dollar price diff of 10 = higher power cost per BTC earned
90 dollar price diff of   9 = flat power cost per BTC earned
90 dollar price diff of 8   = lower power cost per BTC earned


the third case happened this year Diff dropped way more than price

So earning BTC via mining was better in say August when btc was 39k than April when btc first topped 60k


39k price and 14.4 diff in August = better than 62k price 25.05 diff in April

[alh]

This is more good news makes stacking sats easier to do.

uppity is when it is hard to stack sats.

But doesn't lower BTC price means BTC denominated electricity gets more expensive?

Has anyone actually seen where the price of electricity is denominated in Bitcoin (i.e. BTC/Kwh), or other crypto-currency? I am not trying to be disagreeable, I just haven't seen such a thing.  I understand that some folks use BTC to pay their electric bill, but the actual bill is priced in their local currency, and the payment service converts at the time you make the payment. I would think the volatility of BTC wouldn't work well for a utility pricing structure.

[NapHappy]

This is more good news makes stacking sats easier to do.

uppity is when it is hard to stack sats.

But doesn't lower BTC price means BTC denominated electricity gets more expensive?

Has anyone actually seen where the price of electricity is denominated in Bitcoin (i.e. BTC/Kwh), or other crypto-currency? I am not trying to be disagreeable, I just haven't seen such a thing.  I understand that some folks use BTC to pay their electric bill, but the actual bill is priced in their local currency, and the payment service converts at the time you make the payment. I would think the volatility of BTC wouldn't work well for a utility pricing structure.

I probably am having difficulty phrasing it.

When calculating the projected profitability of a BTC miner, I assume that the electricity will be paid from the BTC the miner produced. So I convert the electricity bill (USD) to BTC.

[mikeywith]

This is more good news makes stacking sats easier to do.

uppity is when it is hard to stack sats.

But doesn't lower BTC price means BTC denominated electricity gets more expensive?

of course it does get more expensive, this also somehow helps with suppressing the difficulty rise to a certain extent, which means, more sats to those who don't have to leave, as for right now:

Anyone who mines with anything that is less effienct than 60w/th and pays 20c or more is mining at a loss and will probably shut down pretty soon, those with 10 cents are good all the way to 30k, so I see no major impact coming soon, the only expectation would be the overclockers, overclocking makes your mining gear a lot less effienct and when prices fall like this, it makes sense that many folks will want more efficiency.

But keep in mind that I have seen many people include the power bill in their initial investment, it is like they pay the power bill upfront and then don't even bother if their miners are currently mining at a loss or not, so really the effect of price on difficulty is rather complicated and hard to predict in the short term.

[philipma1957]

Well we are closing in on next jump

https://www.bitrawr.com/difficulty-estimator

Latest Block:   711534  (8 minutes ago)

Current Pace:   99.0488%  (1903 / 1921.27 expected, 18.27 behind)

Previous Difficulty:   21659344833264.85                            
Current Difficulty:   22674148233453.11                            
Next Difficulty:   between 22479793018588 and 22480398422262
Next Difficulty Change:   between -0.8572% and -0.8545%
Previous Retarget:   November 13, 2021 at 11:57 PM  (+4.6853%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Tomorrow at 3:10 AM  (in 0d 19h 0m 14s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Tomorrow at 3:10 AM  (in 0d 19h 0m 51s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 3h 12m 59s and 14d 3h 13m 35s

just about -1%

So in my case I should earn more sats next jump than last jump.

my cost of power is a fixed constant 1/2 the coins go to the host.

In good times like now the host does better. In tight times I do better.

If I only have s9's it is to my advantage
If I had all s19 pro's it would be to the hosts advantage

I have a mix of gear and kind of blend that advantage to neutral.

[stompix]

The pace is picking up again, 149 blocks in the last 24 hours, but there is no way we can get back into positive, it needs 105 blocks mined instead of 86 left, so 17% speed for the finish. Probably the last drop of the year, I don't see even a flat period coming next unless something like this shutdown in Kazakhstan  gets amplified all over the country.

Oh, and I got my new electricity bill (for my home) which reminded me that starting January the tariffs will be 15.5/17.5 cents (euro/usd)/kwh before tax and others, so the final bill will be around 21 eurocents per kwh, plus 8 euros for the plan itself. I don't see anyone home mining at these rates around here.

[philipma1957]

The pace is picking up again, 149 blocks in the last 24 hours, but there is no way we can get back into positive, it needs 105 blocks mined instead of 86 left, so 17% speed for the finish. Probably the last drop of the year, I don't see even a flat period coming next unless something like this shutdown in Kazakhstan  gets amplified all over the country.

Oh, and I got my new electricity bill (for my home) which reminded me that starting January the tariffs will be 15.5/17.5 cents (euro/usd)/kwh before tax and others, so the final bill will be around 21 eurocents per kwh, plus 8 euros for the plan itself. I don't see anyone home mining at these rates around here.

yeah 30 cents a euro is very expensive.

here in USA NJ i am 13 cents winter and 17 cents summer

figure the heat lowers the winter to 10 cents

and raises the summer to 19 cents

I am running a mix of gear in the home.

sidehack stick
appollo miner
a s9
and a lot of gpus.

maybe 3kwatts of gear an hour.

The pace is picking up again, 149 blocks in the last 24 hours, but there is no way we can get back into positive, it needs 105 blocks mined instead of 86 left, so 17% speed for the finish. Probably the last drop of the year, I don't see even a flat period coming next unless something like this shutdown in Kazakhstan  gets amplified all over the country.

Oh, and I got my new electricity bill (for my home) which reminded me that starting January the tariffs will be 15.5/17.5 cents (euro/usd)/kwh before tax and others, so the final bill will be around 21 eurocents per kwh, plus 8 euros for the plan itself. I don't see anyone home mining at these rates around here.

yeah 30 cents a euro is very expensive.

here in USA NJ i am 13 cents winter and 17 cents summer

figure the heat lowers the winter to 10 cents

and raises the summer to 19 cents

I am running a mix of gear in the home.

sidehack stick
appollo miner
a s9
and a lot of gpus.

maybe 3kwatts of gear an hour.

So -1.5%

but now something is up.

https://www.bitrawr.com/difficulty-estimator

Latest Block:   711654  (12 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   47.4676%  (7 / 14.75 expected, 7.75 behind)
Previous Difficulty:   22674148233453.11                           
Current Difficulty:   22335659268936.39                           
Next Difficulty:   between 11303551648240 and 22185553733226

Next Difficulty Change:   between -49.3924% and -0.6720%

Previous Retarget:   Today at 5:20 AM  (-1.4928%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   December 12, 2021 at 7:55 AM  (in 14d 0h 7m 12s)
Next Retarget (latest):   December 27, 2021 at 5:12 PM  (in 29d 9h 23m 36s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 2h 34m 40s and 29d 11h 51m 4s

lets hope this is variance as -50% is crazy

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

[alh]

............

https://www.bitrawr.com/difficulty-estimator

Latest Block:   711654  (12 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   47.4676%  (7 / 14.75 expected, 7.75 behind)
Previous Difficulty:   22674148233453.11                            
Current Difficulty:   22335659268936.39                            
Next Difficulty:   between 11303551648240 and 22185553733226

Next Difficulty Change:   between -49.3924% and -0.6720%

Previous Retarget:   Today at 5:20 AM  (-1.4928%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   December 12, 2021 at 7:55 AM  (in 14d 0h 7m 12s)
Next Retarget (latest):   December 27, 2021 at 5:12 PM  (in 29d 9h 23m 36s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 2h 34m 40s and 29d 11h 51m 4s

lets hope this is variance as -50% is crazy

Edit: BTC price is now back above $57K (Was in the $54K range earlier today).

That scary -50% number is strictly the result of it only having 7 blocks of history to make it's projection of the next 2000+ blocks for the epoch. Think of it like you get a coin and flip it 3 times in a row and it comes up heads. Does that mean it's a "loaded" coin and will always come up heads?

Until you get several hundred blocks in, the projections here are useless in terms of what's going to happen. We see wild variation in this projection for at least the first 200 blocks.

[philipma1957]

I know but it looked cool 😎 -50% is impressive.

[kano]

...
We see wild variation in this projection for at least the first 200 blocks.

Usually the whole diff change actually
With miners coming online, farms going offline, price changes, and random variance, even the full 2016 block range isn't exceedingly accurate.

[stompix]

And just one day since the adjustment it's perfectly stable:

Latest Block:   711813  (5 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   100.4257%  (166 / 165.30 expected, 0.7 ahead)
Next Difficulty Change:   between +0.1542% and +0.9847%

I think that the growth triggered by all the new gear and older gear that has found a home is slowly hampered by others who are losing their contracts, too many news and bits of dialogues over telegram pointing at such cases.
Hopefully (from my point of view) we won't be doing more than 2-3% the next two epoch till the end of year, so around 10Exa short of the ATH.

I know it's about an altcoin but still,it's related so, have you seen the estimates for the ETH mining?
https://digiconomist.net/ethereum-energy-consumption/
I don't know how accurate is this but currently shows 93.11 TWh vs 199.08 TWh for bitcoin, even if we split as I kind of doubt it's accurate, that still ETH would gobble at least half of the energy BTC uses, and so if it finally goes full PoS, then...more cheap energy for everyone?

[Heathen23]

I know it's about an altcoin but still,it's related so, have you seen the estimates for the ETH mining?
https://digiconomist.net/ethereum-energy-consumption/

This portal does not appear to be a rational un-biased source to base your intellectual discussion or business or investment decisions on.

I did not know about this website before your post. I just went to their home page and following are the headlines of their recent articles i saw.

1. "How Bitcoin mining disproportionally impacts vulnerable communities."
- how about existing fiat printing system? They are having really great impacts on "vulnerable communities"?

2. Bitcoin’s growing e-waste problem
- I don't even know where to begin on this one. Height of dumbness.

3. Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally
- so what? Why is the data center that is spending 80% of its energy to power useless gossip is not waste?

4. How China’s Bitcoin mining ban affects energy consumption estimates
- basically celebrating China's bitcoin ban as positive for the environment. As if the Chinese power plants are shut down now that bitcoin mining is banned?

5. Bitcoin now negating a decade of progress in deploying electric vehicles
-huh!

6. A solution to Bitcoin’s Environmental Impact
- basically promoting POS as the first solution, then "green energy", blah blah blah.

Summary:
6 articles in 1st page published since June. 4 are straight out negative to bitcoin. Remaining 2 are also negative to bitcoin in not so subtle way.

What kind of publication cannot recognize a single positive aspect of bitcoin?
We know the reserve banks do not like bitcoins because it is robbing them of their monopolies on minting money. We know the cronies that are dependent on central bank and the big 4 and many of their friends badmouthed bitcoin for years. Then they said blockchain will survive but not bit coin. Finally some of them started buying bitcoin, started building their blockchain teams, even their own coins. Yet at the same time continued misinformation campaign against bitcoin to get more of it. We know even within crypto community there are lobbies that want to destroy all pow coins not only bitcoin. Given that we are investors, miners of bitcoin and therefore share at least some vision and thinking process of Satoshi.

We absolutely don't need to waste our time reading such biased portals by paid shills or dumb reporters whatever the case may be. Energy to mine bitcoin is not "wasted". That way energy to produce and procure special type of paper, watermark, printing is also wasted. The energy to melt metals and create amalgams and seals to mint is also wasted with the same logic. How about the energy to build and secure mints run by government? I am not even getting into the energy used to keep this system going and the energy this kind of shill media is using just to run misinformation campaign. Why don't these shills talk about that?

[NotFuzzyWarm]

I know it's about an altcoin but still,it's related so, have you seen the estimates for the ETH mining?
https://digiconomist.net/ethereum-energy-consumption

...
3. Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally
- so what? Why is the data center that is spending 80% of its energy to power useless gossip is not waste?

We absolutely don't need to waste our time reading such biased portals by paid shills or dumb reporters whatever the case may be. Energy to mine bitcoin is not "wasted". That way energy to produce and procure special type of paper, watermark, printing is also wasted. The energy to melt metals and create amalgams and seals to mint is also wasted with the same logic. How about the energy to build and secure mints run by government? I am not even getting into the energy used to keep this system going and the energy this kind of shill media is using just to run misinformation campaign. Why don't these shills talk about that?

They really got the vs data centers power backwards. As has been pointed out in other threads regarding POW energy usage, over 85% of global data transfer/storage/ etc power usage is video streaming services (including porn services which makes up a large part of that)... Cambridge Research put BTC power usage at about 4% (?) of the total power usage. It is still a huge amount of power being used and yes, more power than many small countries use. Then again, just 2-3 large aluminum smelters also 'use more power than many small countries'. It is a drop in the bucket vs other data-based enterprises.

[philipma1957]

I personally am directly involved in a :

45 kwatt solar array
a

115 kwatts solar array


a

350 kwatt solar array

total 510 kwatts grid tied arrays

they provide 85 to 102 kwatts 24/7/365

all created due to demand and profits from mining.

so 8760 x 85 in a rainy year

to 8760 x 102 in a sunny year.

so 744000 to 893000 fully clean kwatts

now you can argue they used some carbon and crap to build them but not much energy to make them.

So BTC can be used with ease to create demand and profits from a solar array.

Note the 45kwatt is working as I type been online for six months
the 115 kwatt is working as I type and was paid off in the 2017 runup

the 350 kwatt is being built right now.

So the writer of that article is either willingly lying or really ignorant about btc being able to help the worlds electrical infrastructure.

If I had  more investors  we could get some 2000 kwatt arrays built

the math is there for this to work.