2022 Diff thread.

[Saskfarmer]

I think there's still a shit ton of hardware coming online.   Has to be to even flatline.  Having a real hard time believing there's going to be a meaningful downward correction in difficulty.   Miner's are just going to eat the loss till the price recovers.   Or don't.      Can't shake the nagging feeling this is going to carry right to the halving which would make for some real entertainment.

 

[philipma1957]

I think there's still a shit ton of hardware coming online.   Has to be to even flatline.  Having a real hard time believing there's going to be a meaningful downward correction in difficulty.   Miner's are just going to eat the loss till the price recovers.   Or don't.     Can't shake the nagging feeling this is going to carry right to the halving which would make for some real entertainment.

  

The profit margin on a daily basis is not as low as it was in 2018 when the diff tanked.

But 13/14k coins and 37/40t diff will have us just about right to shift the diff.

The October 2018 diff shift last about a 8-9months.

Oct 21 2018 it was 7.4t
July  6 2019 it was 7.9t

low point was 5.1t on dec 29

this time slot was the first diff shift downwards for a period over 4 months as it took a while to go past the oct 21 2018 peak.

[alh]

Just as follow up to this discussion, BTC price has dropped below $16K. Most recent prices was $15,906. Boy, $30K sure looks nice from here......

[NotFuzzyWarm]

And as Baron Rothschild, a veritable banker and “one-percenter,” famously recommended, "buy when there's blood in the streets."
That was true back in his day regarding stocks and real estate, now it's true for BTC as well.

[kano]

And as Baron Rothschild, a veritable banker and “one-percenter,” famously recommended, "buy when there's blood in the streets."
That was true back in his day regarding stocks and real estate, now it's true for BTC as well.

With a reminder that yes this comment is only about BTC

For scam coins that for some unknown reason get discussed in this thread, run far away from them, the blood is there for a reason.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

For scam coins that for some unknown reason get discussed in this thread, run far away from them, the blood is there for a reason.

Most definitely ja to that! It's why I said BTC vs using the more general 'crypto'. If one wants to day-trade and you're vigilant in doing it then alts may or may not work for you but for long-term gain -- stick to BTC!

[philipma1957]

Yeah looks easier to buy than mine at this time.

[mikeywith]

A few months back I talked about those large players and how unsustainable their operations were, I know it did sound funny back when, because all members here combined don't have a fraction of the hashrate that a single large miner has, but the numbers were written on the wall, anyone could see them, you didn't need a crystal ball to figure that much out.

Now, luckily, it seems like that vision is coming true, Iris Energy which owns 5EH worth of hashrate had to turn off 3.6EH because gears failed to generate enough money for the loan, so that's 3.6EH out of the game probably for a very long time.

The second big player that is going to hit the wall soon is Core Scientific the largest bitcoin miner on planet earth with more than 30EH worth of hashrate, Core is running out of liquidity and they are looking for someone to give them some cash so they can maintain their operation at full speed.

It seems like FTX failure will be the "Straw that broke the camel's back" because FTX was going to bailout BlockFi (Core Scientific's lender) and now that isn't going to happen anymore, Core Scientific has a debt of nearly $1 billion, the large players combined have nearly 4$ billion in debt, a large amount of it being owed to lenders like Celsius's and BlockFi, those lenders took investors money, gave them to large gamblers that paid 15k for S19  , the miners now can't pay back, despite having a huge amount of value in hashrate, they can't keep up with the high-interest rate, so everyone is fudged.

It's really just a domino effect, people hype into crypto, they give their hard-earned money to lenders for a good return (which usually doesn't come), and the lenders give that money to greedy miners who think they can grow their hashrate to infinity, everyone in this equation thinks the bull market will go on for a lot longer, but then change of plans happens and the market collapse, everyone involved in this show gets burned.

So what is it going to be? Core said they will hardly have enough money to operate for the rest of the year, so what? unplug 30EH? start praying 20 times a day that BTC goes to 50k before the year ends.? or someone will buy their debt and buy them more time. but who will?  

Whoever is brave/crazy enough to put their money in this black whole has to believe that BTC is going to start putting new ATH pretty soon, does anyone really think so? or maybe they will just be forced to default on loans, file bankruptcy and sell their gears, maybe sell half the gears to get enough cash to operate the rest? but then those gears will have to be sold at a huge discount, someone else with a better business model might buy them and brings the difficulty back up while BTC price doesn't move any higher and the next thing you see is the bitcoin halving which will be the last episode of this shit show.

The next few months will be fun to watch, but regardless of what happens, as I said a few weeks ago, the current hashrate is extremely unlikely to be sustained at current prices, the only logical way for difficulty is down.


Sources for those interested in reading:
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/22/bitcoin-mining-giant-core-scientific-ended-october-with-32m-in-cash/
https://cointelegraph.com/news/iris-energy-to-cut-mining-hardware-after-defaulting-on-108m-loan

[philipma1957]

Yeah anyone with loans is hurting.

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

Latest Block:   764356  (a few seconds ago)

Current Pace:   91.3712%  (293 / 320.67 expected, 27.67 behind)
Previous Difficulty:   36762198818467.21                           
Current Difficulty:   36950494067222.41                           
Next Difficulty:   between 34019890288813 and 36111966461563
Next Difficulty Change:   between -7.9312% and -2.2693%

Previous Retarget:   last Sunday at 5:50 PM  (+0.5122%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   December 5, 2022 at 2:23 AM  (in 12d 3h 6m 29s)
Next Retarget (latest):   December 6, 2022 at 1:33 AM  (in 13d 2h 17m 9s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 8h 33m 11s and 15d 7h 43m 51s
Copy stats to clipboard
...

good numbers. we will see what is next up.

[stompix]

So what is it going to be? Core said they will hardly have enough money to operate for the rest of the year, so what? unplug 30EH? start praying 20 times a day that BTC goes to 50k before the year ends.? or someone will buy their debt and buy them more time. but who will?

Never underestimate stupidity, Faraday Future is my favorite example:

• Faraday Future suspended work until the first $300 million of a claimed $600 million in funding would be realized.
  The new financing involved US$1 billion for 25% of the outstanding shares in the company. I
  In early 2018, Faraday Future acquired a $1.5 billion funding commitment from an undisclosed Hong Kong investor,
  In August 2018, Faraday Future received US$854 million from Evergrande Group for a 45% stake in the company.
  In March 2019, Faraday Future announced a new 50–50 joint venture with $600 million for the project.
  In January 2021, Faraday Future announced that the company would go public through a reverse merger with special purpose acquisition company Property Solutions Acquisition Corp. The combined company would be valued at $3.4 billion USD

How to destroy billions in funding, bankrupt partner companies as well as yourself, and still somehow manage to be worth billions!
And this will happen to a few of those mining companies, but of course not all, some will just be forgotten but some will receive more funding than they would ever produce, sums that make no sense unless bitcoins grow x100 at which point you would have to ask yourself, why not buy the coins directly?

The current mess is clearly unsustainable, yes small, home, hobby and small private businesses can and will survive even at the 5cent per th/s we see now, but for a company that pays hundreds of thousands of dollars on expenses that don't exist on a small scale, nothing, not even the 3-4 cents per kWh will make it up, to turn the company profitable, being able to pay some CEOs wage and still return profits to investors.
Unless the price booms in the next months we will see a decrease in hashrate, for sure, but I don't share the enthusiasm on the amount of exahash will disappear, just browsing the forum I see news about companies and investment funds, and individuals pouring money into companies that face liquidity problems and near bankruptcy, a lot of those will find a lifeline, that won't happen twice or thrice but in the first instance, it will do.

Going through your links

A filing by the firm to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Nov. 21 revealed that it has unplugged its hardware used as collateral in a $107.8 million loan as of Nov. 18.
The units “produce insufficient cash flow to service their respective debt financing obligations,” the firm noted. The operation generates around $2 million in Bitcoin
BTC  gross profit per month but cannot cover the $7 million in debt obligations.
~
Iris has now reduced its capacity by around 3.6 EH/s

53 months of ROI, nice, but 30 million per exa, 30 000 per petahash, 30$ per th/s. That's not bad, isn't it?
Salvageable?

so everyone is fudged.

Definitely, mmm, fudge!!!!  

Let's leave this here, I'm curious if the hashrate goes indeed down by 10% what will change?


Oh, and btw, thank god this drop in mined blocks didn't happen last week when Binance dumped those 150vMb transactions!

[philipma1957]

So what is it going to be? Core said they will hardly have enough money to operate for the rest of the year, so what? unplug 30EH? start praying 20 times a day that BTC goes to 50k before the year ends.? or someone will buy their debt and buy them more time. but who will?

Never underestimate stupidity, Faraday Future is my favorite example:

• Faraday Future suspended work until the first $300 million of a claimed $600 million in funding would be realized.
  The new financing involved US$1 billion for 25% of the outstanding shares in the company. I
  In early 2018, Faraday Future acquired a $1.5 billion funding commitment from an undisclosed Hong Kong investor,
  In August 2018, Faraday Future received US$854 million from Evergrande Group for a 45% stake in the company.
  In March 2019, Faraday Future announced a new 50–50 joint venture with $600 million for the project.
  In January 2021, Faraday Future announced that the company would go public through a reverse merger with special purpose acquisition company Property Solutions Acquisition Corp. The combined company would be valued at $3.4 billion USD

How to destroy billions in funding, bankrupt partner companies as well as yourself, and still somehow manage to be worth billions!
And this will happen to a few of those mining companies, but of course not all, some will just be forgotten but some will receive more funding than they would ever produce, sums that make no sense unless bitcoins grow x100 at which point you would have to ask yourself, why not buy the coins directly?

The current mess is clearly unsustainable, yes small, home, hobby and small private businesses can and will survive even at the 5cent per th/s we see now, but for a company that pays hundreds of thousands of dollars on expenses that don't exist on a small scale, nothing, not even the 3-4 cents per kWh will make it up, to turn the company profitable, being able to pay some CEOs wage and still return profits to investors.
Unless the price booms in the next months we will see a decrease in hashrate, for sure, but I don't share the enthusiasm on the amount of exahash will disappear, just browsing the forum I see news about companies and investment funds, and individuals pouring money into companies that face liquidity problems and near bankruptcy, a lot of those will find a lifeline, that won't happen twice or thrice but in the first instance, it will do.

Going through your links

A filing by the firm to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Nov. 21 revealed that it has unplugged its hardware used as collateral in a $107.8 million loan as of Nov. 18.
The units “produce insufficient cash flow to service their respective debt financing obligations,” the firm noted. The operation generates around $2 million in Bitcoin
BTC  gross profit per month but cannot cover the $7 million in debt obligations.
~
Iris has now reduced its capacity by around 3.6 EH/s

53 months of ROI, nice, but 30 million per exa, 30 000 per petahash, 30$ per th/s. That's not bad, isn't it?
Salvageable?

so everyone is fudged.

Definitely, mmm, fudge!!!!  

Let's leave this here, I'm curious if the hashrate goes indeed down by 10% what will change?


Oh, and btw, thank god this drop in mined blocks didn't happen last week when Binance dumped those 150vMb transactions!

Actually it would have made for some juicy block fees.

[o_solo_miner]

  I like your kind of humor, the only positiv side is realy they all want to transfer btc at any cost into the safe habour.

[philipma1957]

I like your kind of humor, the only positiv side is realy they all want to transfer btc at any cost into the safe habour.

Fingers crossed I can get cheap s19 xp's soon.

Our power is cheap enough that I wen and purchased 10 L3+ units for 1000 dollars. they will earn back the 1000 usd in under 60 days.

[mikeywith]

Never underestimate stupidity, Faraday Future is my favorite example:

Ya sadly, as long as the government keeps printing money out of thin air there always be a ton of money that is ready to bail out stupid businesses, but you can't inflate the bubble to infinity, it's going to burst at some point, it's just a matter of time.

Meanwhile, some of the large players seem to be doing a lot better, Foundry is buying a dead mining business called Compute North which has 17mw worth of hashrate, so ya, much of the hashrate that leaves the network will re-enter it in the future, the condition is terrible but just not as terrible enough to force everyone out of business, it's all about "time", how long will the bear market last will decide the future of most large mining operations, but without a doubt, many of them won't be there to witness the bull market.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Foundry is buying a dead mining business called Compute North which has 17mw worth of hashrate

     
They *do* know that Compute North's demise/trouble is that the cost of power in the areas where their mining farms are located has skyrocketed right? Buying & throwing more money at them just to keep running is insane...

[philipma1957]

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

Latest Block:   764546  (13 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   90.8982%  (483 / 531.36 expected, 48.36 behind)
Previous Difficulty:   36762198818467.21                            
Current Difficulty:   36950494067222.41                            
Next Difficulty:   between 33741636493323 and 35525551999137
Next Difficulty Change:   between -8.6842% and -3.8564%
Previous Retarget:   last Sunday at 5:50 PM  (+0.5122%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   December 5, 2022 at 8:01 AM  (in 10d 21h 37m 45s)
Next Retarget (latest):   December 6, 2022 at 3:28 AM  (in 11d 17h 5m 1s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 14h 11m 24s and 15d 9h 38m 39s
Copy stats to clipboard

down 48 blocks not bad.

Over the years slow hash during this holiday has happened.

On tuesday we should know if hash will drop alot.
Its not surprising to see this drop.

Hash will meander about from now til Jan as big companies with huge mines will make tax moves.

This is more true than ever due to more USA mines.

Although some companies do not use Jan as the new tax year.

[stompix]

Foundry is buying a dead mining business called Compute North which has 17mw worth of hashrate

     
They *do* know that Compute North's demise/trouble is that the cost of power in the areas where their mining farms are located has skyrocketed right? Buying & throwing more money at them just to keep running is insane...

For Compute North their main problem was (from what I read) that the whole company was running on credit, they basically had nothing, $500m in debt and even selling all the facilities they're expected to raise less than 10% down from their previous claim of 100 million. Also, the whole thing is really messy, a lot of their business was actually hosting for others, like MARA, so if that miner goes into trouble because it was running on credit from Celsius for example, so do they. Half a billion company run with 100k in cash, nice chain of fails, right?

As far as I understand Foundry has bought just the location where they were already mining in partnership with Compute North:

Through the partnership, Foundry will supply 14,000 new Whatsminer M30S mining rigs from MicroBT to be hosted at Compute North’s North American colocation facilities. Compute North will commit 47 megawatts of power to these rigs beginning in the first quarter of this year. The goal is to provide an avenue for Bitcoin mining investment for more North American businesses.

Actually it would have made for some juicy block fees.

Yeah, 25% in income per block and Bitcoin down to 10k because of the panic over fees and exchange run, a recap of the fork wars when the chain was last attacked, no thanks.
Speaking of panic, I feel tempted to short BTC at the moment of the diff adjustment, I can already see the panic titles, bitcoin hash rate drops by 10%, miners go bankrupt, POW is doomed, etc etc.
60 blocks behind, I'll bet on a 7.5% drop, let's see if I lost my skills or my quartz ball will still miss this by more than 7.5% altogether.

[philipma1957]

Foundry is buying a dead mining business called Compute North which has 17mw worth of hashrate

     
They *do* know that Compute North's demise/trouble is that the cost of power in the areas where their mining farms are located has skyrocketed right? Buying & throwing more money at them just to keep running is insane...

For Compute North their main problem was (from what I read) that the whole company was running on credit, they basically had nothing, $500m in debt and even selling all the facilities they're expected to raise less than 10% down from their previous claim of 100 million. Also, the whole thing is really messy, a lot of their business was actually hosting for others, like MARA, so if that miner goes into trouble because it was running on credit from Celsius for example, so do they. Half a billion company run with 100k in cash, nice chain of fails, right?

As far as I understand Foundry has bought just the location where they were already mining in partnership with Compute North:

Through the partnership, Foundry will supply 14,000 new Whatsminer M30S mining rigs from MicroBT to be hosted at Compute North’s North American colocation facilities. Compute North will commit 47 megawatts of power to these rigs beginning in the first quarter of this year. The goal is to provide an avenue for Bitcoin mining investment for more North American businesses.

Actually it would have made for some juicy block fees.

Yeah, 25% in income per block and Bitcoin down to 10k because of the panic over fees and exchange run, a recap of the fork wars when the chain was last attacked, no thanks.
Speaking of panic, I feel tempted to short BTC at the moment of the diff adjustment, I can already see the panic titles, bitcoin hash rate drops by 10%, miners go bankrupt, POW is doomed, etc etc.
60 blocks behind, I'll bet on a 7.5% drop, let's see if I lost my skills or my quartz ball will still miss this by more than 7.5% altogether.

A lot of hash is now in the USA. We will get a better idea of the diff this Tues.
This holiday will be fully done by monday and maybe hash will go back online.

[mikeywith]

60 blocks behind, I'll bet on a 7.5% drop, let's see if I lost my skills or my quartz ball will still miss this by more than 7.5% altogether.

I thought we have agreed on "no more optimistic protection" on your behalf, have we not?

A lot of hash is now in the USA. We will get a better idea of the diff this Tues.
This holiday will be fully done by monday and maybe hash will go back online.

I don't understand the relationship between the holiday and hashrate, why does the hashrate need to go on holiday as well? most of the mining operations are hands-off, and then even if the employees had to skip going home -- they would probably do so, nobody would turn off 10EH worth of hashrate just for a holiday IMO.

What I think is that the end of the year will be fun, I heard that many of the prepaid electricity contracts usually end when the year ends, it's without a doubt that power rates have increased all over the world, some there is a good chance that some of the mid-sized or even large players who still have access to cheap power rate and the power company has been making a ton of losses just to keep the contact, so, when the contact period is over, all the new contracts will be priced at higher prices.

[philipma1957]

60 blocks behind, I'll bet on a 7.5% drop, let's see if I lost my skills or my quartz ball will still miss this by more than 7.5% altogether.

I thought we have agreed on "no more optimistic protection" on your behalf, have we not?

A lot of hash is now in the USA. We will get a better idea of the diff this Tues.
This holiday will be fully done by monday and maybe hash will go back online.

I don't understand the relationship between the holiday and hashrate, why does the hashrate need to go on holiday as well? most of the mining operations are hands-off, and then even if the employees had to skip going home -- they would probably do so, nobody would turn off 10EH worth of hashrate just for a holiday IMO.

What I think is that the end of the year will be fun, I heard that many of the prepaid electricity contracts usually end when the year ends, it's without a doubt that power rates have increased all over the world, some there is a good chance that some of the mid-sized or even large players who still have access to cheap power rate and the power company has been making a ton of losses just to keep the contact, so, when the contact period is over, all the new contracts will be priced at higher prices.

No but if a company was upgrading from:
s17 to s19 or
s19 to s19 xp

the holiday could slow replacement with the newer gear.