2023 Diff thread now opened.

[philipma1957]

20 blocks to go

Latest Block:   790251  (12 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   102.5814%  (1996 / 1945.77 expected, 50.23 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   48712405953118.43                           
Current Difficulty:   48005534313578.78                           
Next Difficulty:   between 49330034536901 and 49330168503029
Next Difficulty Change:   between +2.7591% and +2.7593%
Previous Retarget:   May 4, 2023 at 10:54 AM  (-1.4511%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Tomorrow at 2:27 AM  (in 0d 3h 14m 58s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Tomorrow at 2:27 AM  (in 0d 3h 15m 1s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 15h 32m 40s and 13d 15h 32m 43s


note source is from bitrawr.com

[mikeywith]

So a 3.2% increase, the last epoch started really slow, nearly halfway through the epoch was below 96% pace, then around the last third we climbed really fast to 103%, I guess we shouldn't discuss the same theory of miners shutting down then coming online when the epoch is about to finish, should we? lol

Difficulty is projected to adjust downward next week, despite the recent BTC price hike.
Sounds like it's curtailment season. Must be getting hot in Texas. 

altair was probably right, it's likely a few large farms had to downclock/go offline for a while then came back, anyone from Texas to confirm the wether status during the past 2 weeks? online whether forecasts are not very accurate, my temp sensors were reading 39c under the shadow two days ago, and most wether apps were showing a max of 33c.

[philipma1957]

diff is fairly sideways.

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


Latest Block:   791125  (5 minutes ago)

Current Pace:   100.9880%  (854 / 845.65 expected, 8.35 ahead)

Previous Difficulty:   48005534313578.78                           
Current Difficulty:   49549703178592.68                           
Next Difficulty:   between 49906169701902 and 50085432269285
Next Difficulty Change:   between +0.7194% and +1.0812%
Previous Retarget:   last Thursday at 12:59 AM  (+3.2166%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   May 31, 2023 at 9:42 PM  (in 7d 23h 46m 19s)
Next Retarget (latest):   May 31, 2023 at 10:48 PM  (in 8d 0h 51m 50s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 20h 42m 46s and 13d 21h 48m 17s
Copy stats to clipboard

maybe we top 50t

[philipma1957]

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

Latest Block:   791489  (a minute ago)

Current Pace:   101.1548%  (1218 / 1204.09 expected, 13.91 ahead)

Previous Difficulty:   48005534313578.78                            
Current Difficulty:   49549703178592.68                            
Next Difficulty:   between 50058689633146 and 50154410958461
Next Difficulty Change:   between +1.0272% and +1.2204%
Previous Retarget:   May 18, 2023 at 12:59 AM  (+3.2166%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Wednesday at 9:09 PM  (in 5d 11h 28m 53s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Wednesday at 9:45 PM  (in 5d 12h 4m 57s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 20h 9m 50s and 13d 20h 45m 54s
Copy stats to clipboard

Just got a bit over 1% not much shift since last look

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


Latest Block:   791866  (30 minutes ago)

Current Pace:   102.1880%  (1595 / 1560.85 expected, 34.15 ahead)

Previous Difficulty:   48005534313578.78                            
Current Difficulty:   49549703178592.68                            
Next Difficulty:   between 50609747889698 and 50659166342013
Next Difficulty Change:   between +2.1394% and +2.2391%
Previous Retarget:   May 18, 2023 at 12:59 AM  (+3.2166%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Wednesday at 5:48 PM  (in 2d 20h 39m 51s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Wednesday at 6:07 PM  (in 2d 20h 58m 40s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 16h 48m 20s and 13d 17h 7m 10s
Copy stats to clipboard

Price is over 28k diff is up 2%

You know in July of 2019 we rallied to 12 or 13 k and fell back.


many said this rally from 15/16k in fall to 31k in spring matched 2019 rally in July.

Maybe not.

maybe just maybe we get close to 40/45k in next 30/60  days.

Latest Block:   792268  (41 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   103.1667%  (1997 / 1935.70 expected, 61.3 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   48005534313578.78                            
Current Difficulty:   49549703178592.68                            
Next Difficulty:   between 51139249535551 and 51139395266721
Next Difficulty Change:   between +3.2080% and +3.2083%
Previous Retarget:   May 18, 2023 at 12:59 AM  (+3.2166%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Today at 2:41 PM  (in 0d 3h 4m 10s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Today at 2:41 PM  (in 0d 3h 4m 13s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 13h 41m 11s and 13d 13h 41m 14s

About 2-4 hours left

and about +3.0 to +3.5% jump

world record diff of 51t+

[mikeywith]

About 2-4 hours left

and about +3.0 to +3.5% jump

world record diff of 51t+

It was a 3.39% increase, i am still amazed by the ability of these large guys to keep adding tens of thousands of gears ( probably the last generations) while BTC price is not helping and the halving is around the corner,  i doubt this would have happen if the main mining hub was in China like it was the previous halving, the U.S large players seem to have a ton of cash they want to use ( probably not thiers anyway)

[philipma1957]

About 2-4 hours left

and about +3.0 to +3.5% jump

world record diff of 51t+

It was a 3.39% increase, i am still amazed by the ability of these large guys to keep adding tens of thousands of gears ( probably the last generations) while BTC price is not helping and the halving is around the corner,  i doubt this would have happen if the main mining hub was in China like it was the previous halving, the U.S large players seem to have a ton of cash they want to use ( probably not thiers anyway)

I could argue we never had real miners capitulation this cycle. Although we did get near it in Nov 2022 when BTC was close to 16k

[mikeywith]

I could argue we never had real miners capitulation this cycle. Although we did get near it in Nov 2022 when BTC was close to 16k

Indeed Phil, the rules have changed, different players, different times, many people including myself underestimated the mining power location shift, it's obvious that Chinese money and U.S money don't play by the same rules,  the former seemed to be a lot more conservative, when the Chinese controlled the game you would see hashrate drop or at least slow down drastically at times like these, it's like things made some sense back then and they no longer do.

Not saying one part of the world is better/worse, but looks like the U.S players have a lot more cash they can't put elsewhere, they see things that the Chinese couldn't see, or, they just don't know what the hell they are doing, the last is the least likely, but I am still positive that some large U.S miners will be rekt by next year.

[philipma1957]

I could argue we never had real miners capitulation this cycle. Although we did get near it in Nov 2022 when BTC was close to 16k

Indeed Phil, the rules have changed, different players, different times, many people including myself underestimated the mining power location shift, it's obvious that Chinese money and U.S money don't play by the same rules,  the former seemed to be a lot more conservative, when the Chinese controlled the game you would see hashrate drop or at least slow down drastically at times like these, it's like things made some sense back then and they no longer do.

Not saying one part of the world is better/worse, but looks like the U.S players have a lot more cash they can't put elsewhere, they see things that the Chinese couldn't see, or, they just don't know what the hell they are doing, the last is the least likely, but I am still positive that some large U.S miners will be rekt by next year.

Well the tax laws are fucking endless. So many angles to play.

The average USA based billionaire pays about 8% of their year income to taxes.

I make no where near $500k a year and my taxes are well over 20% of my income.

So I am thinking we will see growth on and on and on.

The interesting thing is June 1 to Oct 1 Texas can be very hot. So if they have 20% of the worlds hash in Texas we could see some rollbacks over the next 100 days.  But they will go away in the fall.

[stompix]

Not saying one part of the world is better/worse, but looks like the U.S players have a lot more cash they can't put elsewhere, they see things that the Chinese couldn't see, or, they just don't know what the hell they are doing, the last is the least likely, but I am still positive that some large U.S miners will be rekt by next year.

The sheer amount of money US investors can throw at everything is just mind-blowing, they can throw money, see the business failing, throw more money, see the company going bankrupt, and even during restructuring again another shitload of money dumped in it.
I think that all of those riot, mara, hut8, all of them combined are just a speck, peanuts money in the whole grand scheme.

1 million S19 XP Hyd are 9 billion, for comparison since Elizabeth Holmes just went to prison, Theranos at one point had something between from $400 billion to $1.5 trillion in cash at their disposal according to court docs.


This is fresh from Mara:

“In May, we increased our operational hash rate 9% month-over-month to 15.2 exahashes, and we increased our installed hash rate 13% month-over-month to 20.1 exahashes. With the construction of Applied Digital’s facility in Ellendale, ND progressing and optimizations across our fleet continuing, we believe we are on track to reach our 23 EH/s target near the middle of this year.
In May, approximately 5,500 of Marathon’s Bitcoin miners (c. 0.75 EH/s) were newly energized at Applied Digital’s facilities in North Dakota. Approximately 5,300 S19 XPs (c. 0.72 EH/s) were newly energized in Ellendale, ND. The remaining units were energized at the Jamestown, ND, facility, where Marathon’s first domestic deployment of immersion mining is well underway.

If farms were able to deal with the slump to 5-6 cents per th/s last year then it's pretty sure they can deal with this in the future with cheaper electricity and far more efficient gear. So, worst-case scenario we could go about 30-40% in advance to any price growth in difficulty.
Oh.. not mentioning that fees still make 0.25 - 0.5 a block, despite the weekend.

[mikeywith]

The sheer amount of money US investors can throw at everything is just mind-blowing, they can throw money, see the business failing, throw more money, see the company going bankrupt, and even during restructuring again another shitload of money dumped in it.

They got the printing machine at home, nothing beats that.

If farms were able to deal with the slump to 5-6 cents per th/s last year then it's pretty sure they can deal with this in the future with cheaper electricity and far more efficient gear. So, worst-case scenario we could go about 30-40% in advance to any price growth in difficulty.
Oh.. not mentioning that fees still make 0.25 - 0.5 a block, despite the weekend.

Cheap electricity will depend on a few factors, geopolitical status, how cold the next winter, and the economy of the U.S and EU, those large U.S miners have "cheaper" elecitity almost guaranteed, but it's only a matter of time before they have nobody else left to compete with them and they will start competing against one another, now the electrcity game is easy to play, you and your friends pay 2-4 cents, the rest of the world pay 6-10 cents, you can just keep adding gears knowing for sure that those other guys will have to shrink while you expand.

Eventually, when you kick all of those 6-10 cents folks, the rules of the game change, you now pay the average cost just like most others, it's no longer an easy game, and then you got the halving, those S19 XPs won't ROI in their BTC domination until probably 2025-2026, you will need everything to stay the same for things to work out, next year is going to be fun to watch.

[philipma1957]

The sheer amount of money US investors can throw at everything is just mind-blowing, they can throw money, see the business failing, throw more money, see the company going bankrupt, and even during restructuring again another shitload of money dumped in it.

They got the printing machine at home, nothing beats that.

If farms were able to deal with the slump to 5-6 cents per th/s last year then it's pretty sure they can deal with this in the future with cheaper electricity and far more efficient gear. So, worst-case scenario we could go about 30-40% in advance to any price growth in difficulty.
Oh.. not mentioning that fees still make 0.25 - 0.5 a block, despite the weekend.

Cheap electricity will depend on a few factors, geopolitical status, how cold the next winter, and the economy of the U.S and EU, those large U.S miners have "cheaper" elecitity almost guaranteed, but it's only a matter of time before they have nobody else left to compete with them and they will start competing against one another, now the electrcity game is easy to play, you and your friends pay 2-4 cents, the rest of the world pay 6-10 cents, you can just keep adding gears knowing for sure that those other guys will have to shrink while you expand.

Eventually, when you kick all of those 6-10 cents folks, the rules of the game change, you now pay the average cost just like most others, it's no longer an easy game, and then you got the halving, those S19 XPs won't ROI in their BTC domination until probably 2025-2026, you will need everything to stay the same for things to work out, next year is going to be fun to watch.

big companies do not pay in btc.
they pay in cash.

They mine and spilt hodl the btc profits.

its all about churning O.P.M.

other people’s money.

[mikeywith]

Ok that I understand, but can't they just buy BTC instead? Or is it because they need to borrow money and need to have a collateral of physical goods like mining gears?

In other words, your money or not, don't you always want to invest in what makes you more profit?

[alh]

Ok that I understand, but can't they just buy BTC instead? Or is it because they need to borrow money and need to have a collateral of physical goods like mining gears?

In other words, your money or not, don't you always want to invest in what makes you more profit?

It seems to me that there are very few opportunities where "losing money" is OK. One is money laundering where you have lots of actual cash that you can't just deposit it in the bank, but you can spend it on things that don't return as much as you spent. But the process of doing that disperses the cash and makes it "clean". Would Bitmain, or other gear vendors, turn down cash for new equipment purchases? The authorities in the US wouldn't have clear insight into those kind of transactions, would they?

This is just a random thought with zero evidence to back it up. Maybe I watched too much "Ozark" on Netflix.....

[mikeywith]

It seems to me that there are very few opportunities where "losing money" is OK. One is money laundering where you have lots of actual cash that you can't just deposit it in the bank, but you can spend it on things that don't return as much as you spent. But the process of doing that disperses the cash and makes it "clean". Would Bitmain, or other gear vendors, turn down cash for new equipment purchases? The authorities in the US wouldn't have clear insight into those kind of transactions, would they?

This is just a random thought with zero evidence to back it up. Maybe I watched too much "Ozark" on Netflix.....

voilà, glad someone finally mentioned it lol, I keep hearing about how U.S tax law are different which am sure they are, but the logic doesn't up, doesn't matter what the tax law is, when you pour money into something that you know is going to lose you money when there are other things to do with it, it just doesn't seem like anything but money laundry.

The other possibility is, they are just plain stupid, if not.

because also what Phil said here is probably not the case

They mine and spilt hodl the btc profits.

I can't remember the source now, but someone has gathered the BTC balance of most of those large players and it has been only going down, so they are not holding their BTC, they could be lying, but that's what seem to be case, so chances are, they are selling that BTC to buy more gears.

So why would you buy a 2 year ROI gear a few months before the halving unless you were certain that BTC is going to the moon post halving, and if that is the case, wouldn't buying just BTC do you better? why insist on keeping the purchasing process going every month during all market phases and regardless of the gear price, quality, ROI, or the halving? these large players seem like they have an auto-buy bot that keeps sending orders to Bitmain without any sort of logical thinking, something is not right.

[philipma1957]

Ok that I understand, but can't they just buy BTC instead? Or is it because they need to borrow money and need to have a collateral of physical goods like mining gears?

In other words, your money or not, don't you always want to invest in what makes you more profit?

I bolded what the tax laws favor in the USA.

[mikeywith]

I bolded what the tax laws favor in the USA.

Great, but who would lend them the money? and at what expense, everyone especially those lenders understand that mining gear's value can drop 50% overnight, and liquidating such collateral is far from easy, if I was to lend you money, I'd rather have your BTC as collateral sitting on an exchange ready to be sold for cash than having to deal with the mess of selling your mining gears.?

Here is something interesting.

According to Theminermag that uses SEC Filings for as a source of information.

Production to Liquation Ratio for 17 public companies (Core, Mara, Riot , HUT8, and all the large U.S players):

Jan: 108.1%
Feb:108.9%
Mar:99%
April:94.1%

And last year isn't much better, these guys are selling everything they mine, in some months they even sell more than that using their own reserves in order to pay interest and pay power bills.


Looking at the largest 3 companies by production (and thus by hashrate), this year so far

Core mined 5.4k BTC and publicly sold 5.4k BTC
Mara mined 2.4k BTC and publicly sold 3.6k BTC
Riot  mined 2.7K BTC and publicly sold 2.6k BTC

Current holding for all BTC mined since the operation started:

Core : 0 bitcoin (despite having mined 14.4k BTC last year alone)
Riot  : 7.1K BTC
Mara : 11.5K BTC


The debt-to-equity ratio:

Core -297% >  pretty bad
Mara 210%  > ok
Riot 15%     > pretty good

Now here is an interesting piece of information:

All-in Cost of Bitcoin Mining Q1 2023

Core 16.8k
Mara 22.1k
Riot  13.6k

No wonder why Riot is doing much better than the other two.

Now comes the interesting part, source of data is U.S Import Records

Gross weight of miners in kilograms (U.S)
Jan : 1.6M
Feb :426K
Mar :608K

The average miner's weight is 12.5KG so we can translate those figures to actual gears
Jan 128,000 miner
Feb 34,080 miner
Mar 48,640 miner

As you can see, these guys are either almost broke or just not doing pretty well, one large price shake out or a good halving and things could hit the fan, none of these large companies can stand a 50% drop in rewards that isn't accompanied by at least 70% increase in price, I am not a banker, but most of these companies don't seem like a safe bet for lending them money, yet, the cash still flows and they keep buying newer gears.

[philipma1957]

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



Latest Block:
793761  (4 minutes ago)
Current Pace:

101.3049%  (1474 / 1455.01 expected, 18.99 ahead)

Previous Difficulty:
49549703178592.68                            
Current Difficulty:
51234338863442.89                            
Next Difficulty:
between 51902181300362 and 51954945617224
Next Difficulty Change:
between +1.3035% and +1.4065%
Previous Retarget:
May 31, 2023 at 2:04 PM  (+3.3999%)
Next Retarget (earliest):
Wednesday at 9:45 AM  (in 3d 17h 10m 11s)
Next Retarget (latest):
Wednesday at 10:03 AM  (in 3d 17h 28m 57s)
Projected Epoch Length:
between 13d 19h 40m 19s and 13d 19h 59m 5s
Copy stats to clipboard

So up 1.3% yet price has dropped a bit.

It still feels like we never have had the fall 2018 diff re-set for diff.

Maybe it is because so much gear is in USA and we have endless laws for taxes.  

right now an s19 doing 3kwatts and 100 th earns

$6.82 burns about 72kwatts a day add a bit more watts say 8 it runs at 80kwatts

so :

6.82 - 8.00 = - 1.18 if you have 10 cent power.
6.82 - 7.20 = - 0.38 if you have   9 cent power.
6.82 - 6.40 = +0.42 if you have   8 cent power.
6.82 - 5.60 = +1.22 if you have   7 cent power.
6.82 - 4.80 = +2.02 if you have   6 cent power.  

usually the reset is around here at six cent power.  and when re set happen diff drops and freezes for 6-10 months.

So I am thinking more shit prices and more diff increase for a bit more.


oh the 0.0682 a th is viabtc number

[mikeywith]

usually the reset is around here at six cent power.  and when re set happen diff drops and freezes for 6-10 months.

As we both agree on, the game now seems to have changed, it was China back then, now it's the U.S.

I think one important thing to look at would be how much it costs those large players to mine BTC, we have to assume that SEC Filings are accurate


All-in Cost of Bitcoin Mining Q1 2023

Core 16.8k
Mara 22.1k
Riot  13.6k

Now, of course, these numbers are bound to increase since the difficulty is increasing every month, it's a quarterly report which means it only represents the first three months of the year, but let's just assume they exchanged some older gear for new ones to offset the difficulty increase.

This means, a somewhat good difficulty reset will not happen unless we drop below 22k and stay there for a while, a MAJOR reset would happen if we fall below 20k and stay there for a while, at current prices, those large players can still afford another 15% difficulty increase, maybe up to 20%, current difficulty is 51.23T, we could probably easily push to 60-65T without the need for price increase, anything above is that will be extremely difficult and very difficult without a price increase.

Where do I see the price going? I think more down than up, we will likely spend the rest of the year going sideways with more down than up, probably something between 19-21k is going to be reached before the end of the year, I think some difficulty reset will happen in early 2024, and a major hashrate capitulation will be post-halving since the price increase that everyone is counting on won't happen until 2025, this is just how I view the market.

[philipma1957]

usually the reset is around here at six cent power.  and when re set happen diff drops and freezes for 6-10 months.

As we both agree on, the game now seems to have changed, it was China back then, now it's the U.S.

I think one important thing to look at would be how much it costs those large players to mine BTC, we have to assume that SEC Filings are accurate


All-in Cost of Bitcoin Mining Q1 2023

Core 16.8k
Mara 22.1k
Riot  13.6k

Now, of course, these numbers are bound to increase since the difficulty is increasing every month, it's a quarterly report which means it only represents the first three months of the year, but let's just assume they exchanged some older gear for new ones to offset the difficulty increase.

This means, a somewhat good difficulty reset will not happen unless we drop below 22k and stay there for a while, a MAJOR reset would happen if we fall below 20k and stay there for a while, at current prices, those large players can still afford another 15% difficulty increase, maybe up to 20%, current difficulty is 51.23T, we could probably easily push to 60-65T without the need for price increase, anything above is that will be extremely difficult and very difficult without a price increase.

Where do I see the price going? I think more down than up, we will likely spend the rest of the year going sideways with more down than up, probably something between 19-21k is going to be reached before the end of the year, I think some difficulty reset will happen in early 2024, and a major hashrate capitulation will be post-halving since the price increase that everyone is counting on won't happen until 2025, this is just how I view the market.

It is hard enough to guess diff.  price who the fuck knows!

We had a hard drop today for 3 major mining coins

BTC
LTC
DOGE all dropped a lot But diff goes up up up and away.

if MARA really spends 22k to earn a 25k coin they are sweating the load.

[mikeywith]

It is hard enough to guess diff.  price who the fuck knows!

Indeed, but looking at previous cycles, things seem to repeat quite well, in all years before the halving, the second half of the year wasn't good for the price, also no major price spikes neither before the halving nor a few months after it, and I rather believe that things will repeat than be different this time.

if MARA really spends 22k to earn a 25k coin they are sweating the load.

Those are figures they report to the SEC, it would be pretty damn risky to lie about it, besides, why would you do that anyway? also, by looking at how much BTC they mined this year vs how much they sold, they pretty much sold a lot more than they mined, which also suggests that their mining cost is rather high.