2023 Diff thread now opened.

[philipma1957]

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.

Well their costs may include loan interest or gear purchase cost for upgrades to s19xp’s or m50

thus the extra outlays of money to earn a coin.

If that is the case their cost may drop next quarter .

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[mikeywith]

Well their costs may include loan interest or gear purchase cost for upgrades to s19xp’s or m50

thus the extra outlays of money to earn a coin.

If that is the case their cost may drop next quarter .

According to the source, it says

A quarterly overview of the all-in cost of bitcoin mining by individual companies, which includes the cost of bitcoin production, as well as the SG&A (Selling, General, and Administrative) and interest expenses per each mined BTC.

https://theminermag.com/data/overview/all-in-bitcoin-mining-cost-estimate/

Doesn't mention anything regarding gear upgrades, but could be factored in, the "interest expenses" part I don't understand.

There is another chart for production cost which only takes into account the "electric bill and direct site maintenance expenses but excludes depreciation and amortization expenses", that number shows 15.2k, so that 7k jump could come from the interest rate and the loans they have to repay, takes someone who understands all those terms to come up with an accurate answer, that someone is surely not me.

[philipma1957]

Well their costs may include loan interest or gear purchase cost for upgrades to s19xp’s or m50

thus the extra outlays of money to earn a coin.

If that is the case their cost may drop next quarter .

According to the source, it says

A quarterly overview of the all-in cost of bitcoin mining by individual companies, which includes the cost of bitcoin production, as well as the SG&A (Selling, General, and Administrative) and interest expenses per each mined BTC.

https://theminermag.com/data/overview/all-in-bitcoin-mining-cost-estimate/

Doesn't mention anything regarding gear upgrades, but could be factored in, the "interest expenses" part I don't understand.

There is another chart for production cost which only takes into account the "electric bill and direct site maintenance expenses but excludes depreciation and amortization expenses", that number shows 15.2k, so that 7k jump could come from the interest rate and the loans they have to repay, takes someone who understands all those terms to come up with an accurate answer, that someone is surely not me.

All-in implies everything spent to earn a coin.

So worker salaries.
Building cost.
Power cost.
Miner cost.
Wiring cost.
Loan interest.
Miscellaneous.

Won’t get into depreciation as it is too complex to explain in a single post.

But 22k for mara could lower next quarter as they may not be adding gear for a while.

[mikeywith]

But 22k for mara could lower next quarter as they may not be adding gear for a while.

It could go up if the difficulty affect is greater than whatever interest they pay for the gear, right? I mean if difficulty is 1 and you need 1 S19 that uses 100$ to mine 1 BTC then your bare cost is $100, if difficulty jumps to 2, you will need 2*19s to make 1 BTC OR run the same S19 for twice the time which also means double cost, so in that case the bare cost is $200.

I believe it will only get worse for them because the difficulty increases more than they can afford to expand, a 10% increase might be 9% from other players and only 1% comes from your company, in order for them not to be affected by the difficulty they will have to keep adding gears every 2 weeks that matches whatever the overall network increase, I would imagine at such scale it would be pretty difficult to accomplish.

Mara has at least 13.5EH, to match the next 3% spike they need to add 0.4EH or 2,857 S19 XPs and 8MW worth of power, there is no way they can keep doing that every difficulty epoch, so until all those large players sit together and decide to stop taking away from their own profit, they will keep making things worse for each other, if they add gears they increase their debt and loans they have to pay, if they don't, they will make less BTC and that will increase the overall cost of their operations, I don't see how things can get better without either a difficulty drop or a price increase.

[philipma1957]

Price needs to go up 🆙.

Looks like all the big farms are making that bet.

[stompix]

So worker salaries.
Building cost.
Power cost.
Miner cost.
Wiring cost.
Loan interest.
Miscellaneous.

Not their money invested, not their concern! 

We're just below 3%, 102.9569% so this means the third consecutive rise of ~10 exa,  10k average gears every two weeks, I'm starting to wonder how much they still have contracted. What would have happened if that bank stare that triggered the pump didn't happen and we would still be below 20k?
And despite this, Mara shares are up 50% yoy and 250% ytd, Riot is even better gaining almost 100% yoy!

Furthermore the best efficiency s19xp hydro is at $33 per th/s, assuming free everything it's 450 days at 7 cents per th/s for ROI.
Again, glad I switched to hobby-size mining! 

[mikeywith]

Price needs to go up 🆙.

Looks like all the big farms are making that bet.

Indeed, and that's a very risky bet to be completely honest, I mean, we all are betting on the price to go up long term, and that's pretty fine, but betting on both price and time has some serious consequences if x doesn't happen before y is asking for too much, they are going to need a price jump BEFORE the halving, none of these large guys will be doing fine post halving, and then it's only a matter of time before the great collapse if the price doesn't make up for the halving.

It will be fun to watch to watch these things unfold.

[philipma1957]

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

Latest Block:   794257  (a few seconds ago)

Current Pace:   103.3234%  (1970 / 1906.64 expected, 63.36 ahead)

Previous Difficulty:   49549703178592.68                           
Current Difficulty:   51234338863442.89                           
Next Difficulty:   between 52976617946489 and 52977556392484
Next Difficulty Change:   between +3.4006% and +3.4024%
Previous Retarget:   May 31, 2023 at 2:04 PM  (+3.3999%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   Tomorrow at 3:16 AM  (in 0d 7h 25m 12s)
Next Retarget (latest):   Tomorrow at 3:16 AM  (in 0d 7h 25m 32s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 13h 11m 33s and 13d 13h 11m 54s

3-4%

63 blocks ahead of pace maybe 4-8 hours left.


I grabbed 4 s19s

I grabbed 1 s19xp

I also am going to test the epic umc feeless controller it can be used with the xp nice quick on the fly clock changes.

110th at 19 watts low side

175th at 25 watts high side.

My thoughts are this controller is being used bigly on large farms.

[mikeywith]

3-4%
63 blocks ahead of pace maybe 4-8 hours left.

It was 2.17% , the last 60 blocks were found pretty slow, slow enough to bring the pace from 103.3% to 102.17%, either bad luck or a lot of hashrate left at the end of the epoch, still 2% is a lot of new gears, price has fallen slightly below 25k, overall, a bad month for miners compared to the a few previous months.

[philipma1957]

3-4%
63 blocks ahead of pace maybe 4-8 hours left.

It was 2.17% , the last 60 blocks were found pretty slow, slow enough to bring the pace from 103.3% to 102.17%, either bad luck or a lot of hashrate left at the end of the epoch, still 2% is a lot of new gears, price has fallen slightly below 25k, overall, a bad month for miners compared to the a few previous months.

Would like that price jump to 45k very soon.

[philipma1957]

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

Latest Block:   794907  (13 minutes ago)

Current Pace:   101.0126%  (604 / 597.95 expected, 6.05 ahead)

Previous Difficulty:   51234338863442.89                           
Current Difficulty:   52350439455487.47                           
Next Difficulty:   between 52699813357171 and 53040669217135
Next Difficulty Change:   between +0.6674% and +1.3185%
Previous Retarget:   last Wednesday at 7:09 AM  (+2.1784%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   June 28, 2023 at 3:47 AM  (in 9d 16h 58m 26s)
Next Retarget (latest):   June 28, 2023 at 5:26 AM  (in 9d 18h 37m 35s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 20h 37m 53s and 13d 22h 17m 2s
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Plus One Percent.

Decent numbers for now.

price is 26.4k

[mikeywith]

Would like that price jump to 45k very soon.

Would love that too, but I think it's asking for too much as far as this year is concerned, but ya, 45k BTC would certainly make life a lot easier.

Current Pace:   101.0126%  (604 / 597.95 expected, 6.05 ahead)

Well sadly this isn't the case anymore

Current Pace:   103.1520%  (794 / 769.74 expected, 24.26 ahead)
Previous Difficulty:   51234338863442.89                            
Current Difficulty:   52350439455487.47                            
Next Difficulty:   between 53460683085040 and 54127429091203
Next Difficulty Change:   between +2.1208% and +3.3944%

still a bit early to judge anyway, but ya, those 1-3% jumps will be the norm until one of the large players starts feeling the pain, I believe that 60-65T difficulty will be the limit for this price range, we are not way too far from that, so we will find out in a few months.

[stompix]

still a bit early to judge anyway, but ya, those 1-3% jumps will be the norm until one of the large players starts feeling the pain, I believe that 60-65T difficulty will be the limit for this price range, we are not way too far from that, so we will find out in a few months.

I spent a bi of time pondering about that too, here is my take
November till January saw the price at 16k, we're on average 75% up, here are the adjustments from that period:

770,112   2023-01-03 06:22:50   34,093,570,325,203 - 34.09 T   - 3.59 %   0x1708417e   10 min 23 s   243.66 EH/s
768,096   2022-12-19 17:17:56   35,364,065,900,457 - 35.36 T   + 3.27 %   0x1707f590   09 min 41 s   253.07 EH/s
766,080   2022-12-06 03:50:29   34,244,331,613,176 - 34.24 T   - 7.32 %   0x17083830   10 min 48 s   245.10 EH/s
764,064   2022-11-21 01:14:19   36,950,494,067,222 - 36.95 T   + 0.51 %   0x17079e15   09 min 58 s   264.18 EH/s
762,048   2022-11-07 02:32:43   36,762,198,818,467 - 36.76 T   - 0.20 %   0x1707a812   10 min 01 s   263.14 EH/s

the 15 January spike happened with nearly a full epoch in the same price range before the pump so we could count it also but it will deviate a bit too much. If we use 35 as a base we can look at 61.2, if we assume more gear was already contracted and is also right now in planning and we go for 40 then we have a diff of 70T as the upper limit.
Another thing is the gear, it's highly possible there is a bit of improvement in the J/T area, the XP is at 21J/T  the 90T S19 had 34J/T, so assuming a 10% upgrade base with a 33-50% efficiency you might squeeze another 3T in difficulty. Lower energy prices than last summer and autumn might get also a bit of maneuvering space, so limiting the numbers that will go belly flop in the first stage. So I would go for the upper limit Mikey mentioned plus a bit, 65-70???

Now, how about being more positive? We should stop talking so much about how low the earning can go before bankruptcies and more of any chances of hitting 40 cents per th as in October two years ago!    zero?

[mikeywith]

Now, how about being more positive? We should stop talking so much about how low the earning can go before bankruptcies and more of any chances of hitting 40 cents per th as in October two years ago!    zero?

I correct a typo in your post, hope you don't mind.

For 1th to make 40 cents at the current diffuclty we would need BTC price to be at 170k, and for that to happen without difficulty at least doing a double has exactly zero chances unless it happens overnight, but hey, 20 cents would do just fine.

[philipma1957]

Potential good news for miners:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/oppressive-unbearable-heat-wave-scorches-161530976.html


Maybe Texas get 80 days of smoking hot weather starting now.

This could drop diff bigly 10% for 2 months.

[mikeywith]

Potential good news for miners:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/oppressive-unbearable-heat-wave-scorches-161530976.html

According to the weather forecast, temps can go to as high as 45c, there is no amount of air cooling that could handle it with miners running at stock speed, so it's either water chillers, ACs, or some serious underclocking.

This could drop diff bigly 10% for 2 months.

It's estimated that Texas has 14% of the global hashrate, they could probably get away with 20-30% underclocking, so that is no more than 2.8%-4% on the global scale, and that assumes other miners in colder places are not going to keep adding any gear, so in the best case scenario difficulty just remains somewhat flat, so instead of the usually 2-3% spikes, we go to -1 to 1% adjustments till the heat is gone, but 10% is just way too much.

[DaveF]

It's estimated that Texas has 14% of the global hashrate, they could probably get away with 20-30% underclocking, so that is no more than 2.8%-4% on the global scale, and that assumes other miners in colder places are not going to keep adding any gear, so in the best case scenario difficulty just remains somewhat flat, so instead of the usually 2-3% spikes, we go to -1 to 1% adjustments till the heat is gone, but 10% is just way too much.

They would probably be better off just shutting down a certain % of the miners as opposed to spending time tweaking settings.

I don't know if they are still under the old contracts but they also had agreements to shut down during certain times when needed and the power company would subsidize their losses.

They are already having certain places in TX limit power use and it's only going to get worse.

And the prices are going through the roof:
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/texas-power-prices-record-heat-wave-cooling-demand-ercot-grid-2023-6

-Dave

[philipma1957]

Potential good news for miners:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/oppressive-unbearable-heat-wave-scorches-161530976.html

According to the weather forecast, temps can go to as high as 45c, there is no amount of air cooling that could handle it with miners running at stock speed, so it's either water chillers, ACs, or some serious underclocking.

This could drop diff bigly 10% for 2 months.

It's estimated that Texas has 14% of the global hashrate, they could probably get away with 20-30% underclocking, so that is no more than 2.8%-4% on the global scale, and that assumes other miners in colder places are not going to keep adding any gear, so in the best case scenario difficulty just remains somewhat flat, so instead of the usually 2-3% spikes, we go to -1 to 1% adjustments till the heat is gone, but 10% is just way too much.

they get paid some cash to shut down.

Ie 9 months mining or 10 months mining using the grids excess power.

2 or 3 months gear shut off to let the grid care for people in hot weather.

so 14% may drop to 7% or more for those hot weeks.

[mikeywith]

They would probably be better off just shutting down a certain % of the miners as opposed to spending time tweaking settings.

That won't have the same effect on the miner's temperature, I am not an expert in physics but I run close to 10ph farm and I can tell you that underclocking your hashrate by 10% is more effective than shutting down 50% of your gears, provided that you are already exhausting enough air volume to match the miners' need, when temps are 45c, even if you oversize your air intake and exhaust the miners will have a hard time running stable with intake temps that high.

Lowering the miner's frequency and voltage while keeping the same airflow will drastically drop the temperature, I set all my Whatsminers on low mode (18-20% hashrate drop which translates to 20-24% power drop ), and now they run just fine in temps ranging from 40c to 45c, if I keep them at stock settings and shut down half of them, they miners will still get hot, pretty damn hot actually.

As for "spending time tweaking settings" it really takes no more than 10 seconds to manually send the command to the miners, takes no more than 10 mins to write a script or instruct your management software (like AwesomeMiner) to automatically switch between different power modes based on whatever parameters you see fit, if I can do it, I am pretty certain those large players can do it better.

I don't know if they are still under the old contracts but they also had agreements to shut down during certain times when needed and the power company would subsidize their losses.

that would be a different story then, also, not clear if it has to be a complete shutdown or can be partial based on whatever the grid needs at any given moment.

[DaveF]

I don't know if they are still under the old contracts but they also had agreements to shut down during certain times when needed and the power company would subsidize their losses.

that would be a different story then, also, not clear if it has to be a complete shutdown or can be partial based on whatever the grid needs at any given moment.

That would be the most important factor. It's easy to say this miner hashes at X now it's off so this is what I am entitled to.

The this miner at full power hashes at 'A' and takes this much power. At this % of full power it's hashing at 'B' and needs 'C' power for cooling so I am entitled to 'D' in compensation is going to be a lot more of an accounting nightmare.

But since this is happening I see a lot of places that I deal with that still had equipment in data centers in TX (non mining things) moving out as fast as they can.
As one of my customers just said 'Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, we are now on count 9...time to move out'

Why is power here in the NE more money, because it works. Even after super storm Sandy 99.99% were back up in under 2 weeks.

-Dave