2023 Diff thread now opened.

[paid2]

Is it just miners entering or leaving the network, or something else?

Yeap only miners entering or leaving the network.
The difficulty decreases and increases in relation with the network's total hashrate, in order to keep an average of 10 min between each block found.

Difficulty page on Bitcoin wiki:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty

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[philipma1957]

https://newhedge.io/terminal/bitcoin/difficulty-estimator

Latest Block:   814528  (4 minutes ago)

Current Pace:   104.3830%  (65 / 62.27 expected, 2.73 ahead)

Previous Difficulty:   61030681983175.59                            
Current Difficulty:   62463471666732.73                            
Next Difficulty:   between 62648714974098 and 65516910814115
Next Difficulty Change:   between +0.2966% and +4.8884%
Previous Retarget:   Yesterday at 11:50 PM  (+2.3477%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   November 12, 2023 at 8:43 AM  (in 12d 23h 30m 46s)
Next Retarget (latest):   November 12, 2023 at 9:56 PM  (in 13d 12h 43m 35s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 9h 53m 28s and 13d 23h 6m 17s

plus 2.73 blocks

@joker_.   

   luck or variance has some effect.  Spinning a die number six is one in six shot.  but you can spin six sixes in a row.which would be variance or luck.

So in the first 100 blocks of the 2016 block jump plus or minus 10 blocks can be just luck.

but at block 500 plus 50 blocks (the same 10%)  is likely a trend.

[vapourminer]

nice win @NeuroticFish

thanks again for the contest phil!

[NeuroticFish]

In the morning I had to go to work, so I've seen the these posts only now, a lot later.
Thank you all for the nice words and big thank you Phil for the contest(s).

A couple of hours before the deadline and there was still not clear who is going to win. Very interesting. As Phil said, a photo finish!

at NeuroticFish I will send you 0.001 btc please give me your btc addy you want the coin sent .

I will PM you in a minute with the addy, but there's no rush, you can wait until the fees go lower or you have other payments to make. Thanks for the generosity!

[stompix]

Congratulations to NeuroticFish!  

And we avoided the plague of the flying pigs again!  

However, in the "downtrend" scenario you still won't get the max discount, because gear prices are affected by both profitability (a combination of difficulty and BTC price) and time, many sellers will still hold on to their gears thinking the profitability will rebound, so a 50% drop won't scare them, but you know what will? 6-12 months of sideway market, it's when everybody capitulates and you get the best prices ever.

One more semi-possible variable in the mix.
Bitmain or the others  throwing some new gear into the market or realizing they need to empty stock really fast! If they would do a 30% discount now on the brand new 20j/t gear I think a lot of guys holding first generation s19 will see only numbers all day long including in their sleep. But doubt bitmain would suddenly feel generous enough to sell gear without a 100% added value tax!

Unrelated but a bit of insight in one of the big players' business (pr article but still)

CleanSpark Reaches Rare Bitcoin Mining Milestone at 10 EH/s . CleanSpark's fleet-wide efficiency is estimated at 27.8 joules per terahash (J/TH). CleanSpark recently purchased 4.4 EH/s of Antminer S21 bitcoin mining machines, which are scheduled to be delivered in early 2024. Once plugged in, the Company expects to reach a total hashrate of more than 20 EH/s.

already fully funded by investors, and  from their SEC filling:

We have publicly disclosed our current energy mix of 95% carbon-free power, at a fixed price of $0.0285 kWh.

So, how to compete with these guys?

As for the new diff at this point, not even going to comment:

Current Pace:   108.6942%  (92 / 84.64 expected, 7.36 ahead)

common...right?

[philipma1957]

Congratulations to NeuroticFish!  

And we avoided the plague of the flying pigs again!  

However, in the "downtrend" scenario you still won't get the max discount, because gear prices are affected by both profitability (a combination of difficulty and BTC price) and time, many sellers will still hold on to their gears thinking the profitability will rebound, so a 50% drop won't scare them, but you know what will? 6-12 months of sideway market, it's when everybody capitulates and you get the best prices ever.

One more semi-possible variable in the mix.
Bitmain or the others  throwing some new gear into the market or realizing they need to empty stock really fast! If they would do a 30% discount now on the brand new 20j/t gear I think a lot of guys holding first generation s19 will see only numbers all day long including in their sleep. But doubt bitmain would suddenly feel generous enough to sell gear without a 100% added value tax!

Unrelated but a bit of insight in one of the big players' business (pr article but still)

CleanSpark Reaches Rare Bitcoin Mining Milestone at 10 EH/s . CleanSpark's fleet-wide efficiency is estimated at 27.8 joules per terahash (J/TH). CleanSpark recently purchased 4.4 EH/s of Antminer S21 bitcoin mining machines, which are scheduled to be delivered in early 2024. Once plugged in, the Company expects to reach a total hashrate of more than 20 EH/s.

already fully funded by investors, and  from their SEC filling:

We have publicly disclosed our current energy mix of 95% carbon-free power, at a fixed price of $0.0285 kWh.

So, how to compete with these guys?

As for the new diff at this point, not even going to comment:

Current Pace:   108.6942%  (92 / 84.64 expected, 7.36 ahead)

common...right?

a 2.85 cent a k-watt farm is a can't be beat company.

 I am not that good.

 I won't be lower than 4 cents.

[philipma1957]

Congratulations to NeuroticFish!  

And we avoided the plague of the flying pigs again!  

However, in the "downtrend" scenario you still won't get the max discount, because gear prices are affected by both profitability (a combination of difficulty and BTC price) and time, many sellers will still hold on to their gears thinking the profitability will rebound, so a 50% drop won't scare them, but you know what will? 6-12 months of sideway market, it's when everybody capitulates and you get the best prices ever.

One more semi-possible variable in the mix.
Bitmain or the others  throwing some new gear into the market or realizing they need to empty stock really fast! If they would do a 30% discount now on the brand new 20j/t gear I think a lot of guys holding first generation s19 will see only numbers all day long including in their sleep. But doubt bitmain would suddenly feel generous enough to sell gear without a 100% added value tax!

Unrelated but a bit of insight in one of the big players' business (pr article but still)

CleanSpark Reaches Rare Bitcoin Mining Milestone at 10 EH/s . CleanSpark's fleet-wide efficiency is estimated at 27.8 joules per terahash (J/TH). CleanSpark recently purchased 4.4 EH/s of Antminer S21 bitcoin mining machines, which are scheduled to be delivered in early 2024. Once plugged in, the Company expects to reach a total hashrate of more than 20 EH/s.

already fully funded by investors, and  from their SEC filling:

We have publicly disclosed our current energy mix of 95% carbon-free power, at a fixed price of $0.0285 kWh.

So, how to compete with these guys?

As for the new diff at this point, not even going to comment:

Current Pace:   108.6942%  (92 / 84.64 expected, 7.36 ahead)

common...right?

a 2.85 cent a k-watt farm is a can't be beat company.

 I am not that good.

 I won't be lower than 4 cents.

Sent neuroticfish 0.001 btc

bc1qd.................................2763.

paid 7 sats vs 11 asked for.

 lets see how long it takes to clear.

I will not reveal his full btc addy for his privacy

[mikeywith]

One more semi-possible variable in the mix.
Bitmain or the others  throwing some new gear into the market or realizing they need to empty stock really fast! If they would do a 30% discount now on the brand new 20j/t gear I think a lot of guys holding first generation s19 will see only numbers all day long including in their sleep. But doubt bitmain would suddenly feel generous enough to sell gear without a 100% added value tax!

Not sure I understand the logic here, but I would appreciate a little bit more explanation, "Explain Like I'm Five" would do.

We have publicly disclosed our current energy mix of 95% carbon-free power, at a fixed price of $0.0285 kWh.

The devil is in the detail, how much did they spend to get the 2.85 cents/kWh? anyone can achieve that if the initial investment is to be ignored if your power rate is 10 cents / kWh you sell your power back at 5 cents, and you have 6 hours of sunlight, all you have to do is generate 7 times what you consume and you will get "free power".

Example:

You generate 420kWh during the 6 hours and use only 60kWh (10 per hour)
You sell back the extra 360kWh to the grid for $18
for the remaining 18 hours, you would need  180kWh which at 10 cents will cost you $18

The electric company will never send you a bill, and you can claim that you have free power, but ya, good luck with seeing ROI on this kind of setup.

2.85c cents ALL-in is just, unrealistic IMO.

[philipma1957]

One more semi-possible variable in the mix.
Bitmain or the others  throwing some new gear into the market or realizing they need to empty stock really fast! If they would do a 30% discount now on the brand new 20j/t gear I think a lot of guys holding first generation s19 will see only numbers all day long including in their sleep. But doubt bitmain would suddenly feel generous enough to sell gear without a 100% added value tax!

Not sure I understand the logic here, but I would appreciate a little bit more explanation, "Explain Like I'm Five" would do.

We have publicly disclosed our current energy mix of 95% carbon-free power, at a fixed price of $0.0285 kWh.

The devil is in the detail, how much did they spend to get the 2.85 cents/kWh? anyone can achieve that if the initial investment is to be ignored if your power rate is 10 cents / kWh you sell your power back at 5 cents, and you have 6 hours of sunlight, all you have to do is generate 7 times what you consume and you will get "free power".

Example:

You generate 420kWh during the 6 hours and use only 60kWh (10 per hour)
You sell back the extra 360kWh to the grid for $18
for the remaining 18 hours, you would need  180kWh which at 10 cents will cost you $18

The electric company will never send you a bill, and you can claim that you have free power, but ya, good luck with seeing ROI on this kind of setup.

2.85c cents ALL-in is just, unrealistic IMO.

well the best states do 1 to 1 on kwatts..

SO pretend you are all solar and do 60 megawatts a day. this would be a 10 megawatt array an average of 6 hours sun.

so if you buy back for 18 hours  and use 2.5 megawatt an hour  that is 45 megawatt on buy back and in the six hours you use 2.5 x 6 = 15 megawatt.

and they say they are 95% carbon free. 

So a 10 megawatt array  could do  2.5 megawatt an hour  with that 5% factor tossed in.

It is possible. but lets do some more 2.5 mwatts is 2500kwatts is 800 units at 3 kwatts  or 700 units at 3.5 kwatts 700 x 200th =140000th or 140 ph

which is no where near the claimed 22eh

if they do it with solar they need mm a 100 mwatt only does  1.4eh so 1000 megawatt solar array does 14eh so 1500megawatt array

now to do a 1500 megawatt array you need

1 acre does 250kwatts
4 acres does 1 megawatt
40 acres does 10 megawatts
400 acres does 100 megawatts these are about the worlds biggest arrays.

6000 acres would be needed to do what they claim if it is all solar tied to the grid.

yeah they are not doing it all with solar.

[stompix]

Not sure I understand the logic here, but I would appreciate a little bit more explanation, "Explain Like I'm Five" would do. :

Bitmain knowing their new line of models is a failure, not that it didn't happen earlier, they realize that if they don't sell this subpar gear in a short time everyone will know what failure rates they are to expect so they cut prices to the limit of profitability scaring small resellers into dumping their also at cheaper prices.
There have been a lot of manufacturers who cut prices out of the blue on several smartphones, hard drives and even cars just for customers to realize afterwards that the product was a flop.

The devil is in the detail, how much did they spend to get the 2.85 cents/kWh? anyone can achieve that if the initial investment is to be ignored if your power rate is 10 cents / kWh you sell your power back at 5 cents, and you have 6 hours of sunlight, all you have to do is generate 7 times what you consume and you will get "free power".

I think the name is misleading, just as that "carbon free", CleanSparks has nothing to do with solar other than showing solar panels on their brochures, their two data center expansions in Georgia are fully nuclear powered, that's the rate they manage since Georgia at least on paper is a net exporter of electricity!
So it wasn't as much as putting money in building stuff as maybe throwing some money at bribing.

Not the only ones:

First behind-the-meter bitcoin mining facility powered by 100% nuclear power at scale in the U.S.
TeraWulf benefits from a fixed power cost at Nautilus of only $0.02 per kilowatt hour for five years.

[philipma1957]

Not sure I understand the logic here, but I would appreciate a little bit more explanation, "Explain Like I'm Five" would do. :

Bitmain knowing their new line of models is a failure, not that it didn't happen earlier, they realize that if they don't sell this subpar gear in a short time everyone will know what failure rates they are to expect so they cut prices to the limit of profitability scaring small resellers into dumping their also at cheaper prices.
There have been a lot of manufacturers who cut prices out of the blue on several smartphones, hard drives and even cars just for customers to realize afterwards that the product was a flop.

The devil is in the detail, how much did they spend to get the 2.85 cents/kWh? anyone can achieve that if the initial investment is to be ignored if your power rate is 10 cents / kWh you sell your power back at 5 cents, and you have 6 hours of sunlight, all you have to do is generate 7 times what you consume and you will get "free power".

I think the name is misleading, just as that "carbon free", CleanSparks has nothing to do with solar other than showing solar panels on their brochures, their two data center expansions in Georgia are fully nuclear powered, that's the rate they manage since Georgia at least on paper is a net exporter of electricity!
So it wasn't as much as putting money in building stuff as maybe throwing some money at bribing.

Not the only ones:

First behind-the-meter bitcoin mining facility powered by 100% nuclear power at scale in the U.S.
TeraWulf benefits from a fixed power cost at Nautilus of only $0.02 per kilowatt hour for five years.

hmm 3 mile island anyone. or chernoble

[kano]

...
hmm 3 mile island anyone. or chernoble

OK - seriously? FUD?

To this day I do not understand why there are not more nuclear power plants around.

Deaths caused by them are so small compared to the main power sources, that it's quite ridiculous to be concerned about that.
... and to top it off, the known problems were caused by pure negligence ...
... however oops the coal mine collapsed ... yeah that doesn't matter it's not nuclear power

I found this page interesting ... I wonder if it is true ...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/

My biggest beef with the lack of nuclear power is that the country that has the most nuclear power resources wont use it ... but still mines and sells it

[philipma1957]

yeah 3 major accidents in 60 plus years world wide .

One of them was caused by a major earthquake in Japan. Likely a good as any record.

Coal is some nasty ass shit.  I am sitting in a home that uses 4 high end air filters due to NJ being at the end of coal ally

Some place on this site a did an illustration of how coal pollutes NJ.
found a screen shot showing the path of coal polluted are on Imgur that I did 8 years ago

[NeuroticFish]

Sent neuroticfish 0.001 btc

bc1qd.................................2763.

paid 7 sats vs 11 asked for.

 lets see how long it takes to clear.

I will not reveal his full btc addy for his privacy

They came through last night. I see now that, oddly enough for week time, even 3 sat/vByte would have been enough.
Thank you, sir.

To this day I do not understand why there are not more nuclear power plants around.

Deaths caused by them are so small compared to the main power sources

Well, if there would be more of those, there would be much more deaths too, I guess.
But the truth is that somehow people and media seems to not pay so much attention to accidents in mining areas (occupational hazard) and seems to somewhat inflate the fear of nuclear plants.
Imho the bigger problem with nuclear plants is the fact the waste is not stored/disposed "by the book", instead it's dropped to poor countries; the death toll may be huge, but nobody will actually know or care much about it.

Still, with current rush for cleaner energy (country wise), I see only 3 real directions:
[1] hugely improve storage/batteries and other related infrastructure (may need some breakthrough in chemistry and physics)
[2] make more dams, with quite high costs (money, deaths, relocation)
[3] use nuclear power

On short/medium term nuclear seems to be the obvious choice.
Of course, smaller businesses can go on their own solar, but I see that somehow a niche.

[philipma1957]

Sent neuroticfish 0.001 btc

bc1qd.................................2763.

paid 7 sats vs 11 asked for.

 lets see how long it takes to clear.

I will not reveal his full btc addy for his privacy

They came through last night. I see now that, oddly enough for week time, even 3 sat/vByte would have been enough.
Thank you, sir.

To this day I do not understand why there are not more nuclear power plants around.

Deaths caused by them are so small compared to the main power sources

Well, if there would be more of those, there would be much more deaths too, I guess.
But the truth is that somehow people and media seems to not pay so much attention to accidents in mining areas (occupational hazard) and seems to somewhat inflate the fear of nuclear plants.
Imho the bigger problem with nuclear plants is the fact the waste is not stored/disposed "by the book", instead it's dropped to poor countries; the death toll may be huge, but nobody will actually know or care much about it.

Still, with current rush for cleaner energy (country wise), I see only 3 real directions:
[1] hugely improve storage/batteries and other related infrastructure (may need some breakthrough in chemistry and physics)
[2] make more dams, with quite high costs (money, deaths, relocation)
[3] use nuclear power

On short/medium term nuclear seems to be the obvious choice.
Of course, smaller businesses can go on their own solar, but I see that somehow a niche.

Solar is a help not a full fix.

If all the USA was properly solarized basically 35% reduction in using fuel for power is achievable.
Without going battery route.
Just close to perfect grid tied. 

[NeuroticFish]

Solar is a help not a full fix.

Yep, fully agree.

If all the USA was properly solarized basically 35% reduction in using fuel for power is achievable.
Without going battery route.
Just close to perfect grid tied.

I have my doubts the current grid can support that. The power flux into the grid coming from the areas with sun can easily be seen as a shock, and afaik the usual behavior in case of shocks is shutdown (restart).
Of course, the grid in US is much stronger than the one I know (the one from my country), still 35% is a big number imho.
Maybe this can only work if pretty much everybody uses his own solar when the sun is shining in his area, with the clear risk that the excess can be wasted.
But I'm not specialist, there is a chance I am wrong.

[mikeywith]

To this day I do not understand why there are not more nuclear power plants around.

There is one interesting research paper by Derek Abbott named "Is Nuclear Power Globally Scalable?", the paper is fun to read and it answers this question in depth, key points taken from the research paper are:

1- Location problems:

Nuclear power plants need roughly 20km square and is location sensitive, it needs to be close to the water "river, sea oceans" and yet far from populated areas, not so many locations with such properties.

2- Replacement:

It takes 6-12 years to build a nuclear power plant with a service life of 50 years on average, and it takes about 20 years to to decommission it, which puts more weight on the first point (you need more places to sustain it)

3- Accidents:

To date, globally, there have been 580 nuclear reactors that have operated for a cumulated total of 14,000 reactor years, with about 11 accidents of the magnitude of a full or partial core melt [10]. This corresponds to a failure rate of 11/580, which is 2%. Thus, if the world had a single reactor, it would take on average 14,000/11, or 1,300 years to have an accident of a similar magnitude. Thus, for a scale-up to 15,000 reactors, we would have a major accident somewhere in the world every month. But are we justified in using historical data for these statistics, when the engineering of safety features for nuclear plants has surely improved? The answer is we are not justified in evaluating the likelihood of a large accident in any other way, as we are talking about rare events that are not even possible to model in a system as complex as a nuclear station.

4- Nuclear waste

I believe this is a commonly understood issue that we all understand.

5-Uranium abundance:

At the current rate of uranium consumption with conventional reactors, the world supply of viable uranium, which is the most common nuclear fuel, will last for 80 years. Scaling consumption up to 15 TW, the viable uranium supply will last for less than 5 years. (Viable uranium is the uranium that exists in a high enough ore concentration so that extracting the ore is economically justified.)

There are more points and a lot more detail in that paper, but the TL;DR version of it is that nuclear power isn't easy at all to obtain.

** Source for all info above
Is Nuclear Power Globally Scalable?
By DEREK ABBOTT, Fellow IEEE
School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
University of Adelaide, Adelaide, S.A. 5005, Australia

[joker_josue]

I think the future of energy involves Fusion. But, it seems to me that despite there being several good investments in this regard, the projects are progressing very slowly. At least that's the feeling I have. It seems that there is no great interest in this type of energy production being implemented.

Europe has one of the leading fusion energy projects - ITER. But, not even with the recent energy problems, due to the war in Ukraine, has there been an increase in incentive to accelerate the development of ITER.

Therefore, there is a lot of advocacy about reducing pollution, but in reality it is because it is popular, and not because there is a real interest in this regard.

[philipma1957]

I think the future of energy involves Fusion. But, it seems to me that despite there being several good investments in this regard, the projects are progressing very slowly. At least that's the feeling I have. It seems that there is no great interest in this type of energy production being implemented.

Europe has one of the leading fusion energy projects - ITER. But, not even with the recent energy problems, due to the war in Ukraine, has there been an increase in incentive to accelerate the development of ITER.

Therefore, there is a lot of advocacy about reducing pollution, but in reality it is because it is popular, and not because there is a real interest in this regard.

Well we are all going to die.  So lots of ways to deal with that fact.

I for one can't understand how we as humanity do not have many bases on the moon as a back up plan.

So do we as a world group of people carefully manage and act as a team to make shit better for us all.

Yeah sure.

Logically we could have a ton of nuke power plants and dump all the waste in Antartica.

But with so many opposing beliefs we as a world group basically say fuck it and do our own thing.

[joker_josue]

Logically we could have a ton of nuke power plants and dump all the waste in Antartica.

But with so many opposing beliefs we as a world group basically say fuck it and do our own thing.

That is true! There is a lot of talk, but in the end what counts is to continue with the same advantages you have, regardless of whether this is good or bad for the future.

An old saying goes: "Man has dominated man to his own detriment."
Each day that passes, these words make more sense.