2024 Diff thread happy New Years.

[mikeywith]

new ATH? Lol, if this happens I've been off by a month with my prediction, just as I thought I missed it completely.

Just a month off means you were a spot on with that kind of prediction even being off by 3 months is still a spot on.

I have to admit that I didn't even think that this was possible, now that this has indeed happened, it makes me wonder if this is all caused by U.S large players or some new players are opting in? Russia, China? Who knows.

[philipma1957]

new ATH? Lol, if this happens I've been off by a month with my prediction, just as I thought I missed it completely.

Just a month off means you were a spot on with that kind of prediction even being off by 3 months is still a spot on.

I have to admit that I didn't even think that this was possible, now that this has indeed happened, it makes me wonder if this is all caused by U.S large players or some new players are opting in? Russia, China? Who knows.

Well it is not as much power as you think.

800eh at 20watts is 16000megawatts the whole world wide power use for btc.

so Texas burns 80000 megawatts an hour for every ones uses.

this means Texas alone could run 5x the gear that the world uses.

we can grow the network to 1000eh or 1zh by years end easy peasy

[mikeywith]

Well it is not as much power as you think.

800eh at 20watts is 16000megawatts the whole world wide power use for btc.

so Texas burns 80000 megawatts an hour for every ones uses.

this means Texas alone could run 5x the gear that the world uses.

we can grow the network to 1000eh or 1zh by years end easy peasy

I don't think it's that simple, those 80,000MW were not built over a year or two, it takes a lot of time and money to build them, in this article they talk about a 10GW power plants for $18 billion which means a single 1000MW plant would cost $1.8 billion dollar, that's hardly enough for 50EH.

Another issue that is even more complicated and probably more expensive than production is distribution, that 80,000MW is distributed all across the state, an area of nearly 700,000 KM2, so even if every other business and household shut down to allow BTC mining, it isn't going to be as easy as bringing 80,000MW worth of gears to Texas, you are going to have to distribute them evenly across that area which isn't going to be possible.

Also, when they build power plants, it's usually done on demand, what electric company is going to invest dozen billions to build power plants and infrastructure for a risky business like BTC? half the demand can disappear overnight if the price of BTC crashes, the way I see it is that most miners in the U.S. run on excessive power that is otherwise going to waste, unlike the automotive or defense business, investing in mining is very risky.

Another major factor to consider is the supply of natural gas or whatever given power plant needs to operate, so it's not like you can build an unlimited number of power plants, there is a whole infrastructure related to it, you build a power plant in the middle of nowhere, no access to gas or to expense to transport coal or liquid gas, you build it in an already populated area, the supply pipes are hardly enough for the existing power plants.

I can write ten pages on how expensive and difficult it is to generate electricity, obviously, the entire power used by miners is nothing compared to what the world uses, which still means you are correct in thinking that in power-terms, we still have a lot of room for growth, it's possible, it just can't happen too fast due to all the difficulties in generating power plus miners themselves.

Anyway, reading about Bitfufu aka Bitmain expansion of hashrate to nearly 30EH, it seems Bitmain is planning to go back to being a mining superpower and not just a major seller of hashrate, it would be very difficult for those large miners to compete against Bitmain especially now that Bitmain also operates mainly in the U.S.

[joker_josue]

Anyway, reading about Bitfufu aka Bitmain expansion of hashrate to nearly 30EH, it seems Bitmain is planning to go back to being a mining superpower and not just a major seller of hashrate, it would be very difficult for those large miners to compete against Bitmain especially now that Bitmain also operates mainly in the U.S.

And this is the danger, which could create a mining monopoly. You have the largest machine manufacturer, with the largest pool and number of machines operating in the world.

Unfortunately, I increasingly have the feeling that whoever has control over mining can control Bitcoin. With small and medium-sized miners closing operations.

[mikeywith]

And this is the danger, which could create a mining monopoly. You have the largest machine manufacturer, with the largest pool and number of machines operating in the world.

Unfortunately, I increasingly have the feeling that whoever has control over mining can control Bitcoin. With small and medium-sized miners closing operations.

But what would be worse, a large U.S firm controlling BTC mining or Bitmain? All politics aside, it would be safe to assume that Btimain control would be less harmful for two main reasons, for one, Bitmain is all-in BTC mining, they would lose everything if anything goes wrong with BTC, whereby on the other side, a large player who uses investors funds has nothing much to lose.

The second reason would be past experience, Bitmain dominated physical hashrate ownership,  pool majority and manufacturing for dozen of years, they did not attempt to kill BTC, not saying Bitmain are nice innocent people, they are the exact opposite but there is bad and there is worse, we don't know what the other large U.S, Russian or Rich Arab would do if they controlled BTC mining.

[stompix]

Well it is not as much power as you think.
so Texas burns 80000 megawatts an hour for every ones uses.

I don't think it's that simple, those 80,000MW were not built over a year or two, it takes a lot of time and money to build them, in this article they talk about a 10GW power plants for $18 billion which means a single 1000MW plant would cost $1.8 billion dollar, that's hardly enough for 50EH.

Phil was talking about consumption,so let's go on with the bad news, Texas has a net capacity of 148,900 MW!
So they would have spare capacity, of course ignoring consumption curves of about 2-3 times of the hashrate at 20 watts efficiency.
The points you have raised would be valid if the plants weren't here, nobody would go building them from scratch, but when you have 2.4GW behemoths waiting for a buyer or higher electricity prices, it becomes far easier.

And that's just Texas!

Anyway, reading about Bitfufu aka Bitmain expansion of hashrate to nearly 30EH, it seems Bitmain is planning to go back to being a mining superpower and not just a major seller of hashrate, it would be very difficult for those large miners to compete against Bitmain especially now that Bitmain also operates mainly in the U.S.

Wait till you hear about the anti-trust laws, the army of lawyers those companies have, and the amount of lobby they can run.
Not even counting that we might have a "let's make everything in America' nutcase in office next year.

[philipma1957]

Well it is not as much power as you think.
so Texas burns 80000 megawatts an hour for every ones uses.

I don't think it's that simple, those 80,000MW were not built over a year or two, it takes a lot of time and money to build them, in this article they talk about a 10GW power plants for $18 billion which means a single 1000MW plant would cost $1.8 billion dollar, that's hardly enough for 50EH.

Phil was talking about consumption,so let's go on with the bad news, Texas has a net capacity of 148,900 MW!
So they would have spare capacity, of course ignoring consumption curves of about 2-3 times of the hashrate at 20 watts efficiency.
The points you have raised would be valid if the plants weren't here, nobody would go building them from scratch, but when you have 2.4GW behemoths waiting for a buyer or higher electricity prices, it becomes far easier.

And that's just Texas!

Anyway, reading about Bitfufu aka Bitmain expansion of hashrate to nearly 30EH, it seems Bitmain is planning to go back to being a mining superpower and not just a major seller of hashrate, it would be very difficult for those large miners to compete against Bitmain especially now that Bitmain also operates mainly in the U.S.

Wait till you hear about the anti-trust laws, the army of lawyers those companies have, and the amount of lobby they can run.
Not even counting that we might have a "let's make everything in America' nutcase in office next year.

Yeah basically we "just the USA"  could run 3x the world's hashrate right now.

[mikeywith]

Phil was talking about consumption,so let's go on with the bad news, Texas has a net capacity of 148,900 MW!

You want to be very careful when interpreting power generation data, Texas does not have a net capacity of 148,900MW, that's just the maximum total capacity when all conditions are perfectly met which probably doesn't go past a few minutes, it would be when it's sunny enough to generate 20,809 MW from solar, windy enough to generate 38,695 from wind, rivers flowing fast enough to generate 600MW and so on.

So when you average that out throughout the year, you would get the realistic numbers that look just like so:


source : https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/economic-data/energy/2023/ercot.php#:~:text=The%20Texas%20Interconnection%20supplies%20electricity,254%20counties%20(Exhibit%201).

If you would follow live data of Texas power generation you would see Solar go from 30k to 0, then back to 5, then maybe 10, then maybe 2 for a few months, and so on, besides, most power plants can't do 100% of their capacity 24/7/365 that's just not possible, so the most accurate figure to look at would be the annual Watt-Hour which is a perfect representation of the actual generation capacity.

The numbers that I have soo far are in the 600,000 GWh range, you would divide that by 365, then again by 24 and that would give you 68GW or 68,000MW

Again, we talking about generation capacity and not end-use available power, a huge portion of that power is going to be lost in transmission and to prove to you even further that "no" Texas can't just magically generate a dozen ten megawatts is to go back to the very near history of 2022 when they had to ask miners to shut down to avoid blackouts in the summer, you know how much power they saved from all that shutdown ? a whooping 1,000 MW , and they had to pay miners a lot of $$ to get them to shut down, if they had anything near 140,000MW capacity they wouldn't hassle for 1,000MW

The points you have raised would be valid if the plants weren't here

They are not there, that's the problem, the current power plants are good enough to supply the current demand with some surplus, it's not just a switch button that would make power magically appear from some stand-by power plants, you might want to have a look at the list of all power plants in Texas here.

[philipma1957]

Phil was talking about consumption,so let's go on with the bad news, Texas has a net capacity of 148,900 MW!

You want to be very careful when interpreting power generation data, Texas does not have a net capacity of 148,900MW, that's just the maximum total capacity when all conditions are perfectly met which probably doesn't go past a few minutes, it would be when it's sunny enough to generate 20,809 MW from solar, windy enough to generate 38,695 from wind, rivers flowing fast enough to generate 600MW and so on.

So when you average that out throughout the year, you would get the realistic numbers that look just like so:


source : https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/economic-data/energy/2023/ercot.php#:~:text=The%20Texas%20Interconnection%20supplies%20electricity,254%20counties%20(Exhibit%201).

If you would follow live data of Texas power generation you would see Solar go from 30k to 0, then back to 5, then maybe 10, then maybe 2 for a few months, and so on, besides, most power plants can't do 100% of their capacity 24/7/365 that's just not possible, so the most accurate figure to look at would be the annual Watt-Hour which is a perfect representation of the actual generation capacity.

The numbers that I have soo far are in the 600,000 GWh range, you would divide that by 365, then again by 24 and that would give you 68GW or 68,000MW

Again, we talking about generation capacity and not end-use available power, a huge portion of that power is going to be lost in transmission and to prove to you even further that "no" Texas can't just magically generate a dozen ten megawatts is to go back to the very near history of 2022 when they had to ask miners to shut down to avoid blackouts in the summer, you know how much power they saved from all that shutdown ? a whooping 1,000 MW , and they had to pay miners a lot of $$ to get them to shut down, if they had anything near 140,000MW capacity they wouldn't hassle for 1,000MW

The points you have raised would be valid if the plants weren't here

They are not there, that's the problem, the current power plants are good enough to supply the current demand with some surplus, it's not just a switch button that would make power magically appear from some stand-by power plants, you might want to have a look at the list of all power plants in Texas here.

Mikeywith usa has dozens of plants shut down . Some run off grid for mining some don't run at all. The grids are checker board run . Partial coordination is all that is done. Back in 2018 I was doing some work m for a Pennsylvania plant that wanted to use avalon 851s to act as an excess power circuit. Project failed as the avalon 851s sucked.  They wanted 10,000 to do 10-15mega watts of excess. For the fall winter and spring.  This is common in USA

[joker_josue]

They are not there, that's the problem, the current power plants are good enough to supply the current demand with some surplus, it's not just a switch button that would make power magically appear from some stand-by power plants, you might want to have a look at the list of all power plants in Texas here.

There really isn't a button, which magically increases the energy.
But, just looking at this picture, I would say that they can generate +30000 MW almost instantly. It would be enough to increase energy production via Natural Gas.

Apart from solar and wind energy, and possibly hydropower, which depends on external factors, other energy sources normally have immediate production capacity if necessary.

What I see in these numbers is that they are very well prepared, as they normally only need half the energy they have the capacity to produce. Note that they have no interest in producing more energy than is consumed.

Either way, a simple increase of 1000MW, from one day to the next, is really very significant and something unwanted.

[stompix]

The points you have raised would be valid if the plants weren't here

They are not there, that's the problem, the current power plants are good enough to supply the current demand with some surplus, it's not just a switch button that would make power magically appear from some stand-by power plants, you might want to have a look at the list of all power plants in Texas here.

Just as Phil said, the plants are there, they're just waiting for perfect conditions and contracts to be brought online.

For example, the exact list you linked to gives you 65855 MW capacity just for gas, and 18319 MW for coal, plus there are thousands of MW in decommissioned plants that can be simply bought by someone who has enough money and produces energy just for their needs.
You have 84GW just from fully operational ready-to-fire coal and gas plants, 5GW nuclear and whatever the rest biomass/hydro/solar/wind and those are the ones ERCOT has allowed to inject electricity.

And miners don't go for this, they go after decommissioned powerplants, like Harding , which Mrathon bought:

The Hardin generating station, a 115-megawatt coal plant located a dozen miles from the historic site of the famous battle of Little Big Horn in southern Montana, was slated for closure in 2018 due to a lack of customers only to somehow limp on, operating on just 46 days in 2020. “We were just waiting for this thing to die,” said Anne Hedges, co-director of the Montana Environmental Information Center. “They were struggling and looking to close. It was on the brink. And then this cryptocurrency company came along.”

Or Greenridge:

Greenidge Generation is a gas-fired power plant that previously only operated to provide power to New York’s grid in times of peak demand. Now, it burns fracked gas 24/7/365 to mine Bitcoin.

Or Merom:

Indiana's Merom Generating Station, along the state's western border, is a 40-year-old coal-fired plant. Its retirement was announced in 2020, with the plant slated to go offline in 2023. Then in 2022, that course was reversed. The utility that owned Merom sold the plant to a coal company to continue operating. In the meantime, a cryptomining company announced it was coming to town and would need a lot of power.

I know you're just like me used to a different system, with far fewer independent players in the energy sector, fewer price fluctuations and stuff, but things are different in the US, and on a different scale.

And.......we just went up 10% in difficulty and down to 63k in price, so that would be 4.4 cents???

[philipma1957]

The points you have raised would be valid if the plants weren't here

They are not there, that's the problem, the current power plants are good enough to supply the current demand with some surplus, it's not just a switch button that would make power magically appear from some stand-by power plants, you might want to have a look at the list of all power plants in Texas here.

Just as Phil said, the plants are there, they're just waiting for perfect conditions and contracts to be brought online.

For example, the exact list you linked to gives you 65855 MW capacity just for gas, and 18319 MW for coal, plus there are thousands of MW in decommissioned plants that can be simply bought by someone who has enough money and produces energy just for their needs.
You have 84GW just from fully operational ready-to-fire coal and gas plants, 5GW nuclear and whatever the rest biomass/hydro/solar/wind and those are the ones ERCOT has allowed to inject electricity.

And miners don't go for this, they go after decommissioned powerplants, like Harding , which Mrathon bought:

The Hardin generating station, a 115-megawatt coal plant located a dozen miles from the historic site of the famous battle of Little Big Horn in southern Montana, was slated for closure in 2018 due to a lack of customers only to somehow limp on, operating on just 46 days in 2020. “We were just waiting for this thing to die,” said Anne Hedges, co-director of the Montana Environmental Information Center. “They were struggling and looking to close. It was on the brink. And then this cryptocurrency company came along.”

Or Greenridge:

Greenidge Generation is a gas-fired power plant that previously only operated to provide power to New York’s grid in times of peak demand. Now, it burns fracked gas 24/7/365 to mine Bitcoin.

Or Merom:

Indiana's Merom Generating Station, along the state's western border, is a 40-year-old coal-fired plant. Its retirement was announced in 2020, with the plant slated to go offline in 2023. Then in 2022, that course was reversed. The utility that owned Merom sold the plant to a coal company to continue operating. In the meantime, a cryptomining company announced it was coming to town and would need a lot of power.

I know you're just like me used to a different system, with far fewer independent players in the energy sector, fewer price fluctuations and stuff, but things are different in the US, and on a different scale.

And.......we just went up 10% in difficulty and down to 63k in price, so that would be 4.4 cents???

Yeah this is how to grind out the low cost power guy that has under 500kwatts.

You make money due to your low cost but you can only do 150 units or 100 units of gear which is not so fine if they make only 2 bucks a unit.

I think this cycle could be the one that makes us only have large miners or criminal power theft miners.

This may be where we are now 80% large 10% theft  10% stubborn small miners.

[mikeywith]

Fine guys, let's just assume what you think is happening is indeed the case. Can we agree that none of the power comes for free? 

So, if A player is growing bigger, why isn't B player growing smaller? In other words, difficulty can't climb to infinity; there has to be an equilibrium of some sort; what happened in the last epoch doesn't make sense, at least not if it doesn't correct itself soon.


S19 pro makes 25 cents a day at 6 cents per kWh, it is losing at 7 cents, so where did all those dozen hundreds of thousands s19s go? They can't be all mining at 5 cents, so why are they not off yet? To me, it is only a matter of time and thus this increase is not sustainable.

[philipma1957]

Fine guys, let's just assume what you think is happening is indeed the case. Can we agree that none of the power comes for free? 

So, if A player is growing bigger, why isn't B player growing smaller? In other words, difficulty can't climb to infinity; there has to be an equilibrium of some sort; what happened in the last epoch doesn't make sense, at least not if it doesn't correct itself soon.


S19 pro makes 25 cents a day at 6 cents per kWh, it is losing at 7 cents, so where did all those dozen hundreds of thousands s19s go? They can't be all mining at 5 cents, so why are they not off yet? To me, it is only a matter of time and thus this increase is not sustainable.

Or there are tons of 3 cent miners using s19pros

[joker_josue]

Fine guys, let's just assume what you think is happening is indeed the case. Can we agree that none of the power comes for free? 

So, if A player is growing bigger, why isn't B player growing smaller? In other words, difficulty can't climb to infinity; there has to be an equilibrium of some sort; what happened in the last epoch doesn't make sense, at least not if it doesn't correct itself soon.


S19 pro makes 25 cents a day at 6 cents per kWh, it is losing at 7 cents, so where did all those dozen hundreds of thousands s19s go? They can't be all mining at 5 cents, so why are they not off yet? To me, it is only a matter of time and thus this increase is not sustainable.

Or there are tons of 3 cent miners using s19pros

Or even, some don't mind mining at a loss.

[philipma1957]

Fine guys, let's just assume what you think is happening is indeed the case. Can we agree that none of the power comes for free?

So, if A player is growing bigger, why isn't B player growing smaller? In other words, difficulty can't climb to infinity; there has to be an equilibrium of some sort; what happened in the last epoch doesn't make sense, at least not if it doesn't correct itself soon.


S19 pro makes 25 cents a day at 6 cents per kWh, it is losing at 7 cents, so where did all those dozen hundreds of thousands s19s go? They can't be all mining at 5 cents, so why are they not off yet? To me, it is only a matter of time and thus this increase is not sustainable.

Or there are tons of 3 cent miners using s19pros

Or even, some don't mind mining at a loss.

Not as a huge farm.  I can't think a farm with 1000 s19s burning 3 kwatts each or 3 megawatts an hour or 72000 kwatts a day at let's say 6 cents a kwatt or $4320 daily power bill will stay afloat only earning 1000 x 95 x 4.33 cents or 4113.50

which nets to a 206.50 loss will keep mining more than 3 months.


But a 3 megawatt farm with 6 cent power and old s19s that do 3kwatts and 95 th each very likely shifted that gear out.

Now the 5 cent farm burns 3600 usd a day which means a daily profit of 4113.50-3600 = 513.50  

he can buy some T21's

1 a week and the farm gets upgraded.

So we are at a newer low for miners

 you need to be a 6 cent miner with the newest gear to turn some profit.
a 5 cent cent miner can use older gear ie s19's

this is why s19's are dirt cheap on ebay and a lot of other places.
 
here are some from a seller I trust

https://vmssecuritycloud.com/product/used-bitmain-oem-s19-100t-low-power-autotune-firmware/

10 available at 500 each with free shipping to the USA

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

Latest Block:   855215  (11 minutes ago)

Current Pace:   94.4947%  (432 / 457.17 expected, 25.17 behind)

Previous Difficulty:   82047728459932.75                           
Current Difficulty:   90666502495565.78                           
Next Difficulty:   between 85677502828070 and 88690315367315
Next Difficulty Change:   between -5.5026% and -2.1796%
Previous Retarget:   last Wednesday at 5:13 AM  (+10.5046%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   August 14, 2024 at 12:42 PM  (in 11d 3h 17m 45s)
Next Retarget (latest):   August 15, 2024 at 12:47 AM  (in 11d 15h 22m 51s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 7h 29m 26s and 14d 19h 34m 32s

[joker_josue]

a 5 cent cent miner can use older gear ie s19's

The problem now is getting the energy for 5 cents.
With energy costs increasing across the board, small miners may have difficulty achieving this price.

[philipma1957]

a 5 cent cent miner can use older gear ie s19's

The problem now is getting the energy for 5 cents.
With energy costs increasing across the board, small miners may have difficulty achieving this price.

I have to commit to 1megawatt an hour to get that price

so that is 50 dollars an hour
or 1200 dollars a day
or 8400 dollars a day
or 36000 dollars a month
or 432,000 dollars a year.

Since I had 125kwatts of working gear which is 12.5 percent of the commitment
I need to buy 200 s21s maybe 700,000 in new gear.
along with the transformer and the box at least 150,000 more

for me laying out 800,000 in cash and paying 432,000 in power is doable if I move near the site. But I do not want to move to the site north Texas /Oklahoma area.

I could get around 5.8 cents in Pennsylvania but I won't have full control of the site.

Which is a no go for me. This is why I lost the last mine the four of us could not agree on what to do on that site.

[mikeywith]

I could get around 5.8 cents in Pennsylvania but I won't have full control of the site.

Which is a no go for me. This is why I lost the last mine the four of us could not agree on what to do on that site.

I second that, if you don't have full control over the farm, you will eventually lose it one way or the other, in fact, even if you must have a partner, they must be "investor" only type of a partner whereby they should have no say in what should be done, when and how.

The problem with mining is that it has some crazy profit swings, most people can't handle that, and they would want to "act" to every swing, eventually, actions need to be taken, but having 4 guys in one place deciding on a mining plan is very unlikely going to work.

[philipma1957]

well we are so low in earnings per th I wonder  if we correct in difficulty.

Of course I entered an agreement to buy 11-14kwatts and hour for a year.

it would be nice if the diff drops a lot.