Has mining ever been profitable "at current rates"?

[lightfoot]

When antminers turn off, difficulty lowers, wouldn't that vest time to mine is when everyone else is turning off there's?

Nope, wishful thinking.  Thats the same thing people said when ASIC's were introduced. "When the GPUS' are turned off the difficulty will flatten out."  That never happened.  Just look at the hashrate historical record.
When antminers are turned off, faster and more powerful miners will be turned on. That is probably a more accurate statement.  ;-)

  

Actually power efficiency will become more and more important. GPUs were turned off or switched to junkcoins, but the problem is the entire GPU world is probably a couple of antminers in power :-). My curiousity is that the new generation of miners is going to be about 4 times as efficient as my 65nm technology, which will buy a few months but that's it. Then what?

Oddly enough what is happening to Bitcoin is what's going to happen to the universe in a heat death scenario. In a few billion years when we're huddled around the last of the black holes for energy we will be getting about 500 watts per km tops. Not enough to make a good bowl of popcorn; how are we going to keep the blockchain going?

C

[pixl8tr]

Oddly enough what is happening to Bitcoin is what's going to happen to the universe in a heat death scenario. In a few billion years when we're huddled around the last of the black holes for energy we will be getting about 500 watts per km tops. Not enough to make a good bowl of popcorn; how are we going to keep the blockchain going?

C

Hahah very good made me spit coffee out me nose.

[Doug Rudd]

When antminers turn off, difficulty lowers, wouldn't that vest time to mine is when everyone else is turning off there's?

The equilibrium point between people turning off miners because of loss and people turning on miners because of profit is always going hover around zero profit.

[Meman]

this, has there ever been a time in the last 5 years where mining was profitable at current rates?

Yes, it was, for the early CPU and GPU birds (early adopters).
The party was over, when the first FPGAs appeared.

[precrime3]

this, has there ever been a time in the last 5 years where mining was profitable at current rates?

Yes, it was, for the early CPU and GPU birds (early adopters).
The party was over, when the first FPGAs appeared.

Wait so even when btc was basically nothing, the early birds were "profitable" assuming they could sell it?

[pixl8tr]

this, has there ever been a time in the last 5 years where mining was profitable at current rates?

Yes, it was, for the early CPU and GPU birds (early adopters).
The party was over, when the first FPGAs appeared.

Wait so even when btc was basically nothing, the early birds were "profitable" assuming they could sell it?

Yes, partly because you could mine 50 coins solo with spare cycles on a laptop. ;-)