Antminer S1 soon obsolete => Centralization?

[Bitcoin++]

According to Bitcoinwisdom's calculator 180 Gh/s generates less than $5 a day.
It's just a matter of weeks or months before this halves again, and then the S1's will barely be profitable after electricity.

I don't know how much of the total these Antminers contribute with but it is a lot, isn't it?

So what will happen is that gradually these will be turned off. First in Germany since electricity is expensive there. Then in the rest of EU. And later all Antminers across the world.

This ASIC has been perfect for hobby-miners around the world. When they shut down, will we only have the big guys left? How many big miners are there? And how big is each of them?

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[BigMac]

The centralization seems to be inevitable.
As difficulty keep going up, there will be less and less small miners, but more and more huge mining farms IMO.

[jamesc760]

I agree. The days of small, independent miners are coming to an end. I wish I could move to Iceland; I hear they have cheap electricity, cold weather and beautiful women.

[mikerbiker6]

There are still a lot of countries where electricity is super cheap: china, egypt, philippines...
Centralisation has started to kick in, but this will take at least another 3 years to complete I think.
New more efficient miners are being released and there are also people that don't mine for the money, just for fun.

[taipo]

Antminer S1 users are moving to the Antminer S2's and the raft of other 1 TH/s or faster miners, thus effectively halving their power usage per Ghash, and/or multiplying their hashing power.

Antminer S1 users who have not, or refuse to update their gear will HAVE to quit when the difficulty reaches 11 billion.....1 cent difference between the cost of power and mining income. That looks to be about 3 months from now. Dont expect any of them to do so anytime sooner than that.

Home miners in general will eventually throw in the towel when all of these conditions are met:
- home supply (watts ) is maxed out, AND
- bank accounts are empty, AND
- bitcoin wallets are empty, AND
- cost of power and upgrading exceeds mining income, AND
- partners threaten to leave them or boot their arses out

However if its just kWh supply issues, serious enough home miners will look to data center hosting before conceding that the mining game is over. Until all the other conditions are met above.

Home miners in general however, will continue to mine if the following conditions continue:
- asic manufacturers continue to put out machines that hash for less kWh
- if the value of BTC rises
- new alt coins come out promising the world
- they have 'free' or the perception of 'free' access to power

So the days of the 'small independent miner' are not over yet.

[zeoez]

I was under the impression S1 miners could mine any SHA256 coin? If that is the case you could still profit from it mining alt coins in a multi-pool?

[ChuckBuck]

I was under the impression S1 miners could mine any SHA256 coin? If that is the case you could still profit from it mining alt coins in a multi-pool?

It's not so much the mining aspect with the Ant S1s, it's the power consumption, cooling the units, and selecting the right power supply.

Since most owners own multiple Ants, at 360 W per Ant, it adds up.

We'll see alot of pencil modding and undervolting to keep costs and heat down this summer

[crocko]

You may scrap all Ant S1, collect the chips, and reuse them on bigger configurations.
Ant Miner S2 use the same 55 nm tech.

[Entropy-uc]

There are still a lot of countries where electricity is super cheap: china, egypt, philippines...
Centralisation has started to kick in, but this will take at least another 3 years to complete I think.
New more efficient miners are being released and there are also people that don't mine for the money, just for fun.

Whatever gave you the impression that electricity is cheap in China?  The average rate in Shanghai is $0.22 / KWh

[mikerbiker6]

There are still a lot of countries where electricity is super cheap: china, egypt, philippines...
Centralisation has started to kick in, but this will take at least another 3 years to complete I think.
New more efficient miners are being released and there are also people that don't mine for the money, just for fun.

Whatever gave you the impression that electricity is cheap in China?  The average rate in Shanghai is $0.22 / KWh

Well on average according to wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing

[Angela8488]

S1 outdated for a long itme, but hashrate higher mining machine is too expensive, so in fact S1 is a good choice even now.

[kthejung]

I was under the impression S1 miners could mine any SHA256 coin? If that is the case you could still profit from it mining alt coins in a multi-pool?

I mine at ghash.io and it automatically mines for namecoin and 2 other sha256 altcoins along with bitcoin.  namecoin is worth very little and the other 2 are almost worthless.