Is it the end of mining or a new beginning for Bitcoin?

[cat2]

So home mining seems hopeless due to the growth of industrialized mining operations. But isn’t this battle of the titans going to end badly for them as well? With difficulty skyrocketing isn’t the profitability for these giants sinking fast. Cheap power and cold climate advantages are available to all of them. Specialized cooling systems. What happens when nobody but the giants are buying miners from Bitmain, GAW or any of the other manufacturers. The mining equipment manufacturers are all mining with large farms that are driving their customers away from mining. I suspect they will look back longingly to when they sold equipment to little guys like me. A large diversified market is a good thing when things go sour.

So they are all selling contracts for cloud mining, but aren’t all the cloud miners going to eventually yawn at the inevitable diminishing returns and walk away. Script won’t save them. Have you seen the new scrypt asic miners that Bitmain is going to start shipping by this December. Already sold out.

Will the giants come to an agreement to limit their activity to assure their survival or will their greed prevail. Some people will believe anything but my money is on their greed. Will they just mine for themselves? Are there enough new coins generated to feed these beasts? Will new technology arrive with even more power and the difficulty magically not rise? The downward pressure on the prices of mined coins will only increase as the giants constantly sell to pay their bills and salaries. Their expenses will not shrink with time. The price may continue downward. Why should it rise? Will everyone that actually uses Bitcoin switch to a coin that isn’t mined?

What about when the Bitcoin blocks get halved in mid-2016. Half the return. Overnight!

Do the giants have any choice but to charge down the road they are on if they want to stay alive. It appears there may be a cliff ahead. This can’t continue inevitably. Something has to change. I hope it is decentralized. Was this the plan all along. Bitcoin seems to be a self-adjusting system. Difficulty seems like a fuse. Were the creators of Bitcoin that smart? When the giants compete themselves into the ground and the difficulty slowly drifts down like dust and smoke after a battle, maybe some home miners will turn their machines back on. I hope so.


What do you think the future holds for the mining of coins?

[damiano]

Mining just isn't worth the trouble anymore.  Unless we see a huge surge in price or the prices of miners slashed, its just not profitable to the majority.

I have a feeling we will see sub 300 prices within the next 2-3 weeks.

[cat2]

What are you doing with your mining equipment?

Are you cloud mining instead? Both?

[damiano]

What are you doing with your mining equipment?

Are you cloud mining instead? Both?

I have minimal cloud mining with GAW.  I was lucky to get my primes at $15.99.  No way in hell I would pay what they are asking now.  The only other cloud or hosting mining I am looking into at this point is ltcgear.  At this point my interests are split 50/50 with btc/ltc rather than being all btc.

[taipo]

Mining just isn't worth the trouble anymore.  Unless we see a huge surge in price or the prices of miners slashed, its just not profitable to the majority.

I have a feeling we will see sub 300 prices within the next 2-3 weeks.

The big players can mine close to the line between cost of mining and value of mined BTC. Any huge surge in price will be followed shortly afterward by a huge surge in hashrate and the onflow of rise in difficulty.

[cat2]

Mining just isn't worth the trouble anymore.  Unless we see a huge surge in price or the prices of miners slashed, its just not profitable to the majority.

I have a feeling we will see sub 300 prices within the next 2-3 weeks.

The big players can mine close to the line between cost of mining and value of mined BTC. Any huge surge in price will be followed shortly afterward by a huge surge in hashrate and the onflow of rise in difficulty.

I'm not so sure the big players don't need a big profit. They have investors that expect a return, facility payments, salaries, taxes and all the other expenses associated with running a business. While they may enjoy advantages that come with large data centers in favorable locations their competitors enjoy the same. Equipment manufacturers are probably in the best position for competing in the developing, new Bitcoin landscape but difficulty keeps growing like a bad cancer for them and the Bitcoin price keeps falling. They're not in business to hoard Bitcoins so they have to sell and this isn't helping the price rise.

[xstr8guy]

Mining just isn't worth the trouble anymore.  Unless we see a huge surge in price or the prices of miners slashed, its just not profitable to the majority.

I have a feeling we will see sub 300 prices within the next 2-3 weeks.

The big players can mine close to the line between cost of mining and value of mined BTC. Any huge surge in price will be followed shortly afterward by a huge surge in hashrate and the onflow of rise in difficulty.

You are about the only person on the forum lately that I find myself nodding my head in agreement with when I read your posts.

So many other people think that the hashrate increases are driven by the sale of retail miners. News flash! It's not. It is the ASIC manufacturers themselves building-out huge datacenters one after the other in 3rd World countries with cheap labor & power and/or in cool climates. The biggest culprit is probably Bitfury with their high-efficiency, low-cost 55nm chips.

And the manufacturers are not panicking... yet... and probably won't be until closer to the halving. They'll continue to be profitable for a long time. And during that time, retail sales of mining gear and home mining will have vanished completely.

[BTCish]

so is it really a turning point o btc become only manufacter produced product ?

[LightningBlade]

so is it really a turning point o btc become only manufacter produced product ?

Yes, they get cheapest electricity, they can hire few people to look after all their miners...

[puwaha]

I don't understand...

Why is/was anyone mining to begin with?  Simple answer... to get bitcoin... but more importantly to speculate that the BTC will be more valuable in the future.

What has changed other than the efficiency of the home miners?  Nothing.  You can still generate bitcoin.  It won't generate as much as before, but that's not the point.


The point is... all of mining is pure speculation... the hope that you will generate enough BTC to cover expenses (ROI), and gain profits by the speculation that the BTC will go up in value.


I think it's sad that you all are just now realizing this.  I'm trying to figure out which of the 5 stages of Grief you are all in.

[xstr8guy]

I don't understand...

Why is/was anyone mining to begin with?  Simple answer... to get bitcoin... but more importantly to speculate that the BTC will be more valuable in the future.

What has changed other than the efficiency of the home miners?  Nothing.  You can still generate bitcoin.  It won't generate as much as before, but that's not the point.


The point is... all of mining is pure speculation... the hope that you will generate enough BTC to cover expenses (ROI), and gain profits by the speculation that the BTC will go up in value.


I think it's sad that you all are just now realizing this.  I'm trying to figure out which of the 5 stages of Grief you are all in.

I'm guessing that you're not a miner?

Mining is more than just pure speculation. Most home miners also get a lot of enjoyment from their hardware and the "game" of mining. Just the act of placing and order and the anticipation of receiving the miner is/was exciting.

I'm going to miss it greatly!   

[puwaha]

I'm guessing that you're not a miner?

Mining is more than just pure speculation. Most home miners also get a lot of enjoyment from their hardware and the "game" of mining. Just the act of placing and order and the anticipation of receiving the miner is/was exciting.

I'm going to miss it greatly!   

No, I mine.  I have miners at home and in the cloud.  The point still stands though, people mine in order to get more BTC.  The hope is that the BTC they mine will become more valuable... speculation.