The negative impact of mining farms

[brg444]

I believe he means that mining has become a job of a few entities (mining farms). Not exactly Satoshi's idea about decentralized peer-to-peer systems.

If you think Satoshi didn't envision mining farms then you are underestimating him

[DaRude]

Larger and larger mining farms are not what's increasing selling pressure. To the contrary, the larger the farm the cheaper the electricity and the cheaper the hardware to better the operating margin becomes.
A high operating margin gives miners the option to retain more of the mined Bitcoins while a low operating margin forces the miner to sell or at least get more capital by other means to pay bills.

Mining farms are in the business of mining, not risk taking on currency fluctuation. Once gain if they're so profitable in mining the logical thing is to reinvest that income and expand the profitable mining operation, not horde your inventory in hopes it goes up. Just like a gold mining, i'm assuming they sell most of their resources as soon if not before they get it, they don't speculate on price swings (much).

And once again there are 3600BTC mined EVERY day. Either by mega farms or solo miners across the glove. In both cases i think everyone agrees that MAJORITY of those BTC will end up on the market, so market needs to find a price point at which those BTC can be absorbed. Now the argument is:
1-who is more likely to sell most of mined coins, mega farms or your solo farmers?
2-And by how much? If it's by 1-2% does it really make a difference.

I think history shows that first miners were horders, and actually just did it as a hobby at a loss. So i tend to lean that mega farmers would sell more, but again how much does it matter? There will be 3600new btc today and someone will own them

[MrBig]

Larger and larger mining farms are not what's increasing selling pressure. To the contrary, the larger the farm the cheaper the electricity and the cheaper the hardware to better the operating margin becomes.
A high operating margin gives miners the option to retain more of the mined Bitcoins while a low operating margin forces the miner to sell or at least get more capital by other means to pay bills.

Mining farms are in the business of mining, not risk taking on currency fluctuation. Once gain if they're so profitable in mining the logical thing is to reinvest that income and expand the profitable mining operation, not horde your inventory in hopes it goes up. Just like a gold mining, i'm assuming they sell most of their resources as soon if not before they get it, they don't speculate on price swings (much).

And once again there are 3600BTC mined EVERY day. Either by mega farms or solo miners across the glove. In both cases i think everyone agrees that MAJORITY of those BTC will end up on the market, so market needs to find a price point at which those BTC can be absorbed. Now the argument is:
1-who is more likely to sell most of mined coins, mega farms or your solo farmers?
2-And by how much? If it's by 1-2% does it really make a difference.

I think history shows that first miners were horders, and actually just did it as a hobby at a loss. So i tend to lean that mega farmers would sell more, but again how much does it matter? There will be 3600new btc today and someone will own them

I've already tried to make this same point multiple times in this thread, but it just seems to make the naysayers more stubborn. These mega-mining farms are working to devour their competition while raking in the dough. They're not delusional hodlers who are betting on BTC going to the moon in 10 years or whatever. There's profits to be taken right now, and these people are ready to milk this cash cow dry.

[brg444]

Larger and larger mining farms are not what's increasing selling pressure. To the contrary, the larger the farm the cheaper the electricity and the cheaper the hardware to better the operating margin becomes.
A high operating margin gives miners the option to retain more of the mined Bitcoins while a low operating margin forces the miner to sell or at least get more capital by other means to pay bills.

Mining farms are in the business of mining, not risk taking on currency fluctuation. Once gain if they're so profitable in mining the logical thing is to reinvest that income and expand the profitable mining operation, not horde your inventory in hopes it goes up. Just like a gold mining, i'm assuming they sell most of their resources as soon if not before they get it, they don't speculate on price swings (much).

And once again there are 3600BTC mined EVERY day. Either by mega farms or solo miners across the glove. In both cases i think everyone agrees that MAJORITY of those BTC will end up on the market, so market needs to find a price point at which those BTC can be absorbed. Now the argument is:
1-who is more likely to sell most of mined coins, mega farms or your solo farmers?
2-And by how much? If it's by 1-2% does it really make a difference.

I think history shows that first miners were horders, and actually just did it as a hobby at a loss. So i tend to lean that mega farmers would sell more, but again how much does it matter? There will be 3600new btc today and someone will own them

I've already tried to make this same point multiple times in this thread, but it just seems to make the naysayers more stubborn. These mega-mining farms are working to devour their competition while raking in the dough. They're not delusional hodlers who are betting on BTC going to the moon in 10 years or whatever. There's profits to be taken right now, and these people are ready to milk this cash cow dry.

you have made nothing but assumptions while I've provided you with factual reports tha indicate this is not so black or white

[DaRude]

I've already tried to make this same point multiple times in this thread, but it just seems to make the naysayers more stubborn. These mega-mining farms are working to devour their competition while raking in the dough. They're not delusional hodlers who are betting on BTC going to the moon in 10 years or whatever. There's profits to be taken right now, and these people are ready to milk this cash cow dry.

Yeah i'm yet to hear a valid counter point to this. Although i don't see them as evil, just part of the ecosystem/capitalism. Hope the halving and a risk of a hard fork if they get out of control would keep them in check.

[brg444]

Yeah i'm yet to hear a valid counter point to this. Although i don't see them as evil, just part of the ecosystem/capitalism. Hope the halving and a risk of a hard fork if they get out of control would keep them in check.

BitFury founder and CEO Valery Vavilov indicated that the new funding will allow the company to complete production of its 28nm ASIC chip without selling the reserve bitcoins it has mined from its three industrial-scale data centres.

Vavilov told CoinDesk that it decided not to tap its bitcoin reserves as it remains bullish on the long-term value of bitcoin.

"We believe in the long-term perspective [the price of bitcoin] will grow and we decided to not to sell [our bitcoin] at such a low price," Vavilov added.

[ElectricMucus]

I've already tried to make this same point multiple times in this thread, but it just seems to make the naysayers more stubborn. These mega-mining farms are working to devour their competition while raking in the dough. They're not delusional hodlers who are betting on BTC going to the moon in 10 years or whatever. There's profits to be taken right now, and these people are ready to milk this cash cow dry.

Yeah i'm yet to hear a valid counter point to this. Although i don't see them as evil, just part of the ecosystem/capitalism. Hope the halving and a risk of a hard fork if they get out of control would keep them in check.

Not really a counter, just this: It's possible that nobody who is starting mining now breaks even, even with cheap or stolen electricity. (If you'll assume a constant btc price, free electricity and >2% periodic difficulty increase for instance no consumer miner makes money ever)
In that sense Bitcoin mining is a gamble in it's own and so larger mining farms aren't necessarily more risk-aware.

I think we'll see a few weeks where mining costs more in electricity alone some time in the coming months like we did in 2011.

[brg444]

Not really a counter, just this: It's possible that nobody who is starting mining now breaks even, even with cheap or stolen electricity. (If you'll assume a constant btc price, free electricity and >2% periodic difficulty increase for instance no consumer miner makes money ever)
In that sense Bitcoin mining is a gamble in it's own and so larger mining farms aren't necessarily more risk-aware.

This is not the case, it certainly is still doable to mine at profit, even at current price

[ElectricMucus]

Not really a counter, just this: It's possible that nobody who is starting mining now breaks even, even with cheap or stolen electricity. (If you'll assume a constant btc price, free electricity and >2% periodic difficulty increase for instance no consumer miner makes money ever)
In that sense Bitcoin mining is a gamble in it's own and so larger mining farms aren't necessarily more risk-aware.

This is not the case, it certainly is still doable to mine at profit, even at current price

With a theoretical ROI of over a year which is far from certain. If the price tanks even further I'd even say that most of these farms gonna be out of business a year from now.

[brg444]

Not really a counter, just this: It's possible that nobody who is starting mining now breaks even, even with cheap or stolen electricity. (If you'll assume a constant btc price, free electricity and >2% periodic difficulty increase for instance no consumer miner makes money ever)
In that sense Bitcoin mining is a gamble in it's own and so larger mining farms aren't necessarily more risk-aware.

This is not the case, it certainly is still doable to mine at profit, even at current price

With a theoretical ROI of over a year which is far from certain. If the price tanks even further I'd even say that most of these farms gonna be out of business a year from now.

Sure, that's if you believe the price is still gonna be down a year from now.

They're betting it won't and you can be certain they know more than you about the dynamics of this market.

[DaRude]

Yeah i'm yet to hear a valid counter point to this. Although i don't see them as evil, just part of the ecosystem/capitalism. Hope the halving and a risk of a hard fork if they get out of control would keep them in check.

BitFury founder and CEO Valery Vavilov indicated that the new funding will allow the company to complete production of its 28nm ASIC chip without selling the reserve bitcoins it has mined from its three industrial-scale data centres.

Vavilov told CoinDesk that it decided not to tap its bitcoin reserves as it remains bullish on the long-term value of bitcoin.

"We believe in the long-term perspective [the price of bitcoin] will grow and we decided to not to sell [our bitcoin] at such a low price," Vavilov added.

Again the fact that this one time event was so against the norm that it made the news should hint on how the normal course of business goes. Would BitFury selling their inventory to fund new farm made the news??? Think that be considered the normal course of business

[DaRude]

I've already tried to make this same point multiple times in this thread, but it just seems to make the naysayers more stubborn. These mega-mining farms are working to devour their competition while raking in the dough. They're not delusional hodlers who are betting on BTC going to the moon in 10 years or whatever. There's profits to be taken right now, and these people are ready to milk this cash cow dry.

Yeah i'm yet to hear a valid counter point to this. Although i don't see them as evil, just part of the ecosystem/capitalism. Hope the halving and a risk of a hard fork if they get out of control would keep them in check.

Not really a counter, just this: It's possible that nobody who is starting mining now breaks even, even with cheap or stolen electricity. (If you'll assume a constant btc price, free electricity and >2% periodic difficulty increase for instance no consumer miner makes money ever)
In that sense Bitcoin mining is a gamble in it's own and so larger mining farms aren't necessarily more risk-aware.

I think we'll see a few weeks where mining costs more in electricity alone some time in the coming months like we did in 2011.

 not sure how many time "significantly below $400" per unit can be quoted here. If they're profitable why can't other ASIC manufacturers be?

[brg444]

Again the fact that this one time event was so against the norm that it made the news should hint on how the normal course of business goes. Would BitFury selling their inventory to fund new farm made the news??? Think that be considered the normal course of business

 

That was no event. This quote made the news because it was a comment made after the announcement of yet another round of VC funding.

Here's another one from Josh Garza from GAWMiners at Hashers United conference :

Garza voiced the least concern regarding the price, saying that ultimately, the value of bitcoin is underpinned not so much by the consumers and merchants who use and accept digital currency but by the miners who facilitate the whole network.

“Miners believe in the currency the most,” he said.

More from this conference :

Terpin polled the crowd by asking how many sell a certain percentage of their bitcoins for fiat currencies like the dollar. One only miner raised their hand when Terpin asked if they sold 100% of their bitcoin for dollars, and about one-third of the crowd indicated that they don’t sell any of their generated bitcoins.

Again, I'm not saying all of the miners keep 100% of their coins but it is naive to believe the majority of them dump their Bitcoins for fiat

[DaRude]

Again the fact that this one time event was so against the norm that it made the news should hint on how the normal course of business goes. Would BitFury selling their inventory to fund new farm made the news??? Think that be considered the normal course of business

 

That was no event. This quote made the news because it was a comment made after the announcement of yet another round of VC funding.

Here's another one from Josh Garza from GAWMiners at Hashers United conference :

Garza voiced the least concern regarding the price, saying that ultimately, the value of bitcoin is underpinned not so much by the consumers and merchants who use and accept digital currency but by the miners who facilitate the whole network.

“Miners believe in the currency the most,” he said.

More from this conference :

Terpin polled the crowd by asking how many sell a certain percentage of their bitcoins for fiat currencies like the dollar. One only miner raised their hand when Terpin asked if they sold 100% of their bitcoin for dollars, and about one-third of the crowd indicated that they don’t sell any of their generated bitcoins.

Again, I'm not saying all of the miners keep 100% of their coins but it is naive to believe the majority of them dump their Bitcoins for fiat

Bottom line is money has to come from somewhere to cover costs and generate fiat profit. And your argument that they'd rather indefinitely raise capital from VCs to cover their costs rather than sell their own inventory is conceptually flawed. Simple as that.

[brg444]

Bottom line is money has to come from somewhere to cover costs and generate fiat profit. And your argument that they'd rather indefinitely raise capital from VCs to cover their costs rather than sell their own inventory is conceptually flawed. Simple as that.

 

You are one stubborn fellow

I know people on this forum tend to be very selective in their reading but did you not read the part where they have made/are making millions selling mining gear or did you conveniently ignore it?

On GAWMiners :

The company was an overnight success and achieved over $10M in sales during its first month and is on schedule to do $100M in this first year.

KNC :

Since KnC started in June last year, it has sold bitcoin mining computers worth $75 million.

I can't pull up any numbers for BitFury but my guess is it is more than both these two.

[DaRude]

Bottom line is money has to come from somewhere to cover costs and generate fiat profit. And your argument that they'd rather indefinitely raise capital from VCs to cover their costs rather than sell their own inventory is conceptually flawed. Simple as that.

 

You are one stubborn fellow

I know people on this forum tend to be very selective in their reading but did you not read the part where they have made/are making millions selling mining gear or did you conveniently ignore it?

On GAWMiners :

The company was an overnight success and achieved over $10M in sales during its first month and is on schedule to do $100M in this first year.

KNC :

Since KnC started in June last year, it has sold bitcoin mining computers worth $75 million.

I can't pull up any numbers for BitFury but my guess is it is more than both these two.

Sales != profit.

And again you're whole argument seems to be that they're so profitable they can do whatever they want. Even if that the case in one instance, clearly that's not sustainable on a long term scale

[brg444]

Sales != profit.

And again you're whole argument seems to be that they're so profitable they can do whatever they want. Even if that the case in one instance, clearly that's not sustainable on a long term scale

Not one instance, most instance.

Tell me exactly how it is not substainable? I should add that most of these companies are now setting up cloud mining services and selling mining contracts at what are most certainly extremely high profit margins.

What is not substainable is this persistent bear market in the face of continuing innovation and development in Bitcoin's infrastructure.

When the price starts shooting up again, these companies will be even less enticed to sell any Bitcoin.

It seems to me you have little to no argument and keep moving the goal posts. I, on the other hand, have brought forward numerous arguments and factual reports to indicate that miners are not all dumping to fiat the BTC they mine.

[DaRude]

Sales != profit.

And again you're whole argument seems to be that they're so profitable they can do whatever they want. Even if that the case in one instance, clearly that's not sustainable on a long term scale

Not one instance, most instance.

Tell me exactly how it is not substainable? I should add that most of these companies are now setting up cloud mining services and selling mining contracts at what are most certainly extremely high profit margins.

What is not substainable is this persistent bear market in the face of continuing innovation and development in Bitcoin's infrastructure.

When the price starts shooting up again, these companies will be even less enticed to sell any Bitcoin.

It seems to me you have little to no argument and keep moving the goal posts. I, on the other hand, have brought forward numerous arguments and factual reports to indicate that miners are not all dumping to fiat the BTC they mine.

In one word competition. If it's so profitable what's stopping 100 new asian manufacturer coming online tomorrow at the fraction of the cost and driving hashrate through the roof squeezing those profits? What about Intel entering the market? It's always a risk/reward game you won't see crazy profits for too long, but when you do and first to the game you reinvest to try as grab as big of the pie early on, not hodle because you get way too much money from other business.

So they're not dumping now, and even less likely to dump when market goes up. Perpetual hodlers?? Great business plan with no exit strategy, but even if that's the case and 1% ASIC manufacturers horde up all new coins there's the risk of the other 99% revolting and hard forking you out of the game.

[brg444]

In one word competition. If it's so profitable what's stopping 100 new asian manufacturer coming online tomorrow at the fraction of the cost and driving hashrate through the roof squeezing those profits? What about Intel entering the market? It's always a risk/reward game you won't see crazy profits for too long, but when you do and first to the game you reinvest to try as grab as big of the pie early on, not hodle because you get way too much money from other business.

So they're not dumping now, and even less likely to dump when market goes up. Perpetual hodlers?? Great business plan with no exit strategy, but even if that's the case and 1% ASIC manufacturers horde up all new coins there's the risk of the other 99% revolting and hard forking you out of the game.

There is nothing stopping them doing it.... In fact there are some doing it at this very moment, have you not seen hashrate going "through the roof" in the last few months?

Again, I fail to see what argument you are trying to make.

When you do and first to the game you reinvest to try as grab as big of the pie early on, not hodle because you get way too much money from other business

That's exactly what the biggest ones are doing. At the moment, they don't need to sell their Bitcoin to do that.

Do you not understand that them and their backers believe in the technology?

They're going to eat their share of the pie as long as they can sit at the table. They have a business model that allow them to profit and accumulate assets.

Certainly for the majority of them their business model is not substainable. But don't fool yourself that selling their BTC for fiat would change any of that.

Bigger player (Intel) will enter the market once the price of Bitcoin starts appreciating again and grows another order of magnitude. Once that happen, maybe, just maybe, even major first movers like BitFury will be forced out the market but guess what? They will be sitting on thousands of Bitcoin from early days.

Great business plan with no exit strategy, but even if that's the case and 1% ASIC manufacturers horde up all new coins there's the risk of the other 99% revolting and hard forking you out of the game.

Couldn't make any sense out of this

[labsbitforum]

I believe he means that mining has become a job of a few entities (mining farms). Not exactly Satoshi's idea about decentralized peer-to-peer systems.

If you think Satoshi didn't envision mining farms then you are underestimating him

Big players making farms.  Sure.  Everyone can see that.  Specialized silicon that would lead to 1 or 2 large players controlling bitcoin.  No.

The intent was a decentralized peer-to-peer system.  Failing to adapt the core to that end put bitcoin on a path of greater and greater consolidation that will eventually make it vulnerable to a number things and non-viable.  It will be replaced by a version 2.0 that is peer-to-peer decentralized and probably has other fundamental innovations.