Dec 29 to Approx Jan 12th diff thread (4%) to (7%)

[notlist3d]

4) the spike could be the 24-72hr testing of bitmain or SP-T hardware before it ships to customers. not likely, but it could account for 5-10PH swings as stuff is plugged in, setup, tested, turned off, then boxed to ship and the cycle repeats for another batch.

No manufacturer has the infrastructure to handle 5-10PHs just sitting around idle and only use it for testing. If they have that kind of capacity, they're using it 24/7/365.

Bitmain has a large facility that could handle several PH - and its pretty likely that they test the S5 units (even briefly) before shipping them. similarly, SP-T has been shipping thousands of the SP20 unit, and likely performs some testing before its boxed and shipped.

there is usually some big varience swings in the difficulty calculations, but i think theres also smaller ripples caused by manufacturers bringing several hundred units online for testing, running them overnight, then shutting them down to ship a day or two later.

I would agree I bet Bitmain and SP both have the capability to test units before shipping out.  Also they make in batches so I would guess they plug it in till time of sale.  It is not practical to make it and pack away in a box till it is bought. That is all guessing though. 

Bitwisdom keeps looking a little better each day.  Looks like hopefully under 10 percent change at this point:

Bitcoin Difficulty:    40,640,955,017
Estimated Next Difficulty:    44,652,760,104 (+9.87%)
Adjust time:    After 450 Blocks, About 2.9 days
Hashrate(?):    301,808,962 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):    
1 block: 9.3 minutes
3 blocks: 27.8 minutes
6 blocks: 55.6 minutes

[xstr8guy]

4) the spike could be the 24-72hr testing of bitmain or SP-T hardware before it ships to customers. not likely, but it could account for 5-10PH swings as stuff is plugged in, setup, tested, turned off, then boxed to ship and the cycle repeats for another batch.

No manufacturer has the infrastructure to handle 5-10PHs just sitting around idle and only use it for testing. If they have that kind of capacity, they're using it 24/7/365.

Bitmain has a large facility that could handle several PH - and its pretty likely that they test the S5 units (even briefly) before shipping them. similarly, SP-T has been shipping thousands of the SP20 unit, and likely performs some testing before its boxed and shipped.

there is usually some big varience swings in the difficulty calculations, but i think theres also smaller ripples caused by manufacturers bringing several hundred units online for testing, running them overnight, then shutting them down to ship a day or two later.

I would agree I bet Bitmain and SP both have the capability to test units before shipping out.  Also they make in batches so I would guess they plug it in till time of sale.  It is not practical to make it and pack away in a box till it is bought. That is all guessing though.  

Bitwisdom keeps looking a little better each day.  Looks like hopefully under 10 percent change at this point:

Bitcoin Difficulty:    40,640,955,017
Estimated Next Difficulty:    44,652,760,104 (+9.87%)
Adjust time:    After 450 Blocks, About 2.9 days
Hashrate(?):    301,808,962 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):    
1 block: 9.3 minutes
3 blocks: 27.8 minutes
6 blocks: 55.6 minutes

Lol, why can't anyone understand what I'm saying? I agree that the manufacturers most likely have "testing" facilities that can handle several (or more) PHs. But they'd be fools to only use that infrastructure for testing. There would never be any empty space in those racks. They'd have machines running at capacity non-stop.

So when batches are sold to the public, the oldest miners are shipped and newly manufactured miners are put in their place. Voila! No hashrate spike... just steady growth as newer, more efficient miners take the place of old gear.

[mavericklm]

S5 comes standard with dust build-up! ...

[suchmoon]

So when batches are sold to the public, the oldest miners are shipped and newly manufactured miners are put in there place. Voila! No hashrate spike... just steady growth as newer, more efficient miners take the place of old gear.

Sounds plausible, works just like a regular shipping warehouse, only with all the stuff plugged in. Warm an cozy too

[notlist3d]

So when batches are sold to the public, the oldest miners are shipped and newly manufactured miners are put in there place. Voila! No hashrate spike... just steady growth as newer, more efficient miners take the place of old gear.

Sounds plausible, works just like a regular shipping warehouse, only with all the stuff plugged in. Warm an cozy too

Honestly it's all speculation.  I could make up possibilities of old miners being sold and replaced with more efficient and more powerful miners, but as far as what's happening most operations are pretty quiet.

The good news... looks like under 9 percent change.  Considering we were looking at some estimates much higher I consider it not to bad.  Hopefully week after is lower though.

Bitcoin Difficulty:    40,640,955,017
Estimated Next Difficulty:    44,177,958,509 (+8.70%)
Adjust time:    After 386 Blocks, About 2.5 days
Hashrate(?):    291,712,236 GH/s

[suchmoon]

So when batches are sold to the public, the oldest miners are shipped and newly manufactured miners are put in there place. Voila! No hashrate spike... just steady growth as newer, more efficient miners take the place of old gear.

Sounds plausible, works just like a regular shipping warehouse, only with all the stuff plugged in. Warm an cozy too

Honestly it's all speculation.  I could make up possibilities of old miners being sold and replaced with more efficient and more powerful miners, but as far as what's happening most operations are pretty quiet.

The good news... looks like under 9 percent change.  Considering we were looking at some estimates much higher I consider it not to bad.  Hopefully week after is lower though.

Bitcoin Difficulty:    40,640,955,017
Estimated Next Difficulty:    44,177,958,509 (+8.70%)
Adjust time:    After 386 Blocks, About 2.5 days
Hashrate(?):    291,712,236 GH/s

The picture looks even better:



386 blocks, it can drop another percent if it keeps doing that.

[philipma1957]

I agree with some work we may get close to 8%.

8% vs       14%

285usd vs 270usd


 a decent shift back to profit.

[judypug1956]

it is dropping more


https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Bitcoin Difficulty:   40,640,955,017
Estimated Next Difficulty:   43,812,394,528  (+7.80%)
Adjust time:   After 313 Blocks, About 2.1 days
Hashrate(?):   291,835,133 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):   
1 block: 9.5 minutes
3 blocks: 28.4 minutes
6 blocks: 56.9 minutes
Updated:   12:35 (4.7 minutes ago)


http://www.bitcoincharts.com/


Blocks   338375
Total BTC   13.709M
 
Difficulty   40640955017
Estimated   43813277114 in 313 blks     (+7.80%)    rare that you have the same number
 
Network total   291247.335 Thash/s
Blocks/hour   6.01 / 599 s

[notlist3d]

Bitcoin Difficulty:    40,640,955,017
Estimated Next Difficulty:    43,623,394,554 (+7.34%)
Adjust time:    After 275 Blocks, About 1.8 days
Hashrate(?):    289,041,094 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):    
1 block: 9.6 minutes
3 blocks: 28.8 minutes
6 blocks: 57.5 minutes

It's looking like me might get around 7 percent now.   Pretty nice compared to what it was,   Less than 2 days till we know.

[philipma1957]

Bitcoin Difficulty:    40,640,955,017
Estimated Next Difficulty:    43,623,394,554 (+7.34%)
Adjust time:    After 275 Blocks, About 1.8 days
Hashrate(?):    289,041,094 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):    
1 block: 9.6 minutes
3 blocks: 28.8 minutes
6 blocks: 57.5 minutes

It's looking like me might get around 7 percent now.   Pretty nice compared to what it was,   Less than 2 days till we know.

step by step and inch by inch slowly it drops.   Now if btc could creep back over 300 usd .

[judypug1956]

and more dropping

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty


Bitcoin Difficulty:   40,640,955,017
Estimated Next Difficulty:   43,475,228,753 (+6.97%)
Adjust time:   After 193 Blocks, About 1.3 days
Hashrate(?):   298,853,127 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):   
1 block: 9.6 minutes
3 blocks: 28.9 minutes
6 blocks: 57.8 minutes
Updated:   8:20 (5.6 minutes ago)

under 7%


price at 273

[philipma1957]

 While I want a 300-350 price


273   works if diff goes flat or 1-2% for 5 jumps.

[mavericklm]

make it 250$ and 0% diff!

some big ass farms full of old miners must be off...

[notlist3d]

make it 250$ and 0% diff!

some big ass farms full of old miners must be off...

There are a lot of A1 (dragons) that I expect a lot to be getting rid of by some data centers.  They are great machines just used two much power for my electricity rate.  I just sold mine to someone with lower electricity rates. 

And it's looking like it will be somewhere in 6 percent still on change:
Bitcoin Difficulty:    40,640,955,017
Estimated Next Difficulty:    43,429,913,711 (+6.86%)
Adjust time:    After 185 Blocks, About 1.2 days
Hashrate(?):    297,939,184 GH/s

[philipma1957]

make it 250$ and 0% diff!

some big ass farms full of old miners must be off...

and    due to the 273 price it is a hard decision for them to make  should I power off 100-500 dragon's  (yes to power off)   and replace with 100-500 s-5s or sp20's or sp31's (?).

btw gaw miners is selling off s-3's   they had  quite a  few mining at 7-8 cents a kwatt they would charge 10 cents to host.

Not sure if they had 2.2ph worth mining. they claimed they did.

[davejh]

http://www.bitcoincharts.com/ 

they have  a   4.52% jump   so 6 or 7 is in the middle.  I would love to see a solid drop in price to 175usd  this would scare the shit out of the big miners the dc's even make knc and bitfury sweat.


Blocks   337001
Total BTC   13.675M
 
Difficulty   40640955017
Estimated   42478493256 in 1687 blks
 
Network total   321462.682 Thash/s
Blocks/hour   6.63 / 543 s

At $175/BTC I think we'll see older hardware dropped from the network quicker, but I'd say that there's still a commercial business model for a large-scale miner. At that price point the vast majority of the available mining rewards will be spent on electricity costs so there won't be huge amounts of new hashing coming online (I think we could see things difficulty increases drop as low as 2x per year; essentially just seeing the benefit of silicon process improvements).

If we assume that hardware operates at "x" J/GH and that they're getting power for "y" c/kWh and a nominal 300 PH/s total network and that the network really isn't expanding (so we have 144 blocks per day):

Generation of: 25 * 144 = 3600 BTC per day, so mean hash rate per BTC is: 300 PH / 3600 = 83.33 TH.

Power consumption of 83.33 TH/s: 83.33 * x kW, or 2000 * x kWh per day

Energy cost for our 83.33 TH/s is: 2000 * x * y

If we start to think about the marginal costs associated with hardware, let's guess that we need to cover costs in 365 days. I'll take Bitmain's S5 pricing for 52 units (60 TH/s): $17.25k. Let's assume that commercial users can get a huge discount of 50% so that's $8625, or $11979 for the 83.33 TH/s that we need to earn 1 BTC per day. That in turn means that they need to earn 11979 / 365 = $32.82 per day to cover the hardware costs.

In practice the difficulty will increase throughout the year so let's guess that we want to take $65.64 on day 1 and linearly scale down to $0 on day 365 (yes I know that in practice this would want to be a log scale but I'm doing the maths quickly :-)).

Now let's guess that the difficulty increases 2x this year. The S5 is quoted at 0.51 J/GH so in our earlier calculation x = 0.51. At the end of the year we're earning 0.5 BTC, or $87.5, per day so using our earlier equation we get: $87.5 = 2000 * 0.51 * y. y = 0.0858 $/kWh. Therefore if our miner can get electricity at 8.5c per kWh then they've been seeing a constant positive revenue over 12 months. On day one they receive $175, spend $87.5 on electricity and $65.64 to cover hardware costs; that's a net positive of about $22. On day 122 they're receiving $138.89, but only spending $43.76 on the hardware so they're earning $7.63. On day 244 they're receiving $110 but only spending $21.88 to cover hardware costs. It's not much of an income but it's still $0.62.

Now these numbers are rather approximate and don't consider any other costs that a miner might have, but they'd indicate that there's certainly scope for mining to be a commercially viable enterprise at even sub-$200 BTC prices, especially as hardware becomes more power efficient. If the hash rate expansion were to slow then the depreciation periods can increase even further, while lower cost electricity will definitely let things be more viable.

[klondike_bar]

make it 250$ and 0% diff!
some big ass farms full of old miners must be off...

and    due to the 273 price it is a hard decision for them to make  should I power off 100-500 dragon's  (yes to power off)   and replace with 100-500 s-5s or sp20's or sp31's (?).

btw gaw miners is selling off s-3's   they had  quite a  few mining at 7-8 cents a kwatt they would charge 10 cents to host.

Not sure if they had 2.2ph worth mining. they claimed they did.

wouldnt surprise me if GAW has that much hashrate. look at the paycoin scam - wouldnt be surprised if they were a major source of hashrate rentals on nicehash to make money on the paycoin nonsense. (sure they could mine XPY themselves, but they already have 12mil of them they are flooding the market with - renting out thier cloudmining to mine thier own worthless coin for BTC seems like a clear win)

[klondike_bar]

diff is creeping down nicely, might be in the 7.5% range

[philipma1957]

@ davejh

Need to study the math you used, but if correct margin is very tight for a big miner.

A small guy may say fuck it I will list my 10 s-3's on ebay cheap get 1000 usd back and buy a pair of sp20's.

A guy with 1000 s-3's and 8 cent power is in a tough spot.

His 1000 s-3's hash at 500th and use 400kwatts.

at 6cents power and all other overhead = 2 cents still staying at the 8 cents.   for calculator

he is earning about 880 usd a day.

lets make him after jump at 267 a coin and a new diff of 43.6 .

 He earns 765usd a day beyond his daily expenses.

Now I have charted s-3's since they came out and while you may have done a btc roi very few have done  a cash roi due to btc's drop in price to 267.

So here you are you got a 500th farm of s-3 still bringing in a daily profit.
Unless you are bitmaintech most likely your 1000 s-3s are not paid off.  What to do?

Sell the 1000 s-3's well they won't get a lot.  This guy most likely will run them and hope for a coin jump. He will tell himself I still make some money every day and will do so until the diff gets to 86.

He may buy a few s-5's maybe he buys a 52 pack a month. when it comes in he fire sells 100 s-3's

and 52 x 1100 = 57.2 th   but 100 x 500 = 50th.    so his hash gain is only 7th,

 but his power cost is 52 x 600 = 31,200 watts

vs 100 x 400 = 40,000 watts

so he jumped 7th day and lost 8800 watts  a day


 cost was 17253 for the new s-5's  and maybe he cleared 10,000 for the sale of the s-3's .

now if you analyze my example.  he spends 7 k out of pocket and frankly that is not good.

So he needs more then 100 on each s-3 he needs 125 and he needs to sell 114 of them.

if he clears 125 x 114 = 14250  and the new gear is 17253   he is out of pocket 3k hash

 hash rate stays the same. and he saves 8.8kwatts   guess what that is 6300 kwatts a month x 6 cents = about 380 a month in power cost.

So back to my original point a guy with a 1000 s-3  farm with 6 cent power 8 cent total costs is in a very hard spot to be.

these 250-275 a coin prices are very hard on farmers in the 500th to 1000th range

[notlist3d]

@ davejh

Need to study the math you used, but if correct margin is very tight for a big miner.

A small guy may say fuck it I will list my 10 s-3's on ebay cheap get 1000 usd back and buy a pair of sp20's.

I agree electricity price is one of the biggest factors on many thins including upgrades.  With my around 9 cent I can't bring myself to sell my S3's yet.  I keep miners longer then a lot probley do.  I just finally sold my dragon.  And the person who bought it got a good machine that just needed cheaper electric costs.

I really don't want to change out gear to much during winter.  Once summer comes and i need to do more cooling is when I personally will have decisions on what I want to do.