Interesting time in mining. It looks like we lose around the difficulty we gained on Mar 8th.
I just hope BTC goes back to 300's in a reasonable timeframe.
I still think the big guys are holding back from dropping 3 or 4 million on a new chip super farm.
Basically Bitfury made a lot of money and then shut down gear.
While they can make a .25 watt /gh machine
I think they are afraid to commit the 3-6 million need to make a 20-40ph farm at the current btc price level.
This is a good thing. I am hoping for 11-18 months between gear.
the s-1 was nov-dec 2013----------------------------- 2 watt gear
the s-3 was june- july 2014--------------------------- 0.8 watt gear
the s-5 was nov-dec 2014--------------------------- 0.5 watt gear
the s-6 or s-7 has been mentioned for later then june 2015 I read this here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=902305.msg10826237#msg10826237So say the s-6 comes out in July and is 0.38 or 0.4 watt gear
Then in sept the s-7 comes out at .3 watts
We are seeing a mature asic industry unfold.
This reminds me of the intel cpu's once sandy bridge arrived pc's are so good the next two gen's pushed us into little mini pc's
Anyone with an i7 2600 cpu in a desktop has no need for an i7 4790 desktop.(90% true not 100%)
So to drive sales the pc industry is pushing tablets and mobile gear over desktops.
So if you have a .4 watt asic replace a .5 watt asic what is your gain?
I do wonder how this plays out.
I would not mind rocket to the moon on btc to 2000usd. It would wake everyone up.
I think we wander around in the 200-300 price slot and in the 44-49 diff range for months to come. I can live with that.
I agree, and in fact difficulty began to plateau even before the dramatic price drops in October and January. It really started in July, when double-digit increases stopped being the norm. There were exceptions when SP, Bitmain, or AM made some big deliveries, but other than that we've been pretty much flat.
And I doubt that there's much in the pipeline right now. SP has hinted at a new gen of chips, but their mantra is to be patient. It looks like Bitmain won't release a new chip until 3Q at the earliest, and AM from what I can tell is done or close to it. Unless there's a dramatic price increase, the days of double-digit difficulty increases are pretty much over. It would take over 33 Ph/s to be added to the network during the next difficulty period for a 10% increase.
Moreover, and I've been saying this for a while now, there's a finite supply of "cheap" electricity. There's a reason electricity costs what it does in most populated places. There's demand for it. As big farms move to remote locations for cheap power, the demand and cost will eventually go up as well. That's how markets tend to work.
That said, it's a good time for smaller miners, especially if the price recovers near-term. If we move back up to $500 by the summer, difficulty will be slow to catch up. It takes time to manufacture, and right now I don't think there's all that much in the pipeline. So if the price increases, difficulty will lag by at least a month or two.
