The next difficulty level will make mining unprofitable.

[gentakin]

mining will ALWAYS be profitable, in the long term. once it becomes unprofitable, people will drop out, causing the difficultly to decrease, which will make it profitable again.

Not quite. Take me for example, I'm paying 0.21 EUR per kwh, and that's about $0.30. So it depends mainly on your energy costs (also: hardware) wheter or not it will always be profitable for you. The guys with bad hardware efficiency (think CPU miners) are going to drop out earlier, as as well I will because of the high eur/kwh costs.

If you have low costs and efficient hardware, your statement might be true. But certainly not for everyone (unless I'm moving to the US, but that's not gonna happen).

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[Clipse]

Assuming you pay for electricity/air conditioning and have a electricity rate of 5.5 cents per kilowatt hour, the next difficulty jump will make mining unprofitable!

when will it happen?

mining will ALWAYS be profitable, in the long term. once it becomes unprofitable, people will drop out, causing the difficultly to decrease, which will make it profitable again.

shhh, don't tell everyone !!  we want people to stop !!  LOL

I totally missed that point, uh yeh mining is done its time to trade or accept BTC at shops.

NO one can make profit anymore from mining, its a net loss, uh yes confirmed by governator.

[Clipse]

mining will ALWAYS be profitable, in the long term. once it becomes unprofitable, people will drop out, causing the difficultly to decrease, which will make it profitable again.

Not quite. Take me for example, I'm paying 0.21 EUR per kwh, and that's about $0.30. So it depends mainly on your energy costs (also: hardware) wheter or not it will always be profitable for you. The guys with bad hardware efficiency (think CPU miners) are going to drop out earlier, as as well I will because of the high eur/kwh costs.

If you have low costs and efficient hardware, your statement might be true. But certainly not for everyone (unless I'm moving to the US, but that's not gonna happen).

Wow, $0.30 per kwh , where do you guys get your power from? Collection of A-grade call girls generating electricity from washing lines?

[bernd]

Also Botnets and jscript Miners will always be profitable.

[acamus]

Assuming you pay for electricity/air conditioning and have a electricity rate of 5.5 cents per kilowatt hour, the next difficulty jump will make mining unprofitable!

when will it happen?

mining will ALWAYS be profitable, in the long term. once it becomes unprofitable, people will drop out, causing the difficultly to decrease, which will make it profitable again.

the mining market will reach an equilibrium being a nearly perfectly competitive market

[bulanula]

If this is true, then why would anyone drop out when it becomes unprofitable? And if nobody drops out when it becomes unprofitable, it won't become profitable again.

People will drop out because it takes more money to mine than to buy. Anyone who mines at a loss is insane.

My prediction is that buying and operating a dedicated Bitcoin mining rig  will tend toward slightly less than break-even in the long run because of competition against:

a) people who get electricity for free (college dorm dwellers, parents' basement dwellers)
b) people who have high-end graphics cards for their own video game amusement, who also use them on the side for mining. These people only care about post-hardware-purchase profits, not pre-purchase profits.

correct.

No these OCN kiddos are not insane. They will run at a loss because their mommy+daddy are paying for their gaming rigs and all that. Just see how many people give free cpu time to NSA botnets like F@H for FREE. If they get ANY btc they will mine just for ePeen and bragging rights.

Only fools believe that "once mining becomes unprofitable, people will drop out causing difficulty to fall and mining to be profitable again" !!!

Also only fools believe that "as difficulty rises the price rises" !!!

The cat is already long out of the bag and mining will NOT be profitable any time soon and the price will fall because it only has risen to 7.26 due to extreme speculation.

I expect it to level off near the price of making it ( electricity ) or about $0.25.

[Clipse]

What amazes me is how fast Greed came into play regarding bitcoins.

I still find it fascinating and amazing that BTC=$ and here are people complaining about profitability and market scamming and god knows what else.

No one asked you to bitcoin mine, no one asked you to be a part of this forum however everyone is welcome and shouldnt take anything for granted.

[w128]

No these OCN kiddos are not insane. They will run at a loss because their mommy+daddy are paying for their gaming rigs and all that. Just see how many people give free cpu time to NSA botnets like F@H for FREE. If they get ANY btc they will mine just for ePeen and bragging rights.

This is very true.

I've been amazed at the money and effort the folding guys put into the hobby for a long time. Putting up the biggest numbers on your team or being prominent in the community by way of production is a huge deal for them.

I once joined a folding team and ran a new cabinet full of top of the line blades for several days. It was enough to rank 2nd in daily output among a team of hundreds. I became a minor forum celebrity from it.

I didn't do anything smart, I wasn't nice or particularly friendly or charitable.

It's ridiculous.

[w128]

What amazes me is how fast Greed came into play regarding bitcoins.

I still find it fascinating and amazing that BTC=$ and here are people complaining about profitability and market scamming and god knows what else.

No one asked you to bitcoin mine, no one asked you to be a part of this forum however everyone is welcome and shouldnt take anything for granted.

I have no idea what point you're trying to make here.

[Clipse]

An obvious point, bitcoin isnt just about mining and people should start to consider that now even while mining is still profitable.

Its related to these posts where people feel they are entitled to $XYZ if they buy $123 of hardware for their bitcoin mining rigs.

[phants]

Next:
~26 May 22:00 UTC difficulty up to ~72%

[PcChip]

I thought difficulty was supposed to rise once every two weeks, or twice a month.

Didn't it just rise like 6 days ago ?

[Raulo]

I thought difficulty was supposed to rise once every two weeks, or twice a month.

Didn't it just rise like 6 days ago ?

It rises every 2016 blocks. If 2016 blocks come sooner than in 14 days, it will be sooner. Actually the difficulty increase=14/days_for_the_last_2106_block_since_retarget so for a 70% increase, the retarget will come in about 8 days since the last one.

[w128]

An obvious point, bitcoin isnt just about mining and people should start to consider that now even while mining is still profitable.

Its related to these posts where people feel they are entitled to $XYZ if they buy $123 of hardware for their bitcoin mining rigs.

Maybe I missed it but, I don't recall seeing anyone claim entitlement. They're expecting, possibly gambling on a particular return but that's it.

The "Bitcoin isn't just about mining!" mantra, while certainly correct in a sense, is just silly.  Mining is profitable, easy and the sense that it's creating "free money" is the captivating point that fuels continued growth.

Demanding that everyone take some altruistic or academic stance on the future or health of Bitcoin is a waste of breath and potentially quite hypocritical.

[sir murray]

I was thinking about getting 2 5830s to throw into a spare PC, and keep that running 24/7.


Worth it after this next difficulty increase?

My only cost would be the cards, ~200 usd.

[presha]

Just gonna put this out there...2x5870 + 1x5970 will get you more than 1390 mH/sec as well (and of course, as pointed out by another post, you're going to make way more than 0.28 per day @ 420k difficulty).

2x5870 = 420 + 420 (easily achievable, done so on 10 out of 10 5870s) = 840
1x5970 = 330 + 330 (easily achievable) = 660
840 + 660 = 1500 mH/sec.

1500 mH/sec @ 420k difficulty = 3.29 BTC/day x $7 = $23.03/day.

yeah and two weeks later $14/day
month later  $9/day
and so on

if the network keeps growing with this speed we'll need a quantum pc in a year or so

[miner249er]

If we continue to see 50% or greater increases - it won't even pay back your electricity rates (even if you own your hardware outright) in about 60-90 days. If we continue to see the 70%+ difficulties that time frame goes down to 30-60 days.

At this point - the only support bitcoin will have for processing will be transaction fees and kids running from free electricity with their gaming rigs in their dorms/parents basement.

Anyone with a hint of clue that's trying to support/expand an operation from mining revenue will simply leave the game. Some of those will be temporary waiting for the difficulty to drop in hopes that all is not lost. Others for good.

It will be interesting to see what happens to both the network hash rate and bitcoin exchange values then!

(I should note this assume a BTC/USD exchange rate of $7USD per BTC and .09 KWh)

[Clipse]

An obvious point, bitcoin isnt just about mining and people should start to consider that now even while mining is still profitable.

Its related to these posts where people feel they are entitled to $XYZ if they buy $123 of hardware for their bitcoin mining rigs.

Maybe I missed it but, I don't recall seeing anyone claim entitlement. They're expecting, possibly gambling on a particular return but that's it.

The "Bitcoin isn't just about mining!" mantra, while certainly correct in a sense, is just silly.  Mining is profitable, easy and the sense that it's creating "free money" is the captivating point that fuels continued growth.

Demanding that everyone take some altruistic or academic stance on the future or health of Bitcoin is a waste of breath and potentially quite hypocritical.

I dont come here complaining about how "Its to difficult" to mine expecting something to change so I can have an better chance of mining.

The concept of difficulty increasing and mining getting more complicated and less profitable is what I want OP's like that of this thread to understand. I wont disagree with the point that bitcoinmining is profitable and holds alot of value(right now) but it helps nothing for continued growth of the bitcoin currency if majority of people strongly believe the concept ends once bitcoing mining stops being profitable.

Slowly but surely reading some of the new threads popping up I can gauge that is exactly what new "growthees" expect and those of us who know better should educate them on the other long term values of the bitcoin currency.

If we continue to see 50% or greater increases - it won't even pay back your electricity rates (even if you own your hardware outright) in about 60-90 days. If we continue to see the 70%+ difficulties that time frame goes down to 30-60 days.

At this point - the only support bitcoin will have for processing will be transaction fees and kids running from free electricity with their gaming rigs in their dorms/parents basement.

Anyone with a hint of clue that's trying to support/expand an operation from mining revenue will simply leave the game. Some of those will be temporary waiting for the difficulty to drop in hopes that all is not lost. Others for good.

It will be interesting to see what happens to both the network hash rate and bitcoin exchange values then!

The above plays well into my original explaination, if we dont get new users who joined the party late interested in alternative methods to use bitcoins and still see it for having value then we might see a huge downswing of activity as soon as difficulty spike above a certain threshold which is fast approaching.

I am not against the difficulty increase as it acts like an digital accounting of some sort balancing the books of the ecurrency company but it would become a miserable time to mine if the mining community end up being the only people interested in buying/selling coins for whatever reason without any participation of all the just-laid-off bitcoin miners.

[MoonShadow]

It will be interesting to see what happens to both the network hash rate and bitcoin exchange values then!

Not really, this is a known-known.  The difficulty follows the price; when the price rallies, miners join the fray; and when the price falls, borderline miners drop out first.  It's a self-balancing system.  Feel free to stand around and not participate, however.  That's what I did, and I'm not bitter about missing the rally from 1.4 cents to 6.5 cents before I bought in!

[MoonShadow]

Slowly but surely reading some of the new threads popping up I can gauge that is exactly what new "growthees" expect and those of us who know better should educate them on the other long term values of the bitcoin currency.

Why is it our responsibility?  They should know how to research and read, or at least know how to ask a civilized question before chiming in about they alone can see the great Bitcoin flaw (tm).  If Bitcoin requires that everyone understand how it works in order to be adopted, it's already a failure.  But the facts are that the vast majority of people don't know or care how fiat currencies work, either.  When Bitcoin hits the mainstream, most people won't really care how Bitcoin works.  They will simply trust their geeky friend that it does work, and start using it little by little.