Ethereum Price Plummets As Mining Difficulty Skyrockets

[Deleted member 93354]

Wishful thinking unfortunately.

Well there is where the small time miners hope to sell their cards before the market gets flooded, hoping to get a decent return on the card. But other miners are doing the same thing as they realize it's not longer profitable. These people paying $400 for a RX480/1060 are ...in for a shock.

 

[Archaea]

I hope the whole mining industry blows up.
GPU prices are ridiculous even if you can find one. Damn GPU scalpers are the worst.

I think he does.

anyone can create a crypto currency - what gives it value is the confidence people have in it --- in the ability to trade it for things.

if the GPU designers created a crypto currency and then allowed you to redeem coins for further GPU hardware - they'd have the beginning of a market right there --- a market that self feeds. It'd generate buzz, marketing, money, revenue, and ramp up production....

 

[sleepeeg3]

I don't understand why difficulty to mine going up makes the price cheaper instead of more expensive. You'll have less dilution going forwards.

History repeats itself. I was mining Bitcoin just before GPU mining stopped becoming profitable. Short summary of what happened, plus my predictions for the future:

6/11 - Mt. Gox got hacked, many miners lose faith, sell all their cards AND HOLDINGS and start crashing price. Difficulty begins to fall.
11/11 - GPU mining nearly unprofitable. Remaining GPU miners sell cards/holdings.
12/11 - Prices climb as FPGA miners take over and difficulty levels skyrocket. ASIC miners later takeover and drive up difficulty/prices.
3/17 - Bitcoin price rapidly increases as talks of a blockchain fix (SegWit) bleed over into the mainstream. Mineable Ethereum follows Bitcoin's rise.
6/17 - Bitcoin bubble pops as hype fades. Ethereum prices follow.
8/17 - SegWit implemented in softfork. Bitcoin price jumps. Ethereum prices jump.
11/17 - Bitcoin hard forks, due to 2MB disagreement. Bubble pops. Bitcoin price crashes. Ethereum price crashes. BTC created.
2/18 - Bitcoin and Ethereum prices begin to rise again.
? - Ethereum implements PoS?

Based on that, I think Ethereum difficulty will start to fall, temporarily, as people sell off their cards. Those cards will get bought up by GPU mining farms that have lower energy costs. Meanwhile the price is going to fall as Bitcoin continues through its volatile transition period.

 

[buzzbomb]

I have a pretty big SAN (about 11TB) that I used to use for my VM lab that's doing pretty much nothing now. I wouldn't mind looking into this. Plus power usage wouldn't creep up as it's always on anyway. How much do you make on that? Is it worth it?

It all depends on how much space you offer to farm, how much gets used, how much gets transferred back off your space, and how available it all was over the month. It only pays out once a month right now but they are talking about doing microtransactions or more frequent payouts overall. It's not that it is or isn't "worth it", I just like the concept and I already have drive space with 24/7 availability so it doesn't really cost anything more to run this client. I say give it a shot.

 

[Khahhblaab]

History repeats itself. I was mining Bitcoin just before GPU mining stopped becoming profitable. Short summary of what happened, plus my predictions for the future:

6/11 - Mt. Gox got hacked, many miners lose faith, sell all their cards AND HOLDINGS and start crashing price. Difficulty begins to fall.
11/11 - GPU mining nearly unprofitable. Remaining GPU miners sell cards/holdings.
12/11 - Prices climb as FPGA miners take over and difficulty levels skyrocket. ASIC miners later takeover and drive up difficulty/prices.
3/17 - Bitcoin price rapidly increases as talks of a blockchain fix (SegWit) bleed over into the mainstream. Mineable Ethereum follows Bitcoin's rise.
6/17 - Bitcoin bubble pops as hype fades. Ethereum prices follow.
8/17 - SegWit implemented in softfork. Bitcoin price jumps. Ethereum prices jump.
11/17 - Bitcoin hard forks, due to 2MB disagreement. Bubble pops. Bitcoin price crashes. Ethereum price crashes. BTC created.
2/18 - Bitcoin and Ethereum prices begin to rise again.
? - Ethereum implements PoS?

Based on that, I think Ethereum difficulty will start to fall, temporarily, as people sell off their cards. Those cards will get bought up by GPU mining farms that have lower energy costs. Meanwhile the price is going to fall as Bitcoin continues through its volatile transition period.

Wow. So these are folks that are willing to get in and out on the slightest wisp of gossip. I am not suprised that is as volatile as it seems to be.

I am also wondering - it is counter intutive - as to when difficulty goes up price goes down. Most items gain value the harder they are to get. Not cryotocurrency. This suggests that there is something different going on. Gotta be hard to explain because it goes against expectations.

12/11 - fpga miners took over. (btw 12/11(month day?)). Where is bitcoin vs fpga's today?

Good info.

 

[workshop35]

Wow. So these are folks that are willing to get in and out on the slightest wisp of gossip. I am not suprised that is as volatile as it seems to be.

I am also wondering - it is counter intutive - as to when difficulty goes up price goes down. Most items gain value the harder they are to get. Not cryotocurrency. This suggests that there is something different going on. Gotta be hard to explain because it goes against expectations.

12/11 - fpga miners took over. (btw 12/11(month day?)). Where is bitcoin vs fpga's today?

Good info.

Difficulty isnt what you think it is. For example, bitcoin has blocks created every 10 minutes. Difficulty is used to make sure the blocks arent created every 7 minutes or every 15 minutes. Its a way of adjusting the network according to how much hashing power is available so all the coins are minted at the rate they were intended. Too much hashing power, and the blocks are solved too quickly. Too little, and it takes too long. The same amount of coins are being made every block, it just takes more hashing power to make them. That doesnt make them any more valuable, just more "costly" to mine. If difficulty made less coins made per block then maybe it would affect price, but thats not the case.

 

[Deleted member 93354]

Wow. So these are folks that are willing to get in and out on the slightest wisp of gossip. I am not suprised that is as volatile as it seems to be.

I am also wondering - it is counter intutive - as to when difficulty goes up price goes down. Most items gain value the harder they are to get. Not cryotocurrency. This suggests that there is something different going on. Gotta be hard to explain because it goes against expectations.

12/11 - fpga miners took over. (btw 12/11(month day?)). Where is bitcoin vs fpga's today?

Good info.

Think of it like mining gold. At first you could just pan for it in rivers as it sat on the surface.

Now you have to do a heck of a lot of trip mining just to get a little.

Now you understand the problem when the difficulty goes up. It takes more work to get that little piece of gold. And that will cost you money and time.

And difficulty really doesn't drop with less miners because the way of how block chains work.

Any way fpga is dead for bitcoin. ASIC is questionably profitable on bitcoin, but doesn't work for Etherium.

 

[wizzi01]

Thank god. Maybe in a couple weeks I can finally order my 1050 ti.

Is there a reason you are waiting? 1050ti are still pretty affordable. It's not like a 1060 that newegg had a few weeks ago for $600. https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=1050ti

 

[BinarySynapse]

Think of it like mining gold. At first you could just pan for it in rivers as it sat on the surface.

Now you have to do a heck of a lot of trip mining just to get a little.

Now you understand the problem when the difficulty goes up. It takes more work to get that little piece of gold. And that will cost you money and time.

And difficulty really doesn't drop with less miners because the way of how block chains work.

Any way fpga is dead for bitcoin. ASIC is questionably profitable on bitcoin, but doesn't work for Etherium.

For most of the coins I've looked at, the only thing that determines how difficult a block is to mine is how long it took to mine the last x number of blocks. Less miners means fewer blocks per period of time, so the difficulty goes down to keep the block time down. Now, if everyone stops mining all at once, then yeah the difficulty won't go down because there's no one to make another x number of blocks to realign the difficulty. If 99% of the Bitcoin mining power packed it up and switched coins, it'll eventually drop to a point where CPU's can mine again.