Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over the last 30 days

Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by feelix on Monday December 21, 2015 @09:51PM (#10775483)

Anywhere in the USA who has to pay USA power prices is going to be at a disadvantage by that alone then. It would seem that locating the hashing equipment to the place with the cheapest power possible would be a logical step when things start to get cut that fine. Unless that could be overcome with clever usage of naturally generated local power (such as solar power).

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by douche on Monday December 21, 2015 @10:09PM (#10775550)

You'd think Canada would have more major data centers. They've got a lot of extremely cheap hydro power. You could surely lay ultra-high-speed fiber along the same right-of-ways that the transmission lines use. Also, it's cold as hell more often than not, so cooling is less of an issue than putting them out in the desert somewhere.

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by rockyleal on Monday December 21, 2015 @10:40PM (#10775654)

Bitcoin miner's dilemma: Should I mine where it's hot for the free solar energy or should I mine where it's cold for the extra refrigeration?

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by karlkatzke on Monday December 21, 2015 @11:36PM (#10775854)

Photovoltaic power is actually less efficient where it's warmer. The ideal for photovoltaic generation is somewhere cold but sunny. And I'm not aware of too many solar thermal plants that are online and profitable versus other generating methods.

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by Jtsummers on Monday December 21, 2015 @10:43PM (#10775668)

Cold air but hot ground. Take advantage of geothermal and hydroelectric in the arctic and near-arctic regions.

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by geon on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @07:34AM (#10777342)

Iceland! Active volcano geothermal power and cold climate.

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by maaku on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @12:28AM (#10776016)

USA (Washington state) has the cheapest power in the world (at volume -- places like Iceland are cheaper/nearly free, but with too limited capacity for large scale mining).

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by lmm on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @06:27AM (#10777089)

Really limited capacity? They run aluminium smelters in Iceland, I can't imagine bitcoin mining requires more power than that.

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by maaku on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @07:02AM (#10777228)

At that price point, yes. Maybe the problem has been not enough power required... I don't know. I just know that most bitcoin companies in Iceland have moved or are moving to get cheaper power elsewhere.

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by Scoundreller on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @01:08AM (#10776139)

Therein lies the problem: New users pay the average price, but new capacity has to be built at the marginal cost.

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by Viper007Bond on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @05:28AM (#10776881)

Washington and Oregon sell a lot to the SW. Google just built a big data center here near a dam from a huge city for power reasons.

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by Jtsummers on Monday December 21, 2015 @10:37PM (#10775647)

There have already been articles about people doing that a couple years ago. I believe they were located in a cooler climate as well, made cooling the datacenter a bit cheaper so more power was going to computing than maintaining the computing equipment.

I'll look for that article now.

EDIT: Not the article I was looking for, but it covers it and was from 2013. This guy was using the cheap Icelandic power and the cold Icelandic air to his advantage.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/21/into-the-bitcoin-mine...

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