One Bitcoin miner is buying 20,000 16nm wafers from TSMC per month

Re:One Bitcoin miner is buying 20,000 16nm wafers from TSMC ... by MatekCopatek on Monday January 22, 2018 @04:51PM (#16208264)

See, I had a different thought here. If anything, mining new bitcoins reduces the value of current ones. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what's keeping the bubble from bursting is more dollars coming in - big miners aren't doing that, they don't buy their BTC.

Unlike a clueless average Joe at home, they're running huge businesses, as this article suggests, so they're probably smarter. Does anyone know what the math here is? I'm assuming a) they aren't cashing out too much/too regularly because they're huge and this would drop the price too much and b) they aren't stupid to make huge investments like this, just hoping all would be well.

Where am I wrong? Is the number of fresh "investors" still big enough for all of them to have a steady cashflow? Do they believe they can get out before everyone else? Are they just like all other believers, but with deeper pockets?

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Re:One Bitcoin miner is buying 20,000 16nm wafers from TSMC ... by CydeWeys on Monday January 22, 2018 @04:57PM (#16208329)

The thing that you're missing is that Bitcoin mining has a fixed reward schedule that is independent from the number of miners. If you have more miners, that just means that each miner is yielding less Bitcoin (this is accomplished by scaling the difficulty level, which is currently 1,590,896,927,258X what it was when Bitcoin was released in 2009).

The result is that the only factor that affects whether someone chooses to engage is mining is if it is profitable.

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Re:One Bitcoin miner is buying 20,000 16nm wafers from TSMC ... by legulere on Monday January 22, 2018 @04:56PM (#16208323)

Big buyers/sellers can influence the price and the price irrationally influences buyers.

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Re:One Bitcoin miner is buying 20,000 16nm wafers from TSMC ... by totalZero on Monday January 22, 2018 @04:57PM (#16208338)

Mining new bitcoins makes transaction easier, which improves liquidity of current bitcoins. That certainly should have a positive effect on the theoretical value of a bitcoin.

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Re:One Bitcoin miner is buying 20,000 16nm wafers from TSMC ... by contrarian_ on Monday January 22, 2018 @05:35PM (#16208685)

> Mining new bitcoins makes transaction easier

No. As long as at least one person is brute forcing hashes, transactions will be processed at the same rate of about 10 tx/s.

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Re:One Bitcoin miner is buying 20,000 16nm wafers from TSMC ... by elorant on Monday January 22, 2018 @05:00PM (#16208361)

They probably think Bitcoin has a long way to go. I've talked to people who think it could reach 100k one day.

I hope this whole shenanigan ends sooner than later because now not only we have to pay higher prices for RAM due to smartphones but we also can't find a decent video card below $200. Fuck that shit.

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