Re:Bitcoin Hash Rate Rapidly Growing Despite Price
by rcxdude on Friday July 13, 2018 @01:22PM
(#17524862)
Generally yes. I would expect most bitcoin mining operations would continue for a while after they stopped making a return on investment, until they were no longer making a profit on the cost of electricity. However, electricity is a fairly large part of the cost of mining, and there is a treadmill on the hardware side as well as better ASICs are developed (the ASIC developers skim the cream of this as well, units sold to customers have likely already been used, sometimes heavily).
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Re:Bitcoin Hash Rate Rapidly Growing Despite Price
by JumpCrisscross on Friday July 13, 2018 @01:38PM
(#17524977)
> mining operations would continue for a while after they stopped making a return on investment
Marginal return. The ASICs could have been bought for $10 with the expectation of making $1 a year and paying out 50¢ for electricity (a 5% yield). Now it’s making 51¢ a year (a 0.1% yield). Not enough to make economic sense, but enough to keep running the rig; 0.1% is more than zero.
Broadly, I was pushing back against the author’s inchoate claim that “the continued growth in hash power demonstrates a strong, continued belief in Bitcoin by miners worldwide.”
Re:Bitcoin Hash Rate Rapidly Growing Despite Price
by oh_sigh on Friday July 13, 2018 @01:52PM
(#17525106)
Profits aren't even required if you're laundering money. You might pay a 30-50% fee for any laundering scheme, so if you can only lose 15% of your money by running in the red rigs you're still accomplishing your goals