4 ms·

This has been addressed in the article: > So, it appears bitcoin is now entering a death spiral: If the price continues to drop and the cost of mining does not

This has been addressed in the article: > So, it appears bitcoin is now entering a death spiral: If the price continues to drop and the cost of mining does not fall correspondingly (the cost of mining will algorithmically decrease, but not necessarily to same extent as the decline in prices), bitcoin will quickly go to zero.

ekianjo 8y ago
Why would the cost of mining not fall correspondingly? It will adjust until it becomes profitable again, nobody is going to run mining farms if they are clearly losing money every single day.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  The way the bitcoin protocol is designed, the mining difficulty and rewards only adjust after N blocks have been mined. It doesn't respond in real time to the hash rate on the network.
- Slartie 8y ago
  Because the adjustment window is not real-time-based, but block-based: every 2016 blocks, an adjustment is done - with the obvious caveat being that the duration it takes to mine 2016 blocks is based on the global hash rate. Also, the downward adjustment is limited to (IIRC) halving the difficulty at max. So, given the number of miners drops too far too fast, Bitcoin may end up in a situation in which the global mining power is too low to even reach the end of the adjustment window in a realistic timeframe, which in turn triggers even more miners to shut off their equipment and sell their coins, which lowers the price even more and lengthens the timeframe, which in turn...and so on. This situation is known in Bitcoin circles as the "chain death spiral", and it has been a purely theoretical thing - until now, at least.
  - uncletammy 8y ago
    > Because the adjustment window is not real-time-based, but block-based: every 2016 blocks, an adjustment is done ... This is definitely true. Luckily for miners there are two other blockchains their mining equipment can make use of which don't suffer from the slow difficulty adjustment. They are both version of Bitcoin Cash (BCH and BSV) and they both have 10-block adjustment periods. This makes them much more resilient to sustained periods of depreciation.
- simonh 8y ago
  You're implicitly assuming that bitcoin will retain value. If the value of bitcoin halves every 6 months and the cost of mining halves every 7 months, bitcoin will never* be worth mining again. * Of course it wouldn't be a smooth decline so there may be short periods where it occasionally becomes viable.
  - bitreality 8y ago
    Where is the author pulling their mining costs from? I'd love to see their source. Mining costs are mostly concentrated in purchasing the equipment and setting up a factory. Once that's done, your day to day expenses are electricity and labor. Many of the biggest Bitcoin mining operations are in places like China, near hydro-electric dams, where the electricity cost is extremely low. Labor is also cheap. Since they've already paid the setup costs, they are not going to be shutting down even at $1000 BTC. There have already been hash rate wars. BCH has tried sending BTC into a death spiral before, by luring over miners to their blockchain. It worked, for a bit. Eventually, transaction fees went up on BTC, and miners were incentivized to return to BTC. The average block time is 10 minutes for Bitcoin. Hash rate adjusts every 2016 blocks. That's 14 days on average. If the hash rate dropped 50%, it's 28 days.
- coderzach 8y ago
  Miners probably have a bit of a sunk cost fallacy, since there's a fixed cost associated with acquiring the hardware. Plus, if they're still bullish on bitcoin, the short term loss is probably worth it in their eyes.
  - paulgb 8y ago
    I think you nailed it, although I don't think miners even need to fall for a fallacy for your argument to work: some major miners have made big capital expenditures (efficient hardware, cooling, etc.) to keep variable costs low over the long term. Even if the price drop means they'll never mine themselves out of debt, it could still be the rational thing to do for them to keep the machines on, as long as their reduced variable cost is still below than the market price.
konschubert 8y ago
Aaah. So he's saying that the price might fall so quickly and the hash rate might drop so quickly that the difficulty cannot adjust because they blocks to adjust the difficulty won't get mined? (The difficulty gets adjusted only every 2013 blocks)
maps 8y ago
Which won't happen since the 'cost' of mining is electricity and hardware costs which for some miners is probably very close to zero. All this is going to do is shuffle out the miners who have no efficiency.
- Angostura 8y ago
  Sounds like an opportunity for someone to get control of more than 50% of mining capacity.
  - mannykannot 8y ago
    At which point, could you unilaterally hard-fork it, e.g. to fix this problem with the difficulty-adjusting rules? Though if that is an option, I would guess it would be more likely for a coalition of miners to choose to do so before any individual achieves 50%.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

ekianjo 8y ago

Why would the cost of mining not fall correspondingly? It will adjust until it becomes profitable again, nobody is going to run mining farms if they are clearly losing money every single day.

ForHackernews 8y ago
The way the bitcoin protocol is designed, the mining difficulty and rewards only adjust after N blocks have been mined. It doesn't respond in real time to the hash rate on the network.
Slartie 8y ago
Because the adjustment window is not real-time-based, but block-based: every 2016 blocks, an adjustment is done - with the obvious caveat being that the duration it takes to mine 2016 blocks is based on the global hash rate. Also, the downward adjustment is limited to (IIRC) halving the difficulty at max. So, given the number of miners drops too far too fast, Bitcoin may end up in a situation in which the global mining power is too low to even reach the end of the adjustment window in a realistic timeframe, which in turn triggers even more miners to shut off their equipment and sell their coins, which lowers the price even more and lengthens the timeframe, which in turn...and so on. This situation is known in Bitcoin circles as the "chain death spiral", and it has been a purely theoretical thing - until now, at least.
- uncletammy 8y ago
  > Because the adjustment window is not real-time-based, but block-based: every 2016 blocks, an adjustment is done ... This is definitely true. Luckily for miners there are two other blockchains their mining equipment can make use of which don't suffer from the slow difficulty adjustment. They are both version of Bitcoin Cash (BCH and BSV) and they both have 10-block adjustment periods. This makes them much more resilient to sustained periods of depreciation.
simonh 8y ago
You're implicitly assuming that bitcoin will retain value. If the value of bitcoin halves every 6 months and the cost of mining halves every 7 months, bitcoin will never* be worth mining again. * Of course it wouldn't be a smooth decline so there may be short periods where it occasionally becomes viable.
- bitreality 8y ago
  Where is the author pulling their mining costs from? I'd love to see their source. Mining costs are mostly concentrated in purchasing the equipment and setting up a factory. Once that's done, your day to day expenses are electricity and labor. Many of the biggest Bitcoin mining operations are in places like China, near hydro-electric dams, where the electricity cost is extremely low. Labor is also cheap. Since they've already paid the setup costs, they are not going to be shutting down even at $1000 BTC. There have already been hash rate wars. BCH has tried sending BTC into a death spiral before, by luring over miners to their blockchain. It worked, for a bit. Eventually, transaction fees went up on BTC, and miners were incentivized to return to BTC. The average block time is 10 minutes for Bitcoin. Hash rate adjusts every 2016 blocks. That's 14 days on average. If the hash rate dropped 50%, it's 28 days.
coderzach 8y ago
Miners probably have a bit of a sunk cost fallacy, since there's a fixed cost associated with acquiring the hardware. Plus, if they're still bullish on bitcoin, the short term loss is probably worth it in their eyes.
- paulgb 8y ago
  I think you nailed it, although I don't think miners even need to fall for a fallacy for your argument to work: some major miners have made big capital expenditures (efficient hardware, cooling, etc.) to keep variable costs low over the long term. Even if the price drop means they'll never mine themselves out of debt, it could still be the rational thing to do for them to keep the machines on, as long as their reduced variable cost is still below than the market price.

konschubert 8y ago

Aaah. So he's saying that the price might fall so quickly and the hash rate might drop so quickly that the difficulty cannot adjust because they blocks to adjust the difficulty won't get mined? (The difficulty gets adjusted only every 2013 blocks)

maps 8y ago

Which won't happen since the 'cost' of mining is electricity and hardware costs which for some miners is probably very close to zero. All this is going to do is shuffle out the miners who have no efficiency.

Angostura 8y ago
Sounds like an opportunity for someone to get control of more than 50% of mining capacity.
- mannykannot 8y ago
  At which point, could you unilaterally hard-fork it, e.g. to fix this problem with the difficulty-adjusting rules? Though if that is an option, I would guess it would be more likely for a coalition of miners to choose to do so before any individual achieves 50%.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]