11 ms·
BTC Hashrate dropped another 27% down ~62% form peak now at 2019 levels
- orf 5y agoWhat’s happening?
- lmilcin 5y agoGovernments finally decided to crack down on Bitcoin. Governments are slow so people had time to get super happy initially and now are waking up to reality.
- varispeed 5y agoOr that governments just don't want you to use your computer to solve certain equations. Either way it is good for BTC as China will no longer be able to pull 51% attack.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> China will no longer be able to pull 51% attack Any major government, the PRC included, has it well within its power to repurpose existing computing hardware to launch a 51% attack on Bitcoin. They don’t, because why would they. What has changed is a small group of private individuals in China can no longer coördinate such an attack.
- lifty 5y agoGovernments would have to source the specialised chips used to solve the Bitcoin hash function. While that's possible, it's not as easy as repurposing existing computing hardware.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> would have to source the specialised chips used to solve the Bitcoin hash function Specialised hardware is more efficient. It is not necessary. A combination of owned computing and purchased general-purpose cloud resources would do the trick, albeit sloppily and a bit more expensively than it would have been with specialist hardware.
- celticninja 5y agoOne ASIC is the equivalent of 1000 GPUs, and 1 GPU is equivalent to 1000 CPUs. So whilst what you say is possible, it is not likely. Even if the CCCP required every CPU in China to mine bitcoin it would not come close to the required 51%. Even if we factored in half the country having a GPU to add to the effort it would not be enough. If they wanted to do it they would have confiscated the mining equipment rather than have people send it abroad. Even manufacturing enough ASICs to mount a 51% attack would be difficult for a nation state to achieve. China's best bet was confiscating existing equipment and they pretty much prevented that by forcing it out of their country.
- JumpCrisscross 5y agoYou’re thinking at the scale of individuals, not nation states. Tens of billions of dollars will buy the necessary computing.
- celticninja 5y agoThere is a huge chip shortage right now so yes it could be bought but it would be inefficient and take a long time. Seizing the existing miners in China would be a simple task for the authorities there but they didn't do it. They are not going to spend tems of billions to attack bitcoin when they could have done it for the cost of the power alone.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> They are not going to spend tems of billions to attack bitcoin when they could have done it for the cost of the power alone Because they don't want to. Because it's in nobody's interest to blow up Bitcoin. It's a money maker, a tax maker, and nobody has gotten too badly hurt yet. I was responding to the assertion that China now can't disable Bitcoin. That's not true.
- foepys 5y agoThose ASICs don't evaporate when shut down. China could now seize them and actually pull off a 51% attack.
- celticninja 5y agoThey are not seizing them, they are being shipped abroad to nations where they can be used to mine bitcoin.
- lovemenot 5y agoAny idea which countries they will be going to? It would be great if for example Iceland which can produce surplus base-load renewable power without significant impact to its population.
- celticninja 5y agoKazakhstan has been mentioned due to proximity I believe and also Texas, there has been a lot of interest in using the natural gas flares from oil wells to run them as this is currently a waste product.
- baybal2 5y agoKazakhstan has 1% tax rate for "datacentre services" and extremely subsidised electricity on top of 90% of it coming from co-generation plants. Not for long https://kursiv.kz/en/news/rynki/2021-05/kazakhstan-plans-cancel-tax-free-regime-miners-and-data-centers https://kursiv.kz/en/news/rynki/2021-05/kazakhstan-plans-can...
- lovemenot 5y agoIn my limited understanding those flares are necessary to preserve the safety of workers and equipment on site. If they were able to provide useful power, they would already be doing so.
- 5y ago
- noxer 5y agoFunny how the BTC maxis suddenly accept the fact that China could do an 51% attack, now that this is about to change. But in the years and years since China hosted over 50% it was always denied by the same people who know point out why this is good. You know whats even better. FBA (Federated Byzantine Agreement) instead of PoW/PoS. And nodes all over the globe not just where electricity is cheap.
- throwaway4good 5y agoPricier energy?
- fabianfabian 5y agoThe protocol is configured to aim for 10 minute block intervals. If in a 2 week period there too many or too little blocks the difficulty to find a new block is adjusted for the next 2 weeks. This drop is caused by miners moving from China to other countries.
- iamben 5y agoI assume this is to do with the Chinese crackdown on Bitcoin miners? Could someone with a better knowledge of cryptocurrency than me explain what a substantial drop in hashrate means or could mean? Thanks!
- alexgmcm 5y agoUK just banned Binance too.
- Semaphor 5y agoNot Binance the exchange, but the sub-company that offers advanced financial instruments.
- social_quotient 5y agoThe Chinese based miners are offline and moving to other more favorable countries. A good perspective video from CTO Larsson https://youtu.be/88V4JZr_x64 https://youtu.be/88V4JZr_x64
- cloudhead 5y agoAt these levels, not much. Bitcoin’s security is still rock solid and pulling off an attack is still incredibly expensive. For those who are still mining, ie. the rest of the world, mining will be more profitable until the Chinese hashing power migrates to a different country.
- yawaworht1978 5y agoYes still seems very solid. The was one guy in the early 2010 days on Bitcoin talk using 1000 instances(pc back then), or claiming to do so,and did not succeed. The difficulty is now still many millions times more than it was back then.
- personlurking 5y agoHere's a Twitter thread from a few days ago: https://twitter.com/saifedean/status/1408346196490473476 https://twitter.com/saifedean/status/1408346196490473476 And one from yesterday: https://twitter.com/SinoCrypto/status/1409227438262046723 https://twitter.com/SinoCrypto/status/1409227438262046723
- hgo 5y agoDoes this mean that profitability of mining will go up? I found a calculator, but don't understand it well enough. Did find a "Bitcoin Mining Difficulty" which I assume will change? Value now is: "19,932,791,027,263.00" https://www.coinwarz.com/mining/bitcoin/calculator https://www.coinwarz.com/mining/bitcoin/calculator
- cloudhead 5y agoYes, for those still mining, this is great!
- whoisjohnkid 5y agoYes. In 4 days the difficulty will adjust and it will be 20+% easier to mine a coin. As more people start back mining difficulty will adjust again
- Taek 5y agoPeople aren't stopping their mining because the price fell, they are stopping their mining because of regulatory pressure from China. Miners that are still running today just get to rake in the benefits of China pulling out of the game. The profits will last until new datacenters are set up outside of China. It's a slow process to do that, hashrate might not return to its peak value for 6+ months.
- whoisjohnkid 5y agocorrect. When I mentioned more folks mining again I meant more folks mining because it’s easier and of course whenever the dislocated Chinese miners get their operations back up again in another location.
- mustyoshi 5y agoSort of. All things being equal, lower difficulty means more profitable. But the difficulty is updated every 2 weeks (1440 blocks) to try and stay at 10 mins between blocks, so any profitability bump will only last for up to 4 weeks (the first retarget may not be fully enough if the hashrate drop occurs in the middle)
- jakupovic 5y agoThis means BTC is useless and now really has no use. Must sell all your holdings and forget about crypto :(
- zeepzeep 5y agoYes please do, brings the price down for us others :)
- jakupovic 5y agoThat's what I was hoping for ...
- tut-urut-utut 5y agoWas BTC ever actually useful? The closest to usefulness it ever came was in the beginning as a playground for early crypto enthusiasts. Afterwards, it was just a hype and speculation object. It was never suitable for transaction processing or value storage.
- stefanve 5y agoTo me it was/is an interesting experiment but one of the key components of bitcoin the finite resources is also its mayor point of failure (to gain acceptance). The nice thing of money in its current form is its relative stability. I can go out and buy or sell something without having to think about the value of the currency. This is not possible with bitcoin because the more it will be used its value will get higher due to the fact there are only so much bitcoins. So if it represents more value the value of the coin must go up To make it usable for trading (shopping or otherwise) it must hold a relative stable value. But if it is stable it is no longer of interest for speculation. This will mean that speculators will move their money out of bitcoin and thus it will reduce value. rinse and repeat. Bitcoin it self doesn't give interest or pays a diffident so the only way of making money is to ensure someone wan't to pay more for it than you did. It doesn't have any practical usability. You can't make a neckless from it, you can't use it in electronics. of course no currency gives you interest of diffident but due do the fact that that in a stable country the currency is stable it is an attractive intermediate. of course people make money with trading currency but that is done based on global economics and the state of the region or country that is responsible for the currency. The reason why it is good to be able to print money is that if output rises and thus more value is created you can keep the value of the currency more or less the same. The idea of having a none government run currency to make sure it is not manipulated is focusing on the symptoms and not focusing on the issue. the symptom is misuse of power the issue is not enough accountability of government (and thus banks etc).
- lmilcin 5y agoYou know what that means? Somebody is going to get 50% of total hash rate and cause untold mayhem and catastrophic loss of trust in Bitcoin.
- onion2k 5y agoTo do that you'd need to spend a significant amount of money on mining hardware, and then use it to make your investment lose its value. That would be a very odd strategy. What would the goal be?
- taylorfinley 5y agoDiscover breakthrough in ASIC design strategy. Produce enough mining rigs for the attack but don't bring them online. Buy massive shorts on bitcoin futures. Bring all your rigs online at once, 51% attack, confidence and price plummet, make huge profit on the shorts, use profit to buy highly discounted bitcoins, things settle down, market recovers, sell your next-gen mining rigs to all the other miners, use your huge profits to fund R&D into the next breakthrough, wash, rinse, repeat.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- noxer 5y agoSuch a large attack would likely be the end of BTC so the strategy better would bet on it not coming back a better stagey would be to sell the hardware but make sure most of the units sold operate in a pool you control you can have multiple pools to make it not obvious. then attack with the pools so the lose in hardware value is not yours.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- betterunix2 5y ago...maybe you have a large short position in Bitcoin futures...
- henearkr 5y agoExcellent. I'm happy that this is happening. I hope this will continue steadily downwards. This is very good for the Earth.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y agoIt is clear you've been brainwashed into thinking that bitcoin is somehow 'bad' for earth. No, it is not. The car you drive is much worse.
- ai_ja_nai 5y agoand for AI industry as well, hoping the RTX cards will get affordable someday...
- G3rn0ti 5y agoBitcoin mining does not use graphics cards. Currently, they're too slow to make this process profitable. It's ASICs that do all the Bitcoin mining.
- richwater 5y agoThe price of other crypto is essentially pegged to the stability and value of Bitcoin either directly or indirectly.
- eunos 5y agoIsnt that majority of miners use custom made chip these days?
- flohofwoe 5y agoIf that were the case, prices of graphics cards wouldn't have dropped by half after the crackdown: https://www.pcgamer.com/chinese-market-gpu-prices-drop-amid-crypto-crackdown/ https://www.pcgamer.com/chinese-market-gpu-prices-drop-amid-...
- itstomkent 5y agoHey maybe I might be able to finally get a dang graphics card for my (formerly) new computer after failing to secure one for over 9 months now :-)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- krzyk 5y agoNot that coin :) (Etherum is on GPUs but bitcoin on ASICs mostly)
- cm2187 5y agoNot just graphic cards. I had to wait 3 month to source an AMD CPU. Aren’t they manufactured in the same fabs than GPUs? And still waiting for the ps5 to go back in stock!
- 5y ago
- cloudhead 5y agoThis is basically really good news for bitcoin, since China will no longer source the majority of hashing power. It’s an opportunity to further decentralize hashing power across the globe, and for the west to take a stronger foothold.
- geewee 5y agoIt seems like bitcoin enthuasiasts can always determine why something is good for bitcoin. If more people hash the system is more robust but if less people hash then it's.. uh.. also good?
- neals 5y agoIf you look at it... Bitcoiners enthusiasm is the only thing good for Bitcoin.
- lui8906 5y agoIt's a common joke ("this is good for bitcoin"). But in this case I would say it is actually good. I would correct your statement: 1. Greater hash power makes the system more secure from attack 2. A large amount of hash power geographically concentrated is a weak point 3. More geographically dispersed hash power is better. 4. Ideally a large amount of globally dispersed hashpower provides the best security. -- Disclosure: I do not currently own any BTC.
- gverrilla 5y ago> 1. Greater hash power makes the system more secure from attack Not necessarily. There's a lot of "latent" hashpower ready to join the fight if bitcoin gets under attack, including random people and orgs around the world and the current miners themselves aswell: a lot of them mine other cryptos aswell, and could diminish their mining intensity on them to devote hashpower to bitcoin wars or stop altogether.
- shoghicp 5y agoBitcoin mining at this time requires ASIC devices that cannot switch to other algorithms, other coins that use the same, sure, but not for example Ethereum.
- ahartmetz 5y agoSpelling, please! ...another 27%, down ~62% from peak, now...
- lordnacho 5y agoIf China really wanted to mess with bitcoin, they should not only ban mining but confiscate the hardware. Then everyone will be left speculating over whether the government is going to do an attack.
- sam345 5y agoThough I haven't seen any evidence, it wouldn't surprise me of Chinese government already directly owns or controls quite a bit of mining. Not a bad way to manipulate markets.
- keymone 5y agoBitcoin mining is a poisson process [1] so you have to look at significant moving averages to estimate rate changes. So far looks like hashrate went from ~140E to ~90E, a 35% drop from peak. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_point_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_point_process
- j7ake 5y agoYour link only describes what is a poisson point process, but nothing about why bitcoin mining can be modeled as such a process. Have people analyzed the bitcoin mining data and how they fluctuate compared to different random processes?
- keymone 5y agobitcoin mining is poisson process by definition: mining difficulty is automatically adjusted such that new blocks appear at regular intervals. do you have any specific objection as to why bitcoin shouldn't be modeled in this way?
- j7ake 5y agoThe original Satoshi paper uses the Poisson distribution as an approximation to model the bitcoin mining process. The more appropriate model might be negative binomial, because you want to know how many successes you get until a specified number of failures occur. I don't doubt the Poisson distribution would model the data fairly well, but it's really hard to say that a real process is Poisson distributed by definition.
- gregwebs 5y agoBTC proponents don't want to admit it, but performing a 51% attack has never been difficult: just form a large mining pool. The only issue is convincing all those miners to go against their economic interest. China could have relatively easily done that previously but now it will be more difficult for any one country to become that non-economic actor with both control over hash rate and the ability to coerce miners.
- deweller 5y ago...for some definitions of "difficult" and "large mining pool"
- G3rn0ti 5y ago> The only issue is convincing all those miners to go against their economic interest. Well, you gave the reason yourself why this is not that "easy" ... Interestingly, it's the same reason why large cartels of several companies, ultimately, are doomed to fail to control the price of their product: In a cartel each member is incentivized to undermine the cartel's price to gain a profit. So usually cartels are effective only for a short time (and, yes, even the oil "cartel").
- gccs 5y agoIts easy. Offer a 0% fee pool. They will all flock to it.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 5y agoUntil said Pool gets close to 51%. This has actually happened before many years ago. Look up the Ghash fiasco from 2014.
- gccs 5y agoOkay so run two 0% fee pools. Don't disclose the owner.
- deweller 5y agoThat is not how Bitcoin works. You would need over 51% of mining power to make this switch. What you are proposing is a zero-fee fork of Bitcoin.
- FuckOffPriest 5y agoITT nobodies thinking they know something about bitcoin...
- asenna 5y agoThere are visuals gone viral of some of the minings farms being shut down and packaged up for shipping: https://imgur.com/a/ditki4Z https://imgur.com/a/ditki4Z https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/1406266083632373763?s=20 https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/140626608363237376... The next Bitcoin difficulty adjustment will be happening soon and estimates indicate a change in 22-27% change. https://btc.com/stats/diff https://btc.com/stats/diff
- le-mark 5y agoThat first image is a strong incentive to not get involved in mining!
- lamontcg 5y agoI'm a big crypto hater, but honestly this seems like a nothingburger. Difficulty will go down, other mining pools will expand, some of these machines will get shipped to other nations. Unless they all literally got confiscated by the CCP and immediately set to work on a hostile attack on bitcoin this isn't going to lead to a 50% attack. After 6 months mining will probably be about back to where it was. The only way this would be really bad would be if it led to forced liquidation on the open market somehow. As long as China is happy if they move their machines and bitcoin and maybe their persons out of the country then I don't see how this changes much. Even if they start arresting people that doesn't directly lead to bitcoin being dumped. Now if the CCP confiscated many billions of $USD in bitcoin and then dumped them on the open market all at once just to nuke crypto because they were sick of it, that'd do it.
- brettermeier 5y agoSo nice, I hope it drops to 0.