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> The Bitcoin network hashrate has dropped by more than 38.8% from its peak on Wednesday, as many U.S.-based miners have been forced to switch down their facili

> The Bitcoin network hashrate has dropped by more than 38.8% from its peak on Wednesday, as many U.S.-based miners have been forced to switch down their facilities due to deadly blizzards Is there any kind of geographical map that shows in which states/cities these hashrates are? I guess there probably isn't good correlation between hashrate + external IP? I wonder how profitable mining Bitcoin is these days at any scale.

sgjohnson 4y ago
> I guess there probably isn't good correlation between hashrate + external IP? Probably not, since you don’t even need to be online at all to mine bitcoin.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  > I'm no expert, but mining is just your computer taking the last valid block and trying to make a new one based on it by guessing a solution over and over. > Every 10 minutes or so, some miner on the network guesses correctly, and their block becomes the new one that everyone uses for their guessing. > If your miner isn't on the network, it'll never be told that some other miner guessed correctly and that everyone else on the network is now working on a newer block. Your miner will keep on guessing, but if it does eventually guess correctly, it won't matter as the network has moved on. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/sjfds/why_am_i_able_to_mine_bitcoin_offline_this_seems/c4ei4ve/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/sjfds/why_am_i_abl... Seems kind of inefficient?
- hanklazard 4y ago
  What? A miner needs to be connected to the network to actively mine blocks.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  How do you get transactions if you are air gapped?
  - lucb1e 4y ago
    Or even if you don't care about recent transactions, at minimum you'll need to either own >50% of the hash rate and just make your own chain (good luck) or be online every couple minutes to find the longest chain's block hash value. You don't need fiber internet but just a DSL modem with most-of-the-time connectivity to do mining for contributing to the network's safety, but doing it offline altogether indeed does not really make sense. (If you're doing it for the moneys then you probably do want to get information early (stable, low latency internet) so that you don't waste hash cycles.)
  - tommek4077 4y ago
    The coin is transfered to your public key. This is saved in the public blockchain. Air gap means here, that you store your private keys on a device without internet.
    - lucb1e 4y ago
      That's one way of using the word air gap, but probably not what they meant.
htag 4y ago
> I wonder how profitable mining Bitcoin is these days at any scale. They have calculators for this [0]. The summary is that assuming mining difficulty, electricity rate, and bitcoin value hold constant it's a 10+ year return on the most energy efficient miners, so you're probably better off buying bonds. If you don't have access to very cheap electricity ($0.06/kwh or cheaper) and don't have an efficient way of handling waste heat then it's a non-starter. Even then the price of bitcoin and the mining difficulty are likely to move considerably in 10 years so it's a very risky business plan. [0] https://www.coinwarz.com/mining/bitcoin/calculator?hs=80 https://www.coinwarz.com/mining/bitcoin/calculator?hs=80
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  I was aware of the calculators but I was more interested for example like what does one large mining operation (one large enough that when it goes offline during a blizzard, it's a mention-worthy part of that 40% hash rate drop figure) look like in terms of the calculator variables? How many of what piece of equipment do they have, are they getting electricity for $0.06/kwh or less like you said, how are they handling the waste heat? I wasn't aware we had huge mining farms in America to be honest. I thought it was mainly other countries. I'm also not super knowledgeable/in the know about this kind of stuff so, might just be accidental ignorance on my part.
  - htag 4y ago
    1. USA has pretty cheap electricity globally. I'm not surprised to see lots of mining here. 2. The blizzard probably took multiple mining operations offline. Large parts of the US are experiencing very cold conditions. 3. Maybe Rockland, TX has the most PR about currently operating large miners in the US. I think they have a contract for ~$0.03/kwh and purchase hundreds of megawatts [0]. It's tens of thousands of miners. [0] https://www.wired.com/story/hard-luck-texas-town-bet-bitcoin-lost/ https://www.wired.com/story/hard-luck-texas-town-bet-bitcoin...
    - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
      How much money does one of these operations roughly make and what was the startup cost?
latchkey 4y ago
> I wonder how profitable mining Bitcoin is these days at any scale. It boils down to a function of Capex and Opex. Today though it is a bit more complicated. Given that the bitcoin price goes in cycles, it is less about the current profitability and more about the ability to weather bear cycles. Miners now will hold as much as possible and then take profits when the prices go up again. Sometimes, they borrow against their existing holdings to buy more hardware. During bear cycles it is far more risky to setup a new mining operation, especially when presented with the ability to just market buy BTC in large enough quantities to not affect price. To answer your question though, it makes almost no sense to start a mining operation these days. You're competing with much larger players who have much deeper pockets. If you're doing just a small operation, the difficulty adjustments will hurt you more than a larger player who's lighting up thousands of machines at a time.
- lottin 4y ago
  Imagine if copper miners held on to copper in the hope that it will go up in price. Taking a risk that is both unnecessary and unrelated to your business is stupid. That's the opposite of what a well-run business does.
  - britneybitch 4y ago
    That behavior is more common across industries than you might think. One example: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/natural-gas-europe-lng-ships-wait-offshore-maximize-price-rise-2022-11 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/natural...
  - latchkey 4y ago
    Copper miners control production output [0], which defines the price. Bitcoin miners don't directly control production. They'd need to fork and get 51%+ to follow that fork. [0] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4546309-ivanhoe-mines-upside-potential-awaits-copper-next-rally https://seekingalpha.com/article/4546309-ivanhoe-mines-upsid...
    - deleted 4y ago
lucb1e 4y ago
> Is there any kind of geographical map that shows in which states/cities these hashrates are? https://ccaf.io/cbeci/mining_map https://ccaf.io/cbeci/mining_map I didn't know this existed but randomly saw it in the website's menu while researching another comment. It even drills down to state level in the USA and province level in China if you click the button at the top of the map. Georgia is popular in the USA, anyone know why?

sgjohnson 4y ago

> I guess there probably isn't good correlation between hashrate + external IP? Probably not, since you don’t even need to be online at all to mine bitcoin.

MuffinFlavored 4y ago
> I'm no expert, but mining is just your computer taking the last valid block and trying to make a new one based on it by guessing a solution over and over. > Every 10 minutes or so, some miner on the network guesses correctly, and their block becomes the new one that everyone uses for their guessing. > If your miner isn't on the network, it'll never be told that some other miner guessed correctly and that everyone else on the network is now working on a newer block. Your miner will keep on guessing, but if it does eventually guess correctly, it won't matter as the network has moved on. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/sjfds/why_am_i_able_to_mine_bitcoin_offline_this_seems/c4ei4ve/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/sjfds/why_am_i_abl... Seems kind of inefficient?
hanklazard 4y ago
What? A miner needs to be connected to the network to actively mine blocks.
Ekaros 4y ago
How do you get transactions if you are air gapped?
- lucb1e 4y ago
  Or even if you don't care about recent transactions, at minimum you'll need to either own >50% of the hash rate and just make your own chain (good luck) or be online every couple minutes to find the longest chain's block hash value. You don't need fiber internet but just a DSL modem with most-of-the-time connectivity to do mining for contributing to the network's safety, but doing it offline altogether indeed does not really make sense. (If you're doing it for the moneys then you probably do want to get information early (stable, low latency internet) so that you don't waste hash cycles.)
- tommek4077 4y ago
  The coin is transfered to your public key. This is saved in the public blockchain. Air gap means here, that you store your private keys on a device without internet.
  - lucb1e 4y ago
    That's one way of using the word air gap, but probably not what they meant.

htag 4y ago

> I wonder how profitable mining Bitcoin is these days at any scale. They have calculators for this [0]. The summary is that assuming mining difficulty, electricity rate, and bitcoin value hold constant it's a 10+ year return on the most energy efficient miners, so you're probably better off buying bonds. If you don't have access to very cheap electricity ($0.06/kwh or cheaper) and don't have an efficient way of handling waste heat then it's a non-starter. Even then the price of bitcoin and the mining difficulty are likely to move considerably in 10 years so it's a very risky business plan. [0] https://www.coinwarz.com/mining/bitcoin/calculator?hs=80 https://www.coinwarz.com/mining/bitcoin/calculator?hs=80

MuffinFlavored 4y ago
I was aware of the calculators but I was more interested for example like what does one large mining operation (one large enough that when it goes offline during a blizzard, it's a mention-worthy part of that 40% hash rate drop figure) look like in terms of the calculator variables? How many of what piece of equipment do they have, are they getting electricity for $0.06/kwh or less like you said, how are they handling the waste heat? I wasn't aware we had huge mining farms in America to be honest. I thought it was mainly other countries. I'm also not super knowledgeable/in the know about this kind of stuff so, might just be accidental ignorance on my part.
- htag 4y ago
  1. USA has pretty cheap electricity globally. I'm not surprised to see lots of mining here. 2. The blizzard probably took multiple mining operations offline. Large parts of the US are experiencing very cold conditions. 3. Maybe Rockland, TX has the most PR about currently operating large miners in the US. I think they have a contract for ~$0.03/kwh and purchase hundreds of megawatts [0]. It's tens of thousands of miners. [0] https://www.wired.com/story/hard-luck-texas-town-bet-bitcoin-lost/ https://www.wired.com/story/hard-luck-texas-town-bet-bitcoin...
  - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
    How much money does one of these operations roughly make and what was the startup cost?

latchkey 4y ago

> I wonder how profitable mining Bitcoin is these days at any scale. It boils down to a function of Capex and Opex. Today though it is a bit more complicated. Given that the bitcoin price goes in cycles, it is less about the current profitability and more about the ability to weather bear cycles. Miners now will hold as much as possible and then take profits when the prices go up again. Sometimes, they borrow against their existing holdings to buy more hardware. During bear cycles it is far more risky to setup a new mining operation, especially when presented with the ability to just market buy BTC in large enough quantities to not affect price. To answer your question though, it makes almost no sense to start a mining operation these days. You're competing with much larger players who have much deeper pockets. If you're doing just a small operation, the difficulty adjustments will hurt you more than a larger player who's lighting up thousands of machines at a time.

lottin 4y ago
Imagine if copper miners held on to copper in the hope that it will go up in price. Taking a risk that is both unnecessary and unrelated to your business is stupid. That's the opposite of what a well-run business does.
- britneybitch 4y ago
  That behavior is more common across industries than you might think. One example: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/natural-gas-europe-lng-ships-wait-offshore-maximize-price-rise-2022-11 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/natural...
- latchkey 4y ago
  Copper miners control production output [0], which defines the price. Bitcoin miners don't directly control production. They'd need to fork and get 51%+ to follow that fork. [0] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4546309-ivanhoe-mines-upside-potential-awaits-copper-next-rally https://seekingalpha.com/article/4546309-ivanhoe-mines-upsid...
  - deleted 4y ago

lucb1e 4y ago

> Is there any kind of geographical map that shows in which states/cities these hashrates are? https://ccaf.io/cbeci/mining_map https://ccaf.io/cbeci/mining_map I didn't know this existed but randomly saw it in the website's menu while researching another comment. It even drills down to state level in the USA and province level in China if you click the button at the top of the map. Georgia is popular in the USA, anyone know why?