3 ms·

>power is the dominant cost. That's only true for GPU/PC based miners. 66GH/s @ 600Watts, Power is 1-2% of mining cost at current Difficulty / $Exchange / pow

>power is the dominant cost. That's only true for GPU/PC based miners. 66GH/s @ 600Watts, Power is 1-2% of mining cost at current Difficulty / $Exchange / power cost ($0.12). Here is a link to info about the "free nights" plan. https://www.txu.com/residential/promotions/mass/free-nights.aspx https://www.txu.com/residential/promotions/mass/free-nights.... The ASIC based system is much more power efficient than GPU/PC systems. It's even better than FPGA based systems which are (~10-20x) more power efficient than GPU/PC systems. If Bitcoin mining economics are able to sustain ASIC production, it will probably render FPGA based systems uneconomical. Even with just two viable ASIC production runs, I suspect that GPU/PC mining is dead.

DennisP 14y ago
Ok I doublechecked and you're right that hardware is the dominant cost with these ASICs. But power accounts for about a quarter of the cost at $0.12/kWh, according to this calculator: http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ Thanks for the link, that's pretty cool...wish my utility did that.
- fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
  I think you may not be reading it correctly. I get much better numbers even with more conservative parameters. I more than doubled difficulty, since this is definitely going to change soon due to the effect of the ASIC machines. I need to figure out how to figure out a real number for that. Parameters that I changed: Difficulty 6,968,775 (I don't really think it's likely to double) Hash Rate 50,000 (since 100% uptime is unicorns) Electricity rate (USD/kWh) 0.12 (my current rate) Power consumption (W) 600 Results: Coins per 24h at these conditions 3.6083 BTC (~3.6*20) Power cost per 24h 1.73 USD Revenue per day 71.70 USD (Gross) Revenue Less power costs 69.97 USD (net) It still looks very good to me, am I mistaken? PS, I wish I could take advantage of the free nights, unfortunately, I expect that if this night time load-shedding problem persists for any length of time (a few years), someone will step in and find a way to arb it out, and any big investment in doing that on my part may be lost.

DennisP 14y ago

Ok I doublechecked and you're right that hardware is the dominant cost with these ASICs. But power accounts for about a quarter of the cost at $0.12/kWh, according to this calculator: http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ Thanks for the link, that's pretty cool...wish my utility did that.

fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
I think you may not be reading it correctly. I get much better numbers even with more conservative parameters. I more than doubled difficulty, since this is definitely going to change soon due to the effect of the ASIC machines. I need to figure out how to figure out a real number for that. Parameters that I changed: Difficulty 6,968,775 (I don't really think it's likely to double) Hash Rate 50,000 (since 100% uptime is unicorns) Electricity rate (USD/kWh) 0.12 (my current rate) Power consumption (W) 600 Results: Coins per 24h at these conditions 3.6083 BTC (~3.6*20) Power cost per 24h 1.73 USD Revenue per day 71.70 USD (Gross) Revenue Less power costs 69.97 USD (net) It still looks very good to me, am I mistaken? PS, I wish I could take advantage of the free nights, unfortunately, I expect that if this night time load-shedding problem persists for any length of time (a few years), someone will step in and find a way to arb it out, and any big investment in doing that on my part may be lost.