
The Bitcoin hash rate has increased by 28.2% over the last month - arnauddri
https://kaiko.com/statistics/hash-rate
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geertj
Doing some back of the envelope calculations..

Hash rate is about 1,200 PH now. The most efficient ASIC miner today is the
AntMiner S7 [1], which does 4.86 TH at 1.21 KW. This gives us a power
consumption of the entire Bitcoin network of at least 300 MW. Actual power
will easily be double that, given that not everybody is using the latest
miner. So let's say total power consumption is about 600 MW. This is the
output of a small power plant.

[1] [https://www.bitcoinmining.com/bitcoin-mining-
hardware/](https://www.bitcoinmining.com/bitcoin-mining-hardware/)

~~~
Synaesthesia
Every hour 25 bitcoins are mined, at a current value of $450, that's $11250.
So if the total power expenditure of bitcoin hashing is 600MW, it would have
to cost less than $11250/600 = $18.75/MWH for electricity to not mine at a
loss, which is insanely cheap.

Therefore the hashing chips must be considerably more efficient than the
latest commercially available products. I think the major players get hashing
chips manufactured at scale on smaller nodes for significant power savings.

~~~
cdumler
Actually, the present value is the consideration of the future value of the
return: PV = FV / (1+r)^n. Anyone who is bit mining now is willing to do it at
discount on the assumption the coins will have greater value in the future.
I'm not surprised at all that it's being mined below cost.

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ucha
What's newsworthy about this?

First of all, 28% could almost entirely be attributed to noise.

Second, the fastest hash rate increase recently observed occurred between Nov
2015 and Feb 2016, not during the last month.

~~~
arnauddri
Sure, but you cant deny the trend over the last month. This is a funny timing
to see the hash rate increase, i.e. more miner joining in, when the halving is
3 only months away

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CydeWeys
It's just the latest batch of mining hardware coming online (which is more
efficient per watt than the previous generation). Design and manufacturing is
highly bursty on Bitcoin difficulty increase time scales.

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riprowan
It would be interesting to know total sales of the leading mining hardware,
and who the customers were.

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Synaesthesia
Not really, going by the graph linked it increased from 1.2 to 1.3
Petahases/sec from a month ago to today, which is not 28.2%

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andreygrehov
Sorry for a silly question, but can someone explain for does it mean?

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schmichael
More electricity is being burned to do the same amount of work.

I know that sounds snarky, but it's how proof-of-work systems like bitcoin
work: "miners" all attempt to generate a specific hash which just means lots
and lots of computation. The number of transactions per second the bitcoin
protocol can handle is essentially capped and completely unrelated to hash
rate as the difficulty of producing a correct hash is adjusted based on the
hash rate.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And still no discussion on the value of pissing away our planets energy
reserves, just to create imaginary points in a paranoid game. In one view,
_all the electricity_ burned to make bitcoins is a crime against the planet.

~~~
ethanbond
I think it's a worse crime to say that because you have access to a stable,
relatively apolitical currency, that no one else needs one.

Bitcoin could be hugely beneficial for fledgling financial systems, and robust
financial systems can be hugely beneficial for billions of people.

Our energy crisis was not created by, and will not be solved by, Bitcoin.
Numerous monetary crises could be addressed in serious ways by it, though.

~~~
zamalek
> Numerous monetary crises could be addressed in serious ways by it, though.

That may be true, however, every time we've replaced one currency with another
there have been unforeseen consequences decades or centuries later.

One dead-simple example: A bitcoin can be divided down to 8 decimal places and
there is a limited supply. It is deflationary. No, that _isn 't_ a good thing
(ignoring short-term greed). What happens when we either mine all the
bitcoins, or mining more becomes computationally impossible? How do you run a
business when the minimum possible amount of currency increases by $1 every
day? You have a piece of bread worth $3, but the minimum amount someone can
give you is $5 (then $6, then $7). Suddenly this deflationary currency that
was supposed to fix everything has resulted in global _hyperinflation._

"So we'll just switch to a new system at that point." We can't get countries
to drive on the same side of the road, use the same measurement system or even
upgrade to IPv6. How on earth are you going to roll out a global currency
change overnight? Bitcoin stakeholders can't even agree on much smaller
changes at the moment.

Call it a commodity, sure. It is not a viable long-term _currency._

~~~
ikeboy
You can easily add more decimals with a soft fork, or with a sidechain.

~~~
zamalek
See: second-to-last paragraph.

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ikeboy
What change that's less significant than allowing individual satoshis to be
further divided has been refused as a soft fork? (Bigger blocks is far more
significant.)

You don't even need a fork, you can just use off chain middlemen that add
extra units, or if it's done as a sidechain then no agreement is needed and
it's all on chain.

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dharma1
[http://bitfury.com/products#16nm-asic](http://bitfury.com/products#16nm-asic)

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nikolay
Slow tech news day? I guess the craptocurrency speculators need periodically
"news" like this to dump their bitcoins and buy them cheaper next week.

