What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Bitcoins - anyone else mining? (2 Viewers)

Any trolls want to make a bold 2014 prediction?

Here's mine, Wal-Mart announces plans to accept Bitcoin as payment.
There is bold and then there is foolish. America's largest retailer & their half trillion in annual business has no need to accept an unknown form of currency with extremely volatile swings in value.My not so bold prediction; Walmart never accepts Bitcoin
So your bold 2014 prediction is that my bold 2014 prediction won't come true. How bold of you.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Why don't you continue to make lame accusations about your local dry cleaners not having a website and actively accepting bitcoin without verifying. Small businesses use coinmap to advertise their business, you act like they are not allowed to use coinmap unless they actively promote it. :doh:

You haters are desperate to find anything wrong with bitcoin.
I did my research and NOBODY within 60 miles of my NW PA home takes bitcoin. I'll go further and state that if I asked 100 people what they are, I would be lucky if I got 1. The issue is that many of the businesses in my area are lucky to be in business, let alone have a website, further to even know of and accept what many would call "funny money". To project a bit, I would say a solid majority of small businesses in rural areas of this country don't need another hassle for something for which there is no knowledge, let alone interest.

But I'm a hater. :rolleyes:
60 miles? C'mon, at 75 mph, you can drive 300 miles. If you were a bitcoin enthusiast, you would drive 4 hours and spend $40 in fuel for the honor of paying 1 bitcoin for a sub at subway. Stop being lazy. I am starting to think that my stake in servocoin isn't going to be worth much.
:kicksrock:

 
Made some progress with the data visualization tonight.

The speculation index is through the roof: http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Bitcoin_Charts/SpeculationIndex?:embed=y&:display_count=no#2

Here's the original piece on this from late 2012 for easy reference: http://codinginmysleep.com/measuring-bitcoin-speculation/

Main chart - it's a bit of a rough draft still and needs some work, my colors aren't too great and it's still missing some stuff, but you can add multiple metrics to the graph and move the date range around to get a better look at a given period: http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Bitcoin_Charts/BitcoinCharts?:embed=y&:display_count=no#1

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I was looking at the history of the hashing power against this whole thing a little more after that last post as well, specifically the early days. Here's the CSV, numbers are in GH/s.

https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate?showDataPoints=false&timespan=all&show_header=true&daysAverageString=1&scale=0&format=csv&address=

Here's number of unique addresses as well, in CSV: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-unique-addresses?showDataPoints=false&timespan=all&show_header=true&daysAverageString=1&scale=0&format=csv&address=

Main reason I'm including that is I think it's interesting to see how the number of addresses climbs at various points as well. Now, this doesn't necessarily indicate that more actual people are coming online since a person can have as many addresses as they like. If the average miner starts using 2 or 3 computers instead of 1, that would also cause both the power and the number of addresses to climb. But I'd still like to see some correlation between power and addresses ideally.

When the thing first comes on, you're getting about .006 GH/s for a really long period of time, through about May of 2009. And right off the bat there's about 100ish addresses, it jumps up and down a little over this point while the power stays the same, but as a whole this seems like a pretty stable period all things considered. It was new, and being developed.

Around May of 2009 it actually drops off some, seems to hover around .003 to .004 for quite a while and the addresses drop to double digits. Would be nice to have an explanation on what happened here, but it isn't readily apparent on the surface. This stays pretty stable until about December of 2009.

In December of 2009, you start to see the power climb a decent bit. The power grows more quickly than the number of addresses, but they both grow. From December 1, 2009 through April 1, 2010 the power climbs from .003 GH/s to .057 GH/s. Number of addresses climbs from 66 to 195.

April 18th and 19th of 2010 the first really big event for addresses happens. For a couple day period you see the addresses jump to a couple of thousand, then drop right back again. Addresses goes 236, 1346, 2286, 234 in this 4 day period. I'm guessing there was a positive mention of this somewhere, but I can't find anything to back this up quite yet. And the spike in power is nowhere near the spike in addresses. That goes .085, .100, .084, .079. Based on the addresses before and after, it seems they didn't pick up any long term users off of this spike.

July of 2010 is where sparks really start to fly a little, and there's things in the history that explain them to some extent.

From bitcoin's history page:

July 11 Bitcoin v0.3 release mentioned on slashdot[5], bringing a large influx of new bitcoin users.

July 12 Beginning of a 10x increase in exchange value over a 5 day period, from about $0.008/BTC to $0.08/BTC

July 17 MtGox established

July 18 ArtForz generated his first block after establishing his personal OpenCL GPU hash farm
There's another flurry of addresses for 4 days, much like the April 18th and 19th, but most quickly drop off. It goes 240, 2822, 2122, 6109, 2015, 1683, 548, 549 and is a little unstable for a couple of weeks. By August we're back to a stable number in the 300's to 400's. The jump in power here is just insane though. This was somewhere between .15 and .20 GH/s heading into all of this. Overnight this jumps to 1.5 to 2.0 and just keeps climbing madly. There's actually a 5 GH/s day on 7/16/2010 as well, which is really strange. But whoever is doing that knocks it off quickly. It's hard to see this on the regular hashing graph because today's numbers make all previous numbers look like 0, but you can look at the hash power graph on a log scale, it jumps several orders of magnitude overnight: https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=1&address=

You can't really explain this jump being due to "new users" - in fact since the power jumped up overnight just as these people were coming on almost all drop back off by August it almost seems like this helped to drive most of them away. The GPU mining is the only thing that makes logical sense, which only a few users are actually capable of (many of them write bitcoin code).

The power slowly climbs and is up to about 10 GH/s by October 1st when public GPU mining is first released (again using bitcoin's own history page), about 50 times more power being thrown at it in the beginning of July. Coincidentally, the number of addresses is still about 300-400 almost until this September 20, 2010. Then it starts climbing some, and the arms race is born. Also coincidentally, bitcoin's history page also indicates that the price started climbing on October 7, 2010. After "several flat months".

October 01 First public OpenCL miner released

October 07 Exchange rate started climbing up from $0.06/BTC after several flat months.
Here's the bitcoin history page, where I pulled some of the "historic" dates from: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/History
Here's a graph that compares the hashing power to the number of addresses. This can be done with the main graph too, but I think it looks nicer here as I set this to scale the left and right axis which helps compare these two metrics together very well. It illustrates a lot of the above post rather well when you shrink the dates to look at the periods in question: http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Bitcoin_Charts/HashRatevsAddresses?:embed=y&:display_count=no#1

Lots of addresses to start the network in 2009, probably most of them are Satoshi/Hal. Looking at 2009 by itself and the hashing power vs number of addresses shows about 100% correlation - the lines literally stack on top of each other. So my idea from the above post that we should see some degree of correlation here was dead on and this appears to be an extremely good set of numbers to compare over time.

Move this out to June 1, 2010 and you'll see that beginning in 2010 the power starts climbing without a jump in addresses, I'm going to guess that multi threading came in around that time, I'll need to do some more research on that time period. Move it out to August 1st 2010 and you see the July craziness. The addresses all come on and most of them have dropped off by August here, but the power still stays an order of magnitude higher thanks to Mr Forz. And the strong correlation between addresses and power is destroyed. Expand this out until October 1,2010 just before public GPU mining started and you see the users in the know that were GPU mining before the public had a chance to ran the power up pretty nice before releasing this public. Once public GPU mining is released in October, the arms race goes into full effect. The July and on period makes everything before it quickly look like 0.

Once I get these graphs looking nicer I'll have some visual data to match what I've been describing and a nice starting point for the site launch. I definitely think these kick the ### of the stuff I've been finding elsewhere as is though. Now you can actually look at 2009, 2010, etc data without it all looking like 0. And compare metrics and stuff. :)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Also, in regards to that spike in number of addresses on April 19 2010, you also see another an anomaly in the transaction volume data on that exact date and about 1.6 million of these things moved. April 15, 2010 was one of the more pronounced early spikes in "bitcoin days destroyed". I haven't looked at the block chain around these dates at all, but it's almost certain if you do you're going to see a large account move a bunch of them right there and they bust them out into a bunch of smaller accounts. So it looks like that spike wasn't related to press or a bunch of new users coming on or anything like that.

This does bring some level of doubt to how many new users were actually part of the slashdot thing. There's a giant leap in addresses for a few days, but long term only a few of them actually stick around, either because it didn't impress them for whatever reason or because they couldn't really get much in terms of coins because of competition that included new GPU miner(s). There is a power spike here that correlates well to the number of users unlike during the April spike (though it lags behind a day or two for some strange reason). At the same time April's numbers seem to demonstrate that a single user was capable of (not all that hard) and willing to create thousands of addresses for some reason. And all of the power numbers do get out of whack right at this time basically. So it is somewhat possible that some of that address spike isn't entirely from new users.

To me the most likely explanation of what happened here is that a bunch of geeks see this on slashdot and think "kind of cool, let's give this a shot". Now there's only so many blocks to mine in a day, pooling isn't around yet so only a few of them actually get any coins at all. So most of them are like "this is dumb, my computer runs super hot to get basically nothing". But that spike then gives Forz strong motivation to kick up his GPU farm because it's the only way for one or a few users to grab a gigantic percentage of the coins like they're accustomed to. And then these users in the know kick off a little mini arms race to compete against Forz probably, which is where the "closed source" GPU mining run up happens.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Total Coins vs Difficulty is another nice comparison to look at. What the chart looks like now vs what it looked like 6 months ago is rather telling. And what it looked like 6 months before that, and 6 months before that... speaking of which, this would be an incredibly powerful visual if it was more of a time series rather than making people drag the slider. Probably true of a lot of these comparison type graphs. I wonder if I can do that with this stuff.

I'll probably make a tab for this as this does a great job of illustrating some of my earlier points. If anyone has any other good comparisons or find anything cool in this data that might deserve some better illustration let me know (or even numbers they'd like extracted and graphed from the block chain itself - that is doable). I'll be trying to make these as comprehensive as possible over time.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I like how in Dallas they have a car dealership that accepts bitcoins, except it's only for one car, a restored delorean which they want the price of 30,000 BTC to take it off their hands.

 
If I had 30,000 bitcoins, I'd be all over that. Just for the off chance that it contains a functional time machine.

 
Here's some dialogue from June of 2010 on the mailing list. Kind of funny, because this first guy is actually listed somewhere as being the first web page to accept them. But it's actually uncertain as to whether he got it working.

First Message, May 21st 2010

Hello there,I'm a new bitcoin user, and plan on accepting bitcoin currency for web-hosting that I run, because it sounds cool.The build requirements for the main bitcoin app look a little painful, tho. Is anyone working on CLI tools? At the base, it's just manipulating a database, and running a computational program, right -- I don't see the need for the list of dependencies ubuntu tried to install when I followed the build instructions.Also, having a native linux package would probably help a lot. Has anyone built such a package?-Dan-- --------Dan Mahoney--------Techie, Sysadmin, WebGeekGushi on efnet/undernet IRCICQ: 13735144 AIM: LarpGMSite: http://www.gushi.org---------------------------
This guy doesn't any response, so he follows up on June 28th 2010. James Donald responds on June 30 2010 with the current state of bitcoin, saying that essentially they didn't have many users (small number of users with millions of coins) and were uncertain how to get from where they currently were to there.

On 2010-06-28 4:57 PM, Dan Mahoney, System Admin wrote:> On Thu, 20 May 2010, Dan Mahoney, System Admin wrote:>>> Hello there,>>>> I'm a new bitcoin user, and plan on accepting bitcoin currency for>> web-hosting that I run, because it sounds cool.>>>> The build requirements for the main bitcoin app look a little painful,>> tho. Is anyone working on CLI tools? At the base, it's just manipulating>> a database, and running a computational program, right -- I don't see the>> need for the list of dependencies ubuntu tried to install when I followed>> the build instructions.>>>> Also, having a native linux package would probably help a lot. Has anyone>> built such a package?>> Wow, not one response in months. Amazing.Yes - bitcoin kind of went dead.The trouble is that bitcoin, to be useful, needs an ecology of users.Long ago, I had an argument with the guy who designed it about scaling. I heard no more of it - of course with no one using it, scaling is not a problem. I do not know if the software is in useable condition, or has been tested for scaleability.Bitcoin is a coordination mechanism between lots of people, and we do not have lots of people - I do not see how to get there from here, and am not altogether sure that the software as written will work if we do get there.In order to be useful, needs to be integrated with a messaging and billing system, so that you can send messages containing bills or money. I am pretty sure that no such system exists, and it is no small amount of work to create it.It is a neat idea, to solve a problem>> -Dan>>
This is about 2 weeks before the Slashdot mention, GPU mining, etc, etc.

There really isn't any doubt that we have just a few users amassed millions upon millions of these coins, and even went so far as to kick up GPU farms the second there was a spike in activity. The evidence is pretty clear.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
The people who bash BTC without reservation are every bit as foolish as those who are BTC cheerleaders that don't acknowledge possible downside.

As I've said above (under my Whitetail Hunter alias), I think there will be a crypto currency that eventually becomes mainstream. I don't know if it will be BTC but as of now, it's the most likely candidate.

I continue to work on arbing BTC between various exchanges and am keeping the profit in BTC. It's taken a long time to get things figured out and to receive requisite approvals but I am close to having a working model and I intend to increase USD in the system so that it will generate more "costless" BTC.

Of course, if the USD price of BTC crashes, then I should have taken profits in USD. However, I am happy to accumulate BTC for now.

 
The people who bash BTC without reservation are every bit as foolish as those who are BTC cheerleaders that don't acknowledge possible downside.

As I've said above (under my Whitetail Hunter alias), I think there will be a crypto currency that eventually becomes mainstream. I don't know if it will be BTC but as of now, it's the most likely candidate.

I continue to work on arbing BTC between various exchanges and am keeping the profit in BTC. It's taken a long time to get things figured out and to receive requisite approvals but I am close to having a working model and I intend to increase USD in the system so that it will generate more "costless" BTC.

Of course, if the USD price of BTC crashes, then I should have taken profits in USD. However, I am happy to accumulate BTC for now.
Keep that speculation index high, my friend.

 
The people who bash BTC without reservation are every bit as foolish as those who are BTC cheerleaders that don't acknowledge possible downside.

As I've said above (under my Whitetail Hunter alias), I think there will be a crypto currency that eventually becomes mainstream. I don't know if it will be BTC but as of now, it's the most likely candidate.

I continue to work on arbing BTC between various exchanges and am keeping the profit in BTC. It's taken a long time to get things figured out and to receive requisite approvals but I am close to having a working model and I intend to increase USD in the system so that it will generate more "costless" BTC.

Of course, if the USD price of BTC crashes, then I should have taken profits in USD. However, I am happy to accumulate BTC for now.
Keep that speculation index high, my friend.
Arbitrage <> speculation, friend.

And I put very little weight into a "speculation index" for a security that is in its infancy. I am not saying that BTC won't fail by any means but saying that it will fail because there are speculators is silly.

 
The people who bash BTC without reservation are every bit as foolish as those who are BTC cheerleaders that don't acknowledge possible downside.

As I've said above (under my Whitetail Hunter alias), I think there will be a crypto currency that eventually becomes mainstream. I don't know if it will be BTC but as of now, it's the most likely candidate.

I continue to work on arbing BTC between various exchanges and am keeping the profit in BTC. It's taken a long time to get things figured out and to receive requisite approvals but I am close to having a working model and I intend to increase USD in the system so that it will generate more "costless" BTC.

Of course, if the USD price of BTC crashes, then I should have taken profits in USD. However, I am happy to accumulate BTC for now.
Keep that speculation index high, my friend.
Arbitrage <> speculation, friend.

And I put very little weight into a "speculation index" for a security that is in its infancy. I am not saying that BTC won't fail by any means but saying that it will fail because there are speculators is silly.
The point is that you're trading and not using it as currency, thus helping to keep the transaction vs trade ratio low. We'll see what it ends up doing long term, but it's clear the current rise isn't because it has demonstrated wide stream utility as a currency and is mostly because of other factors that qualify almost entirely as speculation. That's the point behind the "speculation index".

 
As I've said above (under my Whitetail Hunter alias), I think there will be a crypto currency that eventually becomes mainstream. I don't know if it will be BTC but as of now, it's the most likely candidate.
I'm in the same boat and always have been. The only people stating it can't fail are the "Doomsayers" trying to project this thought on me. It is currently the front runner by a wide margin due to network effect. If I wasn't in the process of creating a trading platform I would be holding more btc and less physical gold/silver, it's just too risky of an investment for me.

 
The point is that you're trading and not using it as currency, thus helping to keep the transaction vs trade ratio low. We'll see what it ends up doing long term, but it's clear the current rise isn't because it has demonstrated wide stream utility as a currency and is mostly because of other factors that qualify almost entirely as speculation. That's the point behind the "speculation index".
Any new technology isn't going to go mainstream immediately. I agree that more ways to spend BTC need to emerge but inventing a speculation index based on trading vs. usage is beyond silly. You are trying to manufacture reasons for BTC to fail which puts you in the same boat as the idiots who are convinced​ BTC is going to $50k.

 
The point is that you're trading and not using it as currency, thus helping to keep the transaction vs trade ratio low. We'll see what it ends up doing long term, but it's clear the current rise isn't because it has demonstrated wide stream utility as a currency and is mostly because of other factors that qualify almost entirely as speculation. That's the point behind the "speculation index".
Any new technology isn't going to go mainstream immediately. I agree that more ways to spend BTC need to emerge but inventing a speculation index based on trading vs. usage is beyond silly. You are trying to manufacture reasons for BTC to fail which puts you in the same boat as the idiots who are convinced​ BTC is going to $50k.
I wasn't the guy that created the "speculation index", I merely came across it when I was looking through the charts over at blockchain.info. The logic he used in creating it is pretty understandable though, and Garzik himself created the transaction vs trade ratio chart at his site and linked to his article for further explanation on the chart, so it's beyond silly to call it beyond silly.

It's true that the picture it paints doesn't necessarily indicate that bitcoin is going to fail. But it does show that there is a large divergence between the current value and the utility it has demonstrated in terms of being usable currency to this point. It also shows that a similar thing happened the first time it bubbled and popped.

You're starting to sound a bit like Jojo here. I don't have a problem with bitcoin itself. All I'm doing is trying to get a little more context on the history and digging deeper into some of these statistical anomalies I find along the way. Putting current data to things like the "speculation index". Things of that nature. If you want to take exception to the data and explain why the conclusions I'm drawing from it aren't valid then by all means. Considering I'm using actual data to make my arguments it seems I'm probably being more objective about things than you guys by default.

As for the "speculation index" itself, I think the author of the article is mistaken on the driver behind bitcoin's pricing though, and I'm starting to get a decent feel for the history and numbers. I'm going to try and see which statistics correlate best with historical pricing, for the most part it actually seems to be hash rate (and difficulty as a result). Number of transactions, number of addresses, those don't correlate as well. By and large it's simply the hash rate / difficulty. The harder people have to work to get them, the more their handy profitability calculators tell them they need to charge per coin to turn profit, the more they expect to get to part with the ones that they don't opt to horde. Which is why these arms races lead to these huge price run ups. First time this happened the results weren't pretty - as the author of the "speculation index" notes. ;)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Considering I'm using actual data to make my arguments it seems I'm probably being more objective about things than you guys by default.
The problem is you are drawing conclusions based on transactions that lack context, you are making too many assumptions.
The harder people have to work to get them, the more their handy profitability calculators tell them they need to charge per coin to turn profit, the more they expect to get to part with the ones that they don't opt to horde. Which is why these arms races lead to these huge price run ups.
You are creating a chicken and the egg argument, is btc expensive because they are difficult to mine (what you are postulating) or are they difficult to mine because they can be sold for a certain value (by design imo, difficulty is a function of hashing power)? You can't assume the only reason btc has a high value is because they are difficult to mine. One minute you are talking about how they have no utility and no value as a result; and the next you say they have value because they are difficult to mine and those mining it today are setting the price, I think you are wrong on both counts1) As far as ulility bitcoin enables frictionless e-commerce. It drastically lowers the bar to entry.

2) As far as your other point about miners "setting the price", the current amount of bitcoins entering the bitcoin economy through mining today is small compared to the rest of the bitcoins in circulation. Joe Schmoe that owns 10 bitcoins and is not a miner does not care how difficult they are to mine and he will sell btc at the rate determined by the market.

.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
The people who bash BTC without reservation are every bit as foolish as those who are BTC cheerleaders that don't acknowledge possible downside.

As I've said above (under my Whitetail Hunter alias), I think there will be a crypto currency that eventually becomes mainstream. I don't know if it will be BTC but as of now, it's the most likely candidate.

I continue to work on arbing BTC between various exchanges and am keeping the profit in BTC. It's taken a long time to get things figured out and to receive requisite approvals but I am close to having a working model and I intend to increase USD in the system so that it will generate more "costless" BTC.

Of course, if the USD price of BTC crashes, then I should have taken profits in USD. However, I am happy to accumulate BTC for now.
I don't think anyone here is trashing BTC per se; I think those who've spoken out about it seem to have a healthy dose of skepticism. It's only natural. You're a big fan and trying to make money off it; I'm OK with that. I seriously hope you can make money in it.

 
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/get-a-piece-of-the-bitcoin-action-how-easy-is-it-to-lay-your-hands-on-the-virtual-currency-9035507.html

Bank of America has said that Bitcoin may emerge "as a serious competitor to traditional money providers" – but that feels like a long way off. Bitcoin users fall into four categories: tech-heads fascinated by the maths; traders trying to make a fast buck; a few people trying to buy ecstasy; and libertarians who see its use as some kind of political statement, a method of escaping the scrutiny of government.
 
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/get-a-piece-of-the-bitcoin-action-how-easy-is-it-to-lay-your-hands-on-the-virtual-currency-9035507.html

Bank of America has said that Bitcoin may emerge "as a serious competitor to traditional money providers" but that feels like a long way off. Bitcoin users fall into four categories: tech-heads fascinated by the maths; traders trying to make a fast buck; a few people trying to buy ecstasy; and libertarians who see its use as some kind of political statement, a method of escaping the scrutiny of government.
That's definitely a negative way to spin the pro-Bitcoin community

 
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/get-a-piece-of-the-bitcoin-action-how-easy-is-it-to-lay-your-hands-on-the-virtual-currency-9035507.html

Bank of America has said that Bitcoin may emerge "as a serious competitor to traditional money providers" – but that feels like a long way off. Bitcoin users fall into four categories: tech-heads fascinated by the maths; traders trying to make a fast buck; a few people trying to buy ecstasy; and libertarians who see its use as some kind of political statement, a method of escaping the scrutiny of government.
Should have heavier emphasis on category #2.

 
Considering I'm using actual data to make my arguments it seems I'm probably being more objective about things than you guys by default.
The problem is you are drawing conclusions based on transactions that lack context, you are making too many assumptions.
The harder people have to work to get them, the more their handy profitability calculators tell them they need to charge per coin to turn profit, the more they expect to get to part with the ones that they don't opt to horde. Which is why these arms races lead to these huge price run ups.
You are creating a chicken and the egg argument, is btc expensive because they are difficult to mine (what you are postulating) or are they difficult to mine because they can be sold for a certain value (by design imo, difficulty is a function of hashing power)? You can't assume the only reason btc has a high value is because they are difficult to mine. One minute you are talking about how they have no utility and no value as a result; and the next you say they have value because they are difficult to mine and those mining it today are setting the price, I think you are wrong on both counts1) As far as ulility bitcoin enables frictionless e-commerce. It drastically lowers the bar to entry.

2) As far as your other point about miners "setting the price", the current amount of bitcoins entering the bitcoin economy through mining today is small compared to the rest of the bitcoins in circulation. Joe Schmoe that owns 10 bitcoins and is not a miner does not care how difficult they are to mine and he will sell btc at the rate determined by the market.

.
The context in these early days is very clear as there weren't more than a couple hand fulls of users.The hash rate seems to be more of a leading indicator in the price shooting up during these gigantic run ups. Technological advance hits network, hash rate starts exponentiating, price starts exponentiating shortly after. Miner's mine for 2 reasons. 1) To turn an immediate profit. 2) To horde a larger share of coins. The "ArtForz incident" clearly wasn't to turn an immediate profit, it was intended to horde coins and kicked off a gigantic arms race between a few miners in what was then a tiny community that was still trying to push value on these. There was still only a couple of hand fulls of original users plus an extra hand full of slashdot users that stuck around long term.

For this one, the ASIC miners lead it off. At the beginning of this run up you had guys like Garzik advertising that he paid his ASIC off in 9 days. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/188ljj/jeff_garziks_avalon_asic_miner_paid_for_itself/

And low and behold, an arms race ensued and the price ran up.

The only times we've seen these meteoric rises in price they were lead by disruptive changes in mining technology that created arms races. And we've never seen these sorts of increases during times where arms races created by disruptive technology weren't happening. 2012 was a really good year for bitcoin, and the price doubled. The ASICs come on and the price starts exponentiating. Like GPU mining did before it.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/get-a-piece-of-the-bitcoin-action-how-easy-is-it-to-lay-your-hands-on-the-virtual-currency-9035507.html

Bank of America has said that Bitcoin may emerge "as a serious competitor to traditional money providers" but that feels like a long way off. Bitcoin users fall into four categories: tech-heads fascinated by the maths; traders trying to make a fast buck; a few people trying to buy ecstasy; and libertarians who see its use as some kind of political statement, a method of escaping the scrutiny of government.
That's definitely a negative way to spin the pro-Bitcoin community
It's very accurate, it's almost like he was reading this thread and stealing my lines.

 
DrJ said:
The hash rate seems to be more of a leading indicator in the price shooting up during these gigantic run ups. Technological advance hits network, hash rate starts exponentiating, price starts exponentiating shortly after. Miner's mine for 2 reasons. 1) To turn an immediate profit. 2) To horde a larger share of coins. The "ArtForz incident" clearly wasn't to turn an immediate profit, it was intended to horde coins and kicked off a gigantic arms race between a few miners in what was then a tiny community that was still trying to push value on these. There was still only a couple of hand fulls of original users plus an extra hand full of slashdot users that stuck around long term.

For this one, the ASIC miners lead it off. At the beginning of this run up you had guys like Garzik advertising that he paid his ASIC off in 9 days. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/188ljj/jeff_garziks_avalon_asic_miner_paid_for_itself/

And low and behold, an arms race ensued and the price ran up.

The only times we've seen these meteoric rises in price they were lead by disruptive changes in mining technology that created arms races. And we've never seen these sorts of increases during times where arms races created by disruptive technology weren't happening. 2012 was a really good year for bitcoin, and the price doubled. The ASICs come on and the price starts exponentiating. Like GPU mining did before it.
Logic says you've got it backwards. Price goes up which encourages mining.

However, unless the price goes up, mining doesn't make economic sense at this point unless you've already sunk money into the equipment. If so, you're simply trying to salvage whatever you can. If someone wanted to horde coins, they'd be better off buying them on the open market rather than buying mining equipment.

 
Jojo the circus boy said:
cstu said:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/get-a-piece-of-the-bitcoin-action-how-easy-is-it-to-lay-your-hands-on-the-virtual-currency-9035507.html

Bank of America has said that Bitcoin may emerge "as a serious competitor to traditional money providers" but that feels like a long way off. Bitcoin users fall into four categories: tech-heads fascinated by the maths; traders trying to make a fast buck; a few people trying to buy ecstasy; and libertarians who see its use as some kind of political statement, a method of escaping the scrutiny of government.
That's definitely a negative way to spin the pro-Bitcoin community
Well, why don't you redefine them for us?

 
DrJ said:
The hash rate seems to be more of a leading indicator in the price shooting up during these gigantic run ups. Technological advance hits network, hash rate starts exponentiating, price starts exponentiating shortly after. Miner's mine for 2 reasons. 1) To turn an immediate profit. 2) To horde a larger share of coins. The "ArtForz incident" clearly wasn't to turn an immediate profit, it was intended to horde coins and kicked off a gigantic arms race between a few miners in what was then a tiny community that was still trying to push value on these. There was still only a couple of hand fulls of original users plus an extra hand full of slashdot users that stuck around long term.

For this one, the ASIC miners lead it off. At the beginning of this run up you had guys like Garzik advertising that he paid his ASIC off in 9 days. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/188ljj/jeff_garziks_avalon_asic_miner_paid_for_itself/

And low and behold, an arms race ensued and the price ran up.

The only times we've seen these meteoric rises in price they were lead by disruptive changes in mining technology that created arms races. And we've never seen these sorts of increases during times where arms races created by disruptive technology weren't happening. 2012 was a really good year for bitcoin, and the price doubled. The ASICs come on and the price starts exponentiating. Like GPU mining did before it.
Logic says you've got it backwards. Price goes up which encourages mining.

However, unless the price goes up, mining doesn't make economic sense at this point unless you've already sunk money into the equipment. If so, you're simply trying to salvage whatever you can. If someone wanted to horde coins, they'd be better off buying them on the open market rather than buying mining equipment.
In the traditional world where you're mining for gold, absolutely. The bitcoin world is very different, and as I pointed out several pages ago doesn't behave much like gold especially in the way that it responds to advances in mining technology. These dramatic increases in power come about due to significant hardware advances which render previous forms of mining technology virtually obsolete. This is why hashing rate jumps in orders of magnitude overnight without increases in number of users. GPU was 50-100x more powerful than CPU, ASIC in 50-100X more powerful than GPU. And ASICs are actually growing in power very quickly themselves, You can pre order a 600 GH/s miner from Butterfly labs which will be coming soon. Or you can get one of last year's 10 GH/s or 50 GH/s models.

This feeds difficulty, which in turn feeds price.

 
DrJ said:
The hash rate seems to be more of a leading indicator in the price shooting up during these gigantic run ups. Technological advance hits network, hash rate starts exponentiating, price starts exponentiating shortly after. Miner's mine for 2 reasons. 1) To turn an immediate profit. 2) To horde a larger share of coins. The "ArtForz incident" clearly wasn't to turn an immediate profit, it was intended to horde coins and kicked off a gigantic arms race between a few miners in what was then a tiny community that was still trying to push value on these. There was still only a couple of hand fulls of original users plus an extra hand full of slashdot users that stuck around long term.

For this one, the ASIC miners lead it off. At the beginning of this run up you had guys like Garzik advertising that he paid his ASIC off in 9 days. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/188ljj/jeff_garziks_avalon_asic_miner_paid_for_itself/

And low and behold, an arms race ensued and the price ran up.

The only times we've seen these meteoric rises in price they were lead by disruptive changes in mining technology that created arms races. And we've never seen these sorts of increases during times where arms races created by disruptive technology weren't happening. 2012 was a really good year for bitcoin, and the price doubled. The ASICs come on and the price starts exponentiating. Like GPU mining did before it.
Logic says you've got it backwards. Price goes up which encourages mining.

However, unless the price goes up, mining doesn't make economic sense at this point unless you've already sunk money into the equipment. If so, you're simply trying to salvage whatever you can. If someone wanted to horde coins, they'd be better off buying them on the open market rather than buying mining equipment.
In the traditional world where you're mining for gold, absolutely. The bitcoin world is very different, and as I pointed out several pages ago doesn't behave much like gold especially in the way that it responds to advances in mining technology. These dramatic increases in power come about due to significant hardware advances which render previous forms of mining technology virtually obsolete. This is why hashing rate jumps in orders of magnitude overnight without increases in number of users. GPU was 50-100x more powerful than CPU, ASIC in 50-100X more powerful than GPU. And ASICs are actually growing in power very quickly themselves, You can pre order a 600 GH/s miner from Butterfly labs which will be coming soon. Or you can get one of last year's 10 GH/s or 50 GH/s models.

This feeds difficulty, which in turn feeds price.
It still doesn't make sense. You can keep on typing it, but it doesn't become true the more times you write it.

 
And what's ultimately happens with these new ASICs. You get the first 600 GH/s miner and you're doing pretty good, it's going to be very profitable for you. I toss 600 GH/s and $2100 at this profitability calculator and it says it's going to pay itself off in 11 days: http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

Garzik's first ASIC was "paid off in 9 days".

So people pile money into miners. Unfortunately these numbers hold true for the guy that got the first one, but the guy that got the same ASIC 1 month later didn't get close to those same results. Because the power and difficulty have now grown exponentially over this time and he's on the back end of that curve. Now he needs the price to go up to make his money back.

People are investing money in the mining technology on the hopes they can turn this into a virtual ATM machine. Jojo went through this exact same exercise earlier in the thread. But the price needs to rise exponentially in order for that to happen once you end up on a certain end of the curve.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
DrJ said:
The hash rate seems to be more of a leading indicator in the price shooting up during these gigantic run ups. Technological advance hits network, hash rate starts exponentiating, price starts exponentiating shortly after. Miner's mine for 2 reasons. 1) To turn an immediate profit. 2) To horde a larger share of coins. The "ArtForz incident" clearly wasn't to turn an immediate profit, it was intended to horde coins and kicked off a gigantic arms race between a few miners in what was then a tiny community that was still trying to push value on these. There was still only a couple of hand fulls of original users plus an extra hand full of slashdot users that stuck around long term.

For this one, the ASIC miners lead it off. At the beginning of this run up you had guys like Garzik advertising that he paid his ASIC off in 9 days. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/188ljj/jeff_garziks_avalon_asic_miner_paid_for_itself/

And low and behold, an arms race ensued and the price ran up.

The only times we've seen these meteoric rises in price they were lead by disruptive changes in mining technology that created arms races. And we've never seen these sorts of increases during times where arms races created by disruptive technology weren't happening. 2012 was a really good year for bitcoin, and the price doubled. The ASICs come on and the price starts exponentiating. Like GPU mining did before it.
Logic says you've got it backwards. Price goes up which encourages mining.

However, unless the price goes up, mining doesn't make economic sense at this point unless you've already sunk money into the equipment. If so, you're simply trying to salvage whatever you can. If someone wanted to horde coins, they'd be better off buying them on the open market rather than buying mining equipment.
In the traditional world where you're mining for gold, absolutely. The bitcoin world is very different, and as I pointed out several pages ago doesn't behave much like gold especially in the way that it responds to advances in mining technology. These dramatic increases in power come about due to significant hardware advances which render previous forms of mining technology virtually obsolete. This is why hashing rate jumps in orders of magnitude overnight without increases in number of users. GPU was 50-100x more powerful than CPU, ASIC in 50-100X more powerful than GPU. And ASICs are actually growing in power very quickly themselves, You can pre order a 600 GH/s miner from Butterfly labs which will be coming soon. Or you can get one of last year's 10 GH/s or 50 GH/s models.

This feeds difficulty, which in turn feeds price.
It still doesn't make sense. You can keep on typing it, but it doesn't become true the more times you write it.
Unlike Jojo, and now yourself, I'm actually supporting the logic with facts and figures.

 
I added a few sheets to the Hash vs Address that covers 2012 (post bubble crash) through today. Kind of interesting. After things crash, you see a pretty strong correlation between the number of addresses and hash rate which holds throughout 2012 and the beginning of 2013. Makes sense - there's no really disruptive technologies that hit in this point and everyone is on an even footing with GPU mining. 2012 is a model year IMO. You see growth in hashing power, users, price, transcations, etc that all align very well. It's growth that looks really healthy.

This year the pattern breaks. A lot of users come online when the ASICs first start getting released and when the price jumps to about $100 in April. But since that time, the hash rate is climbing exponentially while the number of addresses is remaining the same. We don't really seem to have had any new users since April, which means there probably aren't a whole lot more people mining either. But that hasn't stopped the power / price from rising exponentially. :)

http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Hash_vs_Address/HashvsAddressJul12-Oct13?:embed=y&:display_count=no#1

To me, 2012 is the model. Then disruptive technology comes along, and all of the sudden...

 
Last edited by a moderator:
DrJ said:
The hash rate seems to be more of a leading indicator in the price shooting up during these gigantic run ups. Technological advance hits network, hash rate starts exponentiating, price starts exponentiating shortly after. Miner's mine for 2 reasons. 1) To turn an immediate profit. 2) To horde a larger share of coins. The "ArtForz incident" clearly wasn't to turn an immediate profit, it was intended to horde coins and kicked off a gigantic arms race between a few miners in what was then a tiny community that was still trying to push value on these. There was still only a couple of hand fulls of original users plus an extra hand full of slashdot users that stuck around long term.

For this one, the ASIC miners lead it off. At the beginning of this run up you had guys like Garzik advertising that he paid his ASIC off in 9 days. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/188ljj/jeff_garziks_avalon_asic_miner_paid_for_itself/

And low and behold, an arms race ensued and the price ran up.

The only times we've seen these meteoric rises in price they were lead by disruptive changes in mining technology that created arms races. And we've never seen these sorts of increases during times where arms races created by disruptive technology weren't happening. 2012 was a really good year for bitcoin, and the price doubled. The ASICs come on and the price starts exponentiating. Like GPU mining did before it.
Logic says you've got it backwards. Price goes up which encourages mining.

However, unless the price goes up, mining doesn't make economic sense at this point unless you've already sunk money into the equipment. If so, you're simply trying to salvage whatever you can. If someone wanted to horde coins, they'd be better off buying them on the open market rather than buying mining equipment.
In the traditional world where you're mining for gold, absolutely. The bitcoin world is very different, and as I pointed out several pages ago doesn't behave much like gold especially in the way that it responds to advances in mining technology. These dramatic increases in power come about due to significant hardware advances which render previous forms of mining technology virtually obsolete. This is why hashing rate jumps in orders of magnitude overnight without increases in number of users. GPU was 50-100x more powerful than CPU, ASIC in 50-100X more powerful than GPU. And ASICs are actually growing in power very quickly themselves, You can pre order a 600 GH/s miner from Butterfly labs which will be coming soon. Or you can get one of last year's 10 GH/s or 50 GH/s models.

This feeds difficulty, which in turn feeds price.
It still doesn't make sense. You can keep on typing it, but it doesn't become true the more times you write it.
Unlike Jojo, and now yourself, I'm actually supporting the logic with facts and figures.
No you're not. You haven't provided any data which supports your thesis and your thesis isn't logical. A few of your conclusions based on "data":

And low and behold, an arms race ensued and the price ran up.
This feeds difficulty, which in turn feeds price.
This is the closest that you actually come to providing any data to support your claim:

The only times we've seen these meteoric rises in price they were lead by disruptive changes in mining technology that created arms races.
The sample size is so small that drawing the conclusion that a new mining technology causes BTC price to rise is silly. But you don't back up your conclusion with anything other than opinion and anecdotal evidence which may or may not be true. Do you think anything else could be responsible for the meteoric rise in BTC prices other than an increase in hash power? Or are you so married to your thesis that you're blind to any other explanation?

I don't even know why I am arguing this point. It's so absurd and isn't even important.

 
I added a few sheets to the Hash vs Address that covers 2012 (post bubble crash) through today. Kind of interesting. After things crash, you see a pretty strong correlation between the number of addresses and hash rate which holds throughout 2012 and the beginning of 2013. Makes sense - there's no really disruptive technologies that hit in this point and everyone is on an even footing with GPU mining. 2012 is a model year IMO. You see growth in hashing power, users, price, transcations, etc that all align very well. It's growth that looks really healthy.

This year the pattern breaks. A lot of users come online when the ASICs first start getting released and when the price jumps to about $100 in April. But since that time, the hash rate is climbing exponentially while the number of addresses is remaining the same. We don't really seem to have had any new users since April, which means there probably aren't a whole lot more people mining either. But that hasn't stopped the power / price from rising exponentially. :)

http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Hash_vs_Address/HashvsAddressJul12-Oct13?:embed=y&:display_count=no#1

To me, 2012 is the model. Then disruptive technology comes along, and all of the sudden...
The users line is the above graph is beyond useless. The scale makes it impossible to discern any meaningful changes in the number of users. And while I'm at it, how are users defined? Is it the number of mining pools or the number of individuals within all of the mining pools?

 
I added a few sheets to the Hash vs Address that covers 2012 (post bubble crash) through today. Kind of interesting. After things crash, you see a pretty strong correlation between the number of addresses and hash rate which holds throughout 2012 and the beginning of 2013. Makes sense - there's no really disruptive technologies that hit in this point and everyone is on an even footing with GPU mining. 2012 is a model year IMO. You see growth in hashing power, users, price, transcations, etc that all align very well. It's growth that looks really healthy.

This year the pattern breaks. A lot of users come online when the ASICs first start getting released and when the price jumps to about $100 in April. But since that time, the hash rate is climbing exponentially while the number of addresses is remaining the same. We don't really seem to have had any new users since April, which means there probably aren't a whole lot more people mining either. But that hasn't stopped the power / price from rising exponentially. :)

http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Hash_vs_Address/HashvsAddressJul12-Oct13?:embed=y&:display_count=no#1

To me, 2012 is the model. Then disruptive technology comes along, and all of the sudden...
The users line is the above graph is beyond useless. The scale makes it impossible to discern any meaningful changes in the number of users. And while I'm at it, how are users defined? Is it the number of mining pools or the number of individuals within all of the mining pools?
:lmao: You can easily discern the changes in number of addresses through about June by clicking on the tab before it. But in April the number of users stop growing and actually starts dropping off a little while the hash rate continues to grow exponentially. That's the point, Galileo.

 
And what's ultimately happens with these new ASICs. You get the first 600 GH/s miner and you're doing pretty good, it's going to be very profitable for you. I toss 600 GH/s and $2100 at this profitability calculator and it says it's going to pay itself off in 11 days: http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

Garzik's first ASIC was "paid off in 9 days".

So people pile money into miners. Unfortunately these numbers hold true for the guy that got the first one, but the guy that got the same ASIC 1 month later didn't get close to those same results. Because the power and difficulty have now grown exponentially over this time and he's on the back end of that curve. Now he needs the price to go up to make his money back.

People are investing money in the mining technology on the hopes they can turn this into a virtual ATM machine. Jojo went through this exact same exercise earlier in the thread. But the price needs to rise exponentially in order for that to happen once you end up on a certain end of the curve.
What has happened is that the first ones in reaped most of the benefits, while the rate of return for subsequent generations of miners declined. Ergo, the price has to go up or those 2nd/3rd/4th generation miners lose their collective shirts.

 
I added a few sheets to the Hash vs Address that covers 2012 (post bubble crash) through today. Kind of interesting. After things crash, you see a pretty strong correlation between the number of addresses and hash rate which holds throughout 2012 and the beginning of 2013. Makes sense - there's no really disruptive technologies that hit in this point and everyone is on an even footing with GPU mining. 2012 is a model year IMO. You see growth in hashing power, users, price, transcations, etc that all align very well. It's growth that looks really healthy.

This year the pattern breaks. A lot of users come online when the ASICs first start getting released and when the price jumps to about $100 in April. But since that time, the hash rate is climbing exponentially while the number of addresses is remaining the same. We don't really seem to have had any new users since April, which means there probably aren't a whole lot more people mining either. But that hasn't stopped the power / price from rising exponentially. :)

http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Hash_vs_Address/HashvsAddressJul12-Oct13?:embed=y&:display_count=no#1

To me, 2012 is the model. Then disruptive technology comes along, and all of the sudden...
The users line is the above graph is beyond useless. The scale makes it impossible to discern any meaningful changes in the number of users. And while I'm at it, how are users defined? Is it the number of mining pools or the number of individuals within all of the mining pools?
:lmao: You can easily discern the changes in number of addresses through about June by clicking on the tab before it. But in April the number of users stop growing and actually starts dropping off a little while the hash rate continues to grow exponentially. That's the point, Galileo.
Chet: The other Jo Jo?

 
I added a few sheets to the Hash vs Address that covers 2012 (post bubble crash) through today. Kind of interesting. After things crash, you see a pretty strong correlation between the number of addresses and hash rate which holds throughout 2012 and the beginning of 2013. Makes sense - there's no really disruptive technologies that hit in this point and everyone is on an even footing with GPU mining. 2012 is a model year IMO. You see growth in hashing power, users, price, transcations, etc that all align very well. It's growth that looks really healthy.

This year the pattern breaks. A lot of users come online when the ASICs first start getting released and when the price jumps to about $100 in April. But since that time, the hash rate is climbing exponentially while the number of addresses is remaining the same. We don't really seem to have had any new users since April, which means there probably aren't a whole lot more people mining either. But that hasn't stopped the power / price from rising exponentially. :)

http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Hash_vs_Address/HashvsAddressJul12-Oct13?:embed=y&:display_count=no#1

To me, 2012 is the model. Then disruptive technology comes along, and all of the sudden...
The users line is the above graph is beyond useless. The scale makes it impossible to discern any meaningful changes in the number of users. And while I'm at it, how are users defined? Is it the number of mining pools or the number of individuals within all of the mining pools?
:lmao: You can easily discern the changes in number of addresses through about June by clicking on the tab before it. But in April the number of users stop growing and actually starts dropping off a little while the hash rate continues to grow exponentially. That's the point, Galileo.
You are correct that it's much easier to read on the other graphs. I was so disgusted by the one you linked that I closed it before my eyes started to bleed.

How are users defined?

Seeing users drop off after ASICS makes complete sense. Low level miners can no longer achieve meaningful results with their computers and instead of investing thousands in ASICS mining rigs which they may not even be able to get, they stop mining.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I added a few sheets to the Hash vs Address that covers 2012 (post bubble crash) through today. Kind of interesting. After things crash, you see a pretty strong correlation between the number of addresses and hash rate which holds throughout 2012 and the beginning of 2013. Makes sense - there's no really disruptive technologies that hit in this point and everyone is on an even footing with GPU mining. 2012 is a model year IMO. You see growth in hashing power, users, price, transcations, etc that all align very well. It's growth that looks really healthy.

This year the pattern breaks. A lot of users come online when the ASICs first start getting released and when the price jumps to about $100 in April. But since that time, the hash rate is climbing exponentially while the number of addresses is remaining the same. We don't really seem to have had any new users since April, which means there probably aren't a whole lot more people mining either. But that hasn't stopped the power / price from rising exponentially. :)

http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Hash_vs_Address/HashvsAddressJul12-Oct13?:embed=y&:display_count=no#1

To me, 2012 is the model. Then disruptive technology comes along, and all of the sudden...
The users line is the above graph is beyond useless. The scale makes it impossible to discern any meaningful changes in the number of users. And while I'm at it, how are users defined? Is it the number of mining pools or the number of individuals within all of the mining pools?
:lmao: You can easily discern the changes in number of addresses through about June by clicking on the tab before it. But in April the number of users stop growing and actually starts dropping off a little while the hash rate continues to grow exponentially. That's the point, Galileo.
Chet: The other Jo Jo?
Child, please.

 
I added a few sheets to the Hash vs Address that covers 2012 (post bubble crash) through today. Kind of interesting. After things crash, you see a pretty strong correlation between the number of addresses and hash rate which holds throughout 2012 and the beginning of 2013. Makes sense - there's no really disruptive technologies that hit in this point and everyone is on an even footing with GPU mining. 2012 is a model year IMO. You see growth in hashing power, users, price, transcations, etc that all align very well. It's growth that looks really healthy.

This year the pattern breaks. A lot of users come online when the ASICs first start getting released and when the price jumps to about $100 in April. But since that time, the hash rate is climbing exponentially while the number of addresses is remaining the same. We don't really seem to have had any new users since April, which means there probably aren't a whole lot more people mining either. But that hasn't stopped the power / price from rising exponentially. :)

http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Hash_vs_Address/HashvsAddressJul12-Oct13?:embed=y&:display_count=no#1

To me, 2012 is the model. Then disruptive technology comes along, and all of the sudden...
The users line is the above graph is beyond useless. The scale makes it impossible to discern any meaningful changes in the number of users. And while I'm at it, how are users defined? Is it the number of mining pools or the number of individuals within all of the mining pools?
:lmao: You can easily discern the changes in number of addresses through about June by clicking on the tab before it. But in April the number of users stop growing and actually starts dropping off a little while the hash rate continues to grow exponentially. That's the point, Galileo.
Chet: The other Jo Jo?
Child, please.
:lmao:

 
I added a few sheets to the Hash vs Address that covers 2012 (post bubble crash) through today. Kind of interesting. After things crash, you see a pretty strong correlation between the number of addresses and hash rate which holds throughout 2012 and the beginning of 2013. Makes sense - there's no really disruptive technologies that hit in this point and everyone is on an even footing with GPU mining. 2012 is a model year IMO. You see growth in hashing power, users, price, transcations, etc that all align very well. It's growth that looks really healthy.

This year the pattern breaks. A lot of users come online when the ASICs first start getting released and when the price jumps to about $100 in April. But since that time, the hash rate is climbing exponentially while the number of addresses is remaining the same. We don't really seem to have had any new users since April, which means there probably aren't a whole lot more people mining either. But that hasn't stopped the power / price from rising exponentially. :)

http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Hash_vs_Address/HashvsAddressJul12-Oct13?:embed=y&:display_count=no#1

To me, 2012 is the model. Then disruptive technology comes along, and all of the sudden...
The users line is the above graph is beyond useless. The scale makes it impossible to discern any meaningful changes in the number of users. And while I'm at it, how are users defined? Is it the number of mining pools or the number of individuals within all of the mining pools?
:lmao: You can easily discern the changes in number of addresses through about June by clicking on the tab before it. But in April the number of users stop growing and actually starts dropping off a little while the hash rate continues to grow exponentially. That's the point, Galileo.
You are correct that it's much easier to read on the other graphs. I was so disgusted by the one you linked that I closed it before my eyes started to bleed.

How are users defined?

Seeing users drop off makes complete sense after ASICS comes online makes perfect sense. Low level miners can no longer achieve meaningful results with their computers and instead of investing thousands in ASICS mining rigs which they may not even be able to get, they stop mining.
It's a total of the number of unique addresses that participated on the network that day for any reason. That reason might have been to mine a new coin. That reason might have been to participate in a transaction with someone. One person can have a number of addresses, both for mining or regular transaction purposes, and the actual addresses themselves will all change over the course of time they use a system.

Early ones are mostly people mining coins since there weren't actually making any transactions. Number of addresses and hash rate had a literally perfect correlation throughout all of 2009. And there were about 200 addresses right off the bat despite not having that number of users. So someone (Satoshi / Hal) was using a number of them to mine. It remains pretty danged stable in terms of number of addresses for most of those early days. On April 19, 2010 we see a spike that I suspect is a large account breaking their money into smaller accounts, though I haven't looked at the block chain on those dates that's what the other numbers for that date say to me.

So it can move for several reasons and doesn't correlate 100% to number of actual users. This obviously makes it an imperfect figure (and one that can be manipulated to some extent) but as a whole it still gives us a rough idea as to whether the number of users taking part in the system is growing, shrinking, etc. Especially when you see the figure remain stable for long periods of time.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
And come on chet, doesn't it strike you as a little odd that this figure seems to indicate that there aren't really any more users using this system today than there were in April?

Much of what I've put out here focuses on the fact that the early history indicates a small number of users mined up all of the coins, went out of their way to drown out new users when they came on from Slashdot, etc. And then based on the RSA paper, the vast majority of said coins from that era are sitting in holding accounts of a few users and you've seen a lot of effort to hide that fact and do some kind of strange things with the coins. The "top 100" list is a complete sham and this still seems to be controlled by a few users. That's what most of my investigation here has surrounded and I haven't focused a lot on current numbers.

I actually didn't even realize that's what it looked like until I just spun those off a few moments ago and I'm honestly floored by that figure. How can this increase 10x in value without there even being a growth in users? After it had gone up like 8X in the few months before this. That's ummm....a little bit strange.

 
Last edited by a moderator:

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top