Post
Topic
Board Speculation
Re: [prediction] Next spike $560,000 14 months from now
by
pa
on 07/10/2015, 22:26:00 UTC
its all a bit pie in the sky but I can see this kind of price action giving people a real hard time!

How do you respond to Burt W's objections regarding the implausibility that so large a fraction of the world's electricity supply would be diverted to mining? Bitcoin to the moon means electricity price to the moon.

efficiency of mining keeps increasing, however, difficulty is increasing as well.

In March 2014 antminer S1 was producing 0.08BTC/day while hashing at 178GH/s
In October 2015 antminer S7 is producing 0.04BTC/day while hashing at 4860Gh/s
So, in mere 19 mo, hashing speed of the consumer machine increased ~27-fold.
Efficiency per watt went from 2 to 0.25-an eightfold increase in efficiency.
However, difficulty increased ~54-fold, making the best (so far) machine to produce just half of what it's predecessor did 19 mo ago.



This is the Burt W post I was thinking of: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=720179.msg8135635#msg8135635

We cannot/do not want to get to $500,000 per BTC any time soon.  Here is the math behind it:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694401.0

If BTC were to go to $500,000 in this era it would cause a catastrophic mining bubble:

   $500,000 x 25 = $12,500,000 per block = $75,000,000 per hour

   $75 million per hour would drive the mining to attempt to use 675 GW.  This is about 30% of all the power generated on the planet.

So, in order to keep our power consumption under about 2% of world wide power production, we cannot/do not want the price to get to $500,000 before era 6, which is about 2033 or so.

Using my previously derived formula for the power consumption:

P = (6(50/2e) + f)(x)(1 - g)/c [kW]

where:

x = exchange rate [USD/BTC]
e = era [0..32] (we are currently in era 1)
f = average fees per hour [BTC/hour]
c = cost of energy [USD/kWh]
g = average gross profit margin [unitless ratio]

we can look at the power consumption in each era assuming a price of $500,000 per BTC.

In order to make it simple I will make the following assumptions:

x = $500,000 per BTC
f = fees per hour will keep the coinbase above 6 BTC/hour (1 BTC/block) in all eras
c = $0.10 per kWh
g = 0.1 miner gross profit margin

Code:
    Original target      Subsidy    Est Fees  Power  % of total world
Era    starting year    BTC/block    BTC/hour     GW  power production
---  ---------------  -----------  ----------  -----  ----------------
  0             2009  50.00000000  0.00000000  1,350            58.41%
  1             2013  25.00000000  0.00000000    675            29.20%
  2             2017  12.50000000  0.00000000    337            14.60%
  3             2021   6.25000000  0.00000000    169             7.30%
  4             2025   3.12500000  0.00000000     84             3.65%
  5             2029   1.56250000  0.00000000     42             1.83%
  6             2033   0.78125000  1.31250000     27             1.17%
  7             2037   0.39062500  3.65625000     27             1.17%
  8             2041   0.19531250  4.82812500     27             1.17%
  9             2045   0.09765625  5.41406250     27             1.17%