Quote from: smooth on April 04, 2016, 12:53:47 AM

Quote from: r0ach on April 03, 2016, 09:16:42 PM

Quote from: smooth on April 03, 2016, 04:24:02 AM

Quote from: r0ach on March 31, 2016, 07:04:24 PM

It's just an externality that can change at any given time. I guess it's only a problem if you for some reason believe sha256 will not be commoditized. The fact that energy costs keep becoming an ever higher percentage of the price per Bitcoin instead of hardware seems like it won't be a problem.

I see no evidence of that. In the GPU mining era, there was no extraordinarily efficient mining as there is now with the most efficient ASICs. All Bitcoins had approximately the same energy input. Now there a steep curve between the least efficient but still-viable ASICs and the most efficient. The area above that curve is missing energy. As far as I can tell the energy density of Bitcoin has decreased.

I calculated the upfront hardware costs vs energy costs as a percentage of 1 Bitcoin between when that big Spoondoolies unit was originally released and also around a year or so before it.

You are citing as a data source a vaporware miner that was never shipped to customers and may not even exist.

With better analysis you will find that I am correct.

I do agree this it may happen at some time in the future. When I don't know, but not yet.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1390781.0

Does either of your analysis, include the additional electricity costs of cooling the environment the ASICS are housed in?
As that will ad overhead especially when the outside temps are warmer.

Cool