Quote from: Sr.Urbanist on March 13, 2018, 08:55:51 PM

If you took the block rewards off blockchain.info, then it would include the value at time of production.

Thanks for mining the data Wink

You're welcome!

I'm not sure what the first part means, so here's what I actually did. First, I downloaded .csv data from this chart: https://blockchain.info/charts/miners-revenue?timespan=all. It incorporates block rewards, transaction fees, and difficulty (actual data for the entire network). On a log scale, you can see the downward steps resulting from block reward halving. Blockchain.info logged the data in USD based on the exchange rate each day (I don't know what kind of averaging they used for that).

Next, I downloaded .csv data from this chart: https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate?timespan=all. As I mentioned previously, this is an estimate based on block solution times.

I divided the first data set by the second one in order to normalize the revenues to a constant mining hashrate and thereby get a result representing individual miners rather than the entire network. Also as mentioned previously, it's standardized to 1 TH/s. Any individual miner would see results on any particular day based on his own specific hashrate that day. And of course, individual results vary because of randomness inherent in the system

That's all I did. I used the data directly from blockchain.info, and added no assumptions about pools, utility costs, depreciation, etc. The overall downward trend indicates that over long time periods, the exchange rate has failed to keep pace with increasing difficulty. There have been many intervals when the opposite occurred (bumps in the curve), but the long-term trend is undeniable. That's why it takes more and more computing power to make the same money year after year. And it's only possible to profit from increased computing power because hardware energy efficiency has improved so much. All of which ties in with Sandal_Hat's comparison to the shipping industry.