DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis







DonatorLegendaryActivity: 1218Merit: 1007Gerald Davis Guesstimate thread for total ASIC pre-order hashing power. August 20, 2013, 06:21:29 PM

Last edit: August 28, 2013, 10:46:05 PM by DeathAndTaxes #1 The idea

The purpose is to try to guestimate (and yes that means error) how much hashing power is in "the pipeline". If there were no pre-orders every unit sold means a unit hashing and then difficulty rises a little and that makes new sales slightly less attractive so sales are slower. This economic feedback model constrains hashing power to overall network efficiency, electrical cost, exchange rate, the risk premium miners are willing to accept and the time value of money. There is a reason GPU mining never allowed the the network to reach petahash scale with miners, mining away at massive losses hoping to make it up with future exchange rates. The problem with preorders is it breaks the feedback model and that is a great thing for hardware vendors; they can sell more hardware, earlier and at higher prices. You can tell people difficulty will go up but there is a lot of uncertainty in how much and how fast. That uncertainty favors the vendors. Not until miners believe there is no profit and stop buying will prices fall. Accurately projecting growth simply by looking at prior growth is probably an exercise in futility.



So lets look at it from another direction. If you know all pre-orders are X PH/s and you assume they (or most of them) will be delivered over some period of time (say between now and end of year) then you can come up with a more realistic curve for the next couple months. You know hashrate now and you can project hashrate at the end of the year and then fill in some likely curves. For that we need an idea of how much hashing power has been presold . So throw me your cites, guesstimates, and official numbers.



The rules

1) To keep this thread from derailing please leave the "xyz is a scam" for another topic. On edit: I wish I had made this moderated.

2) A good starting point is the total pre-ordered amount. This is likely unrealistic but we need a starting point. Later that total can be discounted by the likelihood of fraud (the "coefficient of scamming").

3) If you have a reference or cite (even unofficial) to back up a guestimate please link to it. If not a reasonable explanation is more useful then just posting a number

4) We can safely assume that all non-ASIC hashrate will go to zero so no need to break it out between delivered and ordered. Eventually hashrate ~= total pre-orders.

5) No idea/number is bad. Please be respectful. Honestly nobody knows except the chip makers and most of them are keeping quiet.



The running total



Promised delivery by December 2013

Code: AsicMiner (internal): 1,000 Thash [7] [14]

AsicMiner (sales): ?? Thash

AsicMiner ("next gen"): ?? Thash

Avalon (rigs): 123 Thash

Avalon (chips): 274 Thash [1]

Avalon ("next gen"): ?? Thash

Bitfury (internal): 200 Thash [11]

Bitfury (Aug US & EU): 50 Thash [3] [9]

Bitfury (Oct US & EU): 255 Thash [3]

Bitfury (metabank): 32 THash

Bitfury chips: ?? Thash

BFL (SC series): 3,000 THash [4] [15]

KNC: 500 Thash [5] (alternative viewpoint based on small 11mm x 1mm die = 2,000 Thash [8])

HashFast: 470 Thash [2] [6]

--------------------------------------------------------------

Running Total: 6,004 Thash



Post 2013 rollouts

Code: Cointerra: 2,000 Thash (January 2014) [10]

HashFast (MPP or reserve): 880 Thash (January 2014) [12]

BFL (monarch): ?? Thash (February 2014)

BitMine: 4,000 Thash (March 2014) [13]

--------------------------------------------------------------

Running Total: 6,880 Thash



Code: Running Total 2013: 6,004 Thash

Running Total 2014: 6,880 Thash

--------------------------------------------------------------

Combined Total: 12,884 Thash











Relationship between difficulty and hashing power

Code: 1 TH/s = 0.14 mil difficulty

1 PH/s = 140 mil difficulty

1 million difficulty = 7 TH/s

1 billion difficulty = 7 PH/s

1 trillion difficulty = 7 EH/s



Upper limits on difficulty based on hardware efficiency:

Miners are unlikely to mine when their electrical costs are higher than the value of BTC mined. This limit can be called the electrical break even point and is based on:

a) the current exchange rate (USD per BTC)

b) the hardware efficiency (J/GH )

c) the miner's electrical rate (USD per kWh)



When hashrate/difficulty gets high enough it will cause the least efficiency miners to idle thus creating a sort of replacement cycle (i.e. x GH/s new efficiency hardware causes Y GH/s of older less efficient hardware to idle). This should slow growth significantly because the returns on new hardware will be low, miners will be exposed to the bad news of less efficient miners being forced to idle and X GH/s doesn't mean the hashrate only rises by (X-Y)/GH. It also illustrates the improbability of difficulty power growing exponentially over a long period of time like a year. For example 65 million difficulty gaining 75% per month for a year results in 50 billion difficulty. The electrical cost even at 1W/GH and $0.10 per kWh would >$250 per BTC.



A related thread on the break even point is here: Break even difficulty by hardware efficiency (power cost = value of BTC)







Alternate view

Here is an alternate visual representation by gkm22d. I don't agree with all the capacities but I would consider it a worst case scenario (delusional miners may wish to close their eyes as this may be painful)









[1]

[2] 550 orders @ 400 MH nominal

[3] Based on report that Dave (US distributor) sold out of their allocation of 300 full systems and 300 starter systems. Oct is not sold out but conservatively it will if/when Aug deliveries are made. I will assume that the EU distributor received an equal allocation (an assumption based on bitfury facing unknown demand and users in both markets).

[4]

[5] Guestimate.

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9] Reduced to 30 full systems in Aug for both US and EU distributors

[10]

[11]

[12]HashFast MPP will issue miners up to 4x their initial hashing power if 100% ROI is not acheived within 90 days. Even if MPP is not needed, HashFast would need the chips in reserve and any chips not paid out in the MPP are likely to be deployed as quickly as possible.

[13]

[14]

[15] Upgraded BFL estimate from 2 PH/s to 3 PH/s The purpose is to try to guestimate (and yes that means error) how much hashing power is in "the pipeline". If there were no pre-orders every unit sold means a unit hashing and then difficulty rises a little and that makes new sales slightly less attractive so sales are slower. This economic feedback model constrains hashing power to overall network efficiency, electrical cost, exchange rate, the risk premium miners are willing to accept and the time value of money. There is a reason GPU mining never allowed the the network to reach petahash scale with miners, mining away at massive losses hoping to make it up with future exchange rates. The problem with preorders is it breaks the feedback model and that is a great thing for hardware vendors; they can sell more hardware, earlier and at higher prices. You can tell people difficulty will go up but there is a lot of uncertainty in how much and how fast. That uncertainty favors the vendors. Not until miners believe there is no profit and stop buying will prices fall. Accurately projecting growth simply by looking at prior growth is probably an exercise in futility.So lets look at it from another direction. If you know all pre-orders are X PH/s and you assume they (or most of them) will be delivered over some period of time (say between now and end of year) then you can come up with a more realistic curve for the next couple months. You know hashrate now and you can project hashrate at the end of the year and then fill in some likely curves. For that we need an idea of how much hashing power has been presold .1) To keep this thread from derailingOn edit: I wish I had made this moderated.2) A good starting point is the total pre-ordered amount. This is likely unrealistic but we need a starting point. Later that total can be discounted by the likelihood of fraud (the "coefficient of scamming").3) If you have a reference or cite (even unofficial) to back up a guestimate please. If not4) We can safely assume that all non-ASIC hashrate will go to zero so no need to break it out between delivered and ordered. Eventually hashrate ~= total pre-orders.5) No idea/number is bad.Honestly nobody knows except the chip makers and most of them are keeping quiet.Promised delivery by December 2013Post 2013 rolloutsUpper limits on difficulty based on hardware efficiency:Miners are unlikely to mine when their electrical costs are higher than the value of BTC mined. This limit can be called the electrical break even point and is based on:a) the current exchange rate (USD per BTC)b) the hardware efficiency (J/GH )c) the miner's electrical rate (USD per kWh)When hashrate/difficulty gets high enough it will cause the least efficiency miners to idle thus creating a sort of replacement cycle (i.e. x GH/s new efficiency hardware causes Y GH/s of older less efficient hardware to idle). This should slow growth significantly because the returns on new hardware will be low, miners will be exposed to the bad news of less efficient miners being forced to idle and X GH/s doesn't mean the hashrate only rises by (X-Y)/GH. It also illustrates the improbability of difficulty power growing exponentially over a long period of time like a year. For example 65 million difficulty gaining 75% per month for a year results in 50 billion difficulty. The electrical cost even at 1W/GH and $0.10 per kWh would >$250 per BTC.A related thread on the break even point is here:Here is an alternate visual representation by gkm22d. I don't agree with all the capacities but I would consider it a worst case scenario (delusional miners may wish to close their eyes as this may be painful)[1] https://docs.google.com/a/nacrypto.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiLYkKIHJaIsdHpIaGdUOWRYVUdncTNpNlVKbVhCbEE#gid=0 970,000 chips @ 282 MH nominal[2] 550 orders @ 400 MH nominal[3] Based on report that Dave (US distributor) sold out of their allocation of 300 full systems and 300 starter systems. Oct is not sold out but conservatively it will if/when Aug deliveries are made. I will assume that the EU distributor received an equal allocation (an assumption based on bitfury facing unknown demand and users in both markets).[4] http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/8577/how-much-asic-power-has-been-or-is-being-shipped-in-2013 Crude assumption based on distribution of wait list (hashing power per order) and number of orders. 2PH/s is guestimated based on (avg GH/s per order of known orders)*(num order numbers)*(1/3 to account for unpaid/test orders). Monarch is highly unlikely to ship in volume (if at all) in 2013 while upgrades cancel the existing 65nm order which would reduce the amount of 65nm pre-orders.[5] Guestimate. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=278384.msg2994436#msg2994436 [6] https://bitfunder.com/asset/IceDrill.ASIC [7] http://www.dpcapital.net/blockchain/?hours=336 [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor [9] Reduced to 30 full systems in Aug for both US and EU distributors https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=278384.msg3010364#msg3010364 [10] http://www.coindesk.com/cointerra-cuts-price-of-terraminer-iv-bitcoin-mining-rig/ "In Dec" without a specific date can mean as late as 31 DEC. Given that and the tight schedule and the fact that even a small delay would push it into 2014 I included it in the 2014 group.[11] https://ghash.io/ [12]HashFast MPP will issue miners up to 4x their initial hashing power if 100% ROI is not acheived within 90 days. Even if MPP is not needed, HashFast would need the chips in reserve and any chips not paid out in the MPP are likely to be deployed as quickly as possible.[13] http://www.coindesk.com/bitmine-to-drop-4phs-of-asic-power-onto-bitcoin-network-before-april/ [14] http://thegenesisblock.com/cointerra-expects-to-deliver-2-phs-of-asics-in-december/ (Numerous references, Cointerra 2PH/s, KNC 0.5 to 2 PH/s, AsicMiner 1 PH/s, Bitfury 0.5 PH/s, Avalon 0.32 PH/s[15] Upgraded BFL estimate from 2 PH/s to 3 PH/s https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=278384.msg3029092 (see also the next two posts)