[geertj]

Doing some back of the envelope calculations..

Hash rate is about 1,200 PH now. The most efficient ASIC miner today is the AntMiner S7 [1], which does 4.86 TH at 1.21 KW. This gives us a power consumption of the entire Bitcoin network of at least 300 MW. Actual power will easily be double that, given that not everybody is using the latest miner. So let's say total power consumption is about 600 MW. This is the output of a small power plant.

[1] https://www.bitcoinmining.com/bitcoin-mining-hardware/

[Synaesthesia]

Every hour 25 bitcoins are mined, at a current value of $450, that's $11250. So if the total power expenditure of bitcoin hashing is 600MW, it would have to cost less than $11250/600 = $18.75/MWH for electricity to not mine at a loss, which is insanely cheap.

Therefore the hashing chips must be considerably more efficient than the latest commercially available products. I think the major players get hashing chips manufactured at scale on smaller nodes for significant power savings.

[cdumler]

Actually, the present value is the consideration of the future value of the return: PV = FV / (1+r)^n. Anyone who is bit mining now is willing to do it at discount on the assumption the coins will have greater value in the future. I'm not surprised at all that it's being mined below cost.

[InclinedPlane]

https://twitter.com/celestialweasel/status/44062951919230566...

[ikeboy]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n08/john-lanchester/when-bitcoin-gr...

[infinity0]

> Behind the user-friendly façade of chip and pin are cryptographic techniques of industrial strength.

oh dear... the rest of the article was good, though.

[ikeboy]

They also claimed that all crypto is based on prime numbers, while bitcoin is actually not, and called hashes "encryption". They sound like they sort of know what they're talking about, but jump to conclusions and assume their educated guesses are correct without looking them up.