Bitcoin mining difficulty recently ascended to 163,491,654,908.95925903, a "modest" 13.44% above previous leap. Transaction fees totalled 511.49155786 Bitcoins, comprising 1.00% of total miner rewards. Non-inflationary miner income has gradually risen in the past months, still recovering from damage wrecked by brinkmanship committed in the name of keeping Bitcoin free and useless (archived).
Category Archives: Mining
FTC Settles With Butterfly Labs, Suspended Penalties For Management
Today the United States Federal Trade Commission announced it reached a settlement against Butterfly Labs and the firm's principals Sonny Vleisides and Jody/Darla Drake. Out of a 38,615,161 United States dollar judgment against the firm and Sonny Vleisides the firm is to pay 15,000 and Sonny Vleisides is to pay 4,000. A separate judgment against Jody/Darla Drake for 135,878 United States dollars will similarly be suspended in exchange for Jody/Darla surrendering all of the Bitcoin she mined on company machines thus giving her a choice in how to pay her penalty. These "partial" suspensions were agreed to based on the defendants' inability to pay and are offered in exchange for various promises to not engage in the criminal behavior they built their "business" on for some finite period of time. The orders pertaining to Sonny Vleisides and Butterfly Labs as well as the order for Jody/Darla Drake are reproduced in plaintext below: Continue reading
KncMiner Cuts Of 20% Of Employees
Swedish sources are reporting the KncMiner has let go of 12 employees comprising 20% of their workforce (archived). CEO Sam Cole among other things blames the inability of operations in the Nordic country to compete with Chinese mining firms. Several days ago there was a stabbing reported at a datacenter associated with KncMiner. This new development suggests the pressures of working for a deeply struggling company contributed to the recent outbreak of violence.
Update: KncMiner is also one of the many mining operations listed to this day as supporting the ClassicCoin fork (along with Bitfury, which led the backpedalling effort after it became obvious Classiccoin does not have nor can acquire the support of key players in the market.)
Update 2: This struggling concern is now producing blocks containing votes for the doomed ClassicCoin fork.
Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Crosses 144 Billion With 20.06% Rise
Mining difficulty is now 144,116,447,847.34866333, 20.06% above the previous value. This is the largest increase since August 19th, 2014, and is thus the largest increase covered by Qntra to date. Transaction fees totalled 530.03566591 Bitcoins, comprising 1.04% of total miner rewards, a similar rate to the previous period; for context, this rate was 0.77% in the antepenultimate, and 0.83% at the close of yesteryear. Stay tuned as Bitcoin's supply inflexibility keeps increasing usage costs to compensate for impending disinflation.
California Environmentalists Fight To Save Endangered Nuclear Plant
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that an emergent environmental advocacy group has coalesced to advocate for saving the regulatorily imperilled Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant (archived). The approximately 2.2 gigawatt plant currently provides 7 to 8 percent of California's electricity. Any non-nuclear replacement for the plant would require an energy expenditure relative to output 4 to 5 times greater than replacing Diablo Canyon with another nuclear plant, and a new nuclear plant would still require a greater capital outlay than continuing to operate Diablo Canyon. With energy prices in the United States falling to a point that prohibits new capital investment, these actual environmentalists are advocating for the outcome which minimizes the price in energy to keep the lights on in California.
Bitcoin Network Difficulty Rises 5.89%
Bitcoin network difficulty has risen 5.89% to 120033340651.23696899 today. This is a more modest increase than many recent adjustments, but this difficulty period has been marked variance between block suggesting a full exahash per second of mining as well as multi hour stretches with substantially longer time between blocks. Miners appear to remain bullish on Bitcoin even as various agents of fiat attempt to inject artificial crises of their own imagining.
Mining Difficulty Already Up 9.12% This Year
While pundits seek alpha amid omega, fiat flows on towards its only good use: subsidizing Bitcoin mining. The new difficulty of 113,354,299,801.4711`3037 (a 9.12% increase over the 2015 close) pushes hashpower estimates over 850 PH/s, placing what nobody could've predicted merely 17.6% away (readily attainable in a single leap, should miners quit dicking about and resume their one fucking job).
Radeon Refresh Gets Shrink To 14 nm
In what would have been Bitcoin mining news during the ancient stretch from summer 2010 and to the close of 2012, AMD's next refresh of their Radeon graphics cards will include a process shrink from 28 nm to 14 nm (archived). The new parts are set to arrive in the Summer of 2016 placing their availability within a few months of the next Bitcoin subsidy halving, if current trends in Bitcoin network difficulty continue.
Difficulty Rises 11.16% Adding A New Digit At 103,880,340,815
Just in time for the 2016th (incidentally, the number of blocks in Bitcoin's shorter metric of elapsed time) year of the fiat calendar, Bitcoin added a new digit to its difficulty decimal, now equal to 103,880,340,815 (an increase of 11.16% over the previous value, placing hashrate estimates over 690 PH/s.). While such increases used to be noteworthy, they pale in the shadow of the last leap (December 18th's 18.14% increase, to 93,448,670,796), leaving thin-margined miners nervously wondering whether they'll ever make good on the forecasts of yesteryear. Continue reading
Bitcoin Difficulty Increases 8.77%, Pools Raise Concerns About Sanity
Mining difficulty increased 8.77 percent in spite of a move of questionable wisdom for theatres purporting decentralization, individuals claiming a hashpower supermajority (archived) centralized upon one stage to remind us of their inability (archived) to think independently: Continue reading