Sorry but I think you are all wrong.
Since April the BTC difficulty factor has increased by more than 25%. Thus the cost of mining has increased by roughly the same – some overhead.
The miners will stop mining at that price and the BTC blockchain will grind to a halt if even 25% stop mining. You could have 4 to 10 hour random blocks. They won’t allow it fall that low it is too risky for the entire BTC chain. All BTC miners are now dependent on each other’s survival as the difficulty factor is too high to even lose 15 % of the mining pool. The miners have the money and coin to dictate price and they will raise and lower it to their benefit as long as they are able.
BTC mining uses more electricity than most countries use. BTC is now big business with big investors. They will no more let it die than they would Microsoft die. The price must stay above 5 k to keep all the miners mining. The difficulty factor is now too high to mine for under 5k and the electric cost must be paid as you go at the large farms and even more so in the small ones.
All of the miners know exactly what it cost to mine a block you guys think that you can find the bottom price with chart analysis but it has always been a cost analysis. The bottom is how much it cost to mine a block.
The miners have kept the price down to keep the number of miners down. If you watch the mining pool you will notice that when the price gets to low miners start dropping off. If the price goes up you automatically get more miners. So who benefits from 6666.66 USD? The big miners do. It keeps the little miners out. This whole bottom price thing is about mining not about charts. The price is absolutely controlled by the miners. They want the price to stay low while they stack coin. But stay high enough to pay the bills and overhead while keeping the public interested.
They bring the price down to these low levels to see how many miners they can kick out without hurting the blockchain block time.
If the price goes to high you have an immediate influx of new miners. That forces the old miners to buy more equipment or update old to keep the same percentage of blocks. The big miners want the price exactly where it is.
Block Times have already increased by 3% Since the drop in price occurred which means some miners switched to another coin or simply turned off their mining equipment.
That is an interesting aspect. Thanks for bringing that up.
As you can see they can lose only 7.5% more mining without having a noticeable effect on block time. Just before the price dip the next difficulty was at just over 10.68% increase
interesting perspective. Not really in the know about how miners think/incenstives/pain points, so thanks. One q: you state $6666.66 as a sort of a "break even" for big miners. How did you come up with this number- based only from price chart? average of some sort? I'd assume mining costs vary greatly in different locations no? Thanks!
No the breakeven point now is between 4-6k depending on where you are mining. But only the most efficient miners can make the 4k mark. Most are between 5 and 6k
Example electric where I'm at and facility for 27 s9 is 83.00 per day
So 83 * 30 = 2490. S9 electricity and cooling.
facility = 650 per month.
3140 per month total in the summer
i can mine about .0007 per miner
per day .0007 * 27 = .0189 per day * 30 = .567 per month
Revenue at 6k = .567 * 6000 = 3360
Now granted I use my space and some electricity for other purposes
So as you can see 6k is about where I start to lose money.
This dose not even include the cost of the miners.
If the price stays low for very long miners will shut down and investors will pull out and btc will have to fork and reset the difficulty. You will never mine all of the coin in the current difficulty with half or more of the miners off line.
Now I'm not in an ideal area but neither are about 20 - 30 % percent of the miners or more.
Some have it worse some have it better.
The first indication the price is to low is a drop in network hash rate which we are seeing now.
I'm sorry I didn't answer your 6666.66 question.
My thoughts on this.
It is all just conjecture but it bears out better than charts sometimes especially on the low.
Always, always, always, remember BTC was and still is controlled by the miners. They are the consensus voters. Without them there is simply no bitcoin. This is how it was setup. So if you don’t understand mining and you are heavily invested you are dealing with a half deck of cards. Buyer beware.
Remember BCH would now be bitcoin if it were not for the miners. Everyone else wanted BCH to become bitcoin but the miners didn’t allow it.
Now for the 6666.66.
It took an exstream amount of effort and money to set the daily low of gdax to 6666.66 and it was no accident.
If you are familiar with the exchanges you will note how the price between exchanges changes instantly between exchanges, even though the buy and sell orders are different, the price is consistent between exchanges with very rare exceptions.
Myself and others believe the price is somehow manipulated by the exchanges in collaboration with an unknown entity possibly miners.
I believe along with other miners, which I will never name, the 6666.66 was a signal to the other exchanges not to allow the price to go below the 6666.66 level for the day. So all of the exchanges had to have bots in place fixed at this same price or slightly above so as to buy or sell, which ever was needed, to hold the price above 6666.66 low on gdax. This way it would remain fixed for the day.
I personally think this was done to shut down the rise in new mining operations and lower the rate of difficulty increase for the blockchain. It was allowed to stand for one day to see what effect it would have on mining.
I also believe it did not have a dramatic enough effect, only about 3.5 %, and they will creep it down until they get the increase down to less than 5% . It is currently sitting at 6.40%
The excuse for the price drop would be the result of the CTFC inquiry into exchange records and this kind of action is exactly what the CTFC investigation will be focused on, the price between exchanges being more than coincident.
Exchanges are not supposed to be trading with themselves at all let alone using bots to fix prices hi or low. Because of this investigation it may have been the last chance the exchanges will get to do it but it will not stop the major players from manipulation. They simply will have to work harder. They have enough money and coin to control the low price in a low volume market.
The high however is a completely separate matter and depends on public sentiment and volume. However the whales can still try and trigger a sell off if it is beneficial and these sell offs seem to coincide with bad news like the CTFC investigation.
Keep in mind all of this is conjecture as there is no way to prove it. But I believe it does quack and the CTFC also believes it may be going on.
Whenever you see the difficulty rate start to increase more than 10% twice in a row keep a close eye on your bitcoin or altcoin positions because this can start the big players, miners, warring with each other especially in a weak market where 3000 or 4000 coins can have huge impact.
They can easily part with coins and given any good reason they will. Remember a 10% increase in difficulty is a 10% loss for them no matter what the price of bitcoin is, unless they caused the increase in difficulty themselves. They are the ones loosing 10% so if they can stop it they will. If they can slow it down they will. This is why it is called the game.
You have to have stake in the game to play. Miners have the stakes in BTC, period. Everyone else is a spectator. No matter how much you paid to get in you have no say in the game because you have no mining power.
The best comment in the list thank you
@johnfdoe Thanks for that analysis. Just upvoted your comment and will follow you back
"The bottom is how much it cost to mine a block."- wow, very good explanation. Probably explains the behaviour of miners to a t. But are they really the primary variable involved. Not sure about that.
Fundamental analysis matter more than Technical ones when it comes to price volatility of Bitcoin. A big good news can take BTC price to 20K$ as it did in Jan-2018
I apologize if you misunderstood me we were only talking about the bottom price not the top.