Must I really squabble in the depths of this newbie forum?? Well so be it.
I recently got into bitCoin mining a month or two ago (way too late apparently). As I am efficient at data mining, I learned a lot very quickly about bitCoin and the process of mining. Likewise the low scale mining i was doing with my nVidia card was borderline useless, but it did allow me the opportunity to get my feet wet.
I do not have any direct questions that will yield direct or theoretical factual answers. I'm looking ahead to the future where the bitCoin potential value will be, and how much more difficult it will be to obtain them due to the mining community soon to be flooded with ASIC hardware.
Well i'm a product of my destruction. Last night I put an order in for a 50Gh/s model of Butterfly Labs equipment. I was told that it will ship in July and that current orders are expected to ship as early as next week. I'v seen a few demo video's of people testing the hardware. So July is the magic date for me. Where the difficult lies three months from now will strongly determine what i will be able to mine at that given time.
Two things. Where do we realistically expect difficulty to lie with the hardware coming out? Iv seen some analytical data by users on this very forum putting estimates together 6 months ago saying we would be in the 100M difficulty area right now. Those were not accurate... Obviously the ASIC hardware release has been delayed but at that same time, Avalons hardware is three batches into the market right now. From the information I received from Butterfly labs my order is batch three as well. This means there are already thousands of ASIC product out right now currently crunching numbers.
I think we are over-estimating the market of ASIC right now. Since almost none of the companies are releasing actual order data (i'm assuming to not scare miners away from buying there product), there is no real way to calculate the amount of hash power that will hit the market with these devices. Unless someone has raw data that can be proven? As far as I know Avalon shipped 300 in the first batch, 600 in the second batch, and I don't know about the third that is in progress.
The minirig everyone keeps raving about that's suppose to super inflate the mining community can't even be ordered anymore. I'm guessing because the availability of chips is dwindling? Or the unit doesn't yet work. From what i understand some of these units HAVE shipped. If you look at he difficulty graph over the last few months its almost tripled! I'm guessing its due to the Avalon release and not sheer volume of people who "all of the sudden" picked up mining considering its barely profitable as it is based on exchange rates without running a large scale operation.
What are your thoughts on difficulty?
What are your thoughts on where its headed?
Do we really think difficulty will still peak to 100M like some "experts" say in the next few months based on the fact that ASIC hardware is already on the market and hashing away?
Would it also be safe to say that GPU hashing will be extinct (as cpu was pushed out initially by gpu) as a result to ASIC, hopefully dropping the difficulty down somewhat?
Also bitCoin value has a lot to do with the demand for it. That been said, as difficulty increases would it be wrong to assume value of bitCoin also increase as the work to create them becomes more and more difficult. This is a trend that exists right now though they may not directly correlate. It is fair to say as the difficulty has gone up dramatically over the last 4 months... so has the value..
Let me have it people
Oh and i'm Tony btw. I hope to become a bigger part of this community over time!