Topic: Diff thread Jan 13 to Jan 27 picks are closed! - page 11. (Read 8573 times)

I don't think of it in terms of hashrate being a constraint, I think in terms of wattage... in my observation, availability of hardware doesn't seem to me to be the slowdown in the rate of growth; capacity for power does, since the megafarms are the ones driving total network speed now, and power/cooling are their primary concern when it comes to planning growth.

Worst case: Assume half the network is .5 watts per gigahash/sec or worse, the remaining is .25w, and that all miners with .5w+ devices will be be turned off as unprofitable and replaced with .05w devices in the next few months. For the same power capacity, half the network goes up 10x, which means the whole network goes up 5x to about 4,200 petahash/sec. (Actually, it's closer to 5.5x, but I'm generalizing here anyway). That's the maximum power capacity of the current network in the short term. The restriction then would be the price of the sub-20nm devices we're being promised...if their prices are 5x higher than the .25w devices, there's no incentive for the .25w miners to adopt early by dropping their .25w devices for the .05w stuff. If their prices are less than 5x, then Katie bar the door, because there's going to be a race to the halving - and past it - like the widespread introduction of the first ASICs. If the exchange rate of BTC keeps pace with (or does better than) the rise in difficulty *after* the halving compared to the price they paid for the equipment before the halving, then the halving will be transparent to their bottom lines and it won't be a factor for large farm adoption of .05w devices. If the exchange rate doesn't keep pace at the halving, then network growth should effectively stop until the older devices are paid off. (Keep in mind, though, that it only matters to current revenue generation - miners that have a large stash of mined Bitcoins held in reserve will benefit much more to the rise in price, giving them even more power to grow immediately by adding .05w devices to their existing .25w farms.) It's definitely possible, then, to surpass your expectations - in theory.

All that said, that is the worst case I see - I don't think there is actually enough manufacturing capacity with the existing vendors to deliver that much .05w hash in such a short timeframe. I personally think the non-manufacturer megafarms are waiting until after the halving to determine what risks to take next. I know if I had even 5% of the network, I'd be sitting on my hands right now hoarding BTC hoping for an exchange rate increase even more than it has in the last quarter... unless I was making my own hardware and already knew my cost for upgrading, then I'd be balls to the wall building more and more capacity in my farms. Poor us small potatoes, though...totally at the mercy of the hardware vendors deciding how much to mine for themselves and how much to offer for sale (and for what price).

Lots of moving parts. Fascinating, and in some ways scary.

okay  so shift the 27 to 17  and the 13 to 3  and July 3rd if we do 7.7% average.

I can't see us doing 7.7%  from now to July 3   it is still a factor of    2.8  so diif would be 113 x 2.8 =317

I just can not see how we can be at a diff of 317 and  hash of   2.8 x 830ph = 2324ph

I have been trying to find any news that might have pushed btc down.  Worst I could find recently was Cryptsy - http://www.coindesk.com/class-action-lawsuit-filed-digital-currency-exchange-cryptsy/ .    Do you guy's think the fact of a decent size exchange having problem is having much effect or something else is doing it?

It's still in 430's so not horrible but is lower then a week ago around the 450 price.  So a small drop really I guess in scheme of things.

Id say that would be more reason for manufacturers to push sales now and into the future.. Just like with the california gold rush.. only a few come out rich.. Out of those few 90 % are the ones that sold the shovels and gold pans .  the analogy applies to this in so many ways!!!!..  That's why when bitmain released s7 at such high price i was pissed.. As i knew where we are ultimately heading..it is what it is..  Mine as much as you can now .. hold as much as you can now. wait for a few halvings and if its increased enough in value for you then sell it..  But you never know if btc will be here in 10 years so that's the big unknown .. Hence this is all a gamble. So to each their own in this experiment..

Best Regards
d57heinz

Below is an interesting corollary to bitcoin mining. Just as the gold rush progressed individual miners were pushed out as industrial miners were the only ones able to extract the gold profitably. The big difference is with the halving the difficulty of extraction is known well in advance. Hence right now we are in the dig deep, dig fast mode by the industrial miners. They know they only have a limited time to get their return on investment and will deploy equipment until  the ROI disappears and maybe a little longer. It will be really interesting to see what happens as the halving nears, I kind of think the difficulty will slow as some big miners are going to go out of business. Perhaps the  there is hope that the hobby miners will hang on as they are willing to take a small loss to keep mining?


http://www.history.com/topics/gold-rush-of-1849

LASTING IMPACT OF THE GOLD RUSH
After 1850, the surface gold in California largely disappeared, even as miners continued to arrive. Mining had always been difficult and dangerous labor, and striking it rich required good luck as much as skill and hard work. Moreover, the average daily take for an independent miner working with his pick and shovel had by then sharply decreased from what it had been in 1848. As gold became more and more difficult to reach, the growing industrialization of mining drove more and more miners from independence into wage labor. The new technique of hydraulic mining, developed in 1853, brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region’s landscape.

Its crazy how we went from 743,604,444 GH/s to 811,421,684 GH/s. That is like 14,315 Antminer S7, and they only sell like 50-100 a day.

Even if Bitfury is more efficent by a factor of 5, thats 2863 Bitfury machines, so they would need to build 250 of them every single day to keep up.

I agree they just keep the change at 0%. I'm also thinking it will happen the first two weeks of July or late June.

26,713 blocks left, 2016 blocks per cycle, so 13.25 cycles left. The halving occurs 1/3 into a difficulty adjustment cycle. Last time it happened 1/6 of the way in.

Yes and even if we get 10% diff increases every period it will probably still be sometime in July or so. Or late June, highly doubt any sooner then that.

July 18th which I have on nextdifficulty.com is based on next difficulty estimate + 0% afterwards which is basically 0% minus one two days, the same as bitcoinclock has. So you must have something wrong in your calculations.

edit: the simpliest formula  halvingdays=(420000-lastblocknumber)/144  gives you when say last block was 393260 = 26740/144=185.7 days. Today is January 14th, + 185 days =July 17th

I am not sure how they get the date.

Are they basing it on 9%

Are they basing it on 8%

Are they basing it on 7%

My July 27 is based on 0%

My early July 13 is based on 7%

So I am not so sure what % they use to get July 17

Hope that the diff will stop growing at 10% 

Why 27? bitcoinclock has it at the 17th now.

 we made block 393120 2016-01-13 06:39:38 this was the 2016 block of last adjustment


block 393121    2016-01-13 07:03:04   this was the 1 block of this adjustment

block 393226   2016-01-14 01:48:42   this was the  106th block if this adjustment


so we are 19 hours and 10 minutes in      that should be    114 blocks


So real world actual time  we are at a negative number.  about   -7.02%

the problem is the network can do  25% higher then this speed.

So  while this low number is nice   the big boys crank it up and we pull a few 175 block days in a row and plus 8 %   or worse.

Bitwisdom is starting high double digits:

Bitcoin Difficulty:    113,354,299,801
Estimated Next Difficulty:    125,610,740,850 (+10.81%)
Adjust time:    After 1915 Blocks, About 12.6 days
Hashrate(?):    843,249,330 GH/s

Price is don around 431.. .so the mid 440's are not there right now.

we are not going to keep at 8 - 10%  without a price change.

now to answer how fast will we reduce    2016 blocks in 13 days vs 14 days is 155 blocks vs 144 blocks

or 7.64 %  

so it is

 
 Jan 27
 Feb 10
 Feb 24
 Mar  9
 Mar 23
 Apr   6
 Apr 20
 May  4
 May 18
 Jun   1
 Jun  15
 Jun  29
 Jul   13
 Jul   27  current ½ ing  guess

so drop 14 days = Jul  13

of course that is with 7.64%

Now  here is why it will not be 7.64%    14 adjustments at that number = a factor of 2.803  so current diff = 113  it would be

2.803 x 113 =   a diff of 317! 

 puts all .25 watt gear under water at 9 cents.

and remember the network has 400ph in  .5 watt or worse gear.

I think we're going to be high single digits again, too.  Simply astounding, hundreds of PH each adjustment amount to sooooo many machines being plugged in around the world.

I feel we'll be near 10% again guys

If we keep advancing at 8-10% per adjustment, wouldn't the halving come at 8-10% time sooner?

Right now cryptocoinnews estimates at 188 Days until halving, but if we continuously go at 10% wouldn't it be 18.8 days less? Thus halving coming late june.

Well fourth of July would be all american  but I think   July 10 or 11.


9 hours and 14 minutes ago we made block 393120 2016-01-13 06:39:38

so since then we did 59 blocks   should have done  55 blocks  so we are at 7.27% real time

Hey Philip, when do you think the halving will be based on the current difficulty increases and hardware sales forecasts? Looks like we are about to pull it forward to July 16th.