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Topic: Difficulty curve (Read 4290 times)

hero member
Activity: 742
Merit: 500
September 19, 2013, 08:50:23 AM
#31
At which point does the curve become a vertical line ?


The Universe intended some things to be plotted in log-scale. Too lazy to post log-scale sipa pic. Tongue

hero member
Activity: 692
Merit: 500
September 19, 2013, 08:36:32 AM
#30
At which point does the curve become a vertical line ?

full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
September 17, 2013, 11:33:38 PM
#29
Experience should learn us that end of december promises are not likely to ship before February, but we shall see. No doubt whenever it starts, sparks will fly though Smiley

I'm pessimistic there as well. I'm presuming that KNC is one of those December deliverables...

KnC will very likely ship much sooner than December, in fact I'm personally counting on it!

ASIC hardware will naturally come down in price until there is a proper margin squeeze on the hardware vendors. The next crunch point will be when the price that is paid for electricity is the most important when all the ASICS are broadly the same cost and mining roughly the same speed. (perhaps 1 year or more away)

Adrian

www.byteminr.com
I think it will be more like 3 years before we reach the point where everyone at the same place in ASICs and energy efficiency and electricity costs the key factor.
sr. member
Activity: 574
Merit: 256
CryptoTalk.Org - Get Paid for every Post!
September 17, 2013, 03:42:01 PM
#28
Experience should learn us that end of december promises are not likely to ship before February, but we shall see. No doubt whenever it starts, sparks will fly though Smiley

I'm pessimistic there as well. I'm presuming that KNC is one of those December deliverables...

KnC will very likely ship much sooner than December, in fact I'm personally counting on it!

ASIC hardware will naturally come down in price until there is a proper margin squeeze on the hardware vendors. The next crunch point will be when the price that is paid for electricity is the most important when all the ASICS are broadly the same cost and mining roughly the same speed. (perhaps 1 year or more away)

Adrian

www.byteminr.com
newbie
Activity: 47
Merit: 0
September 16, 2013, 01:26:52 PM
#27
Experience should learn us that end of december promises are not likely to ship before February, but we shall see. No doubt whenever it starts, sparks will fly though Smiley

I'm pessimistic there as well. I'm presuming that KNC is one of those December deliverables...
legendary
Activity: 980
Merit: 1040
September 16, 2013, 01:23:20 PM
#26
It's tapering off now. We're pretty much at the end of generation 1 ASICs; that is every Avalon chip that could be mining is mining, BFL dribble out as usual and Butfury are probably waiting on the foundry after a heavy deployment. There is, althou

I was under the impression both avalon and bitfurry bulk chip sales are only just finding their ways to PCBs that customers are eagerly waiting for. BFL is supposed to be accelerating shipments and then there is 500TH worth of 130nm asics that I-dont-remember-who is supposedly bringing online starting this very moment over the next few months.

I see no tapering in the carts either.



Quote
There is, although, a massive flood breaking around December as at least a few of the 28nm companies start shipping in bulk.

Experience should learn us that end of december promises are not likely to ship before February, but we shall see. No doubt whenever it starts, sparks will fly though Smiley
newbie
Activity: 47
Merit: 0
September 16, 2013, 01:11:06 PM
#25
It's tapering off now. We're pretty much at the end of generation 1 ASICs; that is every Avalon chip that could be mining is mining, BFL dribble out as usual and BitFury are probably waiting on the foundry after a heavy deployment. There is, although, a massive flood breaking around December as at least a few of the 28nm companies start shipping in bulk.

Could be that the next difficulty increase (and maybe the one or two after) will fall below the percentage rate of recent increases. Late November/December will see the start of huge rises which will continue for a quarter.
hero member
Activity: 742
Merit: 500
September 16, 2013, 08:43:46 AM
#24
All living men are mortal.
Socrates is mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is alive!

Socrates was mortal. Therefore, he was alive.
Actually, even that is a non sequitur.

Quote
Sorry, you can't just wave some hands and some things that have some vague commonality. Good reasoning requires at least arguing for a causal relationship. I can argue how increases in hashpower encourage decreases in the rate of increase— higher hashpower makes every bit of marginal increase in hashpower less profitable— but not the opposite.

Let me help you with that one. Increase in network speed proportionally decreases the market value of mining hardware per TH. As a result of that, asic vendors will drop their prices for their next batch, to make sure they appear profitable again, which spurs another round of purchases. Thats a feedback loop, every price drop increases future difficutly, which will spur more price drops, to maintain sales, sales that will again increase difficulty . This loop will only end once asic vendors can no longer drop prices and remain profitable, and we are between one and two orders of magnitude away from marginal silicon production cost now. Until that point, the only brake on network growth is the asic vendor's ability to produce and ship their hardware. If they could instantly produce, ship and deploy, we would achieve the balance between production cost and mining profitability almost overnight and we could be approaching an exahash next month.


Called me? A lot of things Bitcoin are Feedback Loops, and feedback loops tend to generate exponentials Tongue

"When the loop gain is positive and above 1, there will typically be exponential growth, increasing oscillations or divergences from equilibrium.[3]" The ultimate reliable source for all truth: Wikipedia Tongue

 
legendary
Activity: 980
Merit: 1040
September 16, 2013, 03:34:06 AM
#23
All living men are mortal.
Socrates is mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is alive!

Socrates was mortal. Therefore, he was alive.
Actually, even that is a non sequitur.

Quote
Sorry, you can't just wave some hands and some things that have some vague commonality. Good reasoning requires at least arguing for a causal relationship. I can argue how increases in hashpower encourage decreases in the rate of increase— higher hashpower makes every bit of marginal increase in hashpower less profitable— but not the opposite.

Let me help you with that one. Increase in network speed proportionally decreases the market value of mining hardware per TH. As a result of that, asic vendors will drop their prices for their next batch, to make sure they appear profitable again, which spurs another round of purchases. Thats a feedback loop, every price drop increases future difficutly, which will spur more price drops, to maintain sales, sales that will again increase difficulty . This loop will only end once asic vendors can no longer drop prices and remain profitable, and we are between one and two orders of magnitude away from marginal silicon production cost now. Until that point, the only brake on network growth is the asic vendor's ability to produce and ship their hardware. If they could instantly produce, ship and deploy, we would achieve the balance between production cost and mining profitability almost overnight and we could be approaching an exahash next month.
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
September 16, 2013, 03:12:07 AM
#22
Sorry if this rant is too off topic, its a pet peeve of mine.
It's also a peeve of mine, and it very much is ontopic. The people just fitting random formulas to the hashrate and making predictions are producing BS numbers that obscure better analysis (e.g. ones factoring in published shipping schedules or profitability over power costs) and make everyone dumber.

Also exponential functions are present in very much everything self organised. And humans are bloody good at self organising...

All living men are mortal.
Socrates is mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is alive!

Sorry, you can't just wave some hands and some things that have some vague commonality. Good reasoning requires at least arguing for a causal relationship. I can argue how increases in hashpower encourage decreases in the rate of increase— higher hashpower makes every bit of marginal increase in hashpower less profitable— but not the opposite.

what difficulty do you think it takes until we see a flood of hashrate on altcoins?  I mean there are more and more sha256 alts over time.
So many alt-coins that the gpu miners are being diluted as they leave bitcoin mining.  I actually doubt any gpu miners left mining BTC at this point anyway. My guess is LTC has been the main beneficiary
legendary
Activity: 1456
Merit: 1018
HoneybadgerOfMoney.com Weed4bitcoin.com
September 16, 2013, 03:07:02 AM
#21
Sorry if this rant is too off topic, its a pet peeve of mine.
It's also a peeve of mine, and it very much is ontopic. The people just fitting random formulas to the hashrate and making predictions are producing BS numbers that obscure better analysis (e.g. ones factoring in published shipping schedules or profitability over power costs) and make everyone dumber.

Also exponential functions are present in very much everything self organised. And humans are bloody good at self organising...

All living men are mortal.
Socrates is mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is alive!

Sorry, you can't just wave some hands and some things that have some vague commonality. Good reasoning requires at least arguing for a causal relationship. I can argue how increases in hashpower encourage decreases in the rate of increase— higher hashpower makes every bit of marginal increase in hashpower less profitable— but not the opposite.

what difficulty do you think it takes until we see a flood of hashrate on altcoins?  I mean there are more and more sha256 alts over time.
staff
Activity: 4172
Merit: 8419
September 16, 2013, 02:56:08 AM
#20
Sorry if this rant is too off topic, its a pet peeve of mine.
It's also a peeve of mine, and it very much is ontopic. The people just fitting random formulas to the hashrate and making predictions are producing BS numbers that obscure better analysis (e.g. ones factoring in published shipping schedules or profitability over power costs) and make everyone dumber.

Also exponential functions are present in very much everything self organised. And humans are bloody good at self organising...

All living men are mortal.
Socrates is mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is alive!

Sorry, you can't just wave some hands and some things that have some vague commonality. Good reasoning requires at least arguing for a causal relationship. I can argue how increases in hashpower encourage decreases in the rate of increase— higher hashpower makes every bit of marginal increase in hashpower less profitable— but not the opposite.
legendary
Activity: 980
Merit: 1040
September 16, 2013, 02:48:20 AM
#19
hi guys,
Now that we are at 1 peta, this is my guesstimate:

LOL.. I was going to make a similar one. Only its seems much more likely that the curve will look like a bell curve and next year difficulty will go down. You know it makes sense.
hero member
Activity: 692
Merit: 500
full member
Activity: 196
Merit: 100
September 15, 2013, 10:13:43 PM
#17
hi guys,
Now that we are at 1 peta, this is my guesstimate:
legendary
Activity: 924
Merit: 1000
September 15, 2013, 08:46:55 PM
#16
I also feel we have a long wait before the difficulty rise starts to slow down. We will have to wait until technology has peaked and more efficient miners are not being made.
hero member
Activity: 742
Merit: 500
September 15, 2013, 08:40:14 PM
#15

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”
Albert Bartlett


Awesome quote!

Also exponential functions are present in very much everything self organised. And humans are bloody good at self organising... It is not surprising that the growth is indeed exponential and I won't be surprised to see it continue well into mid next year with all the manufacturers delivering second gen, third gen, bulk chips of all gens and all the hype overshooting well past the point any retail customer can ROI. Along the way people without end will keep saying that it's about to level or go S shape or linear or that people will stop pouring money at it and what not...

Disclaimer: I am still one of those "pouring money at it" (via one purchase at KNC)... still...

legendary
Activity: 2492
Merit: 1473
LEALANA Bitcoin Grim Reaper
September 15, 2013, 06:26:25 PM
#14
I think it will be about 6-9 months before it start to truly level off. We may see a brief pause as new asics get shipped and out into the hands of users.

But it's on...like donkey Kong.
member
Activity: 546
Merit: 10
September 15, 2013, 04:36:35 PM
#13
Its also a power function.  Its also a set of piecewise linear functions.  Its also a series of step functions which is physically what actually happens to the difficulty.

If you look for a pattern you can often find it.  That doesn't mean the pattern is representative of physical processes and useful for predictions.
legendary
Activity: 980
Merit: 1040
September 15, 2013, 05:10:03 AM
#12
heh, you expect them to be abe to read a logarithmic chart? Smiley
 
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”
Albert Bartlett

Maybe this will help though:



2.5% growth per day is an exponential function (that happens to work out almost exactly to doubling every month).
And if that is not scary enough, the growth rate is still accelerating, and thats well before even a single 28nm asic was shipped.
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