Difficulty Decrease? | Bitcointalksearch.org

lemonginger

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 100

firstbits: 121vnq

Quote from: bcpokey on June 11, 2011, 02:33:09 PM

A huge drop in price will likely cause people to drop out in the next difficulty level (increase in difficulty of ~45% and decrease in price of about 100% = new people selling off their expensive rigs in droves). Though it may decrease or stabilize, hard to tell.

hmm, i think its far more likely new rig owners will just keep plugging away even if profitability falls off or even temporarily goes negative - both in the hopes of the price of btc going back up in the future (and saving until then) and to recover sunk costs.

One reason why I think profitability of mining will pretty quickly become marginal for the average miner.

Meatball

sr. member

Activity: 378

Merit: 250

Like other's have said, there's no direct correlation between price and difficulty, it's all network power and how fast the network is solving blocks. If the network solves more than 6 blocks an hour, it's going up, less than 6 an hour, it'll go down.

Indirectly, if the price drops, you may see some people determine it's not worth it for them to continue mining and that could cause a drop in network power and eventually lead to a difficulty change.

Honestly, I doubt it though. Just a few weeks ago BTC was $5 and things were still ramping up then. You never know what can happen.

bcpokey

hero member

Activity: 602

Merit: 500

Mining effects will be delayed usually into the next difficulty.

When there was a difficulty increase of 75% the next difficulty increased by 15% (despite a huge jump in bitcoin price).

A huge drop in price will likely cause people to drop out in the next difficulty level (increase in difficulty of ~45% and decrease in price of about 100% = new people selling off their expensive rigs in droves). Though it may decrease or stabilize, hard to tell.

AngelusWebDesign

sr. member

Activity: 392

Merit: 250

People would have to quit mining -- not just casual miners with a 5770, but guys with the "Big Iron" -- for difficulty to go down.

Right now, as things are going, difficulty is set to increase in 3 1/2 days, and by quite a bit!

Synaptic

member

Activity: 84

Merit: 10

Quote from: horrorshow on June 11, 2011, 02:17:12 PM

Since the price is now around ~17.00, does that mean we're back to an earlier difficulty? I just got a 5850 going @ 350mh/s in addition to my 5830 pair @ ~550tot so it's kind of hard to tell, but it seems like I've been getting a lot of BTC today.

If not, if the price remains low, does that mean it will eventually reset to an earlier difficulty?

Difficulty is calculated every 2016 blocks, so no, the difficulty is not changing.

Is it likely that if the price stays this low or goes lower that difficulty will decrease?

Well, there's many people here who don't quite understand reality that would like to believe so, but if you'd like a more accurate analysis of why it won't decrease anywhere in the near terms (6 difficulty adjustments or more), browse my recent posts on the subject.

tysat

legendary

Activity: 966

Merit: 1004

Keep it real

The only way difficulty is going down is if people stop mining.... it's not determined by the price of BTC but by how many blocks are being generated.

Difficulty should influence price some (high difficulty = higher price), but it's not definite that it will and the converse of the statement is not true.

horrorshow

newbie

Activity: 56

Merit: 0

Since the price is now around ~17.00, does that mean we're back to an earlier difficulty? I just got a 5850 going @ 350mh/s in addition to my 5830 pair @ ~550tot so it's kind of hard to tell, but it seems like I've been getting a lot of BTC today.

If not, if the price remains low, does that mean it will eventually reset to an earlier difficulty?

Topic: Difficulty Decrease? (Read 1253 times)