Topic: Difficulty slowdown: Is this turning into a long-term trend? [Discussion Thread] (Read 4176 times)

Estimated Next Difficulty:   39,183,914,852 (+8.89%)
Adjust time:   After 459 Blocks, About 2.9 days
Hashrate(?):   306,218,586 GH/s

Thats (way) too much for just luck. The network may not be above 300PH yet, its definitely above above the previous 257.

As for the impact of declining prices, check the charts above. Mining is still too profitable for anyone with access to cheap electricity and hardware at cost, ie, for all those private mega mines.

The spike in hashrate could very well be "good luck" by the overall network. We don't know for sure that additional mining capacity was actually added to the network.

I would speculate that since the price of bitcoin has been overall declining for some time now that less and less additional miners are going to be added to the network

I am amazed people are still getting into mining at this price. How is anyone making any money?

So - what will be the difficulty at the end of the year?

Seems like the difficulty slowdown...




...  just stopped slowing down.

So we hope! Spondoolies has a good rep, but anything can happen. Maybe they'll pull a Neptune. 

Yes it will ship!

most likely correct

Newly bought miner negative roi
Second hand miner maybe positive roi
atm

I wonder if any new hardware will ROI right now.... Any of you guys want to help compile a list of whats shipping ATM? I'll start with 5 random ones, feel free to add on. I assumed spondoolies shipping was free, but I'm not sure. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Spondoolies SP35 "Yukon"
1.94 BTC/TH  (PSU INCLUDED, SHIPPING INCLUDED)
0.66 W/GH
Delivery November*
Very good specs, but will it ship?

Spondoolies SP20 "Jackson"
2.05 BTC/TH (NO PSU, SHIPPING INCLUDED)
0.9 W/GH
Shipping.
Shitty SP35 for more money. Don't buy this.

ASICMINER Prisma
~1 BTC/TH (NO PSU, SHIPPING NOT INCLUDED, NO CONTROLLER)
0.75 W/GH
Shipping, with significant lead time.
Cheap and efficient, but PSU and shipping needs to be factored in to your cost. As well, there may be a few weeks lead time if you buy now.

Antminer S4
~1.79 BTC/TH (PSU INCLUDED, SHIPPING NOT INCLUDED)
0.69 W/GH (Can be downclocked)
Shipping.
A more expensive miner, as shipping costs are quite high with this unit.

Cointerra Aire
~1.786 BTC/TH (NO PSU, SHIPPING NOT INCLUDED, NO CONTROLLER.)
0.225 W/GH (CLAIMED)
Shipping Q1 2014*
Very expensive for the ship date. However, the claimed power efficiency is the best I've seen. These claims are nothing but hot AIRE until they start shipping though, especially with Cointerra's "meh" track record.




*Estimated by the manufacturer, this is often bullshit.

close enough.

 Although if it all crashed and burned then gpus had usefulness.  if it all crashes now my house full of s-3's are not very valuable for anything else but a space heater.

We're where we were 2years ago pre asic. expect diff to rise only with price changes.

Relax internet sucks for a detailed discussion we all write in a shorthand of sorts.   We are voicing an interpolation of your charts as to how growth will be.

fairglu sees flat diff  increase at  a price  of 200 usd by looking at your charts.

  I see flat diff increase at 300  since I think your charts shows a flat diff at 200 and I think the big builders want a safety margin  of sorts.



I see the big builders being able to move the network 100% bigger in under 60 days.  I see them not doing it since they think it is a losing move. Due to the fact they are mining more then half the coins as I type.

BTW coins are 336 right now .  I just purchased 1 from coinbase.  As I am still bullish on them.

I'm meaning the "zero benefits zero losses" point, where hashrate, energy costs & BTC exchange rate would mean neither benefits nor losses for miners. The market price would obviously be at any point above or below.

What charts? My charts? They dont say anything of the kind. They cant predict BTC exchange rate at all, they can only predict network hashrate given assumptions like the BTC exchange rate.

those charts say that.  right now coins are 331 and growth for this jump is about 4.5%.  I for one think 200 is too low.  I think 300 is the cutoff as I think the big guys want a better margin of error.

So price needs to get near $200/BTC in a few months for things to even out?
(ignoring any unforeseen external factors for the sake of the argument)

Interesting charts.
What they say is actually the reason why I'm skeptic about possibility of important increase of btc/usd price in medium term - large miners tend to sell a lot of mined bitcoins to cover capital costs and fund new capacity.

In the past year we've literally seen a 100x increase in network speed. We wont be seeing anything like that ever again, but neither are we anywhere close to a ceiling at todays btc exchange rate.

Bitfury recently announced they secured funds to expand their mine to 100MW. With their current chips, that means a few 100PH. With the 0.2J/GH they claim for their 28nm chip by the end of this year (0.1J/GH next year), that means ~500PH and possibly ~1EH next year. Thats BF alone.

KnC have said they will gun for 20% of the network, up from <4%.  In the past 24 hr they appear to have doubled their hashrate, so I guess thats starting. Then there is AM sitting on a huge pile of chips that will find their way to the network one way or another,  Spondoolies 28nm, etc.

I posted this chart over a year ago:



and got mostly ridiculed both for the conclusions and the assumptions, which turned out to be pretty darn accurate (considering the >100x increase it predicted). But to predict the next few years, they are outdated given that efficiency will likely be 3-5x better than that, and price per GH will drop below $0.2/GH according to at least spondoolies. So lets see what happens then:




If you pick a conservative electricity cost $8c/KwH and double BF and SP most optimistic efficiency projections from 0.1J/GH to 0.2, you end up somewhere around 1700PH. If you expect bitcoin to rise in value, you can increase those numbers proportionally.

I thing this is just a temporary slow down. We will stil have 15%up or more spikes.

This slowing down of difficulty rising is just silence before storm. Look to the summer increases, 3small and on august 19, BAM! 20% jump! New farms or upgrades of the older ones are taking place for sure!

Down spikes? only and maybe! after begining of 2016, when next halving will take place!

My prediction are: 5%, 15% and constantly around 10% untill summer time! But i hope for 0% increase