Topic: Don't expect another 8% Diff increase -- expect more (Read 8783 times)

grod kinda beat me to it. I'd be happy to lay out 8.5% for both but now I look like I'm copying him

Network growth rate has almost reached a 14day average of 1%/day due to many 3day average of sub1% (and some sub 0%). If no crazy ass price swings happen I see no reason for this trend not to continue. Like grod though, I'm not saying nothing can change, if some big event occurs all that crap goes out the window, which I readily stipulate to.

But for fun we can do 1990576 for block 141120. Your prediction I believe is 2130690 for the median.

difficulty will keep going up, until it reach an equilibrium with average electricity cost. Those who already have miners have no reason to stop mining, until it reaches equilibrium with electricity cost. Plus there will always be new miners coming into the game or people that just likes to mine, at a loss.

First and foremost, I cannot predict the future.

But from the looks of things, I would guess that we will not have too many more 10% increases and that this "new paradigm" of ever growing difficultly will not be sustainable. I would suspect that we might even have a difficulty decrease in the near future (2 - 3 months).

The costs of getting into the 3m difficulty range are in the 10s of millions of dollars and do not take into account the net effect of driving out smaller miners (less than 5Gh).

This assumes no new discoveries / technologies that have any great impact on mining.

Again, I cannot predict the future and have been known to be wrong before.

Mm, not "everyone" will keep on mining.  I cut back, and just have a very energy efficient PC running a 6950.  $350 of hardware creating about a dollar per day after electricity and taxes.  Why so little?  It's partly due to the weak US dollar (Australian 'monopoly money' buys $1.09 US dollars) and high electricity costs.

If difficulty reaches 2.5M, I and many other people will quit if bitcoin's price remains at $12 to $13.  Some people may get excited about spending a dollar per megahash and making under a dollar per day on it.  I don't.  Investing money in rigs to maybe recover mining and hardware costs after a year doesn't sound like a great investment, especially as bitcoin could fall to zero at any time.

I'm sure there is 10+ million mid to high end radeons on the internet and even bigger number of people who will upgrade to 6x series in the next year. Bitcoin will keep penetrating wider audience and network will continue to grow at a high rate for some time. Network right now is at 13.5 Th and growing, expected to hit 20 Th by October. Difficulty will be around 3 million at that time. Bitcoin price, unless something major happens, will be most likely around $10 and EVERYONE will still keep mining as usual. It will still only cost less than $5 to make the coin worth $10. Not the gold rush times but still very nice way to subsidize your new radeon card.

Any thoughts on the recent spike being caused by NMC mining drying up, and a lot of people moving over from there?

Oh boy, this is not good. I just started mining a week ago. One card. *rolls eyes*

Yup, looking like 10% on the nose.  And instant difficulty is 8.5% higher already.

It is clear my ass has amazing predictive powers.  I will have a plaster cast of it made, so that you all can order a replica to mount on a pedistal or over your fireplace instead of that gauche moose head.

But I must admit, the growth trend is a bit surprising even accounting for variance.  While we win by price-is-right rules, looks like the next difficulty will be 10% higher although the payout per coin looks to continue trending lower.   My ass says we won't see a slowdown in this trend until BTC hit $5-$6, it's still profitable to add existing video cards to the network.

Don't make me have to moderate this thread.

It's getting close to the next change. Looks like any one who guessed 8-10% was extremely close and your prediction was way off

It is much harder to go out two re-targets or more. But it is something I am still working on despite any back patting.

I get it. For block 139104 you are calling 1834633, I am calling 1986157. We will see who is closer.

Care to go out to block 141120?

Well that's a fair point. But as I said it's all a very complex mishmash. It is much more difficult for difficulty to decrease than increase. Once you have invested into bitcoin you are invested. If you are making $5 that's still $5 you are making. And the fact is that mining is still ridiculously profitable. Even after all the difficulty increases I see about 1000 USD profit per month off 5GHash in possibly the most electrically expensive area in the country. If I weren't electrically limited I'd be boosting the difficulty up myself. There's simply no reason to see difficulty drop right now. In fact if it weren't for the volatility of bitcoin scaring investors from plopping money into it, and the zero-sum aspect I think you'd see difficulty increasing far faster than it is now even without a price increase, at the current price.

But that still relies on price being the primary motivator, with awareness a subfactor. Difficulty remained relatively constant for the first year and a half or so because both awareness was low, and price was nonexistant. People added value to the coin without exchanges though, there was a thriving "over the counter" trade system created, and this combined with more awareness of the coin caused more people to get on board, raising difficulty.

Aside from the small (now minority) group of enthusiasts who mine bitcoin because they believe in it becoming an eminent player in the world currency, most people playing with mining and trading bitcoin are profit seekers, speculators, and other opportunists, who follow price. And most of the new players who become aware of bitcoin choose to join because of the pricing/profitability.

Basically you will never disentangle price and awareness, but short of a change in human nature as you put it, you will not see awareness be the primary factor in bitcoin mining being taken up. And that's why satoshi constructed it that way in my opinion. To take advantage of human nature.

All my opinion of course.