Without miners right now, we won't even make that diff change within a day.
Block time is 7min 49sec now.
We need miners in the system to save the coin.
Don't drop out but start hashing on
http://rpc.pooljunkie.nl right now!
A couple of questions. I'm an investor and enthusiast, not a miner.
1. I thought the block time was at a constant two minutes...it can change? If so, what are the parameters, causes, and consequences of this change? Educate me.
2. When you are saying "save the coin", I have no idea what you mean. Could you explain? From my perspective as an investor, if you are saying that it is getting harder to get the coin, to me that is the definition of saving it. Help me understand what you mean.
At this moment; yes its much harder to get the coin, because there is a limited amount of miners mining the coin. This means that the average target time to get a coin now is 7 minutes and 57 seconds; instead of the target 2 minutes. This means it takes 4x longer than normal (also meaning only 180 coins are minted over 24 hrs right now).
This can change (and will) when the difficulty of the coin gets adjusted. However; that takes another 290 blocks before that happens (about 38,5 hrs if network hash-rate stays the same).
Additionally; and this is the crap part; taking more time to find a block also means it takes longer to transfer coins from 1 place to another.
This means imo that it's easier to buy a coin than it is to mint a coin... The result in theory should be that the price increases; after all the diff will change sooner or later, making the supply increase again at that time until the diff changes back high again.