Topic: [FINISHED] Educational giveaway | guess first Bitcoin Block in 2020 [9.5 mBTC] - page 5. (Read 2753 times)

it is the lazy inaccurate way of calculating how many blocks are going to be mined in N days.
there is no guarantee to have 1 block every 10 minute, but usually the average is that. 1 day is 24 hours and 1 hour is 6x 10 minutes so we can see 6*24=144 blocks in one day.
a better way is to extrapolate the data that we have from previous weeks, at least for 5 difficulty adjustment period. i tried doing that using blockchair API but faced some problems and gave up

@everyone: due to low participation I've extended the registration from 06.12.2019 at 23.59.59 CET (Berlin Time) to 08.12.2019 at 23.59.59 CET (Berlin Time).

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Nice ones.  
@SFR10 may I ask how long did it take until the calculation was at least somehow close to an realistic number?  

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That's when people start gambling.  
It's all depending if BTC will dump again (and miners switch off for my expectation). Right now, BTC isn't moving much up / down, so miners are relatively stable. When BTC price is going sideways, I expect an increasing hashrate and as a result faster blocks and DdmrDdmr's "prediction" could come true.

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Sorry, but all participants have to follow my rules and I can't accept your number.  

However, if you manage to get 2 more Merit until the registration for the giveaway ends (08.12.2019 at 23.59.59 CET (Berlin Time)), you'll be in!  

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I guess it's also my projection: 144 [blocks per day while 1 block = 10 min avg. [ => 6 blocks per hour x24 hours]] * days left until 2020.


New projection: 37,225 Minutes / 10 Blocks + 606,852 (current Block) = 610,574

What is the good 144 * days method?

i just take a random number so my guess will be 610548

610,542 using the the good old 144 * days method.

I developed my own formula ^{[inspired by "DdmrDdmr"]}:

521899 ^{[my UID]} /3636 ^{[my post count, including this post]} x 27 ^{[days left, I do know it's actually 26 days, 19 hours, 11 minutes]} + 606751 ^{[latest block]} = 610,626.48
- I do know that there are already a lot of educated guesses but I prefer to lock mine to 610,626

Most creative way ever existed 
Well, the 2016 block adjustment will happen at 608832 blocks and it's very possible that we may have some quicker blocks than the actual average of 10 minutes. Your prediction is 78 blocks higher than the average one.
Good luck.

Love you, nerd

Will try to take advantage of your knowledge and drop a guess for 610616

Since all the science has already been used, and assuming that the range in the current entries is reasonable, I went for an approach similar to how the Magic Number for Legendary Activity is generated (with a change from sha1 to SHA2_256, since sha1 is deprecated on my SQL version, and a few others due to datatype stuff):
Result: 610637

Without further ado and averaging first 12 guesses I predict 610572

On average, 146 blocks are mined per day.  Taking the current block height of 606434 into consideration, there are 31 days in December. So the predicted number of blocks would be 31 *  146 = 4526 blocks. Deducting blocks of the last 2 days,


Referenced block 606434 + 4234  = 610,668.

610600

My BTC address 12yXHZE3vpqn7gSi5eLxV61sHwY1pJbQ6C

What a very nice educational thread, to which I've nothing to add but my guess, based on an ever-present impression that there's a wall of machines about to come online:
610910
tyvm

I'll have a go at 610,516
Let's see what comes up.

I've adjusted the title replacing "Beginner's giveaway" by "Educational giveaway", hope it's better now and people don't think it's for beginners only. 

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Added to my list. 

Yess =)
Good luck!

Well, I'll give it a try too

Latest block as of now is 606309, at CET date & time December 2^nd, 1.35PM.
Considering the following:
- until December 31^st at 11:59PM are 42.385 minutes remaining (625 minutes left from today and 41.760 for the interval 03-31 December (29 days*24h*60 minutes = 41.760)),
- an average time of 9.5 minutes to find a new block (this time varies, being conditioned by several factors, such as the difficulty),
- 42.385 : 9.5 = 4461.57,

I consider the 1st block of 2020 will be the block number 610.770 (606.309 + 4461 = 610.770).

Let's Hope for the best

Nice attempt! I expect it will drop further, so my nominated number is again 100 blocks less.  

Of course it's open for everyone!  
But you are somehow right, the title is a bit misleading, I meant "giveaway for beginner's education".
Do you have some suggestions to improve it? Note: characters are limited, only 10 left.  

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@mikeywith
Also a nice explanation, but I have to disagree because my number is 610,375  
I can agree for long-term consideration because mining hardware is always getting more effective ("moores law") and as a result, the hashrate is going up. However, I'm not sure if that applies for the next weeks, when the giveaway is relevant. I'm speculating for a lower BTC-price and therefore a lower hashrate and slower block creation. =)

We are at a price range now where it's likely that another drop of hashrate might occur at any time when price drops further:


https://btc.com/stats/diff

For me, (I'm not involved in mining) it looks like that some miners aren't making much profit right now and consider to shut down.


But the question is: will these normal people win the giveaway?  

It'll be interesting to see what's happening when the halving is coming should the price stay around similar levels like right now.


Yeah, I'm using BTC.com normally and as far as I know it's a good source.


I like detailed and insightful posts and it's actually what I've hoped for as outcome of my giveaway, so don't worry at all. Your comment is much appreciated.  
Looking forward to your number!

I'll go for 610,357

Which never happens "sadly"

Most people have this misconception about bitcoin price vs hashrate/difficulty , this is normal for people who are not heavily invested in mining , but if you have been mining for long enough then you know that theory is invalid.

in theory, it makes sense that if price drops the following happens

1- mining becomes less profitable
2- hashrate decreases and so does difficulty.

While the first one is correct, the second one is invalid , the reason is "efficiency", mining gears become more efficient everyday, so consuming the same amount of energy today gets you more than double the hashrate as opposed of 2017.

another factor is , while miners as "PEOPLE" leave the game, mining gears take way too long to leave the network, simply because there are always people with cheaper power rate who will buy the mining gears from those who pay more for electricity , for an example , a guy in west EU can't make any more profit with say Antminer S9 today, that S9 won't be stored in the garage for good or thrown away, it will be sold to the guy in east EU or sent back to China and those guys who have better power rate will re-plug that S9 back to the network.


Below is a chart form Tradingview contains all hashrate data from 2010 to present day, each candle represents one full month of data




BTC had a few tragic bear markets, hashrate never really had , hashrate seldom goes down, it stays flat for a while and then move up, Bitmain is due to ship a dozen of mining gears during this month (pre-order) , and my guess is that even if price keeps going lower , hashrate will only go higher for months to come, unless something out of the ordinary happens.


If I may, i would add a "cheat" tool for this giveaway  , this tool predicts the next difficulty , sadly it's less efficient for long term since the deadline is 06.12.2019,  this other tool contains historical data inculding number of blocks found in each round, not really the best way to estimate a block that's a month away, but a good tool to give you an "outside the box" view of how this difficulty thing actually effects the block production.


@miau sorry for this long post, I tried to stay on topic as much as i could , I just can't help not posting when it's anything mining related, I will post my guess later after discussing the matter with Jihan Wu. 

Although I could try to answer all those questions, there's a much simpler way: extrapolation! During the past month, the exact same questions were valid, but they've already been answered on the blockchain.
The only real variable that's left is the Bitcoin price: if it goes up a lot, the hashrate will go up. But I don't expect it to change much in just a month.

My guess
We're in the same timezone, so that's easy. There are 30 days and 2 hours left. The current latest block is 606211.
Going back 30 days and 2 hours, we're looking at November 1, 20:00h. Now all I have to do is find the closest block: 601943.
The difference: 606211-601943=4268 blocks.
My estimate: 606211+4268=610479
My guess for the first block of 2020: 610479.

I don't think it's very likely to be correct though: 4268 blocks is less than what's expected in 30 days, 2 hours: (30*24+2)*6=4332, and at increasing hashrate miners are usually a bit faster than what's expected. So it could be the hashrate dropped in the past month (due to the price drop), and if that's the case, the hashrate has to continue dropping for my prediction to become true.

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I love educated guesses
Unless this was for Beginners only? The title makes it look that way, but the rest of the topic doesn't look like it.