Topic: Huge difficulty spike after Halving -- coincidence? (Read 5825 times)
Not really dropping then is it...
Where we at now?
Well, at the moment we're looking at a 3% difficulty increase on the next reset.
Where we at now?
Difficulty is crashing now. I went through this last year when the price was dropping and thus making mining unprofitable for everyone. As it hit $4, I thought I'd have to turn off my miners, but the difficulty kept dropping, keeping me riding the profitability line. I was on both sides at different times, but I didn't care that much since I was also mining for principle and support of the network. I was never more than 10% unprofitable. From that it seemed to me that most GPU miners either paid more than I do in electricity (11c/kwh) or they didn't have cards as efficient as I (1.42 MHps/W measured at the wall). That system right now would be -1.5% profitable which in past experience has people turning off their rigs.
Wow, do you undervolt your cards? I've tried undervolting but wasn't successful. Mine is 2.3 something, much worse than yours.
Difficulty is crashing now. I went through this last year when the price was dropping and thus making mining unprofitable for everyone. As it hit $4, I thought I'd have to turn off my miners, but the difficulty kept dropping, keeping me riding the profitability line. I was on both sides at different times, but I didn't care that much since I was also mining for principle and support of the network. I was never more than 10% unprofitable. From that it seemed to me that most GPU miners either paid more than I do in electricity (11c/kwh) or they didn't have cards as efficient as I (1.42 MHps/W measured at the wall). That system right now would be -1.5% profitable which in past experience has people turning off their rigs.
I took my GPU overclock from reliable 24/7 to max power. I did it to squeeze out the last drops of 50btc blocks. Maybe others did something similar.
Also still profitable at 25btc.
Maybe you overestimated how many would have to shut down.
Besides nothing better to do till the ASICs arrive.
Maybe people are anticipating price increases rather than react to the historical "price sets difficulty ratio" maybe miners are becoming more forward looking.
Also still profitable at 25btc.
Maybe you overestimated how many would have to shut down.
Besides nothing better to do till the ASICs arrive.
Maybe people are anticipating price increases rather than react to the historical "price sets difficulty ratio" maybe miners are becoming more forward looking.
To those who call GPU MINING now unprofitable.. At current diff, with my power cost, my GPU will still be profitable as long as the price is over 5$...
Anyway, I buy and mine..
Anyway, I buy and mine..
If you look at blockchain.info before the reward halving, you can see where a lot of that spike came from. Bitminter and BTC Guild both had especially nice runs of luck for about 12 hours preceeding the change. BTC Guild's luck alone would have been interpreted as a ~2-2.5 TH/s increase in overall network speed for those 12 hours, and even a few hours after.
Bitminter's run of luck today happened because i turned off my GPU miners and fired up my FPGA's which arrived today
Half price for FPGA's, and no ASIC's shipping this year due to flaws found in their designs. They'll pay for themselves before any ASIC's start shipping. When that happens they'll be reprogrammed for other tasks.
http://www.tricone-mining.com/
My calculations at current difficulty/half reward and their current hashing rates says they'll pay off in ~8-10 weeks. Maybe less if GPU miners start dropping off the network due to unprofitablilty.
I somehow doubt we'll see any real working ASIC's until Feb/March at the earliest and thats if they don't have any further delays/issues from what they've already experienced.
Just for fun I calculated this out, at 315MH/sec, no electrical costs, current difficulty, and 10 week payoff, you would have had to get each board + chip for $40/chip (free board), or for a ~950MH/sec setup, board + chips + fans + etc would have to be $120.
That sound right to you, or do you think you need to re-calc?
If you look at blockchain.info before the reward halving, you can see where a lot of that spike came from. Bitminter and BTC Guild both had especially nice runs of luck for about 12 hours preceeding the change. BTC Guild's luck alone would have been interpreted as a ~2-2.5 TH/s increase in overall network speed for those 12 hours, and even a few hours after.
Bitminter's run of luck today happened because i turned off my GPU miners and fired up my FPGA's which arrived today
Half price for FPGA's, and no ASIC's shipping this year due to flaws found in their designs. They'll pay for themselves before any ASIC's start shipping. When that happens they'll be reprogrammed for other tasks.
http://www.tricone-mining.com/
My calculations at current difficulty/half reward and their current hashing rates says they'll pay off in ~8-10 weeks. Maybe less if GPU miners start dropping off the network due to unprofitablilty.
I somehow doubt we'll see any real working ASIC's until Feb/March at the earliest and thats if they don't have any further delays/issues from what they've already experienced.
Assuming that you have bfl singles and paid for each 300$, then hardware break even is 235 days without electricity cost.
If you look at blockchain.info before the reward halving, you can see where a lot of that spike came from. Bitminter and BTC Guild both had especially nice runs of luck for about 12 hours preceeding the change. BTC Guild's luck alone would have been interpreted as a ~2-2.5 TH/s increase in overall network speed for those 12 hours, and even a few hours after.
Bitminter's run of luck today happened because i turned off my GPU miners and fired up my FPGA's which arrived today
Half price for FPGA's, and no ASIC's shipping this year due to flaws found in their designs. They'll pay for themselves before any ASIC's start shipping. When that happens they'll be reprogrammed for other tasks.
http://www.tricone-mining.com/
My calculations at current difficulty/half reward and their current hashing rates says they'll pay off in ~8-10 weeks. Maybe less if GPU miners start dropping off the network due to unprofitablilty.
I somehow doubt we'll see any real working ASIC's until Feb/March at the earliest and thats if they don't have any further delays/issues from what they've already experienced.
2. If it were just ex-miners firing up their rigs for old times sake/to find the last 50BTC block, they must be leaving them on for a while longer.
#2 is my guess. Folks turned on their miners for the day to enjoy the final hours of 50BTC reward. Now that it's past, they have to keep them on long enough to exceed the withdrawl minimum so they claim the fruits of their labors. But it's taking longer than expected since the reward rate is now half what it used to be.
then why is it continuing? (EDIT: sorry, I didn't even read your explanation, but think it's unlikely)
it looks more and more significant (not variance) to me.
Draw a straight line through the graph for the past 6 months and it looks like the difficulty is averaging out. Also that spike is less than the spike exactly 1 month ago
Ok, maybe it's not decisive at all at this point. In fact one would probably have to "normalize" for price when making such judgements.
2. If it were just ex-miners firing up their rigs for old times sake/to find the last 50BTC block, they must be leaving them on for a while longer.
#2 is my guess. Folks turned on their miners for the day to enjoy the final hours of 50BTC reward. Now that it's past, they have to keep them on long enough to exceed the withdrawl minimum so they claim the fruits of their labors. But it's taking longer than expected since the reward rate is now half what it used to be.
then why is it continuing? (EDIT: sorry, I didn't even read your explanation, but think it's unlikely)
it looks more and more significant (not variance) to me.
Draw a straight line through the graph for the past 6 months and it looks like the difficulty is averaging out. Also that spike is less than the spike exactly 1 month ago
2. If it were just ex-miners firing up their rigs for old times sake/to find the last 50BTC block, they must be leaving them on for a while longer.
#2 is my guess. Folks turned on their miners for the day to enjoy the final hours of 50BTC reward. Now that it's past, they have to keep them on long enough to exceed the withdrawl minimum so they claim the fruits of their labors. But it's taking longer than expected since the reward rate is now half what it used to be.
then why is it continuing? (EDIT: sorry, I didn't even read your explanation, but think it's unlikely)
it looks more and more significant (not variance) to me.
1. If it were just BTCguild's luck, it should be leveling off at some point. Instead, the estimated next difficulty just keeps going up.
2. If it were just ex-miners firing up their rigs for old times sake/to find the last 50BTC block, they must be leaving them on for a while longer.
3. As for "some people don't realize GPU mining isn't profitable anymore", that wouldn't explain an INCREASE in hashing power. It would only explain hashing power staying the same.
So we still don't have the answer.
2. If it were just ex-miners firing up their rigs for old times sake/to find the last 50BTC block, they must be leaving them on for a while longer.
3. As for "some people don't realize GPU mining isn't profitable anymore", that wouldn't explain an INCREASE in hashing power. It would only explain hashing power staying the same.
So we still don't have the answer.
ASIC testing, isn't that the most probably answer?
If you look at blockchain.info before the reward halving, you can see where a lot of that spike came from. Bitminter and BTC Guild both had especially nice runs of luck for about 12 hours preceeding the change. BTC Guild's luck alone would have been interpreted as a ~2-2.5 TH/s increase in overall network speed for those 12 hours, and even a few hours after.
Bitminter's run of luck today happened because i turned off my GPU miners and fired up my FPGA's which arrived today
Half price for FPGA's, and no ASIC's shipping this year due to flaws found in their designs. They'll pay for themselves before any ASIC's start shipping. When that happens they'll be reprogrammed for other tasks.
If you look at blockchain.info before the reward halving, you can see where a lot of that spike came from. Bitminter and BTC Guild both had especially nice runs of luck for about 12 hours preceeding the change. BTC Guild's luck alone would have been interpreted as a ~2-2.5 TH/s increase in overall network speed for those 12 hours, and even a few hours after.
Bitminter's run of luck today happened because i turned off my GPU miners and fired up my FPGA's which arrived today
Half price for FPGA's, and no ASIC's shipping this year due to flaws found in their designs. They'll pay for themselves before any ASIC's start shipping. When that happens they'll be reprogrammed for other tasks.
This stuff really only makes sense averaged over a multi-week period.
http://blockorigin.pfoe.be/chart.php
pfoe.be shows it pie chart over the last 2016 blocks to try and get rid of the noise. They also track blocks by parsing individual pool websites instead of guessing ip addresses like blockchain.
http://blockorigin.pfoe.be/chart.php
pfoe.be shows it pie chart over the last 2016 blocks to try and get rid of the noise. They also track blocks by parsing individual pool websites instead of guessing ip addresses like blockchain.
If you look at blockchain.info before the reward halving, you can see where a lot of that spike came from. Bitminter and BTC Guild both had especially nice runs of luck for about 12 hours preceeding the change. BTC Guild's luck alone would have been interpreted as a ~2-2.5 TH/s increase in overall network speed for those 12 hours, and even a few hours after.
Bitminter's run of luck today happened because i turned off my GPU miners and fired up my FPGA's which arrived today
If you look at blockchain.info before the reward halving, you can see where a lot of that spike came from. Bitminter and BTC Guild both had especially nice runs of luck for about 12 hours preceeding the change. BTC Guild's luck alone would have been interpreted as a ~2-2.5 TH/s increase in overall network speed for those 12 hours, and even a few hours after.
Bitminter's run of luck today happened because i turned off my GPU miners and fired up my FPGA's which arrived today
2. If it were just ex-miners firing up their rigs for old times sake/to find the last 50BTC block, they must be leaving them on for a while longer.
#2 is my guess. Folks turned on their miners for the day to enjoy the final hours of 50BTC reward. Now that it's past, they have to keep them on long enough to exceed the withdrawl minimum so they claim the fruits of their labors. But it's taking longer than expected since the reward rate is now half what it used to be.
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