Topic: Insane Prediction for difficulty increases - page 3. (Read 6506 times)

1,254, 349,053 (difficulty on 1/09/2013) correlates to 9,000 Thash. From 150 Thash today.
You really think that's possible in 3 months?
That's 136,363 Avalons!
Or 32,142,857 Avalon chips.
Or 1,800,000 BFL Jalapenos.
Or 180,000 BFL 50Gh miners 
Or 25,714 KnCMiner's Jupiters (not even shipping by that date).
Or 75,000 Bitfury 120Gh miners (also not shipping by that date).
AsicMiner has some 100Th wafers done, but that needs to be assembled yet and put online.

It benefits Bitcoin resilience.

Every estimate I have seen is based off already paid for devices. These are not numbers pulled from someones ass, they are based on known variables. And the numbers thrown around for BFL are likely on  the low end. The only unknown is when these devices will be delivered. Also just wait til KNCMiner starts production(they have only accepted what? 500 pre-orders?), if they succeed(which looks likely), the network hash rate is going to definitely be stupid high.  Next re-target  is already estimated at 18.2 Million and 890 blocks are still left.  And if the hash rate stays at 150TH, the following re-target would be about 20 million(quite unlikely, I'd put my money on it being 21+ million ).

Their will definitely be a point when the hash rate stabilizes, I'm just hoping not to many devices have been bought and the network is saturated. These devices still use quite a bit of power, so even if they sold dirt cheap, they still need to produce enough money to pay for power and have enough profit to keep operators interested. Before the block halving and the ASIC buzz, ROI was about 6-7 months, I have a feeling we are going to go quite a ways past that and hit at least 12 months ROI, which seems to be above the threshold for operators to keep miners running(at least in the past).

I think you are absolutely right. Some of the forecasts around here get to insane numbers not realizing how much hardware would be involved in gaining such astronomical hashes per second.

The chips will get much cheaper as volumes rise.
And also as demand falls.
Remember the free market?

If you are right, then Asicminer is going to go bust unless they can kill off the competition somehow.

um, mining diffiiculty is not exponential, it is linear.

It only looks exponential because we are in a technology transition right now.

It is reasonable to assume that once all the ASIC manufacturers are shipping, they will ship at a constant rate. Thus we won't see difficulty double regularly but rise at a high, but consistent rate.

My view is that you shouldn't base your numbers on difficulty increase solely but also look at what is in the order books of Avalon, BFL etc.

Avalon 150T (500K chips on order) + about 80-100T in batch 1-3 miners (not sure whether chips are included in there twice).
BFL - who knows? say 250T (max would be 500T)
ASICMINER could bring another 200T
KNCMINER - say 150T for first 500 (mix n match of 175 and 350GH/s miners).
Bitfury & Others, who knows? say 500T

We're now at around 100T (easy number) and ≃16M difficulty.

So you'd need another 7400T to reach about 1.2B in difficulty. I don't see that happening right now.

Agree, anything parabolic is not sustainable, BTC price or Mining hashing power.

It will climb for a while but its not going to be +33% forever.  It will eventually stabilize to a sustainable number. 

It could be some miners are hoping for a breaking point.. ie, it becomes so HARD to mine that MOST miners get out leaving only a hardcore group and eliminating some of the difficulty.  I for one do not think difficulty will continue to climb.. eventually it will go down and only those few left mining will reap any rewards..

Instead of looking at doubling every x units of time how about look at how at a point where network will be in equilibrium at current price.

It will require some assumptions but you can also range these assumptions.

Hypothetical assumptions:
* Miners will not buy new hashpower when annual ROIC% is less than 100% (12 month break even).
* Miners operating cost is $Y per TH/s  (take average ASIC efficiency in terms of MH/J and average electrical rate $0.10?)
* Build cost of new ASIC is $X per TH/s.  Look as Avalon chips in bulk, estimated PCB costs, etc. 
* Market forces will eventually push margin on new units to a more reasonable gross profit of 30%? thus the sale price of new units will eventually be X*1.30

You can then estimate the point where the existing hashing power is large enough that the network is unlikely to rise without a change in conditions.  It is also unlikely to fall much because if it does then marginal miners will buy more rigs or turn old rigs back on.   Condition changes could include a significant (say 50% or more) rise in exchange rate, or the release of next generation ASICs (greater than 100% improvement in MH/J and MH/$).

Once you find this "saturation point" you can guesstimate how long it will take to get there and backtrack from there.

Value of the coin is what matters.  You need more money in the market.  That translates to more people owning bitcoin and not cashing it out.  I think many miners, at first, will cash out as they will need to pay off their investment.  After that point, it's a good bet a lot of them will hang onto coins in order to use them for next generation asic purchases.  (The smart play)  But I expect the market to crash in the short term.  Long term it will stabalize and start growing again as people hang onto coins.

More investment in hardware style wallets is probably a good idea.  Even more the retailers/vendors need some kind of terminal to accept bitcoin and cash out like credit card machines are today.  (Entire services exist doing this making people millions of dollars.  Why not do it for bitcoin?)   If people walk around with a few bitcoins in a digital wallet, that is coins not cashed out in the market, helping boost the market value.

And then, more people have to believe in the currency and invest in it because they know it will grow in value.   Not to mention volatility in fiat markets that cause people to flee to currencies like Bitcoin so they can move money easily.

Hi, Can you correlate this data with the total hashrate needed to reach this insane amount of difficulty in a so short time frame?

Yep what happens happens and that could possibly mean BTC isn't even necessary/relevant.

I remember when people said this about GPUs when difficulty was 2M and the price was $15 or so.   

If exchange rate goes up, everything remains profitable longer.  If not, it won't.  Anything can and will happen between now and the end of the year.

For example, if Amazon or Google adopts Bitcoin as a payment method or any number of developments occur that warrant an increase in price that is not merely speculative, your comments will look very silly in short order.  But don't make it seem like it's hopeless.  That's pure FUD.  It is a gamble, but not hopeless.

Not really history is repeating everyone said it would die when CPUs were on the way out.  There are projects offering decently priced ASICS based on Avalon (which will flood the market late summer) so as long as these or similar chips are produced people that have a will will find a way.  I've done the math even if difficulty is 10x what it is I have 10x the HASH power on its way.  It will at that point be exponentially harder to increase difficulty by that factor.

Looks about right except for the last date said 2013 and I think it should say 2014

(difficulty on 1/09/2013)

no

Unless less miners mine more processing power would mean an increase in difficulty as bitcoin releases blocks at around 10 minute intervals
If the price decreased miners might leave the network as it is less profitable
However that is offset by the increase in processing power coming out soon