Topic: Jan 12th to Approx Jan 27th diff thread (3.5%) - page 3. (Read 5913 times)

lol you guys keep making fools of yourself by calling difficulty every time dont you?

I swear i can make better prediction by just flipping a coin.

3.5%  vs -2.5%  .....so close.

We lost jan 22 due to bitcointalk server crash.  diff has trended down just a bit  maybe we can go to -5%  about 4 days left

current price is   225 usd


 http://www.bitcoincharts.com/

Blocks   340158
Total BTC   13.754M
 
Difficulty   43971662056
Estimated   42232570407 in 546 blks     >>>> (-3.95%)
 
Network total   280001.700 Thash/s
Blocks/hour   5.34 / 674 s



https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Bitcoin Difficulty:   43,971,662,056
Estimated Next Difficulty:   42,562,624,122>>>>>> (-3.20%)
Adjust time:   After 545 Blocks, About 3.9 days
Hashrate(?):   290,321,246 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):   
1 block: 10.4 minutes
3 blocks: 31.1 minutes
6 blocks: 1.0 hours
Updated:   4:20 (30.0 seconds ago)

1 day is not enough to project one diff adjustment of  15 days.  but keeping track of it is easy.


It was    5.25 at  932 blocks ---    0
it is now 4.78 at  916 blocks ---  16
it is now 4.88 at  898 blocks ---  34
it is now 5.14 at  880 blocks ---  52
it is now 5.26 at  866 blocks ---  66  
it is now 5.17 at  862 blocks ---  70
it is now 5.07 at  857 blocks ---  75
it is now 5.06 at  812 blocks ---  120
it is now 5.59 at  804 blocks ---  128
it is now 5.35 at  790 blocks ---  142 ---newest number
it is now 5.69 at  781 blocks ---  151 3:47 pm est jan 21

these are solid drops    more then the

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Estimated Next Difficulty:   42,821,227,056   (-2.62%)

things are slowly shaping up for about -3.5% change i think.

seems like a lot of miners are still running, even if its at a loss. I thought the price staying at <210 would shake out a lot of the equipment that pays >0.15/kwh. The fact that even an SP3X at 0.5w/gh is losing money in parts of europe (>0.25/kwh) hurts my brain

If you need real time, watch this https://blockchain.info/blocks/   . But watching that would be totally crazy from probability point of view, there's too much variance. Also it hints that bitcoincharts uses larger span for calculation because just by quick look in last 2 hrs 15 blocks have been found which is much faster than it should (blocks 339893-339907). But again, it's absolutely useless to look at data block by block. Even 1 day of data (144 blocks) is absolutely useless when watching hashrate. If you look at chart here http://nextdifficulty.com/ you can see how extremely volatile is one day hashrate compared to 1 week hashrate, thus barely usable for any assumptions...

you could be correct as we are now at  

Blocks/hour   5.59     at   block 804    .

this is a jump up  but still hard to know as the Block per hour is more real time then any other site.  believe it is the last 10 blocks on this site.

that 5.59 may be high and a variance over 5  rather then a variance under 6.

I'll bet this is variance. If you look at this chart http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-2k.png the hashrate didn't even touch Jan 13th lows and is rising again.

It was    5.25 at  932 blocks ---    0
it is now 4.78 at  916 blocks ---  16
it is now 4.88 at  898 blocks ---  34
it is now 5.14 at  880 blocks ---  52
it is now 5.26 at  866 blocks ---  66   
it is now 5.17 at  862 blocks ---  70
it is now 5.07 at  857 blocks ---  75
it is now 5.06 at  812 blocks ---  120



I will keep track here since this looks more like a trend then variance.

so from 932 to  812 is 120 blocks and the average is 5 blocks an hour not 6 as it should be.

5/6 =  down 16.67%

  It is now a day .  120 blocks/5 block an hour  = 24 hours  of  -15%

needs to be watched longer to see if this keeps up.

right now bitcoincharts is predicting much lower then bitcoin wisdom.

http://www.bitcoincharts.com/

Blocks   339788
Total BTC   13.745M
 
Difficulty   43971662056
Estimated   42229565780 in 916 blks
 
Network total   251018.507 Thash/s
Blocks/hour   4.78 / 752 s-------- This is very low number it is -20%

The blocks per hour needs to be watched a lot if it stays under 5 for a day in a row it means a big farm has shut down.

 
It was 5.25     at 932 blocks to go.
it is now 4.78  at 916 blocks to go.
it is now 4.88  at 898 blocks to go.
it is now 5.14 at  880 blocks to go.
it is now 5.26 at  866 blocks to go.   this is a 66 block time period in which the rate has been -10 to  -20
it is now 5.17 at  862 blocks to go.
it is now 5.07 at  857  blocks
it is now 5.06 at  812 blocks
 it is not a long enough time period  to be sure if a major player has turn down  about 13 hours time. I will check it in a while.


If this stays low diff will drop big.     I will check on this a few times today weds and thurs to see if it was variance or a big shut down.

the new numbers dropped us to.
http://www.bitcoincharts.com/

Blocks   339842
Total BTC   13.746M
 
Difficulty   43971662056
Estimated   41869404718 in 862 blks  this is now (-4.78%)
 
Network total   270976.587 Thash/s
Blocks/hour   5.17 / 697 s >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> not sure how long it stays here but if it stays here we will see a good  drop  come Jan 27 or 28.

the 275 PH/s number looks like it's normal statistical variance so far. On the 13th the daily rate was 229, but on the 14th it was back at 330.

Over on https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty the grey line has been above the red one for pretty-much the whole difficulty level so far so that tends to suggest that we'll stay well above an -7.6% level. The downward trend seems likely though.

Tues morning in NJ.


http://www.bitcoincharts.com/

BTC = 210

Blocks   339772
Total BTC   13.744M
 
Difficulty   43971662056
Estimated   42410605778 in 932 blks     This is a (-3.55%) drop
 
Network total   275671.053 Thash/s
Blocks/hour   5.25 / 685 s

Note 5.25 blocks per hour   also note 275 PH estimate.   It would be interesting to see if this continues if it does  the drop in diff will go over  6%.

5.25 block rate is 13% less then normal   average that in with the 3.55 drop so far and it looks like  -8% is possible.

If you are talking about profitability, at any BTC exchange rate the factors determining the purchase decision are still the same:

- price of the miner (if it costs $300 per TH/s then at $100 it's 3BTC - steep, but see below)
- difficulty and your expectation of its future direction
- power cost ratio with the BTC exchange rate and your expectation of its future direction, unless your utility bills you in BTC, which would greatly simplify this part

But if it's a hobby, just buy an S5 or an SP20 now, makes no big difference really. It's mostly a lottery ticket anyway.

So I guess when prices go to $100 or so would be the safest time to buy mining ASICs?

I used 1ph farms for simple math.  Any farm running at .8 watts per gh and under 10 cents is not going to turn off.

S-3's and s-4's do .7 to .8 watts   they will continue to run at this price.  I would say if they can maintain diff under 45xxxx they can run on and on and on.

We may see diff between 40-45  and price about 200 until the spring as it does not kill off bigger miners with <10 cents a kwatt and under .8 watts a gh.

It does destroy just about all miners in europe or usa that have 15 +cents a watt.

I'm not sure that DCs are actually making money, just that the alternatives to continuing to run would be to lose even more money. If you have a contract for power and facilities and have to pay for both whether you use them or not then you probably have to just keep paying and hope that the coin price improves. Similarly if you're supporting cloud mining then those miners probably have contracts that have to be honoured too.

My guess is that any reduction will be gradual, based on contracts expiring, but even if several DCs with 1 PH/s of capacity went offline the impact wouldn't really be that noticeable.

slight drop

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Bitcoin Difficulty:   43,971,662,056
Estimated Next Difficulty:   43,095,517,516   (-1.99%)
Adjust time:   After 1005 Blocks, About 7.2 days
Hashrate(?):   316,383,090 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):   
1 block: 10.2 minutes
3 blocks: 30.8 minutes
6 blocks: 1.0 hours
Updated:   18:5 (3.2 minutes ago)

http://www.bitcoincharts.com/


Blocks   339699
Total BTC   13.742M
 
Difficulty   43971662056
Estimated   42529538155 in 1005 blks  (-3.27%)
 
Network total   316900.229 Thash/s
Blocks/hour   6.04 / 596 s


I figure drops this small may be revealing that a lot of data centers are still making money.
I did expect  -6 to 9% for this due to price drop in coins.

After ~1000 blocks in this cycle (halfway point) we have this:

Estimated Next Difficulty:   43,313,520,359 (-1.50%)
Block Generation Time (Average of last 504 blocks):   
1 block: 10.2 minutes
3 blocks: 30.5 minutes
6 blocks: 1.0 hours

So the most recent 504 blocks were running at 10.2 minutes average, or ~2% below target. The first ~500 blocks of this cycle were ~4% below, making the first half about 3% below target. This doesn't sound like much, but if you look at past data you would see that this is one of the slowest first-half performances, so there is a good chance we'll see a decrease this cycle. It likely won't be double digits though as I was hoping for:

To end up at -10%: hashrate would have to decrease immediately by ~16% from the current level and stay there until the end of the cycle.
To end up at + (diff increase): hashrate would have to increase immediately by ~5%+ from the current level and stay there until the end of the cycle.

Unless I messed up my napkin math, in which case shame on you for reading this far

well for now

Price 206 usd

 https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty


Bitcoin Difficulty:   43,971,662,056
Estimated Next Difficulty:   43,363,458,449 (-1.38%)
Adjust time:   After 1142 Blocks, About 8.1 days
Hashrate(?):   321,684,441 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):   
1 block: 10.2 minutes
3 blocks: 30.6 minutes
6 blocks: 1.0 hours
Updated:   18:55 (4.3 minutes ago)

****************************************
****************************************

http://www.bitcoincharts.com/   (-3.12%)



Blocks   339562
Total BTC   13.739M
 
Difficulty   43971662056
Estimated   42598199361 in 1142 blks
 
Network total   366207.958 Thash/s
Blocks/hour   6.98 / 516 s


So I see  big farms with a slew of s-3's sticking it out.

here is why :

  A 1 ph farm of s-3's with net op costs of 4.1  cents a kwatt  earns  1598 usd a day over op costs.
  A 1 ph farm of s-3's with net op costs of 5.1 cents a kwatt   earns 1411 usd  a day  over op costs.
  A 1 ph farm of s-3's with net op costs of 6.1 cents a kwatt   earns 1224  usd  a day over op costs.
 A 1 ph farm  of s-3's with net op costs of 7.1 cents a kwatt   earns  1037 usd  a day over op costs.
 A 1 ph farm of s-3's  with net op costs of 8.1 cents a kwatt   earns   849 usd   a day over op costs.
 A 1 ph  farm of s-3's with net op costs of 9.1 cents a kwatt   earns  662  usd  a day over op costs.



So in every case above they most  likely will mine and cash coins.

 I am not so sure they upgrades to s-5's
I am not so sure they sell off the gear.

And at the price of 206 usd a coin they are still earning over op costs.

I don't think the government would need the value the cost of  mining equipment to become very cheap to attack the network. They have a near unlimited amount of resources and bitcoin does not pose any serious threat to the US government/currency (the same is true for other major governments). Bitcoin poses to help the economy (and in tern governments) of smaller/weaker countries (eg 3rd world countries).

A payment processor like Visa/MC (or even Western Union) may have somewhat of an incentive to attempt to destroy bitcoin however they would probably also not need to wait for the price of mining equipment to fall (for example Visa reported a profit of $1.07 billion in the 3 months ending September 30 2014) plus them doing so would likely be considered anti-competative and could potentially result in criminal/civil action against them by the DOJ (it isn't like the DOJ hasn't ever used it's own interpretation of laws against major companies before). A best case scenario would be that their reputation would be greatly harmed.

You might argue that they could buy up the mining equipment without revealing their identities, however just like it is difficult to "mix" 10,000 BTC, it is difficult to buy up PHs worth of mining equipment.

This could be a threat. I would need to think about this one for a little bit. Although there are very few hosting providers that control large amounts of equipment like that.