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Topic: Price vs. Difficulty Graphs (Read 6742 times)

sr. member
Activity: 392
Merit: 250
November 30, 2010, 08:31:34 AM
#17
It seems to me more interesting price-time and difficulty-time on one chart

+1
legendary
Activity: 1470
Merit: 1005
Bringing Legendary Har® to you since 1952
November 30, 2010, 08:22:08 AM
#16
Your latest chart is price vs log(difficulty).  Can you show price vs difficulty?

Yeah, that (log) difficulty one wasn't particulary useful.
Price vs difficulty is another story.
donator
Activity: 826
Merit: 1039
November 30, 2010, 07:24:56 AM
#15
Those are interesting charts. I think the two dominant effects are the influx from the Slashdot article (when the difficulty crossed 100), and the rise of GPU mining (roughly, difficulty of 1000 and later).
sr. member
Activity: 337
Merit: 265
November 30, 2010, 03:50:59 AM
#14
legendary
Activity: 1246
Merit: 1014
Strength in numbers
November 30, 2010, 02:24:48 AM
#13
One reason price might follow difficulty is that mining should not be too profitable (because nothing should be too profitable, the world doesn't leave free money lying around). Therefore the price of Bitcoins can't rise too much above the cost of mining (counting equipment depreciation among the costs of course). The cost of mining is proportional to the difficulty (approximately). Therefore we might expect to see price proportional to difficulty.

We do see a nearly proportional relationship in the 1st graph, but that data set was incomplete. I'd like to see that last graph redone with a linear difficulty scale so we could see how the proportionality holds up with more data.

Exactly right about no free money lying around. But that doesn't mean one follows the other, only that they will maintain a close relationship.
full member
Activity: 183
Merit: 100
November 30, 2010, 02:10:05 AM
#12
Your latest chart is price vs log(difficulty).  Can you show price vs difficulty?
Hal
vip
Activity: 314
Merit: 3853
November 30, 2010, 12:46:21 AM
#11
One reason price might follow difficulty is that mining should not be too profitable (because nothing should be too profitable, the world doesn't leave free money lying around). Therefore the price of Bitcoins can't rise too much above the cost of mining (counting equipment depreciation among the costs of course). The cost of mining is proportional to the difficulty (approximately). Therefore we might expect to see price proportional to difficulty.

We do see a nearly proportional relationship in the 1st graph, but that data set was incomplete. I'd like to see that last graph redone with a linear difficulty scale so we could see how the proportionality holds up with more data.
sr. member
Activity: 350
Merit: 252
probiwon.com
November 30, 2010, 12:44:20 AM
#10
It seems to me more interesting price-time and difficulty-time on one chart
legendary
Activity: 1246
Merit: 1014
Strength in numbers
November 29, 2010, 11:47:03 PM
#9
I'm sure that I don't really need to remind the members of this thread, but to anyone who doesn't already know...

Corrolation is not causation.

In all likelyhood, both these variables are responding to the same unknown.  That unknown is likely the number of people who are interested in bitcoins at any particular point alont the timeframe noted.  But that is just an educated guess, since there is no really proxy for the number of users in the network.

Yeah, it does feel to me like price drives difficulty. But I think "demand" drives both really.
hero member
Activity: 482
Merit: 501
November 29, 2010, 11:43:36 PM
#8
More datapoints (intervals are 86400 seconds)

tcatm: could you please post a csv or tab-delimited data file with the data? Smiley
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1007
November 29, 2010, 09:36:18 PM
#7
I'm sure that I don't really need to remind the members of this thread, but to anyone who doesn't already know...

Corrolation is not causation.

In all likelyhood, both these variables are responding to the same unknown.  That unknown is likely the number of people who are interested in bitcoins at any particular point alont the timeframe noted.  But that is just an educated guess, since there is no really proxy for the number of users in the network.
sr. member
Activity: 337
Merit: 265
November 29, 2010, 08:52:07 PM
#6
More datapoints (intervals are 86400 seconds)
full member
Activity: 185
Merit: 102
November 29, 2010, 08:44:01 PM
#5
Ah I wanted to see this chart.
But...
What are those data points? There should be a ton after the price spike to .5 that are much lower. That curve doesn't seem to fit the actual data?
Was the price just sampled right when the difficulty changed? Could you sample more frequently. I think the graph will look pretty different.
hero member
Activity: 527
Merit: 500
November 29, 2010, 08:34:40 PM
#4
The higher the value of bitcoins the more lucrative generation becomes. It makes sense that the value of bitcoin drives the difficulty.

This will be the case as long as there is a 50BTC reward for generating a block. When it moves to transaction fees, it's a different story.
sr. member
Activity: 337
Merit: 265
November 29, 2010, 08:09:45 PM
#3
I don't know either. Someone on IRC asked for such graphs Smiley
newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0
November 29, 2010, 08:01:41 PM
#2
I don't know if im alone in this, but how do you read those?
sr. member
Activity: 337
Merit: 265
November 29, 2010, 07:49:23 PM
#1

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