Author

Topic: The history of Bitcoin difficulty adjustment (in percent) (Read 507 times)

tranthidung

legendary

Activity: 2310

Merit: 4085

Farewell o_e_l_e_o

Update

The latest difficulty adjustment is -27.94%, at the block #689472
Daily price spread between
- High and Low price
- Open and Close price

Interpretation
- For price (Orange) Positive: good days, Negative ~ bad days.
- Green spikes (+) usually have lag effects and you can see some other good spikes for price a few days later.
- Red spikes (-) usually have inverse-lagged from price in previous days. It usually triggers by significant price falls days before. It is logical if considering about the capitulation of weak miners. Fortunately, after such negative spikes, price rallies.

Quote from: kxwhalexk on July 03, 2021, 08:51:11 AM

I like to use data to comfort others

"In God we trust, for the others please bring data". Data is not to comfort others but to convince others what you are talking about. Obviously, it depends on quality of data and analysis method, etc. It is not true that all data reflects the truth.

Quote

Most of the time, I also have the patience to collect and organize data
But I am still a novice and I am still learning.

Practice makes perfect. So you can and I am not too good with data.

Quote

Do you have your own website? Or can you share your social media？
I can learn so much from you, thank you very much!

Thanks for your interest but unfortunately, I don't have a personal website. You can follow me on Twitter as well (it is a newbie account, LOL)

TranDzung on Twitter

Pmalek

legendary

Activity: 2730

Merit: 7065

Quote from: kxwhalexk on July 03, 2021, 08:51:11 AM

Do you have your own website? Or can you share your social media

You can bookmark tranthidung's profile and visit it whenever you want to see what posts or threads he has written recently. Bookmark this > https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/tranthidung-1292764.

If you want to talk to him, you'll be able to find his Telegram ID at the bottom of his services thread. It's @tranthidung1292764

kxwhalexk

member

Activity: 98

Merit: 173

I like to use data to comfort others， Most of the time, I also have the patience to collect and organize data
But I am still a novice and I am still learning. Do you have your own website? Or can you share your social media？
I can learn so much from you, thank you very much!

tranthidung

legendary

Activity: 2310

Merit: 4085

Farewell o_e_l_e_o

Update

Current difficulty: 19932791027263
According to diff.cryptothis.com, the next difficulty adjustment would be -28%. If the difficulty adjusts like the estimation, it would be the biggest negative adjustment in history.

The biggest (-) adjustment happens 10 years ago, on 31 Oct 2011: -18%
In 2020 and 2021, there are a few big negative adjustments from -12% to -16%, two in 2020 and two in 2021 (see details below)

Code:

+------------------------+
   | date diff_pcneg |
   |------------------------|
   1. | 31oct2011 -18.03 |
   2. | 03nov2020 -16.05 |
   3. | 30may2021 -15.97 |
   4. | 26mar2020 -15.95 |
   5. | 03dec2018 -15.13 |
   6. | 14oct2011 -13.09 |
   7. | 01may2021 -12.61 |
   8. | 26dec2012 -11.59 |
   +------------------------+

To make stats more visual friendly, I make two bar charts for you.

See possible lag effects between price spread and difficulty adjustment with that post

Quote from: ?? on ??

Newest update on difficulty adjustment
Price spread is the difference between highest and lowest daily price
Lag effects: Possibly, significant increase of difficulty (relates to hashrate) results in price topping days later. Horrific drop of difficulty causes price dumping days later
It's neither financial advice nor prediction

tranthidung

legendary

Activity: 2310

Merit: 4085

Farewell o_e_l_e_o

Bump it after many months of silence.

Again, new all time high of total hashrate kicks off sudden drop of hashrate. Reasons, this time, are blamed on flood, rain, coal plants, etc. but do you think any of them are real problems?

Without flood, rains and any visible reasons you can think of, there are scheduled plans for instant shutdowns of big numbers of mining rigs.

It happens and repeats many times. Hashrates top up, price tops up, then accidents come out.

How Accidents in Chinese Coal Mines Are Affecting Bitcoin Mining
Story from News
More things behind such as TA indicators
Time to read, filter and digest news

100bitcoin

sr. member

Activity: 861

Merit: 423

Fantastic work. Is it possible to prepare a difficulty vs. price graph, where difficulty will be in X-axis and price will be in Y-axis?

tranthidung

legendary

Activity: 2310

Merit: 4085

Farewell o_e_l_e_o

Quote from: LoyceV on November 05, 2020, 04:15:40 AM

I was wondering why the difficulty would go down when Bitcoin prices go up. It doesn't make much sense, but it turns out it has to do with seasonal hydro power in China.

It happens repeatedly many times and there are many factors are related or correlated each other:

Seasonal changes in supplies of hydro power in China
FOMO of newbie miners (they join when price rises up, buy rigs, set up and mine but they are unstable in emotions, don't understand how things work, unbale to survive along with short term unprofitable minings, etc.). They turn off rigs when price hits peak but mining rewards they get can not enough for power bills.
Manipulations (I doubt about it for years and believe it is).
When I have time, I will combine data and make charts for total hashrate (or hashrate changes in %), difficulty changes, and price. Difficulty has lag-effects from hashrate changes.

Quote from: DougM on November 05, 2020, 07:29:18 PM

Got it. To be honest, hours after I made that post, I seems to understand your idea about 300% outlier on the chart. Hang on a few minutes, then I will give you update. My solution is replace that outlier to the p75 value at 16.42% but not exclude the outlier from the chart.

I forgot to run sum stats after the replacement. The outlier should be replace at the max value below 93.12%. Anyway, it is not a serious issue with only one data point.

Here you go:

Most of difficulty adjustment / change (%) are positive. There are very few negative changes and big negative values tend to occur in early or last months of each year

After the replacement, stats will be like these. Max value now is 93.12% (close to what you supposed to have 80%)

Code:

variable | N mean sd p50 p25 p75 min max
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
diff_pc | 309 10.8333 15.12739 7.08 1.59 16.2 -18.03 93.12
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quote from: Skybuck on November 27, 2013, 10:52:02 AM

...Biggest change in difficult was probably around 10 july 2010 when bitcoin was announced on slashdot... resulting in the slashdot effect, a jump in difficulty of 300%.

Yeap, it is the beauty of data and statistics. From raw analysis, we can dig deeper, find out what happened in the past (from news or deeper analyses later). I thank you for the information.

Quote

Plenty of good related historical threads if you are interested. I grabbed a few you might like:

Price vs Difficulty Charts - indicators for buying or mining May 06, 2011, 06:00:38 PM https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/price-vs-difficulty-charts-indicators-for-buying-or-mining-7427
Price drives difficulty November 08, 2012, 02:42:12 PM https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/price-drives-difficulty-123238
Will the difficulty go down again ? December 13, 2014, 11:36:13 PM https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/will-the-difficulty-go-down-again-892774

When I have time, we can make a chronological compilation for it: changes from difficulty and likely real things happened behind. Cheesy

DougM

full member

Activity: 173

Merit: 120

Quote from: tranthidung on November 04, 2020, 09:20:22 PM

Quote from: DougM on November 04, 2020, 05:17:46 PM

Can you post your difficulty adjustment graph suppressing the ~300 % outliner so I could get a better look at the chart's pattern? too small to make it out for my eyes Roll Eyes

What did you mean? I can give you specific-year plots for better visualization.

Is it what you suppose to have?

Quote

I am not sure you saw the articles recently posted in the press on the recent Bitcoin mining difficulty drop? If not check out this thread:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.55513356

Thanks for the link. The article has little information, except a few additional information that what happened around the days big difficulty changes (not all history, only in 2020).

Thank you for the new chart. However it would be good to see it from the beginning like your original chart however the 300% max outliner forces the scale to be small so it is hard to see the pattern over time. If you set the Y axis max to 80% it will clip the 300% outliner, but the rest of the data will be easier to see.

The past historical significant changes should be documented in this forum since they were living through it all.
For example why did it jump 300% mid July 2010?

Quote from: Skybuck on November 27, 2013, 10:52:02 AM

...Biggest change in difficult was probably around 10 july 2010 when bitcoin was announced on slashdot... resulting in the slashdot effect, a jump in difficulty of 300%.

LoyceV

legendary

Activity: 3290

Merit: 16489

Thick-Skinned Gang Leader and Golden Feather 2021

Quote from: DougM on November 04, 2020, 05:17:46 PM

If not check out this thread:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.55513356

I was wondering why the difficulty would go down when Bitcoin prices go up. It doesn't make much sense, but it turns out it has to do with seasonal hydro power in China.

tranthidung

legendary

Activity: 2310

Merit: 4085

Farewell o_e_l_e_o

Quote from: DougM on November 04, 2020, 05:17:46 PM

Can you post your difficulty adjustment graph suppressing the ~300 % outliner so I could get a better look at the chart's pattern? too small to make it out for my eyes Roll Eyes

What did you mean? I can give you specific-year plots for better visualization.

Is it what you suppose to have?

Quote

I am not sure you saw the articles recently posted in the press on the recent Bitcoin mining difficulty drop? If not check out this thread:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.55513356

Thanks for the link. The article has little information, except a few additional information that what happened around the days big difficulty changes (not all history, only in 2020).

DougM

full member

Activity: 173

Merit: 120

Quote from: tranthidung on November 03, 2020, 11:24:27 AM

Here you go with my new thread. If you feel my threads are boring, please ignore me or this thread. No need to be serious, I am data-freak. If you read it, I thank you for your attention and your time. Cheesy

Good stuff...I like data too. Keep it coming Grin

Can you post your difficulty adjustment graph suppressing the ~300 % outliner so I could get a better look at the chart's pattern? too small to make it out for my eyes Roll Eyes

I am not sure you saw the articles recently posted in the press on the recent Bitcoin mining difficulty drop? If not check out this thread:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.55513356

tranthidung

legendary

Activity: 2310

Merit: 4085

Farewell o_e_l_e_o

Today, bitcoin network has its second biggest difficulty decreasing (negatively) adjustment, at -16.04992%. The biggest one in negative value is at -18.03, 9 years ago, in 2011.

See details:

Block 655199: 19997335994446
Block 655200: 16787779609933

The network difficulty was adjusted ~ 7 hours ago with the fall of -16.04992% in difficulty between block 655199 and 655200. It is a big adjustment. The second biggest decreasing adjustment in history of bitcoin network.

The biggest one is 9 years ago (in 2011) between 2 following blocks and percent of decreasing adjustment is -18.03. Impressive for today adjustment.

Block 151199: 1468195.4272208
Block 151200: 1203461.92638

Over the history, there are 123 adjustments have values > 10% and 6 adjustments have values < -10% (include the one for today).
The biggest positive adjustment is 300% on 16jul2010.
It was adjusted 309 times (the dataset is for 308 only). I will update with dataset for today later depends on loyceclub
Median (interquartile range): 7.09% (1.67% - 16.42%).
Min - max: -18.03 - 300
Ideas: from plot, you can see some spikes and you can dig to find out what happened in the past

Code:

variable | N mean sd p50 p25 p75 min max
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
diff_pc | 309 11.75175 22.34688 7.08 1.59 16.2 -18.03 300
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Positive changes > 10%
123 recorded days.

Code:

+------------------------+
| date diff_pcpos |
|------------------------|
357. | 30dec2009 18.29 |
369. | 11jan2010 10.33 |
393. | 04feb2010 35.29 |
403. | 14feb2010 38.99 |
413. | 24feb2010 49.59 |
|------------------------|
425. | 08mar2010 19.83 |
449. | 01apr2010 33.3 |
460. | 12apr2010 28.5 |
469. | 21apr2010 46.61 |
482. | 04may2010 12.08 |
|------------------------|
507. | 29may2010 40.29 |
533. | 24jun2010 11.64 |
545. | 06jul2010 21.11 |
552. | 13jul2010 93.12 |
555. | 16jul2010 300 |
|------------------------|
566. | 27jul2010 34.52 |
575. | 05aug2010 44.2 |
585. | 15aug2010 45.32 |
596. | 26aug2010 21.81 |
609. | 08sep2010 14.36 |
|------------------------|
620. | 19sep2010 28.75 |
629. | 28sep2010 43.67 |
652. | 21oct2010 55.95 |
661. | 30oct2010 43.87 |
671. | 09nov2010 46.73 |
|------------------------|
680. | 18nov2010 51.37 |
692. | 30nov2010 17.64 |
701. | 09dec2010 51.67 |
713. | 21dec2010 18.22 |
726. | 03jan2011 12.59 |
|------------------------|
738. | 15jan2011 13.06 |
750. | 27jan2011 19.39 |
762. | 08feb2011 18.11 |
772. | 18feb2011 40.24 |
781. | 27feb2011 52.47 |
|------------------------|
791. | 09mar2011 37.06 |
818. | 05apr2011 19.38 |
831. | 18apr2011 12.15 |
843. | 30apr2011 18.76 |
852. | 09may2011 43.54 |
|------------------------|
861. | 18may2011 55.07 |
869. | 26may2011 78.15 |
880. | 06jun2011 30.44 |
889. | 15jun2011 54.59 |
898. | 24jun2011 57.27 |
|------------------------|
910. | 06jul2011 13.33 |
936. | 01aug2011 11.7 |
1218. | 09may2012 14.89 |
1326. | 25aug2012 11.4 |
1338. | 06sep2012 10.38 |
|------------------------|
1490. | 05feb2013 10.33 |
1503. | 18feb2013 11.47 |
1514. | 01mar2013 19.63 |
1527. | 14mar2013 10.98 |
1537. | 24mar2013 38.13 |
|------------------------|
1549. | 05apr2013 14.59 |
1561. | 17apr2013 16.96 |
1574. | 30apr2013 12.28 |
1586. | 12may2013 11.03 |
1610. | 05jun2013 28.41 |
|------------------------|
1621. | 16jun2013 23.92 |
1634. | 29jun2013 10.32 |
1646. | 11jul2013 22.63 |
1657. | 22jul2013 19.47 |
1669. | 03aug2013 19.63 |
|------------------------|
1679. | 13aug2013 35.88 |
1690. | 24aug2013 29.4 |
1701. | 04sep2013 32.22 |
1711. | 14sep2013 29.56 |
1722. | 25sep2013 32.13 |
|------------------------|
1733. | 06oct2013 27.19 |
1743. | 16oct2013 41.45 |
1753. | 26oct2013 46.02 |
1763. | 05nov2013 30.7 |
1775. | 17nov2013 19.29 |
|------------------------|
1787. | 29nov2013 16.07 |
1798. | 10dec2013 28.41 |
1809. | 21dec2013 30.01 |
1821. | 02jan2014 20.12 |
1832. | 13jan2014 26.16 |
|------------------------|
1843. | 24jan2014 22.59 |
1855. | 05feb2014 19.49 |
1867. | 17feb2014 19.39 |
1878. | 28feb2014 21.92 |
1891. | 13mar2014 11.39 |
|------------------------|
1902. | 24mar2014 17.8 |
1914. | 05apr2014 22.23 |
1926. | 17apr2014 14.04 |
1938. | 29apr2014 14.64 |
1951. | 12may2014 10.66 |
|------------------------|
1963. | 24may2014 18.1 |
1975. | 05jun2014 12.44 |
1988. | 18jun2014 14.51 |
1999. | 29jun2014 24.93 |
2050. | 19aug2014 20.86 |
|------------------------|
2062. | 31aug2014 15.03 |
2087. | 25sep2014 16.2 |
2128. | 05nov2014 10.05 |
2512. | 24nov2015 10.44 |
2536. | 18dec2015 18.14 |
|------------------------|
2549. | 31dec2015 11.16 |
2587. | 07feb2016 20.06 |
2599. | 19feb2016 13.44 |
2872. | 18nov2016 10.68 |
2937. | 22jan2017 16.64 |
|------------------------|
3070. | 04jun2017 13.9 |
3110. | 14jul2017 13.53 |
3176. | 18sep2017 19.58 |
3214. | 26oct2017 21.39 |
3255. | 06dec2017 18.11 |
|------------------------|
3267. | 18dec2017 17.74 |
3293. | 13jan2018 15.36 |
3305. | 25jan2018 16.84 |
3317. | 06feb2018 10.43 |
3436. | 05jun2018 14.71 |
|------------------------|
3490. | 29jul2018 14.88 |
3645. | 31dec2018 10.03 |
3795. | 30may2019 11.26 |
3835. | 09jul2019 14.23 |
3862. | 05aug2019 10.78 |
|------------------------|
3901. | 13sep2019 10.38 |
4178. | 16jun2020 14.95 |
4274. | 20sep2020 11.35 |
+------------------------+

Negative changes < - 10%
5 days in history, and the one for today is the six record.

Code:

+------------------------+
| date diff_pcneg |
|------------------------|
1010. | 14oct2011 -13.09 |
1027. | 31oct2011 -18.03 |
1449. | 26dec2012 -11.59 |
3617. | 03dec2018 -15.13 |
4096. | 26mar2020 -15.95 |
+------------------------+

Updated plots