Topic: Will the difficulty go down again ? (Read 9388 times)

I think the difficulty will remain almost the same for the coming update...

Probably we will see a day in future, when farmers will be using their paddy fields in off-season to implant solar miners. Then we will be at a position to say that mining is back to the hand of the public again.

 But a home miner or anyone that uses an electric spaceheater like this one below

beats a farm since the spaceheater is essentially free power for a miner.

My wife used spaceheaters for years.  900 watt setting.  So an avalon 4.1 is dead quiet and 2 of them use 960 watt slightly under clocked.  No farm competes with that since power = 0.
Once room is warm turn the miner off same as a space heater. So if you have avalon 4.1's underclock them and use them as space heaters you can mine for years with them.

 A lot of complex shit will happen as miners fight over the coins.

Totally agree with this point. Are we going to see home miners vanish and a back and forth battle between big farms that switch hardware on and off dependent on their hashing power, location, costs etc?

Contrary to popular belief, more mining farms are opening up and more chip designers are getting their hand into bitcoin to have more efficient ASIC. Home mining is a passe...

bitcoin mining difficulty will continue to rise
check this site , here you can find current bitcoin difficulty, estimated next difficulty and the history of bitcoin mining difficulty also the historical charts
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

I think the big break for home miners will come next year when the reward halves again.  If not then, some time soon.  The cost of running those big farms is going to outpace the reward shortly.  Eventually I don't think farms will exist at all, it will all be small-time mining.

It's usually because the price of BTC tanked.

when the difficulty is going down, that's a sign that people are unplugging machines, which means the network is bigger than it needs to be

 we are down at the moment 0.2% to 2.95%  

see chart here

http://btc.blockr.io/charts

feb 10    142
feb 11    159
feb 12    124
feb 13    144      


 normal is 144    so 4 x 144 = 576

 the 4 days above are         = 559   we are 17 blocks short of normal  about - 2.95%


the s-3 is a white elephant in the room  more then 50ph of them around the world getting .8 watts per gh. 

reliable gear this gear is being turned on and off as we seesaw up and down each adjustment.

 if your power is 12 cents and price is 208 your s-3 breaks even
if your power is  13 cents  and price is 225 your s-3  breaks even

people are jumping back and forth with s-3's

Well that would be without any other overhead.  No AC/Fans, location rental, employees, etc.  (US would probably need insurance too)

My city (if you call 60K population a city) has $0.032 KWH power for "commercial" users over 50KW.  Under 50KW is $0.048.  Residential (what I pay) is $0.062   

Well, an industrial miner using widely available gear (0.5W per GH/s) and only paying $0.05 per kWh means they'll be profitable (at this difficulty) until the Bitcoin price drops to ~$53 ...or until difficulty increases to 167,638,063,430 (@ $200 per Bitcoin).

So, unfortunately for us home miners, there's room for movement.

Looks like the difficulty does not care about the price anymore. Price is close to 200, but difficulty jump a few minutes ago is 7%+.

Difficulty won't be dropping this period imho.  Too much newer/more efficient hardware coming online.

at current network Hash Rate: of 315,619,866 GH/s
 the estimated next mining difficulty is possibly : 40,593,388,140 that is lower then current mining difficulty 41,272,873,895

It's important to note that bitcoinwisdom isn't really very accurate in terms of it's projected difficulty change right after it's changed. It could easily swing to a positive number over the next 10 days.

As has been noted before, The "turn off" of inefficient mining hardware can be delayed by a number of things. It might well be less costly to the organization to mine at a small loss than incur a bigger loss by turning off a miner altogether.

based on bitcoinwisdom the next difficulty will be another decrease -3.28%. I highly doubt its going to increase. Maybe if it stabilize around 300 we will start to see small increases but at these prices all the old miners greater than 1W per GH are going to be shut down

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of why you don't calculate hashrate / difficulty on a block-by-block basis (or however Alloscomp does it). It's terribly inaccurate.

Right now on https://alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator

Next difficulty retarget occurs at block 342719.0 (eta 6.5 days): 95718487513.6 / +131.9% [est.]

It should..n I think it will! Hopefully sooner than later!

If difficulty keeps going down and price stays the same,more miners decide to turn off until a rise in price

wouldn't that be quite a problem ?

ghash only makes up a very small percentage of the overall network (10% of last check) so them taking their cloud miners offline will likely have a very small impact on the overall network hashrate.

The trend seems to be that a lot of people are having to take their equipment offline because of the lowered price. The current estimate is that the difficulty is going to decline by around 2.5% however it appears that it will probably end up going down by more then that based on the 506 average block time

The Ghash.io hash rate has been going down, so hopefully the difficulty will too.

Since difficulty adjustments are based on the amount of time required to solve 2016 blocks, downward adjustments must happen less often than upward ones. If the time required is less than 14 days, then the difficulty increases. Only if it takes longer than 14 days will will the difficulty decrease. In a sense the difficulty rises faster than it falls. There may also be some other limitations, but just based on the "14-day 2016 block" plan it falls slower than it rises.

When reading all these announcements of powering off miners and many cloud services I would expect that difficulty will go down. But waiting to happen.

Already crossed 200. Dont forget Tim Draper bought Silk Road bitcoina when it was at 600+. He has highly paid financial advisory group. They are not all fool at predicting the future price. But, well, may be not tomorrow...

So... never then?

Cex.IO said that they'll resume when the price will be 320 USD again.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10151684

sad news.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10128418

cex.io is really closing its farms ?

Difficulty jump is +8.19%.

Cex.io is closing its cloud mining operation.

I guess, more coming.

How things have turned out in last few days...

https://alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator
Next difficulty retarget occurs at block 338687.0 (eta 9.5 days): 45304559740.5 / +11.5% [est.]

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty
Estimated Next Difficulty:   45,267,844,451 (+11.38%)
Adjust time:   After 1518 Blocks, About 9.6 days

So, I assume, at 300+ USD, miners are still making profit.

Agreed, I think we will see it go up and down in small percentages while the price continues to fall. The farms have to pay themselves off so I don't see them upgrading anytime soon.  It should be an interesting 2015... The next great halving in 2016 should be interesting as well.

diff is poised to go up in 10-20% chunks each and every time in 2015. Bitmain selling S5 and the upcoming S6 in Q1'2015, Spondoolies selling SP20 and the upcoming models. Expect huge rise in total hashrate in the coming days. Miners will continue to mine. Old mining hardware are sold to unsuspecting noobies, they don't just get turned off and forgotten.

3 or 4 ways can be used to predict the number.
 some sites use previous 1000+  blocks
some use previous 500 + blocks
some use every block since the last adjustment about 1950 as of now


http://www.bitcoincharts.com/ 

 as of this post this site says new diff will be 40,186,743,801   you can be safe to say 40.1 to 40.9 will be it next time.

According to https://alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator

Next difficulty retarget occurs at block 336671.0 (eta 1.1 days): 40554014444.1 / +2.8% [est.]


According to https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Estimated Next Difficulty:   40,636,150,150 (+2.99%)

Adjust time:   After 174 Blocks, About 1.1 days


Why is the difference in stat ?

I agree that miners will continue to evolve and become increasingly energy efficient, but the price point will also increase to a level that individuals are no longer in the game and the network will be solely run by large mining farms and organizations.

It will go up and will not come down unless the price of BTC crashes.  I think we will see a point of more energy efficient equipment keeping a lot of people in the game. But there has to be a point of some large farms running old equipment that will either shut down or swap out to newer miners. I just dont think we will see the huge increases we saw in the past.

The conversation started on Dec 13th when the predicted difficulty was -10% which prompted this thread.
Since then the POW for the paycoin has finished and all hashpower has naturally returned to bitcoin, hence the current difficulty expectation of +3.33% (as of the time of this post) which again was to be expected

Doesn't even look like this difficulty adjustment is going to be a negative one at this point :/

No way. Even if the price continues to drop, newer hardware with higher efficiency is going to come on the market and increase the difficulty. I think Q1 2015 was slated to be the time for the release of the next gen ASICs.

We can hope. I don't see a specific reason for that dramatic of a rise. The last time we saw that kind of spike was due to MtGox bot manipulating the market and creating false/unnatural valuations.
One legit reason I could see the market moving up so high would be the Winkle twins granted approval for their enterprise and Wall Street traders and hedge funds managers getting involved.

500 USD is expected to cross by the end of this financial year... at least once.

It is becoming more mainstream, which adds to tons more people putting in mining contracts or small miners hoping to strike something. I feel as if the price remain in the low $300's that diff will go down. Now, if BTC value rises over $500's again, we should expect insane difficulty spikes again.

 I agree, the hashrate really skyrocketed the last couple of days. I definitely thought it would go back up but not like this..

Next difficulty retarget occurs at block 336671.0 (eta 3.4 days): 39886178001.0 / +1.1% [est.]

I predict, it'll be 40 billion again.

I was under the impression that it ended a few days ago, roughly the time that the short term block rate seemed to crash (and estimated next difficulty started to spike)

I think global adoption is more important right now. If I was to be paid in BTC right now I'd be pretty pissed off since I would have to sell it for fiat to buy shopping, pay rent, pay bills ect...paying people a wage in BTC right now would just result in the same dumping, maybe be a bit less but not by much.

Paycoin mining was just a blip. It lasted only for a week and ended nearly a week ago.

Is it just me or did the difficulty drop because we have so many suppliers selling off their .5-.7 W/GH miners (Spondoolies has the holiday special, and BitmainTech has their bulk bundle special) in order to prepare release of new super-efficient miners? Solar from KNCminer is boasting .02 W/GH/s!! I think the big difficulty rises are still going to come.

Where do companies get money to pay their employees? Usually from investors. So they need to raise capital in BTC: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/why-dont-we-see-more-capital-raised-in-bitcoins-904543

This is probably why the difficulty has been only slightly declining instead of increasing by ~20% every two weeks. It appears that roughly 20% of the preexisting network capacity was added back to bitcoin mining yesterday, based on the 504 block time chart

Yes I believe the pay coin POW is now over so a big section of hash rate has naturally returned to the Bitcoin network, if the timing was a little later then we may have seen 4%-5% drop in difficulty but I suppose the timing was taken into account for the POW

correct and the network is close to positive growth.  Also s-5 and sp20's are being sold.

  I see +2% around  Dec 31.

I see 3-5 % for the next 2 or 3 jumps after this one.

The new .5 watt gear will put a lot of pressure on all gear over .8 watts to be turned off.

The big caveat is price if BTC jumps over 500 usd diff will pick up a lot.

this 295-350 price range is tough on big players.   

 How would you like to buy a  2000 s-3's for a farm at the price of 100 bucks each .. Sounds good right?  only 200,000 usd.

well if you power is 6 cents and they hash at 1ph.  you spend on your psu's and your building you are at 300,000 usd.




just drop coins to 200 usd  a week after you set up.  a huge loss. 
I think lots of farms are looking at this and they are afraid to ramp up or switch out to sp20's and or s-5's.
If you came to me and asked me should I make a 300k investment I would say do you have it to lose? The risk is very high.
Also I think you can't get the price I wrote 300k for a fully working 1ph farm.

No one is hashing Paycoin. If they are, they're wasting their time since there are zero rewards. It's been that way for almost a week.

Next difficulty retarget occurs at block 336671.0 (eta 5.9 days): 39073901597.0 / -1.0% [est.]

Seems you were correct... is the PayCoin mining over ? Seems the hash power is coming back to the bitcoin network.

Cloud ming will be & always will be for fools with not enough time in the day to admin there own machines
(Sorry dont mean to be rude..)

I posed a question "How many miners do u think the network runs on below 180gh which was spec for bitmains S1-180GH miner

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9435885

Ages ago cause when i got my last bill it was $500 above what i spent on electricity, Making mining in my eyes pointless from a cost perspective, BTW not the first dip in neg for diff, About the 20th act... I can see why ur cloud mining...

As i see it & someone else out there made a point of saying it months ago.....

If ur mining currently on anything Larger than 28nm & above $1 elect / per hash then ur losing money, Even more for everyday u keep mining on the while the price goes down....

But they also stated that bitcoin could lose all momentum & go to $0 if the greedy take over the system & everyone loses interest.... I can sort of see that happening (But not) Price is going to fall & fall it will, As more and more scams get unearthed, Miners become faster, cheaper & easier to run..

Faith (Not the GOD type) in the p2p payment system that is bitcoin & the further 20 or 30 years it has to run full circle will keep bouncing the price up & down like a yoyo...

Think about this... Your mining what people first used to believe was an untraceable type of currency, Used by scammers, drug dealers & tax dodgers...

Untraceable, Maybe in the virtual world but once it becomes real money in someones bank acc, unless u can account for that money thru a bussiness ur fucked..

Everything bitcoin is now watched by Governments & Taxed accordingly (In Your Region - Of Course)

Bitcoin here & now has the potential to fall flat on its face & everyone will lose everything or it will dip to the point (Less than $100 a coin) & people will be interested again...

Marginal profits which hedge funds & alike thrive on will assure this.....

Also by the time that happens "Drug Dealers" & "BAD" porno type people will have worked out away around TOR and its inabilities to hide them, Imagine using a System Developed by the US Navy as a means of hiding yourself while being a permanent connection to the internet...

(U tell me if this wasn't deliberate to bring out the nuts, Who cares if its not in the military's hands now, I can assure u, They either have a back door key or a way to insert themselves into a node where they can see traffic - In & Out)

Kids wake the fuck up.... Mine for break even minimum (For now at least) cause the coin is going down to less than $100 (My prediction anyway)

No chance it will be - 10.3%
It needs to average out, closer to the re-target time will show more accurate reading

Next difficulty retarget occurs at block 336671.0 (eta 16.2 days): 35402299210.8 / -10.3% [est.]

-10.3% ? really ? I can see profit 

If they make Paycoin a POW coin again in the future, that would really piss off those HashStaker investors now. Wouldn't it? They have paid to buy a coin that can only be mined by a POS wallet and then to suddenly change it to an ASIC mineable coin again would be disastrous.

This whole Paycoin thing is ridiculous! So I guess I shouldn't be surprised with what the future holds. But I'm certainly don't think XPY is the next BTC. But we'll see.

  Well we have been told a lot about paycoin. We will see exactly how it unfolds day by day. 
GAW-ZEN holds the power on that coin so rules can be bent or changed by them. In the short run it dropped btc rates a lot.  who is to say that after 3 months of no asic mining they decide to allow asic mining again.  They can do that if they want to do it.

Paycoin's success or failure has no bearing on the BTC network hashrate in the long term. The coin won't be ASIC mineable after the proof-of-work (POW) phase is done... which is over in a few days.

it is a short window for the pre-mining so to speak.   the 20th of dec.  after that it all depends on how well the coins price holds up.

if the coin has legs it will affect BTC for months to come.  Or if the coin crashes and burns  BTC will get a solid DIFF increase.

So, how long this PayCoin storm is going to stay ? Will the Gen4 chips can mine PayCoin too ? If yes, that would be a great news for bitcoin miners

Thank you sincerely, that's exactly the type of advice and feedback I was looking for, something constructive that I can take on board and act upon.

Again, thanks

Oh my word, it seems to be a general pattern on here that people with some sort of senior status on their account talk like shit to other people, especially newbie/junior members like they're infants. Of course I have done research but it doesn't hurt to open up some form of constructive conversation with established miners to get a little more knowledge. I do not intend to get into some form of witty conversation with anyone.

I apologize for your lack of basic understanding, when I simply asked where is best to utilize them, I thought it went without saying that I was asking for advice on which pools to use, but I guess it didn't go without saying so I shall state it more clearly for you to understand.

"Any tips on which pools to use my miners in would be greatly appreciated"

Very clever thank you so much for your input. Here's an idea, next time you see someone seeking constructive advise....DON'T POST!!!!

Again thank you so much for your thoughtful input

I for one am done with cloud mining and I shall be investing my BTC into hardware, a few 1 th/s miners should get me started so I would welcome a dip in difficulty (first time it's been negative I believe) and then a surge in new equipment to bring the price back up too.

Any tips on where to utilise my miners would be greatly appreciated

I wish difficulty influenced price.
Btc would be many thousands of $$ each right now.

Hey, this is a great chart. It seems both the line have overlapped each other multiple times.

I find this chart interesting
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/difficulty-price-btc.html#log

It doesn't follow that way. price doesn't care about difficulty.

Difficulty, or rather electricity spent per unit Bitcoin, somewhat follows price. When the more efficient chips come on the market the difficulty will increase again.

Big merchants like NewEgg to OverStock, everyone is simply dumping the coins. If they paid their employees/vendors, then this problem would not arise. This is why companies who fully depend on bitcoin ecosystem should rise.

Interestingly, at the time of writing this, the last block has been found 45 minutes ago.

https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/block/000000000000000019d4247dd6a2d669ccc34cf926d0e50fa6bb78ac70583677

The hashrate will continue to decline leading to a drop in difficulty.

Unless the community wakes up and starts to give at least 50% of its effort in integrating Bitcoin into payroll systems, we're going to see Bitcoin slowly fade away into the night. The only way to equalize the downward price pressure caused by the growth of BTC accepting merchants, is to pay people in Bitcoin.

Other way around son... difficulty is falling because less blocks are being solved... because less people are mining them... because they cant afford to because of the low price.

Seems like it'll go down a fraction again until (if) we see a significant BTC price increase.

At this point it's not sure yet as the estimated is far from accurate.

If enough people fire up their machines in the last day then it will go up slightly.

If difficulty collapse, the price is expected to go down with it as well... is not it ? Does anyone have any difficulty vs. price graph for bitcoin ?

yea.. i think it will go down as well.

I think it will go down a second time, originally I was expecting a marginal increase but it looks like more units are powering down
So at least for now the hashrate will drop
(That said I'm curious if its at a peak bubble and will collapse a bit more soon)

According to https://alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator...

Next difficulty retarget occurs at block 334655.0 (eta 3.2 days): 39547782382.4 / -1.1% [est.]

What is your opinion ?