Bitcoin Forum

This is something I have been thinking at times. What would happen if suddenly someone came up with a new algorythm/technology that could mine Bitcoin much faster? I see all those predictions about mining ending by 2100 ... but Isn't it possible that some new miner comes up raising the mining speed a lot?

No idea about it, just asking  ::)

Another algorithm would require a fork, and it's unlikely it will be adopted (Scrypt and many others came, and Bitcoin did not switch)

As for newer tech, that's been happening from time to time: bigger and better ASIC's

As I said, I am not a math or algorythm expert but... It is not possible to find another way to calculate the hashes that cuts the process short?

I have also heard that Scrypt/Litecoin was designed to be ASIC resistant but failed. Could not something similar happen to Bitcoin in such a long timespan as 100+ years?

That's why there is difficulty readjustments. Every 2 weeks the avarage blocktime is determined and corrected back to 10 minutes by increasing the difficulty of the hashes.

A revolutionary miner would result in a giant leap in difficulty.

There is none, and bitcoin was designed to be harder to mine as more and more powerful hardware come. More and more hashing power = more difficulty = harder to mine bitcoins.

There's a physical limit on the current transistor technology (which the asics are based on).

The thing you're talking about may happen when we switch into quantum computers. When it happens it'll be like "cpu pooled mining" vs gpu mining stuff.

For instance; Today's most advanced asics are mining on a pool and quantum based asics are solomining.

There are a whole bunch of people in this thread posting complete nonsense without any knowledge at all about what they are talking about.

The only person that got it right is NorrisK:


More importantly, what you are asking about has already happened.  Multiple times.

In the beginning ALL mining was handled with CPUs.

Then, "someone came up with a new algorythm/technology that could mine Bitcoin much faster".  They realized that GPUs could mine bitcoins thousands of times as fast as CPUs. Because of this the difficulty target soared and it became difficult to mine profitably with CPUs.

Then, "someone came up with a new algorythm/technology that could mine Bitcoin much faster". They built ASICs that could mine bitcoins thousands of times as fast as GPUs. Because of this the difficulty target soared and it became impossible to mine profitably with CPUs, and difficult to mine profitably with GPUs.

If, in the future, someone else comes "up with a new algorythm/technology that could mine Bitcoin much faster", then the difficulty will once again soar, and it will become impossible to mine profitably with GPUs and difficult to mine profitably with ASICs.

The only way to change this dynamic is to break the SHA256 hash.  If, given an exact hash, you can find a way to consistently create a block with that exact hash in less than 10 minutes, then bitcoin mining will be broken, and we will need to hard fork to a new proof-of-work algorithm.

That's not going to happen, so it's not really worth worrying about. If something that made SHA256 easily hashed appeared then a lot of stuff would be jeopardized because it would mean brute force attacks would be possible (it would need to be this powerful to disturb bitcoin mining market in a meaningful way).

If a faster hardware or algorithm is developed, the difficulty will rise. The same amount of bitcoin will be mined.

No. There'll be a transition process. There's some limits now;
For instance; If the hashrate doubles, may be found 2x more blocks in a day but diff will be adjusted only +25%. (This is programmatically upper limit). Diff can't spike 50% at once.

I am pretty sure Satoshi has thought about this and had designed Bitcoin so this would be impossible. You need to remember that Bitcoin is supposed to be mined for a very long time to come, until year 2140.

I am sure that Satoshi had to count that every kind of technology, processor speeds and inventions are possible to come in the future until this year, 2140. Keeping this in mind, he had to design Bitcoin algorithms and difficulty adjustments.

So I would say that what you are trying to say is quite impossible.

LoLz really. Please take a break and learn a bit or two about bitcoin. You are posting pure BS.

Difficulty adjustment takes place every 2016 blocks and there is no such upper limit of difficulty spike.

Sure, computing power has been growing and growing since the 1970s or earlier. It's very likely that processing power could increase such that the rate of mining packages could increase. In fact, if the cost (of money or time) of mining doesn't increase these coins will never be mined fully. There's no way that miners will be able to be profitable to mine as the packages are halved and then halved and so on. Soon it'll simply not be worth it to dig up more coins - much like it's not worth mining for gold in many areas of the world.

Wonderful explanation, this is what I was looking for. So the possibility for it to happen is there, only there are methods to readjust/prevent it.

So theoretically (I understand this is almost impossible) the algorythm might be broken, but it will be adjusted through other algorythm

Do you know how to read code? If your answer is yes then check this;
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/pow.cpp#L53

If you don't know how to read code then ask someone who knows and you're full of BS.

DannyHamilton said it first. It happened before when ASICS were invented, and BTC itself hardly changed. The real change was in the people who were mining. Once upon a time, it was single guys on their home computers who were doing all the mining. Nowadays,  large share of all mining comes from Chinese farms. This is where the real risk is. There would be even more concentration if some kind of a new super fast hardware would be invented.

It would be help private so it can remain profitable for a longer time. There would be no reason to flood the market with such a thing.

in 2009 CPU mining was the big thing.. difficulty was low but kept on par with the estimates.. then.. (shock, horror)
GPU mining hit the scene.. and the difficulty raised to compensate..
then FPGA, then more specialist stuff doing terra and peta has speeds.. and each time the difficulty changed to compensate..

.. so mining coins still is and always will be inline with long term estimates. as the difficulty changes to compensate

Thanks for keeping us informed, Brad.

Even if it does become available you also need to take into account the power consumption aspect including the initial hardware cost investment. The miner need to decide whether it is economical in a new mining equipment before making a switch. So assuming nothing's changed, then you should see more bitcoins getting mined per same amount of time. From there you would expect what would happen to the price.

I see. I was totally ignorant about that (been in bitcoin about 7 months now). I thought that the diffuculty escalated more "naturally" not because better equipment was found. I thought equipment was developed in order to keep up with difficulty, not that difficulty raised due to the equipment.

What an enlightening post! ;D

if bitcoin was mining with just satoshi and halfinney on a CPU each.. the difficulty would remain at just 1. for however long as they stuck to it just being them mining with the same equipment forever..

this is why if banks make their own blockchain. and only have 2 systems mining it. they can easily manipulate data as they control the difficulty, keeping it low to make it easy to re-write blocks. which is why decentralised mining is soo important. and why new faster tech to mine with it is important too..

to prevent any one person from having enough power to manipulate it

As we know, more mined Bitcoins means more difficult the algorithm. So when this person(s) mined a lot Bitcoin with the machine, it will at least just last once/twice because the algorithm of Bitcoin would become more difficult.

The lower limit (in the same block of code as the upper limit) is more of a concern, because if most of the hash rate drops suddenly you could have slow confirmation times for multiple 2016-block periods.


Also I believe max difficulty increase is +300% (4x). Difficulty can drop down to 25% but not lower.

I badly look for such kind of invention to make bitcoin community a boom. Because when ASICs arrived big price movements were seen. So, hash rate rise is the needed thing to get better price.