Bitcoin Forum

http://dot-bit.org/tools/nextDifficulty.php

Hashing power growth has been slowing for some time now:

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-small-lin-10k.png

I doubt we'll see much more growth before ASICS hit, then we will see a huge jump.

not that slow though

The last difficulty jump was minuscule, and the jumps have been decreasing since at least August.

When I started with bitcoin, difficulty was around 120,000.  This latest jump is roughly three times the entire network power from like less than 18 months ago.  Not bad for two weeks.

Let's not forget a big fat storm barreling around the eastern seaboard.

How did we segue from difficulty to a big storm?!?

Seems obvious to me, but I suppose I can restate; storms knock out power, infrastructure, takes people out of commission for days and/or weeks. Shuts down businesses and shipping. Even before hand, people smart enough to want to protect their equipment will take it out of service in order to move it away from danger zones.

Those with no connection, and / or spotty connections, will be removed or fractionalized from the pool either negating a gain somewhere else or diminishing it, increasing time to hash, reducing change in difficulty. Not a huge effect, but one to consider.

I thought you were talking about the upcoming ASIC tsunami... How Sandy could affect significantly bitcoin global harshing power evades me but why not, maybe there is a hotspot of mining rigs in NJ and NY.

http://modernsurvivalblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/usa-population-density-map-flat.jpg

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/30/us/tropical-weather-state-by-state/index.html

Snarky responses aside, NY and NJ are not the only states in the US on the eastern seaboard.

So if the power goes off in the entire US the network harsh rate will collapse. Of course, only Americans are mining for bitcoins. I naively thought this was a global currency but I may have been wrong...

I seem to be stepping on a lot of easily offended toes in this thread for some reason. If you can show me where I said the US is the only contributor to bitcoin I'll be happy to apologize, otherwise I'll just have to raise an eyebrow at a somewhat unprovoked response.

That said, the US is clearly by far and away the greatest component of the current network. If the power went out in the US, the network hash rate would almost certainly fall to a level that would bring bitcoin transactions to a screeching halt until it resumed. Just how it is, if you're in another country and feel slighted by that, get some friends going on bitcoin I guess.

OK, enough of sourceless statements.

For whoever is interested, here is a rather interesting 3D Bitcoin node world map [http://www.weusecoins.com/globe-bitcoin/ (http://www.weusecoins.com/globe-bitcoin/)].

I was just teasing but bitcoin has to be seen as a global currency not just a U.S. affair, because it is not.

In case this was a response to me at some level, I will need to mention that nodes are completely different from miners (though related via communication obviously), which is what was being referenced in this thread.

If you were not responding to me, then that is a fairly pretty picture, though I'm unsure of what line height represents. If it is traffic through the node, that's fairly interesting that middle america provides a supernode somewhere.

The use of Bitcoin as a global currency and the local sourcing of miners are unrelated, mining is in many ways it's own beast, helping to move the blockchain forward, authorizing transactions, and being rewarded for contributing, but basically invisible and separate from the commerce that would use the coins themselves.

interesting japan isn't at a higher concentration

Durrr.....
They cannot mine Yen why would they be interested?