Bitcoin Forum

Jump from 21.3 to 26.1 Million, 22.5%
Signs of things to come. The ASIC floodgates have been released.
This is a result of continuous ~1.02X daily mining growth.
I estimate that in 4 months (October 2013) Difficulty with be 10X of today's difficulty somewhere between 250 - 300 Million.

So please be very aware before spending those coins ;)

1% growth is fine, for the next 6 months or so. I doubt it will grow that fast in a year or two.

I'm watching with popcorn.

Boom.
Even my pessimistic 1.5% growth per day is proving too optimistic.  ::)

I thought 150,000,000 around November...you really think 250-300million by October?

26.2Million. Nice.

It's not going to be anywhere near that high by October. I predict it will be somewhere around 50 million by then.

Here is why not:

- Butterfly Labs is shipping very slowly. They are not going to get through their backlog of preorders in 90 days like they promised. They probably won't even get through 25% of their pre-orders in 90 days. They are shipping very few singles and seem to have completely stopped shipping jalapenos
- Avalon batch #2 is done shipping now I believe. Batch #3 will likely ship soon, but there isn't likely be a batch #4. Batch #3 isn't really that many machines (compared to BFL pre-orders at least).
- Avalon chips look like they might be delayed too. And I believe people are underestimating how long it will take to get the first Avalon clones working and how long it will take to get them built and shipped in any significant quantities. We probably won't see them in large numbers until October at least.
- KNC might actually ship on time, but they aren't due to start until Sept or Oct. Anything could delay them and I wouldn't be too surprised if they don't ship until the end of the year.
- ASIC Miner will continue to ship their miners but even if they drop their prices, they are less attractive now because of the recent difficulty increases. ASIC Miner themselves will only add mining power as necessary to hover around 25-30% of the world hashrate.

I just don't see where 10 times the current hash power is going to come from in the next 3-4 months to get the difficulty that high.

Doubling is likely, but not 10+ times.

we wish to everything you're right except the thing is that....its inevidable that the difficulty will hit an exponential growth rate specifically when market forces allow mining companies to have plenty of stock to sell.  I'd have like 10 miners by now if I could because of the returns on it...like the person above said, its sort of controlled at the moment as companies race to make a superior asic...bfl will probably show a large jump soon I think we are being naive to think they will stay slow forever...if they can show an impressive turnaround they will have repeat purchases.

ASICMINER is ordering 800 - 1000 TH of hashpower this year. Of course they are going to sell them for cheap.

ASICMiner? Cheap? We talking about the same company? They've gouged customer's wallets at every corner, so I doubt they will be "cheap".

No, they won't. They are too smart for that.

Every miner they sell competes with their own mining operation.

It makes sense for them to sell them for as much as they can to the people that can't do math in order to keep their own mining operation profitable.

What mining company has plenty of stock to sell?

None of them do. None of them have ANY stock right now in fact. ASIC Miner will begin shipping again soon shortly but neither BFL nor Avalon have excess stock they can sell now. It's all just pre-orders.

I don't doubt that we are going to see a huge jump in difficulty. I just don't think it is going to happen in the next 3 months.

I guess my predictions were not too off ;)

^^^^^^ Word!

Listen to the OP, people! Difficulty will be around 300 Million by the end of the 2013.

Last diff went from 31 M to 37 M.

We're headed towards 31 M jump in a single difficulty adjustment soon.

Next difficulty estimated at 44 million so far, it's still some number of days away so could get a bit higher even.  Could see quite a nice jump this time.

will be 47m.. 10m jump :o

On the upside, the next halving day will come sooner.

NOOOOO! Don't talk about this, nobody wants to hear about this because there is no answer to what happens to Bitcoin when mining ROI suddenly takes a 50% hit. :D

It's increasing pretty much as I predicted.

ASICs will eventually make mining marginally profitable.  ROI will be in the 1 yr+ range.
The good news (if you can call it good) is that profit margins of h/w manufactures will be razor thin.  More competition, better customer service.  No more Yifus to deal with.

Eventually, the profit margins for both mining and h/w makers will go down to big fat ZERO and this will be the end of bitcoin.

Unless entities (private foundations, banks, governments, h/w manufacturers) adopt bitcoin and protect it via "at loss" mining operations.

One thing is for sure, without mining there will be no bitcoin.

BTW, OP is right on the money.  Maybe a little conservative, but right on the money.  Bitfury will add thousands of TH/s

Estimated difficulty level is now upwards of 100Million in the next adjustment

OP did a nice call. Likely will end October between 200 and 300 million.

Thanks, looks like difficulty increase is on track with the prediction.

And it's happening :)

I made estimates for next year. Let's see how true they will be.

2014 Jan  1.013 billion
2014 Feb  1.519 billion
2014 Mar  2.278 billion
2014 Apr  3.417 billion
2014 May  5.126 billion
2014 Jun  7.689 billion
2014 Jul 11.533 billion
2014 Aug 17.300 billion
2014 Sep 25.949 billion
2014 Oct 38.924 billion
2014 Nov 58.386 billion
2014 Dec 87.579 billion

O.o

End of October is looking far closer to 450-465M imho

Im not sure. That adjustment may actually be the last moderate one for some time, and more moderate than the upcoming one. It will be too early for HF to make a difference, and KnC may have finished their production run before that. BFL, Bitfury, asicminer, avalon etc they will all continue to add to the hashrate, but end of october may be the calm before the storm. End of november will get really ugly though.