Bitcoin Forum

How long will it take to reach 1 billion difficulty? What are your thoughts on this?

I am thinking around January 2014.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Auya3iRE6az1dDc0UVgwMU52YVpTazVjSHByOGNiWHc#gid=8

Personally I would be ecstatic if it took until January of 2014 for the difficulty to hit 1 billion. At the current daily network growth rate, and considering how that has actually been continuing to increase as of late, I'll actually be surprised if it doesn't hit a billion by the beginning of December of this year. But honestly, who really knows?!

It is just a transition.
The reality is that as it rises exponentially, it also becomes exponentially difficult to increase it.
What we are seeing is the transition from Bi-planes to jets.

Once we hit 26nm en mass it will slow down, the reality is that this could be the start of the end for bitcoin, specifically because the distribution is being centralized into a small number of pools.
It matters not what the overall distribution of miners is, but rather the pool distribution.

It would only take a 'bent' or a 'couple of bent' pool operators to leverage a 51% attack.

To do what? Destroy their business by destroying bitcoin? What would that achieve?

If all of the current companies can ship on time I would predict 1 billion difficulty by Nov 15th.  As more and more default though, that date keeps getting pushed back.

I am predicting March of 2014.

This -  You guys really believe in X^2 to happen month after month after month?  Someone needs to show some mathematics to substantiate the GH required to make it 1B by next January.

If Cointerra, Hashfash, Terrahash, and Bitfury all happen together around early Dec, then Yes its possible.  (Anyone who regards BFL or Avalon as a threat needs to realize that those are now the larger chipsizes)  BFL is simply doing a dead cat bounce and clawing for their life to keep money coming in ala Monarch announcement.

Attn Viceroy:  Inaba sockpuppet alert.

X^2 is obviously impossible, X currently = 65M difficulty.  X^2 = 4.225 Quadrillion.

he meant x*2

Difficulty doesn't have to increase exponentially forever to reach 1 billion by early 2014.  I would estimate that >6 PH/s has already been sold.  The various companies may be delayed a month or two but even so that would put us near 1 billion difficulty in early January.  The fact that "BFL sucks" is pretty much irrelevant.  They have 3 PH/s worth of chips, those chips will be deployed.  There is no reason not to.  They are a sunk cost at this point.  The people who bought rigs may end up negative ROI% but BFL has no reason to not delivery them.  Even if their anemic rollout doesn't improve they should complete shipping of 65nm pre-orders by January.  It is highly likely that even if the long term growth rate slows we could see a couple of very high difficult gains (>100% in 2 week period) if the various companies happen to ship in volume over the same period of time.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=283820

Let me show you a pretty nice calculator where you can try for yourself:

http://btcinvest.net/bitcoin-mining-profit-calculator.php (http://btcinvest.net/bitcoin-mining-profit-calculator.php)

The really slick thing in comparison to other calcs is that you can set the initial difficulty increase for the first jump and how much the percentual growth of difficulty will lower each jump. (Since it is likely to go down as difficulty reaches bigger numbers.

Lets say the difficulty jumps by 30% this time and the percentual growth goes back by 3% for each jump. (Meaning from the first to second jump it would increase by 27%.):
http://btcinvest.net/bitcoin-mining-profit-calculator.php?diff=65750060.149085&dcosts=500&diff_mincrease=30&blpbtc=25&dhsmhs=860&diff_mincreasedecrease=3&btcusd=132.51&dpowcon=30&btcusd_mincrease=1&pcost=0.25&calcweeks=32&dleadtime=0&action=calc (http://btcinvest.net/bitcoin-mining-profit-calculator.php?diff=65750060.149085&dcosts=500&diff_mincrease=30&blpbtc=25&dhsmhs=860&diff_mincreasedecrease=3&btcusd=132.51&dpowcon=30&btcusd_mincrease=1&pcost=0.25&calcweeks=32&dleadtime=0&action=calc)

It would reach 1 billion by the sixth of february 2014 then.

Generally I would say that the difficulty is skyrocketing at the moment and its very hard to tell whats gonna happen to it, but I go with 1 Billion by 2014/02/06  :)

Nice calculator, a lot better put together than the x% jump forever the crowd now uses.  I think it need a little tweek though, I think the next 3-5 increases with be larger than the last and then start tapering off fairly quickly.  if possible add a % increase and # month increase to the calc.

The flip side is that people now have to pull 2 or more numbers out of their asses to plug into the calculator in order to make a prediction. The model may conceptually be more accurate but requires a higher level of sophistication to operate correctly.

JimiQ84 raises an interesting point that I have recently been discussing with some of my other bitcoin friends. I think JimiQ84's concern is a valid one, but perhaps not so much because of bent pool operators. My fear is that with these huge concentrated centers of power...they will be all that much easier for the 'authority' to take out in one single well-coordinated swoop.

So, all you members out there with more history than I (most of you I suspect):
"Yeah, the network is that much more secure...but do you guys feel this tendancy towards mega-mining POP's could potentially threaten BTC in the long run?"

If it happens, those pools will quickly lose all their miners. It would be suicide.

I'd rather have to pull a couple of numbers out of thin air than see a program tell me that there will be $150billion worth of mining equipment on the network in a years time.  Anyone who reads these forums can see we've got a lot of pre-ordered ASICs primed to unload onto the network between now and Dec 1.  Over the last few increases we've seen 19%, then 36% then 29% then 32%.   Even if nobody shipped for the next 2 weeks, we're looking at a 40-45% jump in the next difficulty.  Maybe we'll get lucky and the pansies that demand refunds cause their potential RoI has just moved into the basement will stem the flood of products.

November 20-25 or so when KnC has started to deliver there 2nd batch of miners.

Let's be reasonable. It will take another 6 months or so before it hits 1 billion diff.

You may very well be correct, I even hope you ARE correct, but if you look at who is getting ready to ship what, you'll see that 6 months is unreasonable.  I'd count us lucky if it takes until the end of January.  It all depends on how many companies are BFLing us.

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Jan 14 might be true if all the hardware ships, but it doesn't look right as investing USD 10k+ on these hardware isn't everyone's game. So, mining has to slow down at some time and historical rate may not be very accurate in that case to speculate projected difficulty.