Bitcoin Forum

It looks like the difficulty is predicted to go down as of right now? From 1690906 to 1687502.


http://bitcoinwatch.com/
http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/22/screenshot20110719at549.png

Perhaps stats are still lagging from the new difficulty change or perhaps sufficient people are throwing in the towel. Who knows, at least we can say that it looks like it's stabilizing right now.

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-small.png

Dope.

It's way too early to tell, and if we're really averaging 6.13blocks / hr then it will not likely decrease. This turn of events is not at all unexpected though, a huge boost in price lead a huge boost in hashing power. A huge drop in price effectively curtailed such a continued expansion, but it's much harder to get out of mining than it is to get in. So we see a bit of stabilization.

My worry about the current stabilization is that concept known as stagflation. Interest and demand taper off, while bitcoins continue to be pumped into the system. Hopefully the new stabilization in both hashing power and price ("stabilization" obviously) will attract more businesses to accept bitcoins as payment. Without the dreaded price swings, it should be more business friendly for those looking at balancing the books.

I'm not sure that stat is accurate especially just after difficulty bump...after difficulty change prior til today, I looked at it and it said difficulty was going to go up 1000 something, of course that was incorrect

It seems most people are in agreement that the software is simply not ready for prime time yet. That is, you will find a lot of smaller businesses and even some urban shops taking BTC (as with the recent CNN story), but a broader adoption will not happen unless the security issues are ironed out. Expecting mainstream consumers to encrypt their wallets is simply not realistic.

As for the difficulty, it is rather amusing to see a potential stabilization after a month or so of chicken little calls for dramatic 50+% increases to the moon.

Well, I suppose that I agree with the idea of prime time delay, but it takes basically no infrastructure for a shop to at least open up the doors to accepting bitcoin (unlike the billions of dollars required to enable the smart phone CC readers which are coming out), so I see no reason why a shop couldn't at least potentially accept bitcoin as payment (especially online stores). Doesn't have to be an overnight thing, but the more places that are at least willing to accept the coin the better it is for bitcoin, and the faster you will see developments like enhanced security features.

I agree on the difficulty calls, I've been arguing with people for weeks who claimed that because between may and june there were huge increases that would always be so, even to the point of creating spreadsheets with future difficulty predictions > 1 BILLION. I had to hold myself back from actively calling these people out as things started to smooth over. I don't know the future though so I may end up just as wrong, so for now, I'm just enjoying the current state of affairs.

I highly doubt the difficulty will ever go down. As people have already stated once you have the equipment you might as well just keep going because you are still turning a profit even if its less then before.

I wouldn't be surprised though if eventually we see 1% increases in difficulty or even less. This is where we are heading at the moment and unless some major event happens why should it not go there?

Difficulty will go down. A lot of people who I know personally that mined are giving it up to not wear out their prized new cards, or any number of reasons like profitability and heat and power usage. It's the equivalent of a gold miner in the gold rush packing up and going home because it's not profitable. It happens. Profitability drops, difficulty decreases until reward once again reaches a point where more miners are attracted.

The price seems level. It may be some time before it rises again. I think this effect is obvious and we can expect some decrease.

Now it's an increase:

Next Difficulty
(in 1800 blocks)
1,722,233

Dont forget the namecoin adjustment - some pools went over to deplete the low compexity in namecoins for some days, then will return to bitcoin.

Namecoin is a tiny fraction, I don't believe it has any real effect on bitcoin hashrates.

That would be a reasonably modest increase compared to the sub-1680000 predictions. I guess it goes to show that most people are pulling at straws with mining speculation.

Those readings are 10 blocks after a difficulty change..... They mean nothing.

Nearly 800 Ghash jumped to namecoin yesterday. That is significant

800Gh/s is a large fraction. Get educated, learn some math, go to school, don't do drugs.

I saw that not long ago and I'm ok with that ;D

That's the entire reason I posted mine, to show that it doesn't matter.