Bitcoin Forum

One interesting aspect that seems to be large unnoticed is that the (estimated) hash rate is currently growing exponentially without any direct connection to price. Just this day we passed 10 million gigahashes. https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate

Since the inflation of bitcoin until the next reward halving is approximately 10 percent per year the amount of money spent on mining infrastructure and electricity per year should roughly equal 10 percent of the market capitalization. This direct correlation between price and hashing capacity does not seem to exist for the moment.

I would argue that this indicates that we can expect more upwards price movements in the mid term. It is of course the hashing capacity that is following the price, not the other way around, BUT if the hashing capacity continues to rise exponentially it will indicate that miners are prepared to add more rigs despite the fact that it for the moment would be better to buy coins instead of mining them. This may indicate that everybody in the game are preparing for a price rise.

Another interesting related thing is that the hashing capacity has risen ten to fifteen times since september 2013, whereas the price only has risen by about five to six times, nine at its peak. This probably indicates that the price for the moment is at a sustainable level and that further price rises can be expected.

Thoughts?

It seems that naturally there would be a continuous gain in hashrate due to the fact that the popularity of the coin is growing much larger. It's quite interesting to watch.

the rise in hashing capacity is mainly due to the release of ASIC miners from October 2013 onwards. The next batch is expected around March/April 2014 and will have significant impact. However, at the same time miners with smaller hashing power will move to mine alternative coins. That's where the money is in my view.

@Dogemine Particularly an huge gain in hash-rate however the rise in hashing capacity looks like the more possible explanation by now.

I was wondering what would happen if miners couldn't keep up with the blockchain difficulty.. Does that mean transactions will take longer to get confirmed?  ;D

Such thing cannot happen. Difficulty depend on hash power. If hash power decrease, difficulty will decrease as well.

Please learn what difficulty is before wondering about inexistent things https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty

So when difficulty decreases, block rewards increase again? And miners are the ones handling the transactions in the bitcoin network, right? So when hash power decreases, transactions takes longer to get confirmed?

Please learn that not all people could understand what's written on that page.

your payout for 1gh/s would increase because the overall network hashrate has decreased, so you are a larger % of the network and get a  larger share. The block reward won't increase again.