Bitcoin Forum

Next difficulty change:  Block #278208
Next difficulty projection:   1,393,489,370 @ 11:30PM CDT 1/1/2014 (+18%)
Actual difficulty after change: 1,418,481,395 @ 11:58PM CDT 1/1/2014 (+20%)

So I was off by ~24M, or 2%...

Based on my calculations, between 6/29/2013 and 12/21/2013 there were 16 difficulty jumps, averaging an increase of 28.75% in difficulty and a 29.12% increase in hashrate with each jump.

The current network hashrate is ~9.7 PH/s and if these increases continue at this pace then by February 14th, 2014 there will need to be a network hashrate of ~34.2 PH/s, an increase of over 250%.

So how big is an increase of 25 PH/s?  Well it depends a lot on how many ASICs are going to deliver in the next month.

ASIC Miner obviously is good on delivering their products, but they would need to release a ton of Cubes (657,895 to be exact) to make that type of dent in the hashrate.  CoinTerra looks promising but they haven't actually shipped a unit yet and don't plan to until March/April 2014.  Neither has HashFast, and they appear to be more of a concern of non-delivery judging from some of the posts that I have seen.

I can see the hashrate skyrocketing once the multi-TH/s units are actually being delivered, but as of now it looks to me like the difficulty is going to grow much more slowly than we have been seeing and maybe the 14% increases we saw in November will be similar for the next month or two.   We should know today or tomorrow, but I am guessing the next increase will only be ~15% and the following one should be even less than that.  Until the next generation of ASICs are actually plugged in and mining, I can't see these large increases sustaining.  I'd love to see a decrease in difficulty, but I am not sure that will ever happen again.  Until then I think we will all get to enjoy a good start to 2014 with small increases for at least the first two months.   There simply isn't enough power coming out in the next couple of months to increase the hashrate at the rates we have seen in the past 6 months.

So, yeah, tell me why I am wrong :D

Good tally. There is the 10 days of "pre-testing" (aka poaching of other peoples' pre-orders) by all the manufacturers who are shipping in Feb-March, mining is becoming more and more centralized, so there are probably big data centers doing private orders and receiving private shipments.  KnC continues to ship hard and fast.

But let's see what the diff increase is today. Will you publish it here if you're watching it?

I know the KnC Neptune will be shipping in Q2 2014 and that will add to the inevitable large spike in the coming months.  What units

are they shipping right now?  The Jupiter?  That's 550GH/s so they would need to ship about 40,000 of those units in the next couple

of months to increase the difficulty at the current average rate.


Definitely will post it here as soon as I see it...

It looks like the average net hashrate over the last 100 blocks (block 277495-277595) was ~9.9PH/s which is only an increase of 4.5%

from the net hashrate of the last jump (9.5PH/s @ block 276192)

However, after a little more research it looks like the net hash rate has recently been over 30-50PH/s at various block which is a bit unnerving... maybe these are calculation errors or something?  How can the hashrate fluctuate as much as 500% within a few blocks?

All of my data is from here:  http://blockexplorer.com/q/nethash/2016

If the average net hashrate data is correct, then I would be shocked if the next difficulty jump is not under 15%

Edit:  Okay, I went back 2000 blocks to get a better picture, and also realized I was looking at this wrong... the net hash rate is just a calculation that I was getting from blockexplorer.com so I decided to look at the time of the blocks solved and the past 2000 blocks have been solved at an average of 494.25 seconds each or on target to solve 2016 blocks in 11.53 days.

This is 17.6% below the target time of 10 minutes per block, so the difficulty should adjust ~18% correct?

Wow, you're saying that the network might actually decrease in difficulty (possible in the blockchain?), if it even stays the same for the next month, and you called it, that is like world wide, front page breaking news. Mr. Exclusive Damnsammit

I never said it would decrease... I said it would be nice if it would decrease in difficulty but that I don't think we will see that happening before all 21 million Bitcoins have been mined.

The only point of this thread was that people keep saying ASIC X will never ROI, and they are basing this on the continued climbing difficulty.  I am trying to get more information on how the difficulty can continue to climb at the %rate that it has been the last 6 months.  To that, I say that instead of the 30-40% increases we have been seeing for most of the last quarter will be halved starting with the next difficulty jump that will happen tomorrow.

Granted, the likelihood of a lot of miners being profitable is a tossup because we can't effectively calculate what the difficulty will be in March/April of 2014 however, even if the difficulty only increases 15% over the next 10 retargets we are looking at a network hashrate of 40+ PH/s by the end of March.  I don't know how this can be possible and feel that the difficulty climbs are going to have to slow down soon - not stop. If the average difficulty jump goes down from 28.75% to 14% for a few months, then it is very possible for a lot of the current ASIC devices to ROI.

Although, after all of that is said, I thought this was already happening in November when we saw consecutive retargets of <20%...

The first Hashfast and cointerra miners are starting to go out that's why.

https://twitter.com/HashFast/status/418106414280609793

The email I had a few hours ago from Cointerra says different. Chips and boards..no rigs. Pretty pics of the boards and chips..not a finished machine in sight. They would mention that wouldn't they?

Worry about the KNC rigs, early and faster seems likely so 2400 x 4 or 5 TH rigs about march. That's pretty likely

Yup. Almost time to list my Cube on eGay.

So, what is butterfly labs doing know, well let me tell you, people that are dumb and keep theyre company up by buying from them and waiting half a year to receive their miner which wont be worth it since the difficulty rose up.

If half the shit I hear about BFL on here is true, it's only a matter of time before they get shut down.

It's very possible that there is a lull in difficulty for say a month.  But expect a huge increase as the next stuff comes up.  Like 15% increase for three jumps and then 100% increase for the next jump.

I'm thinking it will be something similar to that, but maybe 5 15-20% jumps and then a couple of huge ones as the 28nm ASICs that are pushing 2-5TH/s each hit the market.  Looks to be a rough year for the ASIC miner.  Scrypt is going to get overloaded... which alt-coin wins this year? Litecoin, something else?  Hmmmm

Yes, I think bitcoin mining should stop because no one is really making profit.

It's big-time players now, bud.  If you don't have a couple hundred grand to throw around, it's probably best to buy it.

Or Scrypt mine...  no ASICs... then it will be CPU mining... now that hobbyists have been created there is no end to the mining culture and the land of the forever altcoins.

Yes, Donald Trump probaly has the biggest warehouse of miners lol

Been that way a while now, depending on how you look at it, or more accurately if you weigh buying BTC against buying a rig to mine them.

You'd imagine my KNC merc costing 2k dollars and mining 8 BTC since late Oct was a profit wouldn't you? Fact is, that was 20 BTC back then...so the way I look at it is a cash profit (at the moment), but in BTC it's unlikely it would ever break even. Worse, it was supposed to mine at 100GH and it's sat here at 145 roughly since the hour I got it. If it had worked out as most of us hoped, BTC would be worth 200ish and it would have mined 1/3 less of them. Either way, I'd rather have 20 BTC wouldn't you..and no months of hoping the rig I'd bought would ever arrive or work when it did?

A KNC Neptune would need to mine roughly 10 - 15 BTC to break even when it arrives...at 4TH maybe it will have a better chance ? Even a huge increase in the hashpower added to the network won't do the damage we've seen so far...imagine how many huge rigs would have to start hashing to double what we see today? Not going to happen every month is it?

Rigs like the Neptune look to draw about 2KW too...so large numbers of those in domestic situations isn't easy on the wiring.

I think that for a while at least these bigger 20nm rigs will be nice for those of us with more domestic gear, purely because they will hold value and be something affordable on Ebay...and the only thing worth running at all. Not everyone can afford of wish to sink 10k plus into the bitcoin gamble. A grand or two..maybe.

Lets say I have a huge mining rig, you know warehouse size compromised of 2,000 usb miners, what will that do in the next 10 years?

Waste a lot of space.  :D

No, waste of money, because what all these people are doing is buying mining equipment and the keep building until bitcoin is no longer in mining stage, and they will have more money wasted than bitcoin because of network difficulty.

I personally think Hashfast are going to make knc miner owners lifes a living hell
and jupiters will be the equivilent of what usb stick miners is now,its going to get really tough this month

Who cares now? I expected my rig to be useless in january but what happened was much better for me. Hashfast (lol at that name) are in effect delivering a Jupiter, old tech, same speed ...way too late to come close to break even, but just in time for 2400 big KNC rigs to come into the game in spring giving hashfast owners a month or so to recoup their investment.

Time is everything now, I was mad at KNC for the bullshitting over a 2 week delay on delivery which in the grand scheme is nothing compared to other companies...but that was 14 day and a diff increase of about 100% leaving me on .5 btc a day for a short while...cost me at least 7 btc that delay of 2 weeks at the prime time. Almost what it's mined since. 

As for the new rigs getting bigger...IMO 2kw per rig is already showing the way it's going. Industrial. Selling rigs won't make sense, in fact I can't see all the companies we know now existing in a year. BFL for example..why would they? I can see private investors getting into mining with deep pockets, not buying rigs, buying the people to make their own and using them. IT's possible to get tax breaks, grants, alsorts of money recouped from your running costs,..and it pays back super fast. Even the rigs are attractive to sell when no longer profitable enough.
We'll see if/when  it happens.

The next network difficulty will make you less bitcoins so those 3 th/s wont be worth shit by the time they deliver.

What? The next difficulty won't be anything drastic, and we all know it's always rising..but to rise 100% as it has in the past do you realise how much hash power would need to be added?

Those 3TH or likely 4TH 20nm rigs will be the new norm, it's the stuff we all have now and that is about to roll out that won't be so sparky anymore....unless of course BTC prices rise significantly again...which will make slower rigs viable.

If a 3 or 4TH rig isn't worth shit when it's the ONLY such 20nm rig available next march or april..mining is dead , simple as that.

Exactly Asics are going to wiped them selfs out
CoinTerra wont even release how many there going to ship
Which tells me its going to be alot as they know its going to be saturated to make any coins back
All Companys know this right now i am sure,bitcoin will die as no one will be able to aford to run them at such a high difficulty,its GameOver i am afraid

If all the miners get wiped out, what will happen to confirmation times? I think blockchain should require a chip to invest %4 of every block crunching to confirmation times.

block crunching is block confirming

Can you say equilibrium? 

Not likely at all.

Scenario 1. ASICs carry on as they are increasing in power. Companies who sell them NOW make money because they have large profit margins...and we fund the upfront costs with pre-orders. When the development reaches a plateau and nothing radically new is coming, who's going to prepay an order for a rig that most likely won't make them a profit? No-one sane, so the model has to change or companies vanish. A lot will anyway, like any area of manufacturing. Still...if nothing new is coming, there's little profit, why mine with them at all?

Eventually people will quit mining and buying rigs, that will decease the hashrate and the difficulty with it...so people will mine when difficulty allows a profit instead of all the time like we do now?

Scenario2. It carries on but goes outside the pockets of normal people mining at home and into corporate size operations. Instead of companies like Hashfast and CT and KNC selling us rigs, they just make them to use themselves, easier for them to make a profit since they are paying trade price not what we need to...so for them it's economical. I'd be surprised if private operations aren't already onto this given the price of BTC.

The system works based on people mining and their hashrate governs difficulty. If people stop due to the difficulty, it will drop. Then they maybe jump back on the horse and it will rise again ...people stopping mining won't kill anything. What would you do if this time next year difficulty was lower than today because loads of people quit mining? You can't say you wouldn't get the rig back online. Can you?



Gonna be an interesting year 2014. Year of the ASIC in the bitcoin calendar.

If people stop and the hashrate lowers then its just going to be a repeatable circle of people starting back up and increasing the difficulty again,bitcoin is doomed in 2014,i am calling it now

Worst care scenario in what you seem to think, no more mining? What would happen to gold if gold mining stopped? It would aall vanish, or the price would rocket? It exists, it can't vanish, only change in value. Same for BTC.

There's only one sensible way to go for miners now as far as new rigs are concerned. Miners developing their own rigs using crowd funding to bypass the mnuafacturer's profit.  Become the manufacturers of the rigs you're already funding with pre-orders. Not an easy option at all but it's possible with the money to pay expertise. That's exactly what KNC did but they used pre-orders and our money to pay for it and kept the profit. Nice work if you can get it eh?

How does one come about to making their own mining hardware, you know like a Blade Erupter, My dad just got a good soldering kit for his hobby of repairing cellphone motherboards. Thanks.

You'd need to buy the chip at least, not really possible without serious skills and knowledge sadly. Some people on here have done group buys and built some stuff though...maybe find some info in those threads. The chances of finding a faulty ASIC and repairing it may be half decent though, there must be some around and if your dad does that as a hobby maybe he could do that?

They Did.

http://hashfast.com/were-shipping-2013/

Cointerra is not Hashfast

KNC's rigs have a few Quality control issues. There Jupeters love to blow caps and stop mining.   

So are those $2200 miners hitting 600 GH/s if I read the news post right?  Should make about 21 BTC, which is pretty much break even if you bought them when BTC was $100.

I need to do more info on this, who knows, I can be the next hardware manufacturer on the market and sure it would make sure for it to be fast to ship (You can tell im dreaming).

Right, because ASICs can only hash when they are actually in the hands of the consumers who preordered them. Its physically impossible for them to hash before this time, because they havent "ripened" yet properly. That requires months of sitting idling in an offsite storage facility. Its like cheese, or winemaking. Yeah, thats it. Thats the ticket!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx3wrfhQaqk

HE said both were shipping, they are not. Jupiters in the 1st early batch had a few issues which were solved either by firmware or replacement boards. Cointerra are not shipping, and neither are hashfast in any real numbers yet. KNC had 2000 plus rigs delivered in 4 weeks the 1st time they ever manufactured an ASIC...next time they'll have learned from that.

As for a 2k rig hashing 600GH breaking even if paid for when BTC were 100 dollars...you think a 600 GH rig starting mining today will manage to mine 20BTC? I don't. Paid with flat it will break even but buying rigs for BTC can be the stupidest mistake.

No doubt all of our current miners will be obsolete in a few months (two, three, four?).  As for us our Jupiter has earned 8 BTC since Dec 9th.  By 1 Feb even if the difficulty doubles we will be ahead of the game in BTC (we are already ahead in USD).   There is no doubt mining is becoming a big boy's game, so hold on to your bitcoins and let's hope they drive the price through the roof ... :)

..and while you big boys throw around your bits - I'm one idiot sitting here with a 0.02 BTC balance hoping my BFL Monarch 600GH/s will arrive in time just to make 1 or 2 BTC.. Which probably won't happen..
Yes - buying BTC directly is probably the best way now..

 Not genuine or accurate. HashFast has, by all accounts, only shipped out two developer units, and mass-production is estimated to be several weeks off from what I'm reading in the various HashFast threads.

Reminded me of BLF ..they did this didn't they? Units to bloggers...then not much for a long time.

Yes, they decided it was important to establish their dominance in the cyptoworld rather than meet commitments made to their paying customers.  You see how that went.  I'm pretty sure the Monarch buyers who are repeat BFL customers is less than 20%.  Should the company survive to release another preorder beyond that I would be surprised if they had beyond 3% repeat buyers.

This coming from a Day 1 SC Single buyer (my single died after 6 days of use and had 14 days of RMA downtime).  Then again according to Josh I'm less than 1% of BFL's customer representation and my story is rare  ::)

So once they see more pole kissing their ass's they will notice it, and they will make shipouts more longer since they know people will continue to buy from them.