Bitcoin Forum

Is this something normal? I'm cloud mining with CEX:IO.. Yeah I know they are expensive, but owning the hardware and keeping it powered up 24/7 isn't feasible where I live because I'd end up having to pay a $500+ electrical bill each month with running it and also an AC unit to keep such hardware cool..

Anyway, I'm at 620GHs. At certain times throughout the day, I see certain blocks taking up to 3 hours to solve. Other times it will take minutes to perhaps 45 mins. Today I noticed several blocks taking 1 hour a piece..

I asked support at CEX:IO and they said it was because multiple pools were working on the same block at the same time and this would happen in eating up the clock.

Perhaps it's just me, but if a certain pool is working on a block, shouldn't other pools move to the next available one to avoid gridlock??

Everyone works on the same block -- the next block.  There isn't another block to work on.  Whoever "finds" it first gets the reward.

You can't work on the next block until you solve the current block.  That's like saying lets build the top of the skyscraper while other guys do the bottom.  You gotta do it one step at a time.  Basically, it's a race by everyone on the network to solve the current block.  Sometimes, a pool goes many hours without solving a block and other times, they solve 3 in a row.  It's just random luck.

ok, thanks for the answer.. I'm new to this since December.

another question I have is, if BitCoin has gone lower in value, shouldn't the difficulty be going down? My understanding is the difficulty goes up when more and more miners are added to the network, but it also should go down when the value of a Bitcoin goes down. Seems like the difficulty lately has been doubling even though Bitcoin has gone down in value.

I realize that the number of miners are increasing, but where is all the new hardware coming from? Most if not all of the hardware vendors haven't even shipped any of their highend products.

Bitcoin difficulty is controlled solely by the hashrate of the network, not bitcoin price. The difficulty is adjusted to keep block generation at ten minutes. The only incidental connection between difficulty and bitcoin price is that if it went down enough so that running a miner for people became a losing proposition (spending more money on electricity than what is being earned) and enough people just simply turned off their miner to prevent themselves from losing money then, and only then, could the difficulty go down.

There are a few things that make this highly unlikely however.
1) Lots of people are in situations where they do not pay for electricity. For these people ANY amount of bitcoin that they generate is profit (hardware money is already gone) so why would they turn them off?
2) there are a ton of people who have pre-ordered hardware that is shipping. If you paid several thousand dollars months ago and now have your shiny new terawhatever miner are you going to let it collect dust because the coin is down today?  Tomorrow it could begin to recover.

JMHO

No, it shouldnt.

Why can't I work on the next block until I solve the current block?

Because there is no block to work on. The next block is put on top of the previous block, which means that the previous block has to exist. Consider why the collection of all the blocks is called a blockchain. The blocks are chained to each other, with new blocks continually being added to one end of the chain. Working on a block not connected to the chain simply doesn't make sense.

Sorry, but I don't really get it.
If you know the hashrate is expensive, and you can't do mining yourself, you can simply don't mine.

Each block contains a link to the previous block.

Well difficulty of bitcoin has an impact on price, but not other way around. Well maybe because number of miners changes accordingly to current coin price, but it is not super flexible since mines require certain investment that you can't monetize right away at point when you decide it is not worth it. S til some people stop mining, it becomes easier for other people, so in general people don't want to stop, hoping that others would.

Even at global panic, with large withdrawal, mining would become so easy people who actually keep they cool wins.

This is the psychological factor of "gold fever."

The question is equally valid for you yourself to answer - why don't you sell your mining hardware and quit when the price goes down? Your answer is probably the same as everyone else's.