Bitcoin Forum

1090715.6800513

or

00000000 00000F61 B1000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 for those of you who need to know.

Last time the difficulty this low was during the mtgox hack, 2011-06-15 - 2011-06-24 (http://blockexplorer.com/b/133055)

Now it's time for the Bitcoins to start rolling in!

A nice 8% improvement to mining yields is always a plus for me. Actually do the the fixed energy cost an 8% drop in difficulty results in an almost 20% increase in net revenue.

So what does

00000000 00000F61 B1000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000

mean?

How does that relate to difficulty 1090715.6800513?

Not really sure.. It's not binary..

In Binary, the current difficulty is
100001010010010011011

Not hex either.. Thats
10A49B

The large number is the TARGET.  For a hash to be valid (and solve a block) it must be smaller than the target.  They are just two ways of expressing the same thing.

DIFFICULTY is somewhat arbitrary but easier for us humans to comprehend.  The first block had a target of:
0x00000000FFFF0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 = difficulty 1
0x0000000000000F61B10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 ~= difficulty 1.09 million

The starting difficulty (diff 1) will occur roughly once per 2^32 hashes so that is where the concept of a share comes into play.
With difficulty of 1 you will solve on average 1 block every 2^32 hashes or 1 share.
With difficulty of 1090715.6800513 you will solve on average 1 block every (1090715.6800513)*(2^32) hashes or 1090715.6800513 shares.

Hopefully that didn't leave you more confused.

TARGET = what we need the hash to be under.
DIFFICULTY = shorthand.  When we say difficulty 1 million we mean the target is 1 million times smaller.

As difficulty rises the target gets smaller.

If price recover now this means this is the last drop for a while. I still doubt it though.

Bitcoin mining won't really be sustainable until we're well under a million in terms of difficulty.

Actually what causes the difficulty to go up or down?

Hashing power.

The network strives to have an average of 10 minutes block.  Every 2016 blocks (roughly 2 weeks) the network compares the time taken for last 2016 blocks and recomputes a difficulty that would have kept average time at 10 minutes.

So:
higher difficulty = higher hashing power.
lower difficulty = lower hashing power.
rising difficulty = hashing power added in the last 2016 blocks.
falling difficulty = hashing power removed in the last 2016 blocks.

With difficulty falling 8% the network is estimating that aggregate hashing power has declined 8% over the last 2 weeks.

Indirectly.

Proper answer: blocks solved in a set time-frame.

Proper answer: time required to generate 2016 blocks (which should take two weeks, so if it took longer, the recalculation of difficulty every 2016 blocks lowers the target difficulty). Since there is variance and luck involved in block finding, it isn't an absolute measure of network hash rate, but pretty close.

I really hope it will get easier, but I guess the next time the change will be an increase in difficulty rather than a decrease

It is too early to say.  There is significant variance in block times even w/ same hashrate.  Check again in a week (or for more fun check each day).  The projected change will bounce around a lot.  As you get closer to the end of 2016 block period there is less and less blocks thus they have less effect on the average and the projection becomes more useful.