Bitcoin Forum

Isn't it suppose to be already out?  I figure its almost been 2 weeks since the last change came out....anyone have information on this at all?  Is it finally starting to become too hard to get that many blocks in this amount of time?

Difficulty adjustments don't happen every two weeks—they happen every 2016 blocks, which isn't necessarily the same. The next one is expected to happen tomorrow this time.

I am aware of that as I stated in my original post. 

But for the last 1.5 years it has been almost like clockwork at 12 days.  I don't think it has ever taken 13 days.  My question was mostly, Is it finally becoming too hard to get that many blocks in this amount of time?

Nope. That's not how it works.

Now I am not quite understanding what you mean by that's not how it works? 

I asked:  Is it becoming to difficult to get that amount of blocks in that amount of time?

I am under the impression that the difficulty makes it harder to find a block, which would increase the time that it takes to discover 1 block, or say, 2016 blocks, are you telling me that is not how it works?

It is set up such that a block will be found approximately every ten minutes.

If there were only two miners with equal capability, they would each find a block about every twenty minutes.

The higher the difficulty level, the harder it is for any one miner to find a block.

The difficulty level is calculated by taking into account the entire network hashpower, such that the entire network will find a block about every ten minutes.



It does make it harder for a miner to find a block, but the whole network finds a block about every ten minutes.... that's the "constant".

Gotcha, so that is why roughly a 2016 blocks are found roughly every 12 days, and that is why the difficulty % changes from time to time.  So then is it rather odd that the change hasn't happened yet, and since it hasn't happened can we expect a small % change in difficulty?

Interesting, can that actually happen with the way it is set up?  Are their chances we go back way down at all?

Yes, it's expected to be increased by a 2.5% as of this writing. https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Is it a bad news or a good news ?  More difficulty less home mining .

We had a drop in the hash rate for about two weeks. That's why it's taking slightly longer to get the required number of blocks. Then the hash rate went way up. No idea why. Maybe one of the big mining farms was doing an equipment upgrade and shut down for the changeout.  The difficulty adjustment tomorrow will probably be 1-2%, much smaller than last time.

I wonder if the drop was when Butterfly labs was shut down by the US government but then given the ok to run limited again. Maybe their server farm was down for that time but is back up now.

that may be some of it. also bitmaintech shipped s-4's so they stopped mining in china and are now starting back up around the world.

Ugh! The misinformation and ignorance in this thread is mind boggling.

It is possible, but it is also possible that it has to do with the price falling as it is potentially not unprofitable to continue to mine at current levels after electric expenses are taken into consideration

looks like the difficulty increase may clock in under 1% - needless to say im pretty pumped about that, though my mining farm is below capacity due to a lack of hardware prices worth purchasing

yeah I have 6 s-3's    with the jump at

Bitcoin Difficulty:   34,661,425,924
Estimated Next Difficulty:   34,889,768,997 (+0.66%)
Adjust time:   After 54 Blocks, About 8.8 hours

from:
 https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

and price up to 367 usd.

 I kind of wish I had more of them.
but I did convert a bit  gear into btc and held the btc  so the price rise from 299 to 367 feels good.

Care to elaborate on this?  Instead of insulting everyone it would be great to hear an explanation.  I don't know 100% how it works which is why I created this thread, I was looking for more information.

last difficulty jump knocked out the s1.  the s1's efficiency lasted close to a year.  i wonder how long it will take to say bye to the s3's ?

S1 isn't dead yet. Undervolted it can go as low as 1.19 W/GH @ 140GH/s. Places with cheap electricity can still run em fine... Man, I wish I lived in Venezuela, their electricity is so cheap ($0.005/KWH @ unofficial exchange rates) that even operating an ASICMINER blade (7.5w/gh) is still profitable.

Daily revenue of 10GH @ current diff:
5.2¢

Daily power costs of 75W @ unofficial exchange rate:
0.8¢

ASICMINER Blades will be profitable in Venezuala until difficulty crosses 220 billion. Hot damn.
Antminer S1's will be profitable until difficulty is well over a trillion...

This is a very brave assumption to make. We have not seen this small of difficulty increases last that long for a very long time (if ever). I think there is a good chance we will not see huge increases anymore however this is far from a guarantee and will likely turn out to not be true if the price of bitcoin starts to increase dramatically again

You're right on the money!

I find it fascinating that some people can take a single difficulty adjustment of 1% and think its a trend, lol. The adjustment before this one was 16% and a few before that was an adjustment of nearly 21%. If someone sees a trend anywhere near 5%, they're dreaming!

I agree I have tracked  a trend of 10% over 105 days.   which is not close to 5% once you compound it the difference between 10% and 5% is huge.

 I can guarantee  that if price jumps to 600 usd   the 10% will slip higher. 

I would say that if we start to see large jumps in price then we will probably see large jumps in difficulty as people with less efficient miners start to bring their machines back online and people start to buy/manufacture larger mining farms. This is primarily the reason why I am hesitant to buy additional cloud mining power as it will become less efficient as difficulty increases and I predict that difficulty will rise along with the price of bitcoin....I am overall bullish on the price of bitcoin

People need to stop letting manufacturer make money, its good money for them and they will mass manufacturer non-stop..