Difficulty skyrocketed ??

[mewhoyou]

Just notice that few website with few petahash have not found any block and even ghash with 50ph is finding one in 3 to 5hours...

New hardware introduce into the market??

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Just notice that few website with few petahash have not found any block and even ghash with 50ph is finding one in 3 to 5hours...

New hardware introduce into the market??

See now I thought difficulty was going down

[wh00per]

still 4 days to go. There's a lot of time for the difficulty to go either way.

[newIndia]

Just notice that few website with few petahash have not found any block and even ghash with 50ph is finding one in 3 to 5hours...

New hardware introduce into the market??

New hardware can not take the difficulty up unless 2016 blocks are found after last difficulty change. But, I guess, this upcoming rise is going to be because of the hash power coming back to bitcoin network after from PayCoin. Gen4 chips are expected to hit the market in 2015.

[sumantso]

still 4 days to go. There's a lot of time for the difficulty to go either way.

What has been the average blocktime since last difficulty change? If its less than 10 mins then difficulty is going to go up.

[Kprawn]

I wonder how many people shut down their mining operations, when they go on holiday in December/January?

I thought the difficulty was reduced.... So I do not see any skyrocketing. 

[finlon]

Just notice that few website with few petahash have not found any block and even ghash with 50ph is finding one in 3 to 5hours...

New hardware introduce into the market??

Even if new hardware was developed, you would never know. They would probably use it to mine a significant chunk,
and then introduce it to the market once the profits decrease for them.

[ranochigo]

It should probably just be a unlucky streak, variance occurs so blocks may or may not be generated every 10minutes. It worth noting that ghash.io has dropped to the 3rd largest mining pool, therefore the hashrate would be lower and blocks would not be generated as fast as discus fish and antpool.

[mewhoyou]

It should probably just be a unlucky streak, variance occurs so blocks may or may not be generated every 10minutes. It worth noting that ghash.io has dropped to the 3rd largest mining pool, therefore the hashrate would be lower and blocks would not be generated as fast as discus fish and antpool.

its just in the past 48hours its been hard to find a block ... time to jumppool soon

[jsgayo]

Is the difficulty not shrinking? Many old mining machine shut down, because income can not offset the electricity.

[ranochigo]

Is the difficulty not shrinking? Many old mining machine shut down, because income can not offset the electricity.

As old ASICs/GPU become obsolete, new ASICs would be introduced to the markets. Its also worth noting that there are some miners who have low or even free electricity which allows their old miners to still be profitable.

[ensano]

I think that the best thing that could happen for home miners is that if bitcoin prices were to go down.  Right now it's already hard to turn a profit and very risky for intvestors to put up huge capital to start up a mining warehouse.

If prices were to drop to say $150-200 I'd be we'd see a very quick drop in overall hash rate with and any plans to open up new large-scale mining operations would come to a halt.

[caga]

Is the difficulty not shrinking? Many old mining machine shut down, because income can not offset the electricity.

As old ASICs/GPU become obsolete, new ASICs would be introduced to the markets. Its also worth noting that there are some miners who have low or even free electricity which allows their old miners to still be profitable.

At the current prices even the Current ASIC's probably find it hard to stay that much profitable.
If the hashing goes down, the price might increase .

[moko666]

its first time in december when difficulty rised,for first 2 updates it was decreased
also it is showing estimated difficulty to +7% for next update

[charlieSeen]

Is the difficulty not shrinking? Many old mining machine shut down, because income can not offset the electricity.

As old ASICs/GPU become obsolete, new ASICs would be introduced to the markets. Its also worth noting that there are some miners who have low or even free electricity which allows their old miners to still be profitable.

The old ASICs have less hashpower then the newer ones coming to the market. The effect of them being taken offline is going to be somewhat minute. I do agree that the miners with free/very cheap electricity are going to keep their miners running longer then other would.

The spike was likely the result of miners starting to mine bitcoin again after pointing their miners at paycoin