Bitcoin difficulty eventually linear growth?

[jimmothy]

Right now as the asic arms race is in full swing we are seeing exponential growth from 20%-40% per difficulty change. My question is will the difficulty rise eventually slow down? To the point of linear growth?

My prediction is that once we see fully optimized 20/28nm asics we will stop seeing such dramatic increases in difficulty because there will not be much room for improvement.

Also eventually electricity efficiency will become a limiting factor and only the most efficient mining operations would be able to continuously add hashing power.

[Fireblade]

The bitcoin price would be a significant factor. Is the price rises it is attractive for the producers and miner to buy lager miners that could ROI. Instead a company selling miner for 4BTC/850usd it could be selled for 3BTC/1130usd.

In my opinion the network hashrate is depending on the BTC price.

[Takeshi_Kovacs]

Right now as the asic arms race is in full swing we are seeing exponential growth from 20%-40% per difficulty change. My question is will the difficulty rise eventually slow down? To the point of linear growth?

My prediction is that once we see fully optimized 20/28nm asics we will stop seeing such dramatic increases in difficulty because there will not be much room for improvement.

Also eventually electricity efficiency will become a limiting factor and only the most efficient mining operations would be able to continuously add hashing power.

It is unlikely to slow down to linear growth. An underlying limit would be Moore's law. That would suggest that difficulty would double every year and a half. Still exponential but not so fierce as now. That time is a long way off though. Everything suggests that the current rate of increase will obtain for at least the first half of 2014 (look at pre-order levels) and may well continue through to the end of the year and beyond.

[HarrisonS]

Even if a 1TH/s miner was produced every minute the difficulty would only increase about 212M per day. If we assume an exponential growth rate of 20% per difficulty change, the increase in hash rate would exceed the production rate of miners in early June. The growth in difficulty will become linear.

[af_newbie]

Even if a 1TH/s miner was produced every minute the difficulty would only increase about 212M per day. If we assume an exponential growth rate of 20% per difficulty change, the increase in hash rate would exceed the production rate of miners in early June. The growth in difficulty will become linear.

Why would it be linear? I don't get it.    The production capacity of 28nm (or 14nm) products can be increasing at exponential rate.  As long as human population increases at exponential (or near exponential) rate why would production (of asics or anything else) not be in step.  It has been so far.

We still have enough resources on this rock to have a good exponential run for another 75-100 years or so.

There will be nothing linear about it in our lifetimes.  Babies are born every minute and every minute there is a teenager somewhere who discovers crypto currencies and wants to make some money.

[jimmothy]

Even if a 1TH/s miner was produced every minute the difficulty would only increase about 212M per day. If we assume an exponential growth rate of 20% per difficulty change, the increase in hash rate would exceed the production rate of miners in early June. The growth in difficulty will become linear.

Why would it be linear? I don't get it.    The production capacity of 28nm (or 14nm) products can be increasing at exponential rate.  As long as human population increases at exponential (or near exponential) rate why would production (of asics or anything else) not be in step.  It has been so far.

We still have enough resources on this rock to have a good exponential run for another 75-100 years or so.

There will be nothing linear about it in our lifetimes.  Babies are born every minute and every minute there is a teenager somewhere who discovers crypto currencies and wants to make some money.

Technically any growth could be considered exponential even if very little. My question is will growth slow down from the 30% per change we are seeing now? I think we are currently in the "bitcoin gold rush" and just like the real gold rush we could see a bunch of the miners drop out5 leaving only the most efficient operations.

[zimmah]

The past few difficulty rises were already pretty linear, although it will likely go exponential again.

Altough 20-30% per difficulty rise is too much to be sustainable.

[af_newbie]

Even if a 1TH/s miner was produced every minute the difficulty would only increase about 212M per day. If we assume an exponential growth rate of 20% per difficulty change, the increase in hash rate would exceed the production rate of miners in early June. The growth in difficulty will become linear.

Why would it be linear? I don't get it.    The production capacity of 28nm (or 14nm) products can be increasing at exponential rate.  As long as human population increases at exponential (or near exponential) rate why would production (of asics or anything else) not be in step.  It has been so far.

We still have enough resources on this rock to have a good exponential run for another 75-100 years or so.

There will be nothing linear about it in our lifetimes.  Babies are born every minute and every minute there is a teenager somewhere who discovers crypto currencies and wants to make some money.

Technically any growth could be considered exponential even if very little. My question is will growth slow down from the 30% per change we are seeing now? I think we are currently in the "bitcoin gold rush" and just like the real gold rush we could see a bunch of the miners drop out5 leaving only the most efficient operations.

Gold rush will continue at least until 98% of coins are mined.  We are at what? 50-60%.  The miners don't drop out.  They upgrade their hardware.

Penetration of bitcoin is very small.  It will continue to attract more and more miners in years to come.  Nothing will slow this down.  Greed is good.