Huge ~40% Drop in Network Hashing Power (5/27/2011)

[SgtSpike]

Please read the thread.

I did.  I still don't believe that chart is accurate.  Something is wrong.  Why else would the difficulty level drop a large amount EXACTLY when difficulty level increased?

Probably because people are saying "screw it", and turning off their miners.

It doesn't make sense if you look at the numbers, as mining is still very profitable, but threads here have already shown that some people are no longer mining due to the difficulty.

[error]

I suspect a lot of the casual miners who came in with the last big round of press hits are getting out. Those who were CPU mining for a month or two and made less than they spent on electricity, or the NVIDIA miners who barely broke even, or even lost. At this difficulty such mining isn't really worth it.

And, summer hit with a vengeance here in the US on the day before the difficulty rose. I suspect some of the miners just can't stand the heat anymore.

[molecular]

Please read the thread.

I did.  I still don't believe that chart is accurate.  Something is wrong.  Why else would the difficulty level drop a large amount EXACTLY when difficulty level increased?

The difficulty increase was around 5/26 6pm, the hashrate was still climbing until after midnight that day. That's HARDLY exactly at the same time.

I assume this is just a lot of smaller miners making recalculations after the strong difficulty increase and deciding mining is not profitable for them any more and they don't want to bet on rising exchange rate, so they just quit or head back to folding@home or seti or whatever.

[Chucksta]

Please read the thread.

I did.  I still don't believe that chart is accurate.  Something is wrong.  Why else would the difficulty level drop a large amount EXACTLY when difficulty level increased?

Probably because people are saying "screw it", and turning off their miners.

It doesn't make sense if you look at the numbers, as mining is still very profitable, but threads here have already shown that some people are no longer mining due to the difficulty.

Exactly, mining does still bring in money, more than enough to cover costs. People are not leaving en masse. I'd be willing to bet (I don't gamble... phobia!) that more are coming in than are leaving.

Reading this thread it strikes me that a lot of people are overly optimistic, thus blinded to any explanations that refute what is shown in the chart.

[SgtSpike]

I suspect a lot of the casual miners who came in with the last big round of press hits are getting out. Those who were CPU mining for a month or two and made less than they spent on electricity, or the NVIDIA miners who barely broke even, or even lost. At this difficulty such mining isn't really worth it.

And, summer hit with a vengeance here in the US on the day before the difficulty rose. I suspect some of the miners just can't stand the heat anymore.

Mmmm, good point about the heat.  I have a friend in CA who is jealous of my mining, and he has a card that would do 100MH/s at least, but he won't mine because he said his room is already too hot.

Those of us who are adults can just go out and buy something to cool the room with, but some younger miners might not have that option available, and would just shut down the miners instead.

[error]

It got up to 86 here in New Hampshire the past few days. It's HOT.

[molecular]

is there any chance to see a difficulty drop ?

It's happened before, last time when "misteryminer" left in March. see http://bitcoin.sipa.be.

I doubt it will happen this time, though

[Sukrim]

It might be more psychologically relevant:

"Oh, a lot of ppl. are dropping out, I should drop out too!" 

[ChaosFox]

Seems like it's going up anyway.  But, consider this: There's someone, or a group of people with a considerable part of the network's computing power, in the order of the Thash/s.  They only allocate some of that power right before difficulty increases and turn it off right after difficulty increases, taking advantage of the screwiness for the first blocks, in hopes others miners will leave and the difficulty increase forecast actually gets skewed, and as the change approaches and some people leave, they gradually put their power in, ensuring a steady profit. Maybe I'm just nuts, and yes, this is one pretty tinfoil hat.

[k]

Seems like it's going up anyway.  But, consider this: There's someone, or a group of people with a considerable part of the network's computing power, in the order of the Thash/s.  They only allocate some of that power right before difficulty increases and turn it off right after difficulty increases, taking advantage of the screwiness for the first blocks, in hopes others miners will leave and the difficulty increase forecast actually gets skewed, and as the change approaches and some people leave, they gradually put their power in, ensuring a steady profit. Maybe I'm just nuts, and yes, this is one pretty tinfoil hat.

i'm pretty sure it doesn't work like this. how can these mystery miners take advantage of the "screwiness for the first blocks" after the difficulty change as you call it. It's only a screwiness in the calculated hash rate stats that happens after the difficulty change. The difficulty is set for a 2016 block period, it doesn't change. So for a certain hash rate you should get the same return on average for a particular difficulty regardless if it's just right after that difficulty has been set or if it's just before the difficulty is going to be readjusted

[commlinx]

I got scammed by this too, recently I bought one of the cheap ASIC miners on ebay that worked great for a day or two then I got an e-mail it would stop working at block 127225 unless I paid a further $1000 per core for an unlock code. I refused the extortion and guess many others were the same. At 45 Ghash/s for 16 cores it might have been worthwhile but I couldn't be sure I wouldn't be scammed again at some future block count

[Dhomochevsky]

What? Care to elaborate on that? More details about the scam and the scammers please.

[Chucksta]

Seems like it's going up anyway.  But, consider this: There's someone, or a group of people with a considerable part of the network's computing power, in the order of the Thash/s.  They only allocate some of that power right before difficulty increases and turn it off right after difficulty increases, taking advantage of the screwiness for the first blocks, in hopes others miners will leave and the difficulty increase forecast actually gets skewed, and as the change approaches and some people leave, they gradually put their power in, ensuring a steady profit. Maybe I'm just nuts, and yes, this is one pretty tinfoil hat.

i'm pretty sure it doesn't work like this. how can these mystery miners take advantage of the "screwiness for the first blocks" after the difficulty change as you call it. It's only a screwiness in the calculated hash rate stats that happens after the difficulty change. The difficulty is set for a 2016 block period, it doesn't change. So for a certain hash rate you should get the same return on average for a particular difficulty regardless if it's just right after that difficulty has been set or if it's just before the difficulty is going to be readjusted

LOL, the guy is talking out of his butt... on some funny stuff and living in pixie land, LOL

[Jaime Frontero]

I got scammed by this too, recently I bought one of the cheap ASIC miners on ebay that worked great for a day or two then I got an e-mail it would stop working at block 127225 unless I paid a further $1000 per core for an unlock code. I refused the extortion and guess many others were the same. At 45 Ghash/s for 16 cores it might have been worthwhile but I couldn't be sure I wouldn't be scammed again at some future block count

huh?

yes, please elaborate...

[Nythain]

And, summer hit with a vengeance here in the US on the day before the difficulty rose. I suspect some of the miners just can't stand the heat anymore.

Actual temperatures aside... Tornado season hit with a vengeance throughout a pretty hefty chunk of the US... I'm curious how many miners have been without power or even worse, a home, in the last week or two.

[TTBit]

Implied network power for last X blocks, using block explorer:

(2 ^ 256 / (2^224/Difficulty)) / (time in seconds between blocks) * (number of blocks)

Example:
Implied network power between blocks 127259 and 127295

(2 ^ 256 / (2 ^ 224 / 434877.045527)) / (20423 seconds) * (36 blocks) = 3,292,375,105,494.02 hashes per second

(actually, this seems low)

[w128]

Don't worry guys. Im away for the holiday weekend. I had some concern about burning my house down so I shut the miners down. Be back in full swing on Monday midday with new capacity arriving Wednesday.

[allinvain]

What? Wait a minute. Are you saying that you control that hashing power? If so what are you running 1000 5970s?

[SgtSpike]

What? Wait a minute. Are you saying that you control that hashing power? If so what are you running 1000 5970s?

He doesn't, lol.  People are just saying stuff to get attention, but they're all a bunch of liars.

[w128]

What? Wait a minute. Are you saying that you control that hashing power? If so what are you running 1000 5970s?

He doesn't, lol.  People are just saying stuff to get attention, but they're all a bunch of liars.

The word is sarcasm. No need to be an ass.