Imagine everybody around the world had free electricity..what would be the diff?

[adaseb]

Out of speculation, imagine every type of miner, CPU, GPU, ASIC was profitable.

If that were the case, what do you think the currently difficulty would be right now?

Would it be double? triple?

I imagine that most of those 60Gh/s ButteryFly Miners wouldn't contribute much to the total hashrate.  This is assuming that the production of miners wouldn't increase of what it currently is today.

[Amph]

everyone would not stop mining for sure , unless he is earning something around one satoshi per day, because if they made roi too, what's the point of turning off your miners? none

but maybe the price would suffer less, because there will be no point in selling after roi is reached, because you don't need to pay the bills

[notlist3d]

Every machine ever built would still be on still own.  I mean you could still use a BFL minirig. Which almost all I would guess have been pulled from mining.

Difficulty would skyrocket.  There would not really be a reason to make more efficient miners.  If it does not save you money everyone would use current miner models.  And companies just keep pushing same product.

[crazyivan]

It would be an interesting experiment, everybody would mine and this would probably add to the BTC acceptance.

[alh]

Simple economics would suggest that as the cost of something approaches zero, the demand for it approaches infinity.

Sounds vaguely like the promise of Nuclear Power in the US during the 1906's:

"Too cheap to meter"

What nobody made clear was that the first 100 watts produced by a nuclear plant cost a billion dollars. The "last" 100 watts were essentially "free".

[Benjig]

The diff would be the significant volume increase of Bitcoin mainstream bar, what lovely days for Bitcoin and mankind..

Difficulty would get high and probably many people may prefer not to mine because it's warm, hard, low efficient.

But from those days on even hungry boys in Africa will know what Bitcoin is..

[Beefcake]

Difficulty would go through the roof, new hardware manufacturers would pop up everywhere, and the average person would eventually mine.  But I think that would be the least of the changes.  Such a simple sounding thing would actually be a fundamental change to the world economy.

[alh]

One other thought:

Unless you found a way to use that "free" electricity that didn't result in heat, it would accelerate the heat death of the Earth I suspect.

That's would be a major bummer, regardless of difficulty.....