[4,847,647]Difficulty Discussion Thread [TRENDING ↑ ↑]

[bitboyben]

Lots of good answers here.
Maybe I'll make a highly speculative chart where the monthly volumes of all the markets are added up and I'll assume 20% of the daily BTC allotment gets thrown in there. Then take half out and see how the total volume changes.

[Fjordbit]

There would have to be something major to happen to see a drop anywhere near that.  GPU miners being unable to compete and powering down doesn't really impact the exchange rate either way, from what I can tell.

It might cause it to go up, as people who were previously mining to support an SR habit will now need to source their coins from the market.

[cunicula]

There would have to be something major to happen to see a drop anywhere near that.  GPU miners being unable to compete and powering down doesn't really impact the exchange rate either way, from what I can tell.

It might cause it to go up, as people who were previously mining to support an SR habit will now need to source their coins from the market.

Yes, well a price rise would provide supporting evidence for a very strong form of Keynesian theory. One that even I don't believe is valid.

[bitboyben]

http://bitcoinmagazine.net/where-is-bitcoin-a-look-at-some-analytical-data/

Read this article today I must say I am impressed enough to share it here because it seems pretty relevant to the topic.

Thoughts?

[Meatball]

I wouldn't be surprised in the least if you see the BTC/$ price go half or lower where it is.

There would have to be something major to happen to see a drop anywhere near that.  GPU miners being unable to compete and powering down doesn't really impact the exchange rate either way, from what I can tell.

The main reason why I wouldn't be surprised to see it drop is that I would think you're going to see a lot supply than demand and GPU miners sell off their remaining BTC and ASIC miners dump as much as they get to get payback for their ASIC's. 

But of course, we all know that trying to predict what the BTC/$ will do is about the same as trying to predict which direction a herd of cats would go.

[bcpokey]

http://bitcoinmagazine.net/where-is-bitcoin-a-look-at-some-analytical-data/

Read this article today I must say I am impressed enough to share it here because it seems pretty relevant to the topic.

Thoughts?

My thoughts are that Vitalik is a very poor writer, which may not be his fault, he is russian or something? But the endless self-referencing is a bit annoying.

Sometimes articles prompt me to skip to the end based on their writing style, and this was one of them:

All in all, it is hard to tell what is happening with Bitcoin.

That's the gist of what I got from that article as its conclusion. "We dunno, but it seems like it should be ok".

[Stephen Gornick]

the endless self-referencing is a bit annoying.

I'm not sure what you are referring to on that.  Do you mean links to other articles that he authored?

[bcpokey]

the endless self-referencing is a bit annoying.

I'm not sure what you are referring to on that.  Do you mean links to other articles that he authored?

I do indeed. I don't mind linking to other articles as an information resource about other topics (though linking 10 articles in one paper can be a little self-aggrandizing), however the stylistic choice is somewhat misleading. Perhaps an overabundance of Wikipedia-mindedness, but I expect that a hyperlink of a term (such as Bitcoins Savings and Trust) will lead to a very impartial explanation of specifically what that thing is/was, not another similarly styled wandering treatise on some event. He also uses his own writings as a 'reference' to back up the argument he is making in the current article.  It is poor form in my opinion to build an argument, then use that argument as evidence, without at least mentioning that he is citing himself.

I prefer the magazine style choice of: "You can read more about XYZ in other articles I have written about XYZ <hyperlink>here</hyperlink>" (or similar to that) if choosing to link to oneself in ones own article while discussing a topic, so that I clearly know what type of information they are presenting. Also I think it helps the author from over-linking, which can make the article itself hard to follow, as you split off into tangent after tangent.

Hope that makes my position clearer.

[bitboyben]

Ok, but what do you think about the data?

[NeoCortX]

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Why does everyone think halving will cause the price to go up?

There is no logical reason to expect the price to go up.

Many people post nonsense suggesting that the price will go up.

Widespread nonsense is usually sufficient to provoke a market reaction.

Nonsense is particularly effective when market participants are poorly informed.

I think that halving will cause the price to go up yes. Not like a price-shock overnight, but on the longer term; absolutely. And I would argue it's quite basic economics. By halving the bounty, inflation will drop in half. In 2011 the inflation was roughly 60%. In 2012 the inflation was roughly 25%. In 2013 the inflation will be about 15%.
The rough numbers are like this:

Year   BTC@end   multiplier year-over-year
2011   5000000   
2012   8000000   1.6
2013   10000000   1.25
2014   11500000   1.15

Someone who has the exact numbers please correct me.

The supply is decreasing on a technical level because there are fewer BTC produced.

When it comes to demand, I have a hard time seeing what would put the brakes on there. BTC remains stable, and it's possible to move in and out of the market with increasing ease. The currency becomes more and more popular, both among merchants and customers. As the mining revenues drop, mining will become less and less the center part of the bitcoin economy; they will in a few weeks drop to just 25% of the economy. So the miners will gradually lose their opportunity to sell large quantities of BTC, since their revenue goes down, at least in terms of BTC.

I might have overlooked some flows of money in and out, but I think the concept of looking at how the money flows is quite basic.

I am still looking for reasons that Bitcoin would drop. I think one such thing would be if a government banned the currency, I think that would send the price spiraling down. Apart from that, I cannot see any clear indicator, but please enlighten me if you see other hurdles for Bitcoin.

[bobitza]

The main reason why I wouldn't be surprised to see it drop is that I would think you're going to see a lot supply than demand and GPU miners sell off their remaining BTC and ASIC miners dump as much as they get to get payback for their ASIC's. 

I agree witht he above statement ... but to go half value? I don't think we have enough selling pressure to achieve that.

[MrTeal]

Well, difficulty is at 3438909 right now. Anyone want to make any predictions on what it will be come the next retarget at 211680?

Way down to the low 2Ms?
Something like 2.8M?
Down a bit to 3.2M?
Staying the same?
Small increase?
Big increase as ASICs hit?

I'd guess it will end up somewhere around 3.2M as some GPU hardware is turned off, but there won't be a huge change as some miners will be slow to wind down and FPGAs probably make up a significant percentage of the network at this point.

[DobZombie]

Well, difficulty is at 3438909 right now. Anyone want to make any predictions on what it will be come the next retarget at 211680?

Yeah I don't think ANYONE thought it'd go in THAT direction

o.0

[RyanRed]

Everything speculation of course, but logically I would suspect the price to increase. All I know is I dont believe the time to sell is now. Im hanging on to them all for now. Theres too many unknown factors out there right now. But hell. This market is so damn volatile no one can truly know.

[Meatball]

I can tell you right now that btc price will not double overnight, the decrease in inflation rate is tiny compared to 10m+ coins outstanding.

The bitcoin price is determined by the flow of people selling coins versus the flow of people buying coins. The amount of coins issued can effect this flow, but the number of coins minted certain has an effect. There's only 61K bitcoins between the current price and $14. With 3600 coins no longer being minted each day, this should tilt the flow to eat through that in a few weeks.

You're assuming that there will be steady or increased demand for BTC. 

[itsgoldbaby]

Is Bitcoin Charts Network hash rate correct? It currently shows Network total   20.997 Thash/s, a couple days ago it was like a little over 29 Thash/s. Should the difficulty be going down? 

[MrTeal]

Is Bitcoin Charts Network hash rate correct? It currently shows Network total   20.997 Thash/s, a couple days ago it was like a little over 29 Thash/s. Should the difficulty be going down? 

It's just an estimate based on the time to find a block, so it doesn't take into account the effects of variance. You'd expect it to bounce around quite a bit, and it does.
Still, I wouldn't be surprised if hash rate went up to try and find 210000 and it is now dropping off. Many GPU rigs are now unprofitable.

[mrb]

The drop we are seeing is starting to look more significant than the variance over the last 3 months: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-10k.png We need 2-3 more days of data to be sure.

[midnightmagic]

The drop we are seeing is starting to look more significant than the variance over the last 3 months: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-10k.png We need 2-3 more days of data to be sure.

Hey, did you ever get ahold of that special hashing algorithm you were going on about all those months ago?

[mrb]

?