Gigantic difficulty jump of the last few days (speculation)

[Biodom]

Possibilities:

1. Bitfury filled up their 100mW center?
2. Spondoolies started deploying their SP50?
3. BW deployed their 14/16 nm machine in house?
4. Some government decided to mine bitcoin en masse (for the heck of it)-could be in combination with #1-3
5. Someone deployed a bitcoin mining quantum computer?

[ezeminer]

Possibilities:

1. Bitfury filled up their 100mW center?
2. Spondoolies started deploying their SP50?
3. BW deployed their 14/16 nm machine in house?
4. Some government decided to mine bitcoin en masse (for the heck of it)-could be in combination with #1-3
5. Someone deployed a bitcoin mining quantum computer?

1-3 I see are likely
4. Who knows, if they did most likely the NSA would have it at their new Utah datacenter (is it a datacenter? or is it disguised as a datacenter mining bitcoins?)
5. Google is barely testing their Quantum Computer. The only companies I can imagine doing quantum computing mining are Bitmain and Spondoolies, but this is still at least (imo) 2 years+ down the road.

[Amph]

wrong estimation as usual, you may add that, i remember the first time it went to 400, there was a nice % of error

i would not be surprised if this is true again

[johnyj]

The latest news is that kncminer's account has been shut down by their bank, why? Might because of large amount of suspicious funds entering their account

Mining has become the new way to launder money totally clean, that's the reason difficulty just keeps rising

[QuintLeo]

On the KnC thing, more likely part of the leadup to a forced bankrupcy. KnC has a BUNCH of debts outstanding, and a TON of legal issues.

 On the recent hashrate climb, I'd guess a combination of folks getting production ramped up - Bitmain and Avalon for sure, possibly BitFury, unlikely but possible BW.com/Lketc (they're not really expected for a month or so, but they've been keeping things sorts close lately), possibly Spondoolies, very long shot Innosilicon (not really due for a couple more months).

 Quantum computers are HORRIBLE at straight-line type calculations like cryptocurrentcy uses.
 NOT an option.
 They only perform well compared to conventional computing gear on stuff with a TON of variables that interact with each other.


 Any government that decided to start mining Bitcoin (pretty close to ZERO probability) would be limited by the available hardware makers available production.
 NOT a factor.

[BTCBinary]

I think that could influence of a lot of new hardware coming out and being put to work.At least it is very similar to what happened before when nem miners got in.

[mwizard]

Two news items from the last couple of days on what the big miners are doing. One on KNC, one on Bitfury

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3014471/bitcoin-miner-knc-is-planning-another-four-week-datacenter-build-out.html

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bitfury-opening-third-carbon-neutral-bitcoin-mining-operation-georgia-1532998

Both KNC and Bitfury have said they now have 16nm chips running with power efficiency better than 0.1J/Gh.

It would be surprising if the miners in China are also not moving to the new generation of mining hardware.

[mwizard]

KnC has a BUNCH of debts outstanding, and a TON of legal issues.

Any source for the above claims?  Did anything ever happen with the Magnus Daar court case from the Titan/Neptune days?

[Atomicat]

Maybe it could be possible that BITMAIN has increased the shipping rate of the Antminer S7's.

[notlist3d]

Maybe it could be possible that BITMAIN has increased the shipping rate of the Antminer S7's.

We can guess all day long.  But wer really don't know what it is.  That is part of having a industry where most companies are private.

There is open as far as blockchain.  But what companies have or are doing in most cases is not a open book, they want to be ahead of competition.

[VirosaGITS]

Maybe it could be possible that BITMAIN has increased the shipping rate of the Antminer S7's.

We can guess all day long.  But wer really don't know what it is.  That is part of having a industry where most companies are private.

There is open as far as blockchain.  But what companies have or are doing in most cases is not a open book, they want to be ahead of competition.

We've "tracked" the S7 being bought by guessing based on how much BTC was sent to Bitmain. At worse its only a portion of the hashrate. There's other factors, other companies onlining a whole lot of hashrate. The next thing we could do to get a better idea is look at which pool got the hashrate gain. BitcoinCZ only went up 4PH/s in the last month.

[Atomicat]

Maybe it could be possible that BITMAIN has increased the shipping rate of the Antminer S7's.

We can guess all day long.  But wer really don't know what it is.  That is part of having a industry where most companies are private.

There is open as far as blockchain.  But what companies have or are doing in most cases is not a open book, they want to be ahead of competition.

We've "tracked" the S7 being bought by guessing based on how much BTC was sent to Bitmain. At worse its only a portion of the hashrate. There's other factors, other companies onlining a whole lot of hashrate. The next thing we could do to get a better idea is look at which pool got the hashrate gain. BitcoinCZ only went up 4PH/s in the last month.

It seems that big mining companies are not using public mining pools to mine. They have their own private pool or are solo mining.

The highest possibility is that they own a private pool.

[VirosaGITS]

Maybe it could be possible that BITMAIN has increased the shipping rate of the Antminer S7's.

We can guess all day long.  But wer really don't know what it is.  That is part of having a industry where most companies are private.

There is open as far as blockchain.  But what companies have or are doing in most cases is not a open book, they want to be ahead of competition.

We've "tracked" the S7 being bought by guessing based on how much BTC was sent to Bitmain. At worse its only a portion of the hashrate. There's other factors, other companies onlining a whole lot of hashrate. The next thing we could do to get a better idea is look at which pool got the hashrate gain. BitcoinCZ only went up 4PH/s in the last month.

It seems that big mining companies are not using public mining pools to mine. They have their own private pool or are solo mining.

The highest possibility is that they own a private pool.

All the same. If a "private pool" suddenly pop up with 10% of the network hash, then we know. From there we can probably figure where the mine is in the world.

Considering the unknown block % is under 1%, this is not the case;
https://blockchain.info/pools

And thus by simply comparing which pool has the hashrate now vs 1 month ago, we can instantly know where the hashrate went. Although its hard to tell where it came from.

[edonkey]

Number 5 is a definite no. Mining is inherently quantum resistant.

However digital signing via ECC is not. If there ever is a quantum computing attack on Bitcoin, it will be to steal private keys, not cracking blocks.

Yes, there is quantum resistance in Bitcoin receive addresses due to how they are derived from public keys. But if ECC eventually falls to a quantum attack, effectively no one can spend without without signing and therefore exposing their coins to theft.

For now quantum computing is still in its infancy. There is no immediate threat.

That said, the bitcoin devs should walk, not run, towards quantum resistant signing technologies. I have to assume that this can and will happen well before quantum computing poses any real threat.

[foxbitcoin]

The latest news is that kncminer's account has been shut down by their bank, why? Might because of large amount of suspicious funds entering their account

Mining has become the new way to launder money totally clean, that's the reason difficulty just keeps rising

I couldn't get that. How is mining the new way of laundering money? I could assume that buying bitcoin anonymously is new way of laundering. Recent difficulty increase probably is caused by the suddenly skyrocketing bitcoin price, which attract more ppl to get into mining industry.

[vortexz]

My speculation is :
Bitmain has a new generation miner that they turned on, something like S8 or S9, this is why the huge increase of network hash rate, and this is why now they are selling S7 from stock - no more pre-orders, because they already replaced all of them with the new generation miners and they need to get rid of S7

What do you think about my ideea ?

[philipma1957]

the monster spike was a bitfury test:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1278803.msg13233458#msg13233458


This one will be gentle compared to next one. ~400PH almost ready to go online...
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bitfury-opening-third-carbon-neutral-bitcoin-mining-operation-georgia-1532998

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https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1278803.msg13234689#msg13234689



 Guys remember the 212 block day  it came and it went well it must have been bitfury testing see below

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bitfury-opening-third-carbon-neutral-bitcoin-mining-operation-georgia-1532998


 No one know how good they are powerwise , but

 50 mw x 3 =  150 ph  is .33 watt a gh
 50 mw x 4  = 200 ph  is .25 watt a gh
 50 mw x 5 =  250 ph  is .20 watt a gh

we did 212 vs a norm of 144  but all the other days we are doing close to 160

so we did 212 vs 160   which is 52/160 = 32.5%  so .325 x 566ph = 183ph

So if it works and does not explode (we can hope for that)  and based on the monster 1 day spike    they are going to add 150 to 200 ph. 

 This is good new not bad news.  we are doing about 650ph this period add 200 = 850 ph lastly next month some more will  be added.

So by my birthday (Jan 27)  we will be touching 999ph   or 1eh   I think  eh   comes after ph.

Now go back to sept we were 404 so 404 to 999 = a factor of 2.5 price was   230 now 430 a factor of  1.87

so if you did not upgrade your gear   2.5 is higher then 1.87

but if you switched out to s-7's  you power is 2x better.

so 2.5 diff jump  would not be so bad since  with 1.87 price jump and 2x power improvement  the good factor is 3.74

What is better is if you have long held s-5's from last jan's price war  you can still mine them and finally order your new s-7's today.

We will then go flat like last year

[mwizard]

the monster spike was a bitfury test:

 No one know how good they are powerwise , but

 50 mw x 3 =  150 ph  is .33 watt a gh
 50 mw x 4  = 200 ph  is .25 watt a gh
 50 mw x 5 =  250 ph  is .20 watt a gh

It is likely new Bitfury chips run well below .1 watt a gh (or Joules/Gigahash).

Their press release and site claims "16nm chip that is expected to achieve 0.06 J/GH this year.".  See http://www.coindesk.com/bitfury-completion-16nm-bitcoin-mining-asic/

KNC claim 0.07 J/GH. See http://www.coindesk.com/kncminer-deploys-next-generation-16nm-bitcoin-asic/

So it is safe to assume the latest miners run below 0.1 J/GH.   Or 2 or 3 times more energy efficiently that an S7.

[alh]

OK, so I get the "BitFury testing" hypothesis. But then why did it "go away"? Unless there was some kind of huge failure, wouldn't you let it run for the most part and fix what was broken? Even if things came in too high in terms of J/GH, or maybe the immersion cooling really won't do what's expected, why not "throttle back"  in terms of frequency or whatever and still hash with what you have? I could understand testing prior to shipment of a product, but it's all internal to BitFury isn't it? It's not like ByFury has to collect a 100PH monster order and test it prior to shipment, do they?

I also take the coindesk articles with a grain of salt. They are derived entirely by what KNC or BitFury tell them. They have no way way to independently verify anything they write about KNC or BitFury, do they? We've all seen ASIC manufactures come up short on their efficiency estimates before. I see no reason to think that KNC and BitFury are immune to that possibility.

[philipma1957]

the monster spike was a bitfury test:

 No one know how good they are powerwise , but

 50 mw x 3 =  150 ph  is .33 watt a gh
 50 mw x 4  = 200 ph  is .25 watt a gh
 50 mw x 5 =  250 ph  is .20 watt a gh

It is likely new Bitfury chips run well below .1 watt a gh (or Joules/Gigahash).

Their press release and site claims "16nm chip that is expected to achieve 0.06 J/GH this year.".  See http://www.coindesk.com/bitfury-completion-16nm-bitcoin-mining-asic/

KNC claim 0.07 J/GH. See http://www.coindesk.com/kncminer-deploys-next-generation-16nm-bitcoin-asic/

So it is safe to assume the latest miners run below 0.1 J/GH.   Or 2 or 3 times more energy efficiently that an S7.

The mystery spike was about 200 ph if your numbers are try they did not use all they can do.

So we will soon know if we do 200 or 300 ph