Three days out, and network hashrate unaffected?

[organofcorti]

I agree with your mathematics and reasoning, but still...
With variance like that, who needs people adding more capacity to the network?

Sorry, I don't follow. Did you mean "who knows if more people are adding capacity to the network"?

I was paraphrasing the saying, "With friends like this, who needs enemies?"

In other words, a 5% diff increase is pretty significant, especially when margins are razor thin. It doesn't really matter WHY it happened, even if it's raw chance.
If variance can jack up difficulty by 5%, it doesn't matter that no one is adding capacity.

I find it odd that variance isn't just-so-happening to bring the total hashrate DOWN, even though several people have stated their rigs are now silent.

I personally took 5 GH/s off the network several days ago, and others have done the same.

Ok. I think you were misunderstanding me. When the 95% confidence interval is included, if difficulty goes up by say 4%, this could be the result of:

* no change in network hashrate, and all due to variance (network was "lucky")
* a 4% increase in hashrate and average luck
* an 8% increase with really poor luck.
* a 0.6% decrease in hashrate with really good luck.

All it means is that we can't know if the network is stable, decreasing a little, increasing or really increasing hashrate. The network hashrate is just not a very accurate indicator of what miners are doing in the short term.

Perhaps an analogy might help. When mining on vardiff at say 15SPM the variance over a day is low, but per hour your hashrate bounces all over the place since you aren't sending in solutions very often. The network is receiving solutions at the rate of 0.1 per minute, so the hashrate is going to have even more variance.

It evens out in the long run, it's just more of an issue for miners now that most are mining on very thin margins.

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[bitboyben]

I'm curious if any one knows how long it will take to show a hash rate drop if indeed there is one.

I think there are some people legitimately shutting down but I think there's *just* been a lot of talk, perhaps to convince others to do the same?
I think there's a bit of a game of chicken going on now.
If others shut down I won't have (Halve) to...
Also you could buy BTC OR you could make them at the cost of electricity.

Maybe it is a good thing people are so optimistic about BTC prices that they are willing to mine at a loss?
But adding hardware to network at a loss? that's just crazy.

[organofcorti]

I'm curious if any one knows how long it will take to show a hash rate drop if indeed there is one.

That's quite a good question. Basically, if the change is greater than your upper or less than your lower confidence interval bounds, then you can say the network hashrate has changed by at least the amount it exceeds the upper or lower bounds, with such - and - such confidence.Your choice of confidence interval directly determines how large the the upper and lower bounds are, and how long it takes to reduce them.

I'll post an example when I can.

[rat]

i don't think the hashrate will ever drop.

people still want a piece of the pie -

however small that is.

they are all chasing a possibility, a probability -

a chance


for the same reason people have mined gold at a loss -

for centuries.

[superfastkyle]

the reason people aren't stopping is they suck at math. We had our net income cut in half not profits! So people may have been making 20 dollars a day and now think, I'm only making 10 dollars a day when it reality its more like $5. They also are not figuring in their hardware is losing value about as fast as they are making money. They are also a few people like me who are playing chicken. But at this point I think I'm close to done. Maybe I can beat the fire sales to ebay.

i don't think the hashrate will ever drop.

people still want a piece of the pie -

however small that is.

they are all chasing a possibility, a probability -

a chance


for the same reason people have mined gold at a loss -

for centuries.

[AngelusWebDesign]

the reason people aren't stopping is they suck at math. We had our net income cut in half not profits! So people may have been making 20 dollars a day and now think, I'm only making 10 dollars a day when it reality its more like $5. They also are not figuring in their hardware is losing value about as fast as they are making money. They are also a few people like me who are playing chicken. But at this point I think I'm close to done. Maybe I can beat the fire sales to ebay.

i don't think the hashrate will ever drop.

people still want a piece of the pie -

however small that is.

they are all chasing a possibility, a probability -

a chance


for the same reason people have mined gold at a loss -

for centuries.

Several miners have used that phrase "playing chicken".

Yes, playing chicken -- with a train.

You have to get off the road when you get close to that train (ASICs) anyhow, so why not get off a month or so early, and reclaim the space (quiet, money, etc.) used by the mining operation?

[bitboyben]

Yes I agree the train is coming. I guess we will really see how bad people's math is soon enough!

[-ck]

* ckolivas can't resist saying

Choo choo

[Ente]

Several miners have used that phrase "playing chicken".

Yes, playing chicken -- with a train.

You have to get off the road when you get close to that train (ASICs) anyhow, so why not get off a month or so early, and reclaim the space (quiet, money, etc.) used by the mining operation?

I will react to it when the first ASIC is verified and out in the wild. When and if.

Ente

[bitboyben]

We'll maybe the traders are really good at math and the price of bitcoin has the reward halving included in it? Maybe our awesome summer profits was a pre block halving bonus that will only happen every four years. And scraping by is the norm.

[Aseras]

Or, you know most bitcoiners don't sit and watch their rigs 24/7 So they aren't in a rush to turn them off instantly. The ones switching to alt chains did it before the drop. Most are taking a wait and see and going for what they can get before asics hit.

[rupy]

I think it's hard to let go... It definitely will be for me too when ASIC kill my FPGAs (speculation x12.5 higher difficulty makes them unprofitable and ASIC brings x40 MH/W so I expect atleast x40 difficulty!)

[Ente]

I see a nice drop in the last few days:
http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-10k.png

Or is that deepbit being offline? Website is down, no idea about the mining. Anyone can confirm?

Ente

[2GOOD]

I see a nice drop in the last few days:
http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-10k.png

Or is that deepbit being offline? Website is down, no idea about the mining. Anyone can confirm?

Ente

..deepbit mining acting strangely too not completely down but almost.

Anyway I'm sure 95% percent of miners have backup pool so for me this is not the case of dropping hashrate.

[Ente]

I see a nice drop in the last few days:
http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-10k.png

Or is that deepbit being offline? Website is down, no idea about the mining. Anyone can confirm?

Ente

..deepbit mining acting strangely too not completely down but almost.

Anyway I'm sure 95% percent of miners have backup pool so for me this is not the case of dropping hashrate.

I don't know.. The last time deepbit was down was a year ago, one day offline because of DDOS? I don't think many have a backuppool set up. Hell, many miners won't even have noticed yet! :-)
Anyway, the "difficlty" is in free fall, from 4m down to 3m already.. Let's see how this one goes!

Ente

[bitboyben]

Wow that is a big drop there. Maybe this is the shut off proof that we have been expecting. I'm gonna go check out the price forums to see if supply is adjusting price much. Still lean times for miners for now.

[-ck]

Never ceases to amaze me how many miners set up precisely one pool without a backup, at the highest fee, and virtually never update anything, nor check on whether it's working properly. Mining profitably just isn't like that... 

[sethsethseth]

down to august levels now

http://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate

[bitboyben]

23 T hash... Not bad. Hoping for July levels say 13T hash. I guess the lower it goes the better for the first ASIC guys!

[rat]

looks like it's going back up.

i guess i was right.



you can't stop the hash!



i'm doing it at a loss right now -

and don't care.


it's heating my toes at least.