Difficulty News - 6/8

[AngelusWebDesign]

We're already up to 9.5 blocks/hour -- over 50% more than Bitcoin "wants" as an ideal. That means yet another difficulty rise in about 6 days.

We're up to 5.5 Terahashes per second -- capacity is still being added, apparently.

(Ignoring the just-now jump to TEN blocks per hour...) We'll reach the next difficulty level in 6.70 days.
So we're looking at next Wednesday for the next D-Day.

Oh, and the next difficulty level will be 27% higher -- so far. If any other rigs come online between now and next Wednesday, the difficulty will be even higher.

Matthew

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[Skunkworks]

Am I the only one who thinks difficulty is going to REALLY level out in about two weeks, given the growing supply issues with GPUs?

[AngelusWebDesign]

I'd like to think so, but I don't think it's true.

I came back here to report WORSE news for miners.

The blocks/hour is at an unprecedented 10.91/hour!  It wasn't that bad before the LAST difficulty increase, which means... this next increase will be more drastic.

And the total hashrate has risen to 5.9 Thash/s.

That also means that the reset date has moved up by a couple of days. We only have about 5 more days at this diff. level.

[Freakin]

Am I the only one who thinks difficulty is going to REALLY level out in about two weeks, given the growing supply issues with GPUs?

I think more like 3+ weeks.  5830s just sold out this week, and people are still waiting on shipments, etc.  We've seen multiple pictures of people who received large orders of cards that won't be getting them into production overnight.

Vlads 50+ cards and DC3 is going to take a bit longer than 2 weeks as well, I would expect.

[gdman361]

how much could difficulty jump? 200-300%? just to estimate the risks of massive jump

[Rodyland]

I believe the maximum jump is 400%.

blockexplorer.com has an estimate of the next jump, currently 734166.  As for where it could go between now and the next jump - sky is the limit.

[Tukotih]

Difficulty does only good. It increases BTC value and promotes common sense so that miners don't become too greedy.

I mean, bitcoin mining can not exist without difficulty. Because without difficulty, BTC value would probably just drop all the time.

[bcpokey]

*sigh* There are no supply issues of any kind. 5830s can still be found with relative ease. 6870s are in great abundance, 6950s while not great are also in abundance. The used card market is still flush with cards to be found. Bitcoin is a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the GPU market and is not constrained by GPUs. It is constrained by how tiny it is.

But it is growing, and quickly relative to its size. However one nice thing is that as it grows larger the rate of its increase is proportionally smaller (its nice for us miners). That is to say, if you have a 2THash/sec network and you grow to 4THash that's a doubling, but if you then grow to 6THash, that's only a 50% increase. Unless we see a repeated doubling of the bitcoin user base "The sky is the limit" is not really apropos for bitcoin.

[yyduinihao0]

I don't think this level of difficulty increase will be a problem for miners yet, because the rate of price increase is still way faster then the difficulty. however, I do believe there is a point in the future that mining will become less and less profitable. I am so curious about the future of  this whole Bitcoin idea.

[mistersaturn]

may I add something, or is it only me thinking this way: if the difficulty increases by about 30% or smthn again, WHO CARES, price was rising from 18 to 30 dollars in the last 36 hours, it's more than fair that difficulty is increasing, otherwise mining would become MORE profitable, its good as it is.