Ethereum Mining Bomb (Probably only 6 more months of ETH mining left)

[adaseb]

On Stackexchange I found a great analysis of the Difficulty bomb that was adjusted in the Homestead release.

As you can see in the chart, even if people stop adding GPUs to the network today, it will make it very difficult to mine in about a year. Right now with 14 second blocktimes we make very little, imagine blocktimes of 5 minutes.

Also this is assuming static difficulty, most likely the difficulty will keep doubling every 2-3 months which will bring the blocktime to a few minutes sometime at the end of the year.

The author posted the python script, so if someone is good at programming they might be able to recalculate the result using todays difficulty of 42T and with the exponential difficulty increase with GPUs being added to the market.

Looks like the 2GB GPUs will be able to outlast this so there is basically no point in buying GPUs bigger than 2GB.


http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/3779/when-will-the-difficulty-bomb-make-mining-impossible/3800#3800

Difficulty on 2016-06-03 is 35.15 T and average blocktime is 14.99 seconds.
Difficulty on 2016-07-07 is 35.18 T and average blocktime is 15.00 seconds.
Difficulty on 2016-08-02 is 35.25 T and average blocktime is 15.03 seconds.
Difficulty on 2016-09-06 is 35.56 T and average blocktime is 15.16 seconds.
Difficulty on 2016-10-02 is 36.40 T and average blocktime is 15.52 seconds.
Difficulty on 2016-11-06 is 40.17 T and average blocktime is 17.13 seconds.
Difficulty on 2016-12-02 is 48.56 T and average blocktime is 20.71 seconds.
Difficulty on 2017-01-05 is 88.83 T and average blocktime is 37.88 seconds.
Blocktime over one minute in January 2017

Difficulty on 2017-02-09 is 249.8 T and average blocktime is 106.5 seconds.
Difficulty on 2017-03-07 is 679.3 T and average blocktime is 4.829 minutes.
Difficulty on 2017-04-02 is 1.753 P and average blocktime is 12.46 minutes.
Difficulty on 2017-05-07 is 6.907 P and average blocktime is 49.09 minutes.
Blocktime over one hour in May 2017

Difficulty on 2017-06-02 is 20.65 P and average blocktime is 146.8 minutes.
Difficulty on 2017-07-07 is 82.50 P and average blocktime is 9.773 hours.
Blocktime over one day in July 2017

Difficulty on 2017-08-02 is 219.9 P and average blocktime is 26.06 hours.
Difficulty on 2017-09-05 is 879.6 P and average blocktime is 4.342 days.
Blocktime over one week in September 2017

Difficulty on 2017-10-02 is 2.639 E and average blocktime is 13.02 days.
Blocktime over one month in October 2017

Difficulty on 2017-11-05 is 10.55 E and average blocktime is 7.443 weeks.
Difficulty on 2017-12-01 is 28.14 E and average blocktime is 4.962 month.
Difficulty on 2018-01-05 is 112.5 E and average blocktime is 19.84 month.

[bathrobehero]

Great stuff, I never even knew about the difficulty bomb before.

[ps_jb]

Increase in difficulty will decrease the mined coins, which will increase their price - so for the same ETH->fiat you can buy additional GPUs and continue

[Kalamsid]

This time bomb will be defused according to the Ethereum developers. The PoS will start later than expected.

[Amph]

again if you are here only because right now ethereum is profitable, you are pretty naive to the whole cryptoscene...

see you in the next two years with another "ethereum high profit coin"

and anyway the diff will not double again in few months, doubled one time is a thing, doubling two times is a completely different story

good luck adding another 100k gpu or so

[GMPoison]

again if you are here only because right now ethereum is profitable, you are pretty naive to the whole cryptoscene...

see you in the next two years with another "ethereum high profit coin"

and anyway the diff will not double again in few months, doubled one time is a thing, doubling two times is a completely different story

good luck adding another 100k gpu or so

No one is going to mine an unprofitable coin. Ethereum is profitable now, so people mine it. By the time it's no longer, you'll have made your profits, upgraded your gear, and moved on to the next profitable coin.

[toptek]

bitmain just open up a eth pool either they care again or are worried but btc are on the way up again i just noticed maybe good times again.


stratum-eth.antpool.com:8008
stratum-eth.antpool.com:443
stratum-eth.antpool.com:25


or a third Possibility i won't say i hope it's not .

[Tmdz]

I didn't realize this bomb existed.

So the bomb is active and speaking in todays terms the hash rate exceeds the rates this bomb causes the difficulty to increase.  Meaning if we had a stagment hashrate we would continue to see a difficulty rise and the block time would increase.  So basically the bomb will have no effect on block time until people stop adding gpu's and that won't happen until the profit gets to that thin margin point.

The whole idea is to force people into POS due to the fact there will be no profit to mine and eventually the block chain would freeze.  Its actually quite clever and sneaky to put something like that into the code.  6 Months sounds like a pretty accurate estimate for mining time left, altho if the price can trend up further that could be pushed out.

[Amph]

again if you are here only because right now ethereum is profitable, you are pretty naive to the whole cryptoscene...

see you in the next two years with another "ethereum high profit coin"

and anyway the diff will not double again in few months, doubled one time is a thing, doubling two times is a completely different story

good luck adding another 100k gpu or so

No one is going to mine an unprofitable coin. Ethereum is profitable now, so people mine it. By the time it's no longer, you'll have made your profits, upgraded your gear, and moved on to the next profitable coin.

it depend on electricity, go to whattomine and put 0.03 cent in electricity, the result is that the top 20 altcoin are suddenly profitable..

[sakinaka]

I don't understand. If the difficulty increases, it means that more people are mining it, so more GPUs, and thus the blocktime will stay the same.

[philipma1957]

all it means is you need 2 positions mining.

1 in btc  ½



1 in eth   ½


and three in holding


cash   ⅓

eth    ⅓

 btc..  ⅓


check your numbers every day and   be prepared to shift your shit around.



Always keep an eye out for a new hot alt coin

[reb0rn21]

If anyone thinks price will go up as mining profitability drop, think twice, price has nothing with mining difficulty, never had, its all on team with premined ethereum and their P/D scheme!

If anyone think ethereum is gona be BTC 2.0, I wish you luck with holding 90% premined (72 Million eth) scam

[adaseb]

If anyone thinks price will go up as mining profitability drop, think twice, price has nothing with mining difficulty, never had, its all on team with premined ethereum and their P/D scheme!

If anyone think ethereum is gona be BTC 2.0, I wish you luck with holding 90% premined (72 Million eth) scam

Most of those premined coins were from their ICO and most likely they were all sold for profit.

[costi.kocev]

Did the bomb is boooooming today?

The Difficulty rises today is huuuuge. 

[Tmdz]

Did the bomb is boooooming today?

The Difficulty rises today is huuuuge.  

No, Farms are feverishly adding gpu cards to increase hash and the global has rate is soaring higher every day, the network is increasing difficulty to control block times.

The difficulty bomb is when hash no longer increases but difficulty does and block times increase, so far that has not happened.

[dannygroove]

Did the bomb is boooooming today?

The Difficulty rises today is huuuuge.  

Yeah, almost at 50 Trillion. Will this sustain? If price drops to pre DAO lows I dont know what will happen.

[adaseb]

Did the bomb is boooooming today?

The Difficulty rises today is huuuuge.  

Yeah, almost at 50 Trillion. Will this sustain? If price drops to pre DAO lows I dont know what will happen.

It will probably still keep rising. Still this is much more profitable than an Antminer S7 so people will keep adding GPUs.

[dannygroove]

Did the bomb is boooooming today?

The Difficulty rises today is huuuuge.  

Yeah, almost at 50 Trillion. Will this sustain? If price drops to pre DAO lows I dont know what will happen.

It will probably still keep rising. Still this is much more profitable than an Antminer S7 so people will keep adding GPUs.

Yup, I'll start adding 2 S9 to my farm after halving since everyone wants to mine ETH.

[onemd]

Did the bomb is boooooming today?

The Difficulty rises today is huuuuge.  

Yeah, almost at 50 Trillion. Will this sustain? If price drops to pre DAO lows I dont know what will happen.

It will probably still keep rising. Still this is much more profitable than an Antminer S7 so people will keep adding GPUs.

For the farms with low electricity price, they will keep on adding the miners. I hope they will invest wisely.

[mymenace]

If anyone thinks price will go up as mining profitability drop, think twice, price has nothing with mining difficulty, never had, its all on team with premined ethereum and their P/D scheme!

If anyone think ethereum is gona be BTC 2.0, I wish you luck with holding 90% premined (72 Million eth) scam

Most of those premined coins were from their ICO and most likely they were all sold for profit.

I can assure you that is not the case.