Someone just fired up some serious hashing power.

[MoonShadow]

The stats are, as mentioned, off the mark after retarget.

Well, at the time of this posting, blockexplorer.com shows 12 blocks in the last hour. Isn't the target rate 6 per hour? My simple mind wants to infer that the hash rate is twice what it was when the difficulty adjustment was computed. Not something that can merely be the artifact of a bad estimation technique, is it?

The target rate is, indeed, 6 per hour.  The difficulty adjustment would have dropped that rate down very close to 6 if not for a sudden near doubling of the hashing capability of the network.

[befuddled]

Factoid: if hash rate keeps outstripping difficulty adjustments such that blocks are generated at 12/hour instead of 6/hour, then the 210000th block happens sooner than otherwise projected, 9 months from now.

I kind of welcome it because the lower rate of bitcoin generation will create a smaller rate at which BTC are dumped for cash by those who mine to cash out immediately. More pressure for BTC appreciation. I don't expect it will unless more than one large scale FPGA/ASIC outfit comes in. It was ArtForz or someone associated with one such I recall said they would only scale up to no more than 1/2 of total hash rate because beyond that they are competing with themselves and experience diminishing returns. If more than one comes in, then all bets are off. They could squeeze the GPU miners down to nothing.

[[Coins!]]

Factoid: if hash rate keeps outstripping difficulty adjustments such that blocks are generated at 12/hour instead of 6/hour, then the 210000th block happens sooner than otherwise projected, 9 months from now.

I kind of welcome it because the lower rate of bitcoin generation will create a smaller rate at which BTC are dumped for cash by those who mine to cash out immediately. More pressure for BTC appreciation. I don't expect it will unless more than one large scale FPGA/ASIC outfit comes in. It was ArtForz or someone associated with one such I recall said they would only scale up to no more than 1/2 of total hash rate because beyond that they are competing with themselves and experience diminishing returns. If more than one comes in, then all bets are off. They could squeeze the GPU miners down to nothing.

So in 9 months, only 25 coins are generated per block rather than 50, at some previously forecasted rate?

But with the doubling of miners and network hashing power recently, that will be more like 3-4 more months?

This bitcoin business is very interesting : )  Higher difficulties + lower block values rapidly changing the market.   

[MoonShadow]

Factoid: if hash rate keeps outstripping difficulty adjustments such that blocks are generated at 12/hour instead of 6/hour, then the 210000th block happens sooner than otherwise projected, 9 months from now.

11 months early?  How did you get there?

[anodyne]

Came to think of something else, as I've already brought up deviations in stats... I noticed the stats on bitcoinwatch go down to less than 3 blocks/hour before retarget, and as I remember it the network graph followed. That did also look weird, and did not seem to have much to do with the actual block generation rate.

[_s3v3n_]

Actually that "Other" are my 300 servers in the office, just switched from -bigadv folding to mining so no worries people. All I need is 40000 BTC and I will turn them off.


 


(Hope no one believes me here)

ROFL!!

[rezin777]

Came to think of something else, as I've already brought up deviations in stats... I noticed the stats on bitcoinwatch go down to less than 3 blocks/hour before retarget, and as I remember it the network graph followed. That did also look weird, and did not seem to have much to do with the actual block generation rate.

Did you notice that the block count had stopped on bitcoin watch prior to the difficulty change? I would imagine that was affecting the other stats. Some time around the difficulty change it was corrected or started counting again.

[befuddled]

11 months early?  How did you get there?

Yeah, maybe I screwed up the arithmetic.

210000 - 131,159 = 78841 blocks away

78841 / (12 blocks/hour) = 6570 hours away = 273.75 days

273.75 days / (365.25 days/year)   =  0.74949 years

0.74949 years * 12 months/year = 8.99 months.

So 9 months.

[MoonShadow]

11 months early?  How did you get there?

Yeah, maybe I screwed up the arithmetic.

210000 - 131,159 = 78841 blocks away

78841 / (12 blocks/hour) = 6570 hours away = 273.75 days

273.75 days / (365.25 days/year)   =  0.74949 years

0.74949 years * 12 months/year = 8.99 months.

So 9 months.

So you are assuming that the hashing power doubles every retarget, which would happen every week, for the next nine months.

I see. 

Care for an over/under bet on that?

[computerparts]

A little birdie told me there's more coming. Expect another difficulty change in 5 days or so. Enjoy the ride with those inefficient multi gpu rigs   

[befuddled]

So you are assuming that the hashing power doubles every retarget, which would happen every week, for the next nine months.

No, I'm not. In my message to which you replied, I said: "if hash rate keeps outstripping difficulty adjustments such that blocks are generated at 12/hour instead of 6/hour, then...". 

[Littleshop]

What a bunch of n00bs.

Seriously, though...

You have to ignore those figures for at least 24 hours after a reset. It's an easy mistake to make, I'll admit. I wondered what the heck was going on the first time I saw it -- but I assumed something was messed up.

I'm not a noob, and I checked for a disfunctional statistic.  I'm used to it being off for quite a while after a difficulty adjustment, but as I was watching it, the stats were rising instead of adjusting.  And I still waited for four hours to mention it because I wasn't sure.

You need to wait longer.

That being said, the price is holding steady.  I think everything will be ok.

[MoonShadow]

What a bunch of n00bs.

Seriously, though...

You have to ignore those figures for at least 24 hours after a reset. It's an easy mistake to make, I'll admit. I wondered what the heck was going on the first time I saw it -- but I assumed something was messed up.

I'm not a noob, and I checked for a disfunctional statistic.  I'm used to it being off for quite a while after a difficulty adjustment, but as I was watching it, the stats were rising instead of adjusting.  And I still waited for four hours to mention it because I wasn't sure.

You need to wait longer.

That being said, the price is holding steady.  I think everything will be ok.

No, I don't, and I wasn't talking about the price.  Did you bother to read the thread?

[MoonShadow]

So you are assuming that the hashing power doubles every retarget, which would happen every week, for the next nine months.

No, I'm not. In my message to which you replied, I said: "if hash rate keeps outstripping difficulty adjustments such that blocks are generated at 12/hour instead of 6/hour, then...". 

Yes, and for the blocks to continue to come at twice the target rate across 28 retargetings would require that the network total hashing power double every seven days for 28 weeks.

[Spunky]

I was talking about this massive hashing increase with some friends and someone mentioned that someone he knows, who runs computing for a major genetics research facility with ~3000 4x GPU servers, decided to use their idle cycles to mine and brought them online today.  Totally unsubstantiated, and hard to believe you could get away with that for very long, considering the power draw, but who knows.

[befuddled]

Yes, and for the blocks to continue to come at twice the target rate across 28 retargetings would require that the network total hashing power double every seven days for 28 weeks.

Right. That was the premise of the scenario. I didn't say I thought it was going to happen. But if it did, then it would. You know what I mean.

[mellowhead]

I was talking about this massive hashing increase with some friends and someone mentioned that someone he knows, who runs computing for a major genetics research facility with ~3000 4x GPU servers, decided to use their idle cycles to mine and brought them online today.  Totally unsubstantiated, and hard to believe you could get away with that for very long, considering the power draw, but who knows.

If this is true, it made sense for them to go online right after the difficulty increase, so as not to affect said increase with the higher hashrate. It's what I would have done, at least. And I'd say in all likelihood they won't be able to keep it up for long because of a)the next difficulty increase effectively negating the increased hashing power, and b)someone will notice the increase in energy usage at the facility. Unless the one who pays the bills is in on the deal. If not, they will have to terminate their little project before the power usage is investigated.

[freequant]

What a bunch of n00bs.

Seriously, though...

You have to ignore those figures for at least 24 hours after a reset. It's an easy mistake to make, I'll admit. I wondered what the heck was going on the first time I saw it -- but I assumed something was messed up.

I'm not a noob, and I checked for a disfunctional statistic.  I'm used to it being off for quite a while after a difficulty adjustment, but as I was watching it, the stats were rising instead of adjusting.  And I still waited for four hours to mention it because I wasn't sure.

You need to wait longer.

That being said, the price is holding steady.  I think everything will be ok.

Can you guys stop focusing exclusively on what bitcoinwatch shows you and repeat like parrots that as it used to display broken stats in the past after a difficulty change, it ough to be the one-size-fits-all explanation to anything suspicious that people report thereafter?
I am getting sick reading posts of so many people wallowing in delusion each time there is a legitimate reason to be concerned.

Go see the blockchain directly and count the blocks generated every hour.
All the hard facts are in the block chain.
If you go there and check, you will know for sure that the network is generating coins at twice the normal rate in spite of the difficulty increase.
If you don't go there, please at least stop soothing other people with fallacies and call people noobs just because they report things that don't please you.

[Cluster2k]

I was talking about this massive hashing increase with some friends and someone mentioned that someone he knows, who runs computing for a major genetics research facility with ~3000 4x GPU servers, decided to use their idle cycles to mine and brought them online today.  Totally unsubstantiated, and hard to believe you could get away with that for very long, considering the power draw, but who knows.

A friend of a friend said eh?  Possibly true, but apart from the dramatically higher hash rate there has been 0% evidence of the above presented.  If true, the hash rate should drop dramatically as that system becomes non-idle, and also I don't see it lasting too long before questions are asked about power usage.  Mining with other people's hardware and electricity is the sweetest deal.  Losing your job and endangering your career is however a bit of a downer.

As I thought in earlier posts, difficulty has gone up and the next step looks even larger, yet the exchange rate has not budged at all.  Difficulty is no longer tied to the value of a BTC.  The market is well supplied with BTCs.  Most miners are no longer required.  The speculator buying into the market has no care about hardware costs, cooling, electricity, etc. 

[WNS]

It was ArtForz or someone associated with one such I recall said they would only scale up to no more than 1/2 of total hash rate because beyond that they are competing with themselves and experience diminishing returns.

I would be interested to see their reasoning on that, my calculations put the sweet spot at 20%, not 50%. In my calculations adding hash power not only devalues your existing investment, but increases the difficulty within 2 weeks. Unless your hardware is both cheaper and more energy efficient than everybody else's, it makes very little sense to expand beyond 1/5 of the mining pool.