What is driving the difficulty jump?

[tertius993]

Such a massive jump in the last period - over 16%.

Is that the largest actual increase in difficulty setting far - 336 to 392 billion?

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[Raimonn]

If you look at the hashrate numbers, it increased from 2,411,623,656 GH/s on 10th January to 2,812,940,600 GH/s you need a lot of miners to make this jump. Bitmain started to sell its new T9, its possible that one of the bigs farms received a lot of these new miners. Also Bitmain could start mining on its new farm.

[charger100]

Bitmain has probably launched the data-center that was announced at the end of 2016. And if btc price doesn't reach $1k in the nearest future, then mining profits will start to actually decrease...

[d@nte]

Bitmain has probably launched the data-center that was announced at the end of 2016. And if btc price doesn't reach $1k in the nearest future, then mining profits will start to actually decrease...

If they actually launched the data center, then this is possibly one of the big causes for the significant increase in mining difficulty, as it was a very large project. I also saw on their website that they have launched a new mining equipment, that is currently available for sale. According to them, there is a considerable gain in terms of energy efficiency.

[2double0]

If you look at the hashrate numbers, it increased from 2,411,623,656 GH/s on 10th January to 2,812,940,600 GH/s you need a lot of miners to make this jump. Bitmain started to sell its new T9, its possible that one of the bigs farms received a lot of these new miners. Also Bitmain could start mining on its new farm.

Those numbers still look moderate if we compare them with the growth in prices all of a sudden.
This is just the beginning of a new era in mining, we are possibly heading towards a considerable amount of high-quality mining where it will be impossible for an average miner to even think of it.

[charger100]

If you look at the hashrate numbers, it increased from 2,411,623,656 GH/s on 10th January to 2,812,940,600 GH/s you need a lot of miners to make this jump. Bitmain started to sell its new T9, its possible that one of the bigs farms received a lot of these new miners. Also Bitmain could start mining on its new farm.

Those numbers still look moderate if we compare them with the growth in prices all of a sudden.
This is just the beginning of a new era in mining, we are possibly heading towards a considerable amount of high-quality mining where it will be impossible for an average miner to even think of it.

what kind of prices are you talking about?

[unholycactus]

I feel like it's partly caused by a bigger influx of 16nm chips.
New technology and more efficient mining combined with the value spike we saw earlier this year.

[2double0]

If you look at the hashrate numbers, it increased from 2,411,623,656 GH/s on 10th January to 2,812,940,600 GH/s you need a lot of miners to make this jump. Bitmain started to sell its new T9, its possible that one of the bigs farms received a lot of these new miners. Also Bitmain could start mining on its new farm.

Those numbers still look moderate if we compare them with the growth in prices all of a sudden.
This is just the beginning of a new era in mining, we are possibly heading towards a considerable amount of high-quality mining where it will be impossible for an average miner to even think of it.

what kind of prices are you talking about?

I am talking about the mining hardwares' prices which grew up all of a sudden after halving, that's just because the rewards halved and difficulty grew which was radical as expected, but these mining companies are still not providing such higher hashes against the current rewards and that's what I compared here.

[QuintLeo]

Combination of Bitmain continuing to sell S9 and R4 units and launching it's new(ish) T9 unit, Bitfury units from other manufacturers finally starting to arrive (and presumably sell to large farms if not small miners so far), likely some additional miner deployments by BW.COM, and possibly one or more other new major farms starting to come online somewhere.


And no, 15% isn't the largest jump in one difficulty period ever seen - 3+ years back 15-20% jumps were THE NORM at least for a while.


 We just saw a "flat" period last year due to no new miners comming online for a while, then only BitMain having new stuff out and being limited on how many they could sell due to lack of available foundry capasity to make the new chips.

[tertius993]

Combination of Bitmain continuing to sell S9 and R4 units and launching it's new(ish) T9 unit, Bitfury units from other manufacturers finally starting to arrive (and presumably sell to large farms if not small miners so far), likely some additional miner deployments by BW.COM, and possibly one or more other new major farms starting to come online somewhere.


And no, 15% isn't the largest jump in one difficulty period ever seen - 3+ years back 15-20% jumps were THE NORM at least for a while.


 We just saw a "flat" period last year due to no new miners comming online for a while, then only BitMain having new stuff out and being limited on how many they could sell due to lack of available foundry capasity to make the new chips.

I know it's not the largest percent rise, but that isn't what I asked - I asked if it was the largest actual increase - i.e. Have we ever had a >50 billion increase before?

[Amph]

Increase the diff like that will not make any benefit to miners, they are only stealing to each others and increase their consumption

and therefore even if you have a massive margin because of the value of bitcoin, is still not make sense to invest for stealing 1% or less to another big farm

[QuintLeo]

Combination of Bitmain continuing to sell S9 and R4 units and launching it's new(ish) T9 unit, Bitfury units from other manufacturers finally starting to arrive (and presumably sell to large farms if not small miners so far), likely some additional miner deployments by BW.COM, and possibly one or more other new major farms starting to come online somewhere.


And no, 15% isn't the largest jump in one difficulty period ever seen - 3+ years back 15-20% jumps were THE NORM at least for a while.


 We just saw a "flat" period last year due to no new miners comming online for a while, then only BitMain having new stuff out and being limited on how many they could sell due to lack of available foundry capasity to make the new chips.

I know it's not the largest percent rise, but that isn't what I asked - I asked if it was the largest actual increase - i.e. Have we ever had a >50 billion increase before?

 Probably not - but dealing with it as anything but a percentage makes no sense.

[iglasses]

Fools who keep sending Bitmain huge sums for their outrageously overpriced miners.

[fanatic26]

Fools who keep sending Bitmain huge sums for their outrageously overpriced miners.

Funny, the T9 currently has the best price per GH of any miner on the market yet you single bitmain out for being overpriced. Flawed logic is flawed.

[nyanhtet]

Hardware mining can still profit if electricity bill is zero?

[fanatic26]

It is still profitable even if you pay for electricity. There are hundreds of calculators out there, you can find an answer to your question in under a minute with the google machine.