I have compiled the following table showing the difficulty level extrapolated from present figures:
Date Difficulty Level
---------------------------
17/04/2013 9,121,259.40
01/05/2013 10,842,874.22
14/05/2013 12,889,439.52
27/05/2013 15,322,288.88
09/06/2013 18,214,332.46
22/06/2013 21,652,242.00
05/07/2013 25,739,048.34
18/07/2013 30,597,229.13
31/07/2013 36,372,379.34
13/08/2013 43,237,574.67
26/08/2013 51,398,558.38
08/09/2013 61,099,907.29
21/09/2013 72,632,361.46
04/10/2013 86,341,537.41
17/10/2013 102,638,285.93
30/10/2013 122,011,004.83
12/11/2013 145,040,275.80
25/11/2013 172,416,263.88
08/12/2013 204,959,401.01
21/12/2013 243,644,973.60
03/01/2014 289,632,350.94
16/01/2014 344,299,730.35
29/01/2014 409,285,440.44
11/02/2014 486,537,040.22
24/02/2014 578,369,685.59
09/03/2014 687,535,512.33
22/03/2014 817,306,114.92
22/03/2014 971,570,593.08
22/03/2014 1,154,952,104.36
22/03/2014 1,372,946,415.71
22/03/2014 1,632,086,606.27
22/03/2014 1,940,138,857.49
22/03/2014 2,306,335,198.06
22/03/2014 2,741,650,178.95
You really think a difficulty of 2 Billion is realistic? I don't see it going that high by then. What what do i know. The GPU thing made it spike for a while then it kinda leveld off and even went down for a second.
Let me argue the case why these numbers are completely bonkers.
These numbers assume an 18% increase over the former month, steadily. This is an exponentially growing function.
Bitcoins are generated in a steady fashion, meaning that the network adjust the difficulty to keep the hashrate in line with the time Blocks are mined.
So, that means that if you are mining with 1% of the network and then later, 0.5% of the network, the difficulty will have to rise accordingly to reward you with the now fitting portion of the network rewards, not counting transaction fees.
That means that if you were mining 36BTC at 1% of the network, it would mean you are at 18BTC at 0.5% of the network, per day.
Now, this leads us to the coming table. The table that will consider that if we assume difficulty increases like that, it will correlate largely with the hashrate. The following table assumes an absolutey 100% linear correlation in hash rate and difficulty, which we will find, is the theoretical ideal, just never met because of variance of people starting and stopping their devices. I have used the number from above, because the talks of "Difficulty is 1 billion, get out of Bitcoin" people tended to annoy me.
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi42.tinypic.com%2F168sdg2.jpg&t=665&c=SCBN0jw30EYhyw)
If you think, people will invest a whopping 1.2 billion dollars in mining equipment and get that started by 2014, by my guest.
If you think all the ASIC companies together will manufacture to the order of 500.000 50gh miners and get them sold, be my guest.
If you think that this is absolutely bonkers, like me, lets assume something more reasonable.
You can take the amount of money invested and pick one of the numbers that feels "right" for you. See how much money is flowing in bitcoin land and in miners' land.