BFL is shipping

[Schrankwand]

I think you should rather use 25-30% in your calculations. ASICS are coming fast now, and will skyrocket the difficulty.

Yes, but not monthly.

The difficulty increase in percentage staying the same means that the average increase has been the same.


Lets illustrate this:

Difficulty 10m. For illustration, lets say it is 10th/s (I know that is wrong.)

Hashrate increase of 10%, increase 1m. 1th/s
Same hashrate comes up: 11m, Hashrate 11/th/s with a 1th/s increase. After 2016 blocks, difficulty is increased by 9,09%.
If you suggest a cumulativ increase of additional percentages, you need to think about the costs. 360 million is RIDICULOUS. I have written about this before.

You would have to add the total hashrate of June to accomodate October increases. Just think about that. Then you would do it again, and again. Adding the current total network hashrate several times over, with increasing the increase absolute number every time.

[ripple]

Here is past difficulty level data... make your own predictions for future changes.

Remember to take into account the quantity of ASIC chips in production by Avalon and others.

Date          Increase %   Difficulty level     

05-Feb   10.33%   3,651,012
18-Feb   11.47%   4,367,876
01-Mar   19.63%   4,847,647
14-Mar   10.98%   6,695,826
24-Mar   38.13%   7,673,000
05-Apr   14.59%   8,974,296
17-Apr   12.28%   10,076,293
30-Apr   12.28%   11,187,257
12-May   11.03%   11,187,257
25-May   8.64%   12,153,412
05-Jun   28.41%   15,605,633

[Welsh]

It's going to be very hard soon to mine anything.

[erk]

The ASIC hash rate war is proving to be a drama. What I see happening is the ASIC vendors released their units with two much hash power, this will cost them sales and profits in the near future with BFL being the worst offender.

Instead of introducing the TH/s to the network spread around to thousands of miners in small chunks, they told everyone about the Minirig. People with deep pockets have ordered hundreds so when they finally ship, the TH/s will explode overnight. This will drive the smaller miners away from BTC and buying BFL product as the smaller units wont be able to compete, and the average miner wont be able to afford competitive rigs any longer, the gap is too large. So the mining will be concentrated into a smaller and smaller group of players with deep pockets. They will be able to dominate at a far cheaper cost than otherwise would have been possible for two reasons. Firstly BFL sold the Minirig too cheap, per GH/s compared to all other products on the market including their own lesser models. Secondly the instant concentration of hashing power will reduce the other miners revenue far more abruptly than if the whole net rose gradually, that will cause shock and awe not unlike a market crash.

Of course BFL are not alone, the Avalon 66GH/s unit was too big, they should have started with a 22 GH/s unit or smaller, and shipped 3 times as many of them.

Kncminer are talking about a 175GH/s an 350GH/s which are once again too much hash power.

Up until now everyone added hashing power in small increments adding a GPU or two, the crazies built racks of the things, but overall there were no big jumps. That's all about to change and I think for the worse. BTC was all about decentralization, these unnecessarily large ASIC sizes that are coming, screws up that concept.

[Malawi]

I think you should rather use 25-30% in your calculations. ASICS are coming fast now, and will skyrocket the difficulty.

Same hashrate comes up: 11m, Hashrate 11/th/s with a 1th/s increase. After 2016 blocks, difficulty is increased by 9,09%.
If you suggest a cumulativ increase of additional percentages, you need to think about the costs. 360 million is RIDICULOUS. I have written about this before.

You would have to add the total hashrate of June to accomodate October increases. Just think about that. Then you would do it again, and again. Adding the current total network hashrate several times over, with increasing the increase absolute number every time.

I see what you mean, but I'm thinking that difficulty is going into an exponential curve right now. It will not last for a long time, and there will be a new plateau. What that plateau will be, we will see some time late summer/fall. After that, I think difficulty-increases might become lower than the "regular" 10-15%

Remember that those who are switching from CPU's to ASIC are likely to increase their hashing-power by a factor of 10.

[Its About Sharing]

Even though one might argue that the ASIC mining companies produced too many Gh too quick, doesn't that help secure the network and make a 51% attack from a government or such, less likely?
Just trying to find something positive in it all.

I ordered my Jalapeno, quite recently, knowing I wouldn't break even (since it will probably arrive at near years end) but I wanted to do my part to help support the network. And when one considers I can run it with low energy consumption using a Rasberry PI, it seemed like a good thing to do, especially since the Jalapeno uses a small amount of energy compared to a currently shipping competitors unit. But, I guess I'd then be able to pay for the unit if I had it now! 

IAS

[Zanatos666]

Wow, they must be flying through production now. Less than 24 hours after it went into production, I have my shipment email with tracking.  My day just got a whole lot better.

[Spectrome]

It's going to be very hard soon to mine anything.

how come? someone announce ASIC-scrypt miners?

[jaywaka2713]

It's going to be very hard soon to mine anything.

how come? someone announce ASIC-scrypt miners?

I think he was talking about mining Bitcoin with a GPU. Buddy, it's progression of hardware. 1 year ago the only way to get Bitcoins was via buying a GPU. Now you have to buy ASICs. And ASICs are cheaper than GPU rigs anyways.

[Operatr]

The ASIC hash rate war is proving to be a drama. What I see happening is the ASIC vendors released their units with two much hash power, this will cost them sales and profits in the near future with BFL being the worst offender.

Instead of introducing the TH/s to the network spread around to thousands of miners in small chunks, they told everyone about the Minirig. People with deep pockets have ordered hundreds so when they finally ship, the TH/s will explode overnight. This will drive the smaller miners away from BTC and buying BFL product as the smaller units wont be able to compete, and the average miner wont be able to afford competitive rigs any longer, the gap is too large. So the mining will be concentrated into a smaller and smaller group of players with deep pockets. They will be able to dominate at a far cheaper cost than otherwise would have been possible for two reasons. Firstly BFL sold the Minirig too cheap, per GH/s compared to all other products on the market including their own lesser models. Secondly the instant concentration of hashing power will reduce the other miners revenue far more abruptly than if the whole net rose gradually, that will cause shock and awe not unlike a market crash.

Of course BFL are not alone, the Avalon 66GH/s unit was too big, they should have started with a 22 GH/s unit or smaller, and shipped 3 times as many of them.

Kncminer are talking about a 175GH/s an 350GH/s which are once again too much hash power.

Up until now everyone added hashing power in small increments adding a GPU or two, the crazies built racks of the things, but overall there were no big jumps. That's all about to change and I think for the worse. BTC was all about decentralization, these unnecessarily large ASIC sizes that are coming, screws up that concept.

However BFL has yet to ship a damn thing from the revised BitForce line. The Jalepenos are old news, and it took over a year for them just to deliver that much. I feel the BFL rigs are not of any concern until someone actually sees one in the wild, which at present rate will be sometime in 2014...

KnCMiner is bull, as Phinneaus Gage has been happy to point out the many holes in them so far. They have only created an FPGA miner prototype (which looks more like 4 FPGA boards loosely bolted together with small corner pieces of acrylic plastic...not what I would call a real prototype), which was then dumped because FPGA won't do anything against ASICs. Now they claim to be developing that, but have so far produced absolutely nothing. I have no faith the will as they seem just as disorganized and/or scammy as the rest.

The network will even out some, as the big players jump into ASIC the FPGA and GPU miners will either shift in or go to Litecoin or other coins. I don't think the jump will be as bad or as fast as most predict, but it will be increasing a lot as ASICs are rolled out by other companies like ASICMiner and Avalon who have actually delivered what they promised. But even as mining gets harder, the other edge of that sword is that Bitcoin will continue to increase in value because of it. Even mining a small slice of a coin can still mean big money in the future.

It's going to be very hard soon to mine anything.

how come? someone announce ASIC-scrypt miners?

Scrypt is just now hitting the FPGA stage, as I know   Scrypt is not as apt on ASIC hardware either, it will be a long time before we see Gen 4 hardware for Scrypt coins.

[Spectrome]

All very good points, Still i think people will flock more to pools than solo mine in the ASIC boom, people on old equipment will still be able to make a share, but how much is anyones guess until the hardware starts rolling out, its the waiting i cant stand, in the meantime things are pretty good.

[KSV]

oh yeah the ASIC war is about to breakout. . . coming soon to a post near you!

[erk]

Even though one might argue that the ASIC mining companies produced too many Gh too quick, doesn't that help secure the network and make a 51% attack from a government or such, less likely?
Just trying to find something positive in it all.

I ordered my Jalapeno, quite recently, knowing I wouldn't break even (since it will probably arrive at near years end) but I wanted to do my part to help support the network. And when one considers I can run it with low energy consumption using a Rasberry PI, it seemed like a good thing to do, especially since the Jalapeno uses a small amount of energy compared to a currently shipping competitors unit. But, I guess I'd then be able to pay for the unit if I had it now! 

IAS

What are you talking about by concentrating the hash power into smaller number of hands, increases the chance of a 51% attack.

[Its About Sharing]

Even though one might argue that the ASIC mining companies produced too many Gh too quick, doesn't that help secure the network and make a 51% attack from a government or such, less likely?
Just trying to find something positive in it all.

I ordered my Jalapeno, quite recently, knowing I wouldn't break even (since it will probably arrive at near years end) but I wanted to do my part to help support the network. And when one considers I can run it with low energy consumption using a Rasberry PI, it seemed like a good thing to do, especially since the Jalapeno uses a small amount of energy compared to a currently shipping competitors unit. But, I guess I'd then be able to pay for the unit if I had it now! 

IAS

What are you talking about by concentrating the hash power into smaller number of hands, increases the chance of a 51% attack.

Where did I say we are concentrating the hashing power into a smaller number of hands? If only a few people were buying them than that is news to me but I thought that since we are keeping an eye on the mining pools that the pools were the problem and not individuals harding machines.

Thanks for not commenting on my noteworthy support of the community and just my "mistake". 

[erk]

http://www.coindesk.com/butterfly-labs-finally-ships-out-last-years-jalapeno-orders/

[Xian01]

12-May   11.03%   11,187,257
25-May   8.64%   12,153,412
05-Jun   28.41%   15,605,633

 This is pretty amazing to take in. So I'm guessing this June 05 spike is caused from all the USB Erupters and Jaly's coming onto the network ? Is there something else that has come online, assuming ASICMiner is going to handle 25% of the blockchain solo ?

[Malawi]

12-May   11.03%   11,187,257
25-May   8.64%   12,153,412
05-Jun   28.41%   15,605,633

 This is pretty amazing to take in. So I'm guessing this June 05 spike is caused from all the USB Erupters and Jaly's coming onto the network ? Is there something else that has come online, assuming ASICMiner is going to handle 25% of the blockchain solo ?

Don't forget the Avalon units, and the number of chips they have sold.

One Avalon equals a large room full of CPU riggs. Even a jally equal 2-3 riggs.

[Xian01]

Don't forget the Avalon units, and the number of chips they have sold.

One Avalon equals a large room full of CPU riggs. Even a jally equal 2-3 riggs.

 AFAIK, none of the Avalon chips have shipped to customers/OEM's yet.

 As a data-point, one official Avalon rig =~ 11 Jally's

[Malawi]

Don't forget the Avalon units, and the number of chips they have sold.

One Avalon equals a large room full of CPU riggs. Even a jally equal 2-3 riggs.

 AFAIK, none of the Avalon chips have shipped to customers/OEM's yet.

 As a data-point, one official Avalon rig =~ 11 Jally's

Yeah, probably not a large room, but still something like in this picture. (If the machines are up to date etc.)

[Kouye]

Scrypt is just now hitting the FPGA stage, as I know   Scrypt is not as apt on ASIC hardware either, it will be a long time before we see Gen 4 hardware for Scrypt coins.

This is excellent.
Keep closing the doors to any further pre-order scam they could come up with, before they announce it.

Maybe a thread "If I was in charge at BFL, I would..." would save a lot of money to all future victims.
Imagine the next steps of the ponzi, and share them.

I know they aready got pretty far but heh, this "100 days for 100 chips" seems to work its way even higher.