ETH Difficulty +11% in less than 24 hours.

[dannygroove]

And what you think will happen with difficulty on other coins when all that hardware from eth switch to them?You really think you will have current profit on etc?

This is what I don't understand.  This kind of blind optimism divorced from reality.  It is not speculation, it is a logical certainty that once eth profitability tanks, so will all the other cryptos.  It's really really simple.  It goes like this:

1. Most crypto miners are mining eth but..
2. When eth is no longer profitable...
3. They will switch their machines to mining any other crypto that are profitable, leading to...
4. Massive increase difficulty, resulting in...
5. Profits falling off a cliff.

I'm astounded how anyone can not understand this. 

Whats even worse, most rookies don't know what difficulty is. So they just buy cards blindly ignoring every aspect of mining profitability.

[Tmdz]

You guys know way more than I do. Maybe it is an ASIC machine, maybe not - but something is clearly happening because the difficulty rate is increasing exponentially and there a lot of weird happenings (iceage, backlogs, difficulty rate increasing 11% in one day, etc.)

In my experience when you have this many weird things happening all at the same time - something fishy is going on.

I will point out that I'm seeing a trend across the board with video cards that I would not normally consider. People are buying up 460s, 560s, 1060s and even 1070s to try to jump on the band wagon. It's almost like stocks, there are always a bunch of people jumping in at the last minute only to lose money when the floor drops out from underneath them. People are getting desperate and buying other cards to try to make money and to chase that difficulty level.

This is entirely predictable and expected.  Everyone and their cat are running out and buying up every GPU that can hash.  More hashing will increase difficulty.  Nothing unusual or unexpected.  Lots of people eager to build a money making machine and desperately afraid of missing out.  Last year very few had heard about this stuff.  Now cryptocurrencies have been getting a lot of press and word of mouth and it's taking off big time.  The result is heaps of new miners coming in with the inevitable result being rapidly increasing difficulty.

It's hard to imagine how anyone starting out now will ever make a profit. (unless they have really cheap electric)

This is a direct result of the ice age, which some months ago was explained quite well.

Look at hash rate charts vs difficulty charts   https://etherscan.io/charts

over the past month hash went up 66% but difficulty went up 95%

In the future it will become much worse

Thanks for the link! Next couple of months are going to be interesting to say the least. Hashrate is going up, difficulty level is going up, PoS is coming - The perfect storm is brewing.

They will not be doing a full pos switch at the next fork, at best the team wants to "test the water" and do a hybrid pow/pos with pos accounting for ~1% of blocks.  From there they bring POS blocks up if it goes well, so mining will back to normal.

But watch the forums around august late summerish there will be a lot of people freaking out once the ice age gets really bad, it jumps the difficulty every 100k blocks.

[QuintLeo]

I agree this has to be some ASIC in play, because there are no new 200k GPUs in the world.

 Given how hard GTX 1070 cards have been getting hit in the last week, I disagree with that last statement.

 I don't see the "difficulty bomb" mattering, and don't understand why ETH wasted the time to create it - as it affects all miners equally, it isn't going to change profitability at ALL on a per-card basis.


 The "phase in" aspect of the current plans to move ETH to PoS might soften the landing when all those ETH cards start looking for new homes - but it's still going to be brutal eventually, unless the current price jumps resume before that point in some of the other bigger coins like ZEC.
 We're also talking sometime NEXT year it looks like before it becomes a significant issue - though ETH has had to "delay" plans for the PoS transition before....


 It's not stupid for a miner to sell their coins immediately - it's sometimes "I have BILLS to pay", it's more often "I don't trust this coin to stay at this price" or "I don't trust the volitality".
 Keep in mind that coin prices are NOT automatically going to go up - Bitcoin was well over $1000 at it's earlier peak, then dropped as low as $200 and spent a LONG time under $500.
 Litecoin hit it's all-time peak near $50, a year later it was more like $2 and spent a LONG time under $5 - and I don't think it's EVER gotten back to that all-time peak (though this last week it got very close, one way or the other).

 Then there's the bear in the woods that far too many cryptocoin devs keep ignoring - outside of Bitcoin, ETH, and Litecoin, how many coins have significant acceptance in The Real World?
 In fact, I probably shouldn't include ETH and LTC in that list as both combined don't get accepted at 10% as many places as Bitcoin alone does.
 Without the ability to spend the coins in The Real World, they have zero chance at long-term viability.

[iamnoobplzhelp]

Miners follow the money, not the other way around.

The increase in ETH price has nothing to do with the increase in miners.
ETH would still be viable even if it had 1 miner. That miner would just be finding blocks like crazy.

The increase in ETH price has everything to do with adoption, investors, and people getting excited about Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies in general.

[Tmdz]

I agree this has to be some ASIC in play, because there are no new 200k GPUs in the world.

 Given how hard GTX 1070 cards have been getting hit in the last week, I disagree with that last statement.

 I don't see the "difficulty bomb" mattering, and don't understand why ETH wasted the time to create it - as it affects all miners equally, it isn't going to change profitability at ALL on a per-card basis.


 The "phase in" aspect of the current plans to move ETH to PoS might soften the landing when all those ETH cards start looking for new homes - but it's still going to be brutal eventually, unless the current price jumps resume before that point in some of the other bigger coins like ZEC.
 We're also talking sometime NEXT year it looks like before it becomes a significant issue - though ETH has had to "delay" plans for the PoS transition before....


 It's not stupid for a miner to sell their coins immediately - it's sometimes "I have BILLS to pay", it's more often "I don't trust this coin to stay at this price" or "I don't trust the volitality".
 Keep in mind that coin prices are NOT automatically going to go up - Bitcoin was well over $1000 at it's earlier peak, then dropped as low as $200 and spent a LONG time under $500.
 Litecoin hit it's all-time peak near $50, a year later it was more like $2 and spent a LONG time under $5 - and I don't think it's EVER gotten back to that all-time peak (though this last week it got very close, one way or the other).

 Then there's the bear in the woods that far too many cryptocoin devs keep ignoring - outside of Bitcoin, ETH, and Litecoin, how many coins have significant acceptance in The Real World?
 In fact, I probably shouldn't include ETH and LTC in that list as both combined don't get accepted at 10% as many places as Bitcoin alone does.
 Without the ability to spend the coins in The Real World, they have zero chance at long-term viability.

They created it because at that time they had planned on moving to full pos and did not want miners holding them hostage like they do in bitcoin.

Plans changed the asset grew to crazy highs so they are playing it safe now.

In the short term profit will tank and ETH is already feeling the pain of longer block times with congestion which will get much worse.  All those icos and erc20 token means ETH requires a fast block time to even function.  Imagine how screwed up the network will be even at just 1 min.

[Metroid]

The increase in ETH price has everything to do with adoption, investors, and people getting excited about Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies in general.

What increase? if you are saying past 2 months yes, look at this week, eth already crashed 30% and the difficulty rose 100% and that was only this week.

[iamnoobplzhelp]

The increase in ETH price has everything to do with adoption, investors, and people getting excited about Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies in general.

What increase? if you are saying past 2 months yes, look at this week, eth already crashed 30% and the difficulty rose 100% and that was only this week.

Yes. The short-term price of Ethereum is inherently unstable. It's very much like a stock. I'm talking about longer term. Exactly 2 months ago, Ethereum was worth $48. Then the Ethereum Alliance announced a number of new partners and the price jumped to over $100 in a short period of time. Ethereum gained more popularity and the price increased even more. More alliance members, increase in price. More people adopting, increase in price.

Yes, in the short-term, the price of Ethereum has dropped a bit. This is speculation, but I'm guessing people are getting nervous because of the network slow-downs. In the long run, Ethereum will get more backers and more people will invest and the price will go back up.

It's all a guess, but IMO, Ethereum is a very good bet.

[SidETH]

I suggest everybody selling their coins now. I will keep and check back in a couple of years.
A simple matter of not betting money you can't afford to lose.

[QuintLeo]

People are forgetting that 1070 can do 30 mhs and that they are available to buy almost everywhere.Or it could be that nvidia is testing their 1060 mining cards😀

 Half right.

 Yes, most 1070 are capable of 30 Mh/s or very close.
 No, they are NOT available to buy almost everywhere for the last week or so - avaiability has gotten REAL spotty, almost down to RX 470/570/480/580 levels - though the price hasn't climbed AS MUCH yet, it's also headed up well into 1080 territory.

 People mining ETH on a 1070 are being kinda dumb though, those cards do a LOT better on other algos and coins for profitability.

[QuintLeo]

I agree this has to be some ASIC in play, because there are no new 200k GPUs in the world.

 I don't see the "difficulty bomb" mattering, and don't understand why ETH wasted the time to create it - as it affects all miners equally, it isn't going to change profitability at ALL on a per-card basis.

They created it because at that time they had planned on moving to full pos and did not want miners holding them hostage like they do in bitcoin.

 That makes ZERO sense. The same number of coins are going to get mined no matter what the diff does, the same number of blocks are going to get created, etc.

 It doesn't affect ANYTHING that matters.

 It certainly does NOT affect "miners hording coins" in any way, shape, or form, as it affects ALL MINERS EQUALLY.

[sidog]

I don't understand why people say the Eth price will crash due to higher hashrate and diffuclty.

If ETHs are difficult to get (to mine), won't their price grow up ?

I agree with that. When more people mine it, the price will go higher.

I would love to hear how that works!  By what mechanism, (besides wishful thinking), can people mining a coin cause the price to rise?  I don't know how many different ways I can explain this... It's really not complicated...

Difficulty is solely and entirely determined automatically and periodically to try to maintain a constant and fixed confirmation time.  When more hashrate power is applied to a coin e.g. more miners mining it, confirmation times start to shorten which causes the difficulty to increase automatically to try to maintain the same confirmation time.  It has absolutely no relationship to price.  The price is not involved in the calculation.

So we have established there is no mechanical or mathematical relationship between difficulty and price.  The only other way, might be if investors saw a rising difficulty and took that as a reason to buy more coins.  But it begs the question why the heck would investor care what the difficulty is??  I can't imagine investors look at mining difficulty at all.  It's just not relevant as it bares no relation to present or future price movements.  All an increasing difficulty suggests is more miners are mining it.  All that means is that it is more profitable to mine, usually because it has had a rapid run up in price.  Now investors are interested in price movements but why would they look at an indirect imprecise indicator of price action (mining difficulty) when they can glance at any historical price chart?

Anyway, I'm hoping someone can prove me wrong and demonstrate a distinct correlation between mining difficulty and price.  I can't imagine how that might work but I try to maintain an open mind

I entirely get what you are trying to saying and really appreciate the semi deep dive into the relationship between price and hashing rate.    Let me try to put explain it another way:

The release of coins (ETH) into the world will be CONSTANT regardless of how many miners there are.   Because of the CONSTANT rate of release of ETH, miners will have no direct bearing on the the PRICE of ETH.

I am still not 100% sure as to the correctness of that statement, but I think that was your point.

[Tmdz]

I agree this has to be some ASIC in play, because there are no new 200k GPUs in the world.

 I don't see the "difficulty bomb" mattering, and don't understand why ETH wasted the time to create it - as it affects all miners equally, it isn't going to change profitability at ALL on a per-card basis.

They created it because at that time they had planned on moving to full pos and did not want miners holding them hostage like they do in bitcoin.

 That makes ZERO sense. The same number of coins are going to get mined no matter what the diff does, the same number of blocks are going to get created, etc.

 It doesn't affect ANYTHING that matters.

 It certainly does NOT affect "miners hording coins" in any way, shape, or form, as it affects ALL MINERS EQUALLY.

No the same number of coins will not be mined, you do not understand what the ice age is.

Block time will continue to increase, reducing the emission of coins and reducing profit for miners.

Miners will not be able to keep up with difficulty as is the case right now, block time is 17.5 sec but should be 14 sec.

Eventually block times will get so slow that the chain will die, so you either fork or die.

[QuintLeo]

P.S. There is a moratorium on selling graphics cards in bulk right now as so many have been purchased the graphics card companies are unable to meet their retail demands to customers/partners. So in turn they have allocated all remaining stock to those partners and large mining firms are kind of SOL right now.

 Which doesn't stop the dealers and distributors from bulk sales, nor does it prevent the large farms from doing multiple smaller orders.

[QuintLeo]

I agree this has to be some ASIC in play, because there are no new 200k GPUs in the world.

 I don't see the "difficulty bomb" mattering, and don't understand why ETH wasted the time to create it - as it affects all miners equally, it isn't going to change profitability at ALL on a per-card basis.

They created it because at that time they had planned on moving to full pos and did not want miners holding them hostage like they do in bitcoin.

 That makes ZERO sense. The same number of coins are going to get mined no matter what the diff does, the same number of blocks are going to get created, etc.

 It doesn't affect ANYTHING that matters.

 It certainly does NOT affect "miners hording coins" in any way, shape, or form, as it affects ALL MINERS EQUALLY.

No the same number of coins will not be mined, you do not understand what the ice age is.

Block time will continue to increase, reducing the emission of coins and reducing profit for miners.

Miners will not be able to keep up with difficulty as is the case right now, block time is 17.5 sec but should be 14 sec.

Eventually block times will get so slow that the chain will die, so you either fork or die.

 That's not due to the difficulty bomb though, which is what *I* was specifically talking about.

 That's due to Ice Age changing the block time spec, completely DIFFERENT issue that does affect mining profitability *AND* new coin availability (and might affect the price some but not due to anything miners are doing).

 

[Tmdz]

I agree this has to be some ASIC in play, because there are no new 200k GPUs in the world.

 I don't see the "difficulty bomb" mattering, and don't understand why ETH wasted the time to create it - as it affects all miners equally, it isn't going to change profitability at ALL on a per-card basis.

They created it because at that time they had planned on moving to full pos and did not want miners holding them hostage like they do in bitcoin.

 That makes ZERO sense. The same number of coins are going to get mined no matter what the diff does, the same number of blocks are going to get created, etc.

 It doesn't affect ANYTHING that matters.

 It certainly does NOT affect "miners hording coins" in any way, shape, or form, as it affects ALL MINERS EQUALLY.

No the same number of coins will not be mined, you do not understand what the ice age is.

Block time will continue to increase, reducing the emission of coins and reducing profit for miners.

Miners will not be able to keep up with difficulty as is the case right now, block time is 17.5 sec but should be 14 sec.

Eventually block times will get so slow that the chain will die, so you either fork or die.

 That's not due to the difficulty bomb though, which is what *I* was specifically talking about.

 That's due to Ice Age changing the block time spec, completely DIFFERENT issue that does affect mining profitability *AND* new coin availability (and might affect the price some but not due to anything miners are doing).

 

Dude, The difficulty bomb IS the ice age, they are the same thing only they call the ice age when block chain freezes.

[Kazkar]

You have to dig while you can. Now the price justifies itself. Then we will look for a replacement. 

[Metroid]

Difficulty jumped almost 20% today. So you trolls are making 20% less money and that is only today hehe

[Brucelats]

People are forgetting that 1070 can do 30 mhs and that they are available to buy almost everywhere.Or it could be that nvidia is testing their 1060 mining cards😀

 Half right.

 Yes, most 1070 are capable of 30 Mh/s or very close.
 No, they are NOT available to buy almost everywhere for the last week or so - avaiability has gotten REAL spotty, almost down to RX 470/570/480/580 levels - though the price hasn't climbed AS MUCH yet, it's also headed up well into 1080 territory.

 People mining ETH on a 1070 are being kinda dumb though, those cards do a LOT better on other algos and coins for profitability.

What would you suggest to mine with gtx 1070? When i was checking profitability charts and such i noticed eth is only few percent less profotable then other coins.

I have right now 17x gtx 1070.

[dragonmike]

you trolls

Pot, kettle, black...

[Vann]

The current ETH difficulty has more to do with the ICE AGE that was PROGRAMMED to increase the difficulty exponentially as the switch to POS was closer. The question is whether the developers will back it off now that the move to POS is not ready as soon as it was planned.