54% difficulty increase in 3 days

[pennytrader]

Are you ready? Just wondering what would be the difficulty jump after that...

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[d.james]

about 250% firm.

[AngelusWebDesign]

It's amazing that the mining hardware just keeps piling in --

[Chucksta]

It's amazing that the mining hardware just keeps piling in --

Yes, but than again it is still profitable. I thought mining would be over by now, but it just does not want to give up.

My 8 miners acquired 3.5 BTC in the last 22 hours. Even at $10 per BTC, that is $35. My electricity max per box (4 PCs), is roughly $1 for the day, therefore $4 in total.

I reckon that a lot of the new miners are just people using equipment that they already had, maybe with a gfx card upgrade or two. They've watched and listened while someone they know has had their computers making money for them, and finally they have decided to give it a go. "Hell, even if it's just a few dollars, a few dollars a day pays for fuel ", they may reason.

[Fjordbit]

Are you ready? Just wondering what would be the difficulty jump after that...

How do you find this out?

I found this page, but it shows just a 43.3% increase

[jasonk]

Yea totally not cool.  I'm shocked that the network is growing at this rate considering the drop in coin prices + mt gox has been down.......  INSANE!

[no_alone]

Yahhh its crazy.
We still at stable 50% increase each difficulty jump.

[BtcNmcMiner]

It's amazing that the mining hardware just keeps piling in --

I reckon that a lot of the new miners are just people using equipment that they already had, maybe with a gfx card upgrade or two. They've watched and listened while someone they know has had their computers making money for them, and finally they have decided to give it a go. "Hell, even if it's just a few dollars, a few dollars a day pays for fuel ", they may reason.

That's how I got into it. I'm mining on a PC that I built in February because my old one was about 3 years old and getting dated. The hardware was just sitting there running 24/7 anyways when I stumbled into bitcoins and I decided it was worth it to give it a go. So far my mining proceds have paid for an added video card so even if I stop now I'm still ahead.

[Cluster2k]

It's amazing that the mining hardware just keeps piling in --

Yes, but than again it is still profitable. I thought mining would be over by now, but it just does not want to give up.

My 8 miners acquired 3.5 BTC in the last 22 hours. Even at $10 per BTC, that is $35. My electricity max per box (4 PCs), is roughly $1 for the day, therefore $4 in total.

My stats are that I'm earning $17 a day (taking into account currency conversions and MtGox fees) but power costs $5 per day (measured, not just estimated from parts specs).  Not everyone pays a few cents per kilowatt like US/Canadian citizens seem to do.  With a 50% difficulty increase that'll be $12 per day but still burning $5 in power.  Does it make sense to have $1000 of hardware producing less than $5 a day?  (Don't forget taxes must be paid on income).  Bitcoin's USD$ value did not increase at all in the last two difficulty increases, and there is no evidence this trend is about to change.  MtGox's little adventure is unlikely to have a stimulating effect on speculators either.

I have a feeling many bitcoin users are piling in without giving regard to the cost of power (and the cost of cooling where required).  Pretty soon they'll be thinking "free cash!" while spending $1.10 to make $1.

[[Coins!]]

Yes, but than again it is still profitable. I thought mining would be over by now, but it just does not want to give up.

My 8 miners acquired 3.5 BTC in the last 22 hours. Even at $10 per BTC, that is $35. My electricity max per box (4 PCs), is roughly $1 for the day, therefore $4 in total.

I reckon that a lot of the new miners are just people using equipment that they already had, maybe with a gfx card upgrade or two. They've watched and listened while someone they know has had their computers making money for them, and finally they have decided to give it a go. "Hell, even if it's just a few dollars, a few dollars a day pays for fuel ", they may reason.

Profitable compared to electricity, but... how much did those 8 miners cost you to set up? What is your ROI for the next 6 difficulty increases if they're all 50%, and all happen in 9-12 days?

[AngelusWebDesign]

It's amazing that the mining hardware just keeps piling in --

Yes, but than again it is still profitable. I thought mining would be over by now, but it just does not want to give up.

My 8 miners acquired 3.5 BTC in the last 22 hours. Even at $10 per BTC, that is $35. My electricity max per box (4 PCs), is roughly $1 for the day, therefore $4 in total.

I reckon that a lot of the new miners are just people using equipment that they already had, maybe with a gfx card upgrade or two. They've watched and listened while someone they know has had their computers making money for them, and finally they have decided to give it a go. "Hell, even if it's just a few dollars, a few dollars a day pays for fuel ", they may reason.

I seem to have about the same mining income as you -- only I have 12 cards.  All pretty efficient ones, too (5800 series). I run a pretty lean ship here.  But my electricity cost is around 74 kW/h per day. I keep close tabs on my electricity usage. I regularly write down what the meter on the side of my house reads, so I'm familiar with my normal daily kW/h usage.  I also own a Kill-a-Watt meter.

I'm including the cost of extra air conditioning. I live in Texas, where we haven't had a cloudy day in weeks, and the temp hits 105 some days.

I think some guys are reporting less cost, because they don't (or can't) count the cost of fans, A/C, etc.

Anyhow, 74 kW/h comes out to $6.51. And that's a 8.8c per kW/h, which is certainly average if not cheaper than most. And that figure is super-accurate as well. I took my electric bill, subtracted the Statement Fee ($15.00), and divided what was left by the number of kW/h I used -- which equaled 8.8 cents.

You're saying $1 each for 4 machines, which have enough graphics cards to produce 3.5 BTC/day? That's 3.3 GH/s.

I think everyone needs to go back to the drawing board and double check how much they're REALLY spending on mining. You might be surprised.

Matthew

[rograz]

Yea totally not cool.  I'm shocked that the network is growing at this rate considering the drop in coin prices + mt gox has been down.......  INSANE!

Still delayed reaction to the surge up to 30$/BTC imo, we might see a decline in growth reflecting current events in about 2 weeks time.

[borito4]

It's amazing that the mining hardware just keeps piling in --

Yes, but than again it is still profitable. I thought mining would be over by now, but it just does not want to give up.

My 8 miners acquired 3.5 BTC in the last 22 hours. Even at $10 per BTC, that is $35. My electricity max per box (4 PCs), is roughly $1 for the day, therefore $4 in total.

I reckon that a lot of the new miners are just people using equipment that they already had, maybe with a gfx card upgrade or two. They've watched and listened while someone they know has had their computers making money for them, and finally they have decided to give it a go. "Hell, even if it's just a few dollars, a few dollars a day pays for fuel ", they may reason.

I seem to have about the same mining income as you -- only I have 12 cards.  All pretty efficient ones, too (5800 series). I run a pretty lean ship here.  But my electricity cost is around 74 kW/h per day. I keep close tabs on my electricity usage. I regularly write down what the meter on the side of my house reads, so I'm familiar with my normal daily kW/h usage.  I also own a Kill-a-Watt meter.

I'm including the cost of extra air conditioning. I live in Texas, where we haven't had a cloudy day in weeks, and the temp hits 105 some days.

I think some guys are reporting less cost, because they don't (or can't) count the cost of fans, A/C, etc.

Anyhow, 74 kW/h comes out to $6.51. And that's a 8.8c per kW/h, which is certainly average if not cheaper than most. And that figure is super-accurate as well. I took my electric bill, subtracted the Statement Fee ($15.00), and divided what was left by the number of kW/h I used -- which equaled 8.8 cents.

You're saying $1 each for 4 machines, which have enough graphics cards to produce 3.5 BTC/day? That's 3.3 GH/s.

I think everyone needs to go back to the drawing board and double check how much they're REALLY spending on mining. You might be surprised.

Matthew

Im also mining in texas... and I have 0 AC costs. Running my cards in the garage yields ~5c higher temps than running them inside, only added cost is my 4 box fans @ 75w each. My 4 rigs @8.5c/KwH are using ~5.25 in cost per day, while putting out ~2.5g/hash. Each rig is pulling down around 500-750W, Unclocking the memory to ~340 helped cut the machine usage by almost 100W per box.

[Zman0101]

I'm doing 3200 mega hash and my rigs cost me $250 a month on electricity.

[Synaesthesia]

Difficulty growth cannot continue indefinitely, because the network cannot be infinitely large.

[Zman0101]

I agree. If the price of the coin goes up... Its an even balance but, who knows.

[Synaesthesia]

Wonder what difficulty we will eventually stabilize at? And sometime in the future payout will decrease to 25BTC per block too. You gotta think that it will just push up the value.

[AngelusWebDesign]

I think the right answer is that there's a delay in reaction -- things don't happen instantaneously.

The Mt. Gox hack was only less than 3 days ago, for crying out loud! (I know, it seems like a LONG time ago...)

Someone could have ordered more mining hardware on Saturday, and wouldn't even HAVE IT YET -- nevermind be able to decide what to do with it now (mine with it, sell it, return it, etc.)

There's a bit of inertia/delayed reaction involved here.

[tsvekric]

Wonder what difficulty we will eventually stabilize at? And sometime in the future payout will decrease to 25BTC per block too. You gotta think that it will just push up the value.

Yeah, it should push up the value (or rather, not push down on the value as much) because the supply of bitcoins will be increasing at a slower rate.
However, it's not like bitcoins will double over night on that day - yet mining will be (about) half as profitable.  Difficulty will definitely fall (price determines difficulty)

[[Coins!]]

Difficulty growth cannot continue indefinitely, because the network cannot be infinitely large.

Ok you are correct, but how many difficulties will it take before we reach an equilibrium?

Only 60,000 mtgox accounts in existence.  There are 330,000,000 people in the USA alone.  

I think there are plenty of unused GPU cycles out there, and the more media attention this garners, the more interested parties will fire up mining rigs.  That doesn't even count the gaming systems for WoW or Secondlife or any of the millions of PC games that are out there that don't do anything all day while their owners are at work.   All an owner needs to do is turn on guiminer and leave.

We're not anywhere near the saturation point of the network.