Some noobish questions re: future difficulty values and rate of increase in diff

[marvinmartian]

I'm trying to find some history on previous round difficulties.  Doesn't seem to be any.  Some nice graphs here I suppose:  http://bitcoin.sipa.be/. 

Seems like difficulty is projected to go up pretty steeply in the coming months.  I'm trying to come up with an estimate for diminished rate of return on my mining setup. 

EG., next round of difficulty will be around 1379048 which will drop mining productivity by around 30%.  Might one assume a constant rate of decline like that or is it projected to be even more accelerated?

Curious what work / articles have been done on this subject.

Thanks,

MM

[1714959472]

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[kjj]

http://blockexplorer.com/q/nethash

[Schleicher]

EG., next round of difficulty will be around 1379048 which will drop mining productivity by around 30%.  Might one assume a constant rate of decline like that or is it projected to be even more accelerated?

Well, predictions are always difficult, especially predicting the future.
But I believe difficulty will continue to rise.

[marvinmartian]

I feel like I just had my cherry popped.  ;-)

The real question, it seems, is where (if any) the state of equilibrium will be reached.  Clearly, once the price of bitcoins is no longer high enough to justify mining @ a certain difficulty fewer people will get involved.  Right now, it's still somewhat profitable provided rigs can hold out a couple of weeks.

If difficulty continues to rise, the price of bitcoins will have to rise as well otherwise it simply won't be worth the price of electricity needed to mine the coins.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

MM

[Jack of Diamonds]

If it keeps rising to about 3-4m it will already be pretty unprofitable at current exchange rates to most small miners.

I'll halt mining if it rises to ~8M but prices stay at current levels, just wont be worth it, except as a speculative investment into the long term value of bitcoins