Nov.16 pool mining bitcoin2x

[soy39]

So, on November 16, some pools are going to be mining bitcoin2x.  If the weather permits, not running miners unless it's cold as I do, I'd like to point a miner at a bitcoin2x pool.  Wonder how the difficulty is going to start.  After all, the difficulty on bitcoin is pretty high but there are a lot of pools mining bitcoin.  Will the initial difficulty likely be higher than warranted for the limited number of miners starting?  Unless they're pegging the starting difficulty low so those miners who are there at the start get a good take before the first difficulty rise.  A good reward for those who start will attract more miners and that increased hashing power, will make the higher difficulty warranted.  This is all guess work.  Will someone who actually knows what to expect give us the 411?  Thanks.

soy39

[soy39]

Okay, so 'fork' implies that pools for both bitcoin1x and bitcoin2x will be mining the same chain pre-fork, then the designated block will be reached, then the fork, then the mining on the two pools will be different.  The bitcoin1x pool will have fewer miners solely due to the fork.  The bitcoin2x chain will now be mining larger blocks.  A question is: will the first block of the bitcoin2x be mined at the same difficulty as the corresponding block on bitcoin1x?  That bitcoin1x block will take longer due to fewer miners.  The first block on the bitcoin2x at that time will take longer due to its larger size, greater content.  I'm not sure the second is absolutely true as empty blocks had been found in the past.  If an empty block can be discovered they why would the bitcoin2x blocks need be "full"?  But then, that empty block situation was said to be due to an unfair vetting of what to put in the block, and that condition was said to be defeated with segwit last August.

Another question is, if both bitcoin1x and bitcoin2x take exceptionally long to discover the first block post fork, which difficulty will drop more and when?  I suspect bitcoin2x will drop more as it's new and untested therefore fewer miners than on the bitcoin1x branch of the fork.

Okay, I see an answer to a question about difficulty given by Andrew Chow on bitcoin.stackexchange.com back on Oct. 23rd.  "...The "difficulty" of mining is determined by the difficulty (the value). The difficulty only adjust itself every 2016 blocks, so when the Segwit2x fork happens, the difficulty will not adjust until 1152 after the fork happens. So the difficulty will not change at the time of the fork for either chain (barring any difficulty adjustment thing that segwit2x decides to implement in the future) so it will be equally difficult to mine on both chains and thus not easier at all.

When the difficulty adjusts, it can only adjust by a factor of 4 at most, so only down to a difficulty 1/4th that of the difficulty at the time of fork. This means that it won't be possible to CPU or GPU mine either chain for a while as the difficulty needs to adjust down a lot."

soy39

[Turkish88]

Many miners support segwit2x and seem to have to start 2x coin, but if before the fork, bitcoin core intentionally reduces the difficulty, then it will give him the advantage of attracting more number of miners. As time will tell

[soy39]

So is segwit2x being mined right now or only as a test?  I understand that pools which intend to mine segwit2x will start on Nov. 16 and that testing is being done now but not actual mining.

Besides the question if bitcoin ASIC mining devices will run on the segwit2x pools or become obsolete if they can't, and if 2x becomes the dominant cryptocoin, there's the question of relative value, bitcoin1x vs bitcoin2x.  If 2x becomes the dominant although we'll have equal numbers of both coins to start, I could see many selling their 2x and putting it into 1x then finding it was a mistake.

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But if the majority of bitcoin miners would fail to crunch segwit2x blocks then it would seem doomed - so perhaps we can assume they can.