Will difficulty decrease this cycle?

[FloatesMcgoates]

May it be the case that ASICminer's stagnation combined with the possibility that most batch 3 avalons are already in the wild cause total network hashrate to be stagnant for the next few weeks? Current (VERY EARLY) projections show a very minimal increase with a very real possibility of a difficulty decrease, will these projections hold?

[crazyates]

You're not counting that BFL is now shipping. I just got my 3rd ASIC from them today. I suspect more will be shipping out over the next 2 weeks.

[FloatesMcgoates]

You're not counting that BFL is now shipping. I just got my 3rd ASIC from them today. I suspect more will be shipping out over the next 2 weeks.

Is there a possibility that BFL pre-mined on those machines so that their contribution to the hashrate would have already been factored in? That would explain why it appears network hashrate has actually decreased in the last couple days if the machines moved from their pre-mining stages and are now in packages being shipped around the world.

[crazyates]

You're not counting that BFL is now shipping. I just got my 3rd ASIC from them today. I suspect more will be shipping out over the next 2 weeks.

Is there a possibility that BFL pre-mined on those machines so that their contribution to the hashrate would have already been factored in? That would explain why it appears network hashrate has actually decreased in the last couple days if the machines moved from their pre-mining stages and are now in packages being shipped around the world.

BFL has publicly stated in the past that they will do a 24-hour offline burn-in test, but they do not mine with customer's hardware.

[tymothy]

May it be the case that ASICminer's stagnation combined with the possibility that most batch 3 avalons are already in the wild cause total network hashrate to be stagnant for the next few weeks? Current (VERY EARLY) projections show a very minimal increase with a very real possibility of a difficulty decrease, will these projections hold?

As some have pointed out, this is an estimated hash rate which fluctuations stochiastically. Chances are the hash rate has increased slightly. Certainly this dip would suggest it's improbable that there's been a rapid increase in hash rate. The only reason why I could see there being a slight drop is if GPUs are being shutdown after the difficulty increases have made GPU power costs exceed revenue.

I can't imagine there being a dip in bitcoin difficulty in ~2 weeks from now short of a catastrophic change in bitcoin price. The rate of increase could be lower than the previous one, which would be welcome news to most miners. But there will be more ASIC miners coming online in the next two weeks.

[FloatesMcgoates]

May it be the case that ASICminer's stagnation combined with the possibility that most batch 3 avalons are already in the wild cause total network hashrate to be stagnant for the next few weeks? Current (VERY EARLY) projections show a very minimal increase with a very real possibility of a difficulty decrease, will these projections hold?

As some have pointed out, this is an estimated hash rate which fluctuations stochiastically. Chances are the hash rate has increased slightly. Certainly this dip would suggest it's improbable that there's been a rapid increase in hash rate. The only reason why I could see there being a slight drop is if GPUs are being shutdown after the difficulty increases have made GPU power costs exceed revenue.

I can't imagine there being a dip in bitcoin difficulty in ~2 weeks from now short of a catastrophic change in bitcoin price. The rate of increase could be lower than the previous one, which would be welcome news to most miners. But there will be more ASIC miners coming online in the next two weeks.

While it is a near certainty that a massive amount of ASICs will be unleashed in the future, I was wondering more along the lines of if we have reached the point where almost every major ASIC producer is in-between generations. Right now it appears no major hardware producer besides BFL (and BFL is shipping very small amounts from what I gather) are actually shipping at the moment.

[notme]

May it be the case that ASICminer's stagnation combined with the possibility that most batch 3 avalons are already in the wild cause total network hashrate to be stagnant for the next few weeks? Current (VERY EARLY) projections show a very minimal increase with a very real possibility of a difficulty decrease, will these projections hold?

As some have pointed out, this is an estimated hash rate which fluctuations stochiastically. Chances are the hash rate has increased slightly. Certainly this dip would suggest it's improbable that there's been a rapid increase in hash rate. The only reason why I could see there being a slight drop is if GPUs are being shutdown after the difficulty increases have made GPU power costs exceed revenue.

I can't imagine there being a dip in bitcoin difficulty in ~2 weeks from now short of a catastrophic change in bitcoin price. The rate of increase could be lower than the previous one, which would be welcome news to most miners. But there will be more ASIC miners coming online in the next two weeks.

While it is a near certainty that a massive amount of ASICs will be unleashed in the future, I was wondering more along the lines of if we have reached the point where almost every major ASIC producer is in-between generations. Right now it appears no major hardware producer besides BFL (and BFL is shipping very small amounts from what I gather) are actually shipping at the moment.

ASICMiner is shipping USBs.  Blades should be available before next difficulty, although with shipping we will see how many hit the network.

[mgio]

No, it will go up. Not as much as last time but it will go up.

Here is why:

- Avalon Batch 3 just began shipping it seems. They definitely aren't close to being finished. Not many people have gotten their batch 3's yet and they will in the next 2 weeks.
- BFL is still shipping, although very slowly. They won't make much of a dent as they are still shipping singles from the first and second day, but difficulty definitely won't be gong down.
- ASIC Miner has block eruptors back in stock and are selling them again.

[tymothy]

I wonder how long the rate of increase can be sustained. ASIC was a huge leap up. A sudden influx of ASIC units caused a massive growth-rate. At some point though, nearly all units will be ASIC as a percent of hashrate (or maybe it already is, not sure). The marginal gains to total network hashrate by adding an average ASIC unit expressed as a percent will decrease.

It would seem then that if we have nearly all ASIC mining rigs, adding ASIC units of average ASIC hashrate at constant rate will eventually produce only a linear increase in hashrate, that is a constant rate of increase. Now of course ASIC units may improve marginally in the near future and total production might ramp up, but such changes would need to be extremely drastic to maintain the rate of increase. Adding ASIC units with marginal speed improvements in an already ASIC saturated environment will result in a reduced rate of growth compared to adding ASIC units to a low-powered GPU-prevalent environment.

The hashrate will increase, but relative rate of hashrate increase might very well decline.