What's going to happen when the difficulty hits a trillion?

[BuhTuglia]

Seriously, no idea if it will ever get that high... but rumors of folks buying huge lots of Avalon ASIC chips, products like BFL's Monarch (if it actually ever sees the light of day), and just the slow-motion train wreck of difficulty as more and more ASICs come online... Difficulty jumped from what, 36m or so to 50m last time? What's it gonna be a year from now? What will mining look like then?

Will the little guys be shut out completely? I mean, pooled mining is the only way us little guys can get a fraction of a coin now, will we even have a chance when the giant ASIC farms come online? Isn't mining basically a crapshoot with the odds favoring the highest hashrate? Sorry; I am bad at analogies. Will all but the biggest pools die out? Will they even be able to survive?

All this ever-increasing hashing and still only one block every ten minutes... soon the next block reduction will loom on the horizon... will it be worth it then? Is it worth it now, even? I guess it all depends on the price of the coin. It's been worth it to me as an interesting hobby, but the endless and somewhat exponential diminishing returns will soon reach a point where I just turn it off. It was cool (not too long ago) when I was drawing down half a coin a day, now it's not nearly as much fun (or as profitable), even with my poor little Jalepeno turbine running 24/7.

Is greed the major motivation driving the mining world? Or the bitcoin world, for that matter? I mean we're all a bit greedy, it's human nature, and you have to be to survive and move ahead, that's why we came down from the trees, or what got our ancestors thrown out of the garden of eden, fit your personal belief structure in there as you wish. I never thought of myself as a particularly greedy miner, I enjoyed making them, I've spent as many coins as I've saved, and sure I'd like to have more. Who wouldn't? Now big money is getting involved. Well, it was fun while it lasted. Sorry if this is sounding whiney and sour grapes-ish.

Sorry to ask so many questions, just curious what people think.


russell

[monbux]

Well that's for the bitcoin users to decide... I'm not exactly a veteran in bitcoin, but I would say let's wait and see

[mjc]

1 Trillion is just a number.  It just means if you are still mining with 50 GH :-) you will not make much.

Remember, your take is roughly a ration of your [mining capacity : total network hash rate] * (1 - pool fee) * 3600 BTC. 

The Difficulty is the real factor not hash rate, but they are directly related.

[odolvlobo]

Little guys will never be shut out. Right now you can get a 336 MH/s USB miner for $40. There is only a small advantage in being a big guy -- mostly related to power, space,  and cooling.

[Akka]

Also don't forget, while you can run a jalapeno for the lulz. The "big guy" have serious expenses in electricity and maintenance. They can't afford to mine at a loss, also they are forced to continuously sell their coins to pay for their expenses.

This whole mechanism it self regulating, as soon as mining isn't profitable anymore (serious) investments in mining will stop. But also difficult will always rise as long as you can make a profit and coins will always be sold at a close to production cost point or even below. But never at much above for a longer time frame, just because as soon as you can mine and sell coins for profit, people will start investing in mining again.

And that's a good thing, mining isn't intended to make you a lot of money, but just make it worthwhile to secure the network.

[r0xie]

When it hits a trillion I imagine we have already a massive 28nm asics offer and maybe 22n in production. Nothing changes, just bigger power hardware to mine for everyone, same little parts of a cake to mine for everybody.

[Fixatron]

I think asic tech will be much better by that time.

[dinarius]

If the size of the network increases over time due to wider adoption (even in the absence of technology changes) then your own share of network hash capacity reduces making it less likely that you'll get paid for mining. The whole bitcoin thing feels like a goldrush at the moment. Given the fairly modest expected mining payouts most people would be better served by finding an alternative way of making money (like a job) and then simply buying Bitcoin (assuming that's what they want).

But by all means donate some hashing capacity to the network to keep your coins safe. I prefer to think of mining as a lottery with a slightly better chance of payout, a lower jackpot and the knowledge that you're supporting a cause you (presumably) believe in.

[pontiacg5]

If the size of the network increases over time due to wider adoption (even in the absence of technology changes) then your own share of network hash capacity reduces making it less likely that you'll get paid for mining. The whole bitcoin thing feels like a goldrush at the moment. Given the fairly modest expected mining payouts most people would be better served by finding an alternative way of making money (like a job) and then simply buying Bitcoin (assuming that's what they want).

But by all means donate some hashing capacity to the network to keep your coins safe. I prefer to think of mining as a lottery with a slightly better chance of payout, a lower jackpot and the knowledge that you're supporting a cause you (presumably) believe in.

How exactly is mining anything at all like a lottery. As long as you aren't doing something stupid like solo mining or pooled 10Mh/s on a laptop you'll ALWAYS get paid for mining. If you can't hit the minimum withdraw amount for the pool you mine on then you have a problem. Keeping coins safe aren't much of a problem. If the network hash rate drops you can bet more people will start mining to take advantage of that fact.

My miners make me more coins while I'm at work, once they are set up there's not much to do and if you think it's a job the (real) world will kick your ass! If you don't have a job obviously bitcoin isn't a replacement. Seems to me the only ones with that view are kids who've never had a job or any idea of the value of a dollar.  

The only way I ever see difficulty hitting that high is if the price of the coin skyrockets, making those few fractions of a coin you can mine worthwhile. Pools would drop the minimum payout requirement, and not a whole lot will really change in the mining world, except for the ones already holding coins  

[elliwilli]

if it hits such a large difficulty it will be basically imposable for anything besides a ASIC farm to mine any bitcoin (You will get dust but that is it)

[vaio127]

The little guys who can't afford or won't buy ASICs will slowly be shut out.

[odolvlobo]

The little guys who can't afford or won't buy ASICs will slowly be shut out.

Why do you assume that ASIC miners will all be expensive? There will always be a market for cheap ASIC miners and so there will probably be at least one on the market. Right now you can get an ASIC miner for around $20. Is that too expensive for a little guy?

[CEG5952]

asics will have a lower barrier eventually but they will also become obsolete very quickly, like gpu

[b!z]

ASICs tech will evolve, they won't be obselete.