How long will it take to reach 1 billion difficulty?

[bcp19]

Let's be reasonable. It will take another 6 months or so before it hits 1 billion diff.

You may very well be correct, I even hope you ARE correct, but if you look at who is getting ready to ship what, you'll see that 6 months is unreasonable.  I'd count us lucky if it takes until the end of January.  It all depends on how many companies are BFLing us.

[wpgdeez]

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[likeBTC]

Jan 14 might be true if all the hardware ships, but it doesn't look right as investing USD 10k+ on these hardware isn't everyone's game. So, mining has to slow down at some time and historical rate may not be very accurate in that case to speculate projected difficulty.