Difficulty curve

[frankenmint]

Sorry if this rant is too off topic, its a pet peeve of mine.

It's also a peeve of mine, and it very much is ontopic. The people just fitting random formulas to the hashrate and making predictions are producing BS numbers that obscure better analysis (e.g. ones factoring in published shipping schedules or profitability over power costs) and make everyone dumber.

Also exponential functions are present in very much everything self organised. And humans are bloody good at self organising...

All living men are mortal.
Socrates is mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is alive!

Sorry, you can't just wave some hands and some things that have some vague commonality. Good reasoning requires at least arguing for a causal relationship. I can argue how increases in hashpower encourage decreases in the rate of increase— higher hashpower makes every bit of marginal increase in hashpower less profitable— but not the opposite.

what difficulty do you think it takes until we see a flood of hashrate on altcoins?  I mean there are more and more sha256 alts over time.

[mechs]

Sorry if this rant is too off topic, its a pet peeve of mine.

It's also a peeve of mine, and it very much is ontopic. The people just fitting random formulas to the hashrate and making predictions are producing BS numbers that obscure better analysis (e.g. ones factoring in published shipping schedules or profitability over power costs) and make everyone dumber.

Also exponential functions are present in very much everything self organised. And humans are bloody good at self organising...

All living men are mortal.
Socrates is mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is alive!

Sorry, you can't just wave some hands and some things that have some vague commonality. Good reasoning requires at least arguing for a causal relationship. I can argue how increases in hashpower encourage decreases in the rate of increase— higher hashpower makes every bit of marginal increase in hashpower less profitable— but not the opposite.

what difficulty do you think it takes until we see a flood of hashrate on altcoins?  I mean there are more and more sha256 alts over time.

So many alt-coins that the gpu miners are being diluted as they leave bitcoin mining.  I actually doubt any gpu miners left mining BTC at this point anyway. My guess is LTC has been the main beneficiary

[Puppet]

All living men are mortal.
Socrates is mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is alive!

Socrates was mortal. Therefore, he was alive.
Actually, even that is a non sequitur.

Sorry, you can't just wave some hands and some things that have some vague commonality. Good reasoning requires at least arguing for a causal relationship. I can argue how increases in hashpower encourage decreases in the rate of increase— higher hashpower makes every bit of marginal increase in hashpower less profitable— but not the opposite.

Let me help you with that one. Increase in network speed proportionally decreases the market value of mining hardware per TH. As a result of that, asic vendors will drop their prices for their next batch, to make sure they appear profitable again, which spurs another round of purchases. Thats a feedback loop, every price drop increases future difficutly, which will spur more price drops, to maintain sales, sales that will again increase difficulty . This loop will only end once asic vendors can no longer drop prices and remain profitable, and we are between one and two orders of magnitude away from marginal silicon production cost now. Until that point, the only brake on network growth is the asic vendor's ability to produce and ship their hardware. If they could instantly produce, ship and deploy, we would achieve the balance between production cost and mining profitability almost overnight and we could be approaching an exahash next month.

[FeedbackLoop]

All living men are mortal.
Socrates is mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is alive!

Socrates was mortal. Therefore, he was alive.
Actually, even that is a non sequitur.

Sorry, you can't just wave some hands and some things that have some vague commonality. Good reasoning requires at least arguing for a causal relationship. I can argue how increases in hashpower encourage decreases in the rate of increase— higher hashpower makes every bit of marginal increase in hashpower less profitable— but not the opposite.

Let me help you with that one. Increase in network speed proportionally decreases the market value of mining hardware per TH. As a result of that, asic vendors will drop their prices for their next batch, to make sure they appear profitable again, which spurs another round of purchases. Thats a feedback loop, every price drop increases future difficutly, which will spur more price drops, to maintain sales, sales that will again increase difficulty . This loop will only end once asic vendors can no longer drop prices and remain profitable, and we are between one and two orders of magnitude away from marginal silicon production cost now. Until that point, the only brake on network growth is the asic vendor's ability to produce and ship their hardware. If they could instantly produce, ship and deploy, we would achieve the balance between production cost and mining profitability almost overnight and we could be approaching an exahash next month.

Called me? A lot of things Bitcoin are Feedback Loops, and feedback loops tend to generate exponentials

"When the loop gain is positive and above 1, there will typically be exponential growth, increasing oscillations or divergences from equilibrium.[3]" The ultimate reliable source for all truth: Wikipedia

 

[Speakeron]

It's tapering off now. We're pretty much at the end of generation 1 ASICs; that is every Avalon chip that could be mining is mining, BFL dribble out as usual and BitFury are probably waiting on the foundry after a heavy deployment. There is, although, a massive flood breaking around December as at least a few of the 28nm companies start shipping in bulk.

Could be that the next difficulty increase (and maybe the one or two after) will fall below the percentage rate of recent increases. Late November/December will see the start of huge rises which will continue for a quarter.

[Puppet]

It's tapering off now. We're pretty much at the end of generation 1 ASICs; that is every Avalon chip that could be mining is mining, BFL dribble out as usual and Butfury are probably waiting on the foundry after a heavy deployment. There is, althou

I was under the impression both avalon and bitfurry bulk chip sales are only just finding their ways to PCBs that customers are eagerly waiting for. BFL is supposed to be accelerating shipments and then there is 500TH worth of 130nm asics that I-dont-remember-who is supposedly bringing online starting this very moment over the next few months.

I see no tapering in the carts either.

There is, although, a massive flood breaking around December as at least a few of the 28nm companies start shipping in bulk.

Experience should learn us that end of december promises are not likely to ship before February, but we shall see. No doubt whenever it starts, sparks will fly though

[Speakeron]

Experience should learn us that end of december promises are not likely to ship before February, but we shall see. No doubt whenever it starts, sparks will fly though

I'm pessimistic there as well. I'm presuming that KNC is one of those December deliverables...

[byteminr]

Experience should learn us that end of december promises are not likely to ship before February, but we shall see. No doubt whenever it starts, sparks will fly though

I'm pessimistic there as well. I'm presuming that KNC is one of those December deliverables...

KnC will very likely ship much sooner than December, in fact I'm personally counting on it!

ASIC hardware will naturally come down in price until there is a proper margin squeeze on the hardware vendors. The next crunch point will be when the price that is paid for electricity is the most important when all the ASICS are broadly the same cost and mining roughly the same speed. (perhaps 1 year or more away)

Adrian

www.byteminr.com

[mechs]

Experience should learn us that end of december promises are not likely to ship before February, but we shall see. No doubt whenever it starts, sparks will fly though

I'm pessimistic there as well. I'm presuming that KNC is one of those December deliverables...

KnC will very likely ship much sooner than December, in fact I'm personally counting on it!

ASIC hardware will naturally come down in price until there is a proper margin squeeze on the hardware vendors. The next crunch point will be when the price that is paid for electricity is the most important when all the ASICS are broadly the same cost and mining roughly the same speed. (perhaps 1 year or more away)

Adrian

www.byteminr.com

I think it will be more like 3 years before we reach the point where everyone at the same place in ASICs and energy efficiency and electricity costs the key factor.

[AussieHash]

At which point does the curve become a vertical line ?

[FeedbackLoop]

At which point does the curve become a vertical line ?

The Universe intended some things to be plotted in log-scale. Too lazy to post log-scale sipa pic.