Next difficulty ~4,000,000,000? Tracking difficulty since 145,000,000.

[beegatewood]

The difficulty is going out of control..

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[zvs]

The difficulty is going out of control..

What you say!  I just spent five millions on asics!

[ScryptAsic]

The difficulty is going out of control..

What you say!  I just spent five millions on asics!

Wohoo, you serious? I spent like 2k on GPU...

[rampalija]

That's crazy.

Buying new mining hardware right now certainly looks like a fools game.

Yes. The choices are:

• You buy mining equipment and nobody else buys mining equipment (difficulty stops increasing, you win)
• You buy mining equipment and many others also buy mining equipment (difficulty goes up, you lose -ROI)
• You don't buy mining equipment and nobody else buys mining equipment (no income from mining, you lose 0 ROI)
• You don't buy mining equipment and many others buy mining equipment (no income from mining, you lose 0 ROI)

Sound familiar? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

While it's theoretically possible to win (option 1), if all players act in (what they think is) their own interest and buy mining equipment, the more likely outcome and what we are seeing now is everyone loses (option 2). Thus, the best option is not to play = 0 ROI.

Assuming one believes that BTC will go up in value, I think the best option at this point is to buy BTC directly.

In my opinion, the small potential returns for buying mining hardware right now aren't a good move when adjusted for risk.

i was telling ppl to do that and not  to buy miners, cuz many ppl are preordered miners and they have yet to come

[Wipeout2097]

~600 million

[rampalija]

~600 million

i am expecting it too, somewhere around 600 milion

[Nemo1024]

~600 million

i am expecting it too, somewhere around 600 milion

I think it'll settle between 485 and 490 this time around.
There are a few BlueFuries being shipped. On the other hand KnC seems to be done with their first deployment/shipment, so we have at least a 15 day long respite.

[demonmaestro]

i wonder how long it will be till it levels off. year, 2 years, 3 years, never?

[Rannasha]

i wonder how long it will be till it levels off. year, 2 years, 3 years, never?

I believe the growth will slow down considerably somewhere next year. Newest generation ASICs use a 28nm feature size, which is only slightly behind the 22nm feature size of the latest generation of Intel CPUs. So while ASIC manufacturers have been able to use existing older technology relatively cheaply until now, if they want to improve much further, they'll hit the cutting edge where costs are massively higher and competition for production resources is greatly increased as well.

There is still room for improvement of current designs, but the steps will become less and less large.

[smoothie]

The difficulty is going out of control..

What did you expect from an arms race?

[smoothie]

i wonder how long it will be till it levels off. year, 2 years, 3 years, never?

Honestly that all depends on the demand for mining.

With ASICs in development it seems like the leveling off may be out a year or two. The next 9 months will pose very interesting.

I suspect there will be a lot of miners who buy hardware in the next 6 months that will be even more bitcoin poor (and fiat valuation, if that even means anything anymore) than miners that bought hardware 3-6 months ago, even if the order of magnitude of the hashing speeds between such units is 10 times...

[demonmaestro]

Well it maybe an arms race HOWEVER it does take miners to make bitcoin move.  So yes buying bitcoin is nice and all but with out a miner there is no bitcoin.

[Nemo1024]

Well it maybe an arms race HOWEVER it does take miners to make bitcoin move.  So yes buying bitcoin is nice and all but with out a miner there is no bitcoin.

This! Plus, the more miners there are out there, the more secure the network is.

[Klubknuckle]

http://bitcoindifficulty.com/

Current difficulty: 390,928,788
Next difficulty (estimate): 462,272,138 (+18%)

I would invest in ASIC if the difficulty stabilized like this. Hope its not another 40%..

[GigaWave]

Unless the pools have had some amazing luck in the past ~24hrs, it looks like 1 TH just came online. Current estimate from bitcoincharts is 4500 TH.  Which is good for ~628 Diff. Hoping its just a fluke or just really great luck. Any news for large deployments or shipments in the past week?

[baritus]

http://bitcoindifficulty.com/

Current difficulty: 390,928,788
Next difficulty (estimate): 462,272,138 (+18%)

I would invest in ASIC if the difficulty stabilized like this. Hope its not another 40%..

That site is not very accurate.

Better estimate: http://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

[Corenin]

http://bitcoindifficulty.com/

Current difficulty: 390,928,788
Next difficulty (estimate): 462,272,138 (+18%)

I would invest in ASIC if the difficulty stabilized like this. Hope its not another 40%..

That site is not very accurate.

Better estimate: http://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Oh no, another 40% hike, asic buyer ment to doom..

[rampalija]

The difficulty is going out of control..

What did you expect from an arms race?

cuz you dont know how many ppl are expectinf their miners to come and start mining, i assume a lot of ppl

[rampalija]

speculation speculations speculation. ....    just wait and see and mine as many BTC as you can until new diff yoump

[Hili]

Next difficulty 485000 

Nope, more like 535M. Check out http://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty as suggested by baritus. That site has been pretty accurate in previous difficulty predictions.