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

[kendog77]

He-he pessimistic, are we?  And rightly so. There are still a few more KnC units to come on-line, not to speak of all the other stuff...

Not so much other stuff shipping that Im aware off. Next adjustment will be in ~10 days, HF wont have shipped a lot, if anything by then, CT most likely nothing either, or at least not enough and not early enough to make much difference;  BFL has caught up with their backorders (and who in their right mind is ordering 65nm gear at those prices today), asicminer is sold out I believe, which leaves only a few small players like Bitmain and maybe some Bitfury gear?

Next 10 days will be the calm before the storm.

I think the rest of December will actually be quite favorable for miners as far as difficulty increases are concerned. The hashrate still needs to catch up to the November Knc batch, so that will impact the next difficulty increase.

After that it doesn't seem like there are any large miner deliveries due in December and the pre-order delivery delays are piling up.

[Clayce]

Ok, sorry if this has been asked a ton before...but what is a ballpark Difficulty estimate for May???

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

1,098,765,432

[neordicICE]

Seems only 1.1 - 1.15
Not much time for new stuff to make difference

[zuerdemon]

Ok, sorry if this has been asked a ton before...but what is a ballpark Difficulty estimate for May???

Between 10-15 billion if the difficulty continue to increase at this pace.

[faizaa123]

my saturn and redhash, 2 months ago, were chugging along at such an awesome pace... now i'm scared my babies are becoming worthless.  kind of hope the difficulty stabilizes a bit soon.

[Clayce]

Ok, sorry if this has been asked a ton before...but what is a ballpark Difficulty estimate for May???

Between 10-15 billion if the difficulty continue to increase at this pace.

Wow, so at 15b, a Neptune will barley be making 3BTC per/mo...

Hopefully that's worst case...

[Puppet]

Wow, so at 15b, a Neptune will barley be making 3BTC per/mo...

Hopefully that's worst case...

I would actually consider Neptune shipping in May a best case scenario. Given all the uncertainties regarding 20nm production, I wouldnt be surprised if it shipped closer to July.

[ceyre]

Neptunes better ship in May.  I feel like I just got my Jupiter and within a few months they'll be "meh".

:S

[Soros Shorts]

Ok, sorry if this has been asked a ton before...but what is a ballpark Difficulty estimate for May???

Between 10-15 billion if the difficulty continue to increase at this pace.

At 1 Watt per GH/s that is about 60-100 Megawatts of electricity powering mining hardware. The output of a small power plant.

[DrG]

Wow, so at 15b, a Neptune will barley be making 3BTC per/mo...

Hopefully that's worst case...

I would actually consider Neptune shipping in May a best case scenario. Given all the uncertainties regarding 20nm production, I wouldnt be surprised if it shipped closer to July.

Didn't you hear, BFL will be blowing out Monarchs left and right come March



















2015

[baritus]

1.38B next guess

[ceyre]

1.38B next guess

Holy hell, 1.38B...
This is not what I was expecting at all.  My own personal hashrate estimation charts are off big time.  Time to re-think my plans...

[Dexter770221]

1.38B next guess

1.48B
Who will give more

[Its About Sharing]

I don't get something though, where are the recent shipments coming from?
Strange...

[asso]

I don't get something though, where are the recent shipments coming from?
Strange...

There are shipments from China

[darcimer]

Is my math right? I am not accepting the difficulty growth rate of 30% steps.
Difficulty doesn't grow like bacteria, right? I don't think Moore's law is useful for the next 3 months.
Genesis block says Jan difficulty will go from from 1.5b to 3b (default values).  Understandable.  But does Feb go from 3b to 6b? And March from 6b to 12b? 
I know there's a lot of hash hitting the market Q1(maybe?), my question is, reversing the logic and if the math stays consistent, is a rise of difficulty from 1.5b to 12b in 3 months realistic?  That's the rough equivalent of ending march with a network hash rate 10x faster than our current rate(10Ph/s to almost 100Ph/s).  Is it technologically possible to have the network hashrate increase by 8 Petahash every 11 days for the next 3 months?  Without considering under-discussed factors like equipment breakage/obsolescence, vaporware, elec$ and  btc$, and even if all equip shipped Jan 1, that's the equivalent of over 2500 KNC Neptunes every 2 weeks. Using round figures, that's almost 70,000 1Th/s miners shipped in 3 months (almost 800 a day!).  I don't see that happening. KNC only made 1200 first round neptunes ( i know they are 3+Th/s), but I doubt the rest of the asic market is making up the additional hash, so doesn't the difficulty curve has to taper? Or is my logic flawed?

[Puppet]

Is my math right? I am not accepting the difficulty growth rate of 30% steps.
Difficulty doesn't grow like bacteria, right? I don't think Moore's law is useful for the next 3 months.
Genesis block says Jan difficulty will go from from 1.5b to 3b (default values).  Understandable.  But does Feb go from 3b to 6b? And March from 6b to 12b?  
I know there's a lot of hash hitting the market Q1(maybe?), my question is, reversing the logic and if the math stays consistent, is a rise of difficulty from 1.5b to 12b in 3 months realistic?  That's the rough equivalent of ending march with a network hash rate 10x faster than our current rate(10Ph/s to almost 100Ph/s).  Is it technologically possible to have the network hashrate increase by 8 Petahash every 11 days for the next 3 months?  Without considering under-discussed factors like equipment breakage/obsolescence, vaporware, elec$ and  btc$, and even if all equip shipped Jan 1, that's the equivalent of over 2500 KNC Neptunes every 2 weeks. Using round figures, that's almost 70,000 1Th/s miners shipped in 3 months (almost 800 a day!).  I don't see that happening. KNC only made 1200 first round neptunes ( i know they are 3+Th/s), but I doubt the rest of the asic market is making up the additional hash, so doesn't the difficulty curve has to taper? Or is my logic flawed?

You are right its not like bacteria and it wont continue doubling forever. But do consider this; during the previous difficulty interval, over 3PH was added in 10 days, during a time "no one" was shipping or deploying high performance miners. Well, clearly, someone must have, but it wasnt KnC, nor HF, CT, Bitmine, AM, BA or BFL. Unless it was some dark horse in this race, that was the result of smaller vendors like Bitmain or some bitfury resellers. If they can deliver 300TH per day, just how much do you think all the companies i just mentioned combined can ship/deploy once they are going in full production ?

FWIW, Josh from BFL is on record saying his company will easily be able to assemble and ship over 1000 Monarchs per day. Thats over 10PH per month. And thats only a single company. Next year we will have over 10 companies shipping latest generation miners. At least one of which is using a seriously large factory to assemble their units:
https://hashfast.com/pictures-of-the-ciara-assembly-floor/

576500 Square feet. Makes BFL look like a garage shop really.

[niothor]

Is my math right? I am not accepting the difficulty growth rate of 30% steps.
Difficulty doesn't grow like bacteria, right? I don't think Moore's law is useful for the next 3 months.
Genesis block says Jan difficulty will go from from 1.5b to 3b (default values).  Understandable.  But does Feb go from 3b to 6b? And March from 6b to 12b?  
I know there's a lot of hash hitting the market Q1(maybe?), my question is, reversing the logic and if the math stays consistent, is a rise of difficulty from 1.5b to 12b in 3 months realistic?  That's the rough equivalent of ending march with a network hash rate 10x faster than our current rate(10Ph/s to almost 100Ph/s).  Is it technologically possible to have the network hashrate increase by 8 Petahash every 11 days for the next 3 months?  Without considering under-discussed factors like equipment breakage/obsolescence, vaporware, elec$ and  btc$, and even if all equip shipped Jan 1, that's the equivalent of over 2500 KNC Neptunes every 2 weeks. Using round figures, that's almost 70,000 1Th/s miners shipped in 3 months (almost 800 a day!).  I don't see that happening. KNC only made 1200 first round neptunes ( i know they are 3+Th/s), but I doubt the rest of the asic market is making up the additional hash, so doesn't the difficulty curve has to taper? Or is my logic flawed?

You are right its not like bacteria and it wont continue doubling forever. But do consider this; during the previous difficulty interval, over 3PH was added in 10 days, during a time "no one" was shipping or deploying high performance miners. Well, clearly, someone must have, but it wasnt KnC, nor HF, CT, Bitmine, AM, BA or BFL. Unless it was some dark horse in this race, that was the result of smaller vendors like Bitmain or some bitfury resellers. If they can deliver 300TH per day, just how much do you think all the companies i just mentioned combined can ship/deploy once they are going in full production ?

FWIW, Josh from BFL is on record saying his company will easily be able to assemble and ship over 1000 Monarchs per day. Thats over 10PH per month. And thats only a single company. Next year we will have over 10 companies shipping latest generation miners. At least one of which is using a seriously large factory to assemble their units:
https://hashfast.com/pictures-of-the-ciara-assembly-floor/

576500 Square feet. Makes BFL look like a garage shop really.

That's Ciara assembly , and it won't be working 24/7 for hashfast.
Actually , they will assemble their products in less than 24h on one line.

But at one point , you can't get more double the Hashpower each month.
It's pretty easy right now , ship 3000 Neptunes or equivalent , next month add 6000 , but in 12 month we will have to add 6 millions of those to keep up.

[Puppet]

That's Ciara assembly , and it won't be working 24/7 for hashfast.
Actually , they will assemble their products in less than 24h on one line.

Which is the point. I just dont see a significant bottleneck anywhere.  Assembly cant be a (long term) bottleneck, if you consider the industry assembles roughly 1 million PC's per day and since this number is taking a nose dive, all these assembly houses are desperate for new business.

Chip production is not a bottleneck either. One single 28nm wafer holds enough chip candidates for somewhere around 50 - 100 TH. TSMC alone processes tens of thousands of such wafers per day, and they too are desperate for new production volume as they are operating well under 70% of their capacity.

The only thing really holding production back is probably a combination of strategic planning (its better to sell miners further in the future as their ROI is less predictable then) and risk adverseness of asic vendors, who are not ordering more than they can afford to lose, in case their chip doesnt work, bitcoin takes a nosedive, some competitor produces so much it destroys the value of their product,  or whatever.  

But at one point , you can't get more double the Hashpower each month.
It's pretty easy right now , ship 3000 Neptunes or equivalent , next month add 6000 , but in 12 month we will have to add 6 millions of those to keep up.

In 12 months growth will have tapered off. It wont even take that long. Not because I think production would be a problem, but simply because mining would no longer be economically feasible unless bitcon price goes x10 or more again. At this point however, I dont think anyone really loses sleep whether difficulty will be 500B or 5T next Christmas.  What really matters is the next 3 or 4 months.