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

[ScaryHash]

Cool !

I was a little surprised by the new difficulty too. I thought it would be higher.

[palawan]

Bitmaintech (Antminer hardware/manufacturer) has a post that got me thinking (dangerous).  It broke down the risk/reward of btc mining from the "big" miners' point of view.  R&D, labor hours, hardware investments, power costs, infrastructure costs, and after all of that, what's left?  Bitmaintech estimates percentages in the teens.  At what risk?  If btc price goes down, no profits, but losses.

I know everyone says don't buy any miner now as it will never make the return on investment, but the big players are also in the same predicament as the hobby miners.  Sure, the manufacturers are going to keep producing faster and faster miners, but the jig is up.  Hardware vendors now have to deliver or no one's buying their BS anymore.  Lower prices for better hardware same thing that happened with PC's/laptops.  And how many new miners will be coming in when they are intimidated by the message "the difficulty is so high" and diminishing returns...

So maybe the difficulty will stop shooting up...  Unless, of course, the btc price shoots up again.

I'm mining as a hobby.  Learning to tinker with specialized hardware and software.  It's a lot of fun for a tech-nerd like me.  Maybe I get my roi, also.

[Sonny]

Bitcoin Difficulty: 2,193,847,870
Estimated Next Difficulty: 2,609,566,119 (+18.95%)
Adjust time: After 1535 Blocks, About 9.8 days

http://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Let's see how accurate this estimation will be. 

[Shogen]

Bitcoin Difficulty: 2,193,847,870
Estimated Next Difficulty: 2,609,566,119 (+18.95%)
Adjust time: After 1535 Blocks, About 9.8 days

http://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Let's see how accurate this estimation will be. 

Keep growing exponetially

[Yuki1988]

Bitcoin Difficulty: 2,193,847,870
Estimated Next Difficulty: 2,597,587,410 (+18.40%)
Adjust time: After 1364 Blocks, About 8.6 days

The estimated next difficulity is becoming lower and lower. 

[BuildTheFuture]

Shhhh, quiet, you're going to jinx it. 

[Trongersoll]

Just a reminder, all the sites that estimate the next difficulty are really inaccurate for days after a difficulty increase. about 4 days (or less) before the next increase they are pretty good.

[baritus]

I'm guessing 3B diff for next.

[frank754]

3,191,424,356 (+21.74%)
Adjust time:    After 1906 Blocks, About 12.3 days

This is what bitcoinwisdom is saying right now... no more ROI on many of the miners out there except the biggest.

[Zangy]

3,191,424,356 (+21.74%)
Adjust time:    After 1906 Blocks, About 12.3 days

This is what bitcoinwisdom is saying right now... no more ROI on many of the miners out there except the biggest.

Time to sell all the mining hardware to the ignorant many (like me) for vastly over priced £££ on ebay. Shame, the human race is self destructive in its greed

[Its About Sharing]

3,191,424,356 (+21.74%)
Adjust time:    After 1906 Blocks, About 12.3 days

This is what bitcoinwisdom is saying right now... no more ROI on many of the miners out there except the biggest.

Time to sell all the mining hardware to the ignorant many (like me) for vastly over priced £££ on ebay. Shame, the human race is self destructive in its greed

Not sure this is greed. If one can make more by merely buying btc's than how can you call someone taking a huge chance on a miner Greedy? If anything it is a huge gamble but rather appears to be both a hobby and reinvestment, not to mention a way to get btc's in some tough countries.

[Sonny]

3,191,424,356 (+21.74%)
Adjust time:    After 1906 Blocks, About 12.3 days

This is what bitcoinwisdom is saying right now... no more ROI on many of the miners out there except the biggest.

Time to sell all the mining hardware to the ignorant many (like me) for vastly over priced £££ on ebay.

I am just sad to see there are always newbies buying overpriced hardware with no idea they can never get their investment back...not enough close....

[Trongersoll]

I am just sad to see there are always newbies buying overpriced hardware with no idea they can never get their investment back...not enough close....

Funny, ever since I started buying mining hardware in May, I have seen people make this statement. And yet, I've made US$5000 over my US$15,000 investment. I'm glad that people are saddened that people buy hardware, otherwise there would be that many more people pushing the difficulty up.

[af_newbie]

How accurate would you say that is?

Past predictions:
Guess   Actual
145M - 148M
170M - 189M
215M - 267.7M
390M - 390.9M
510M - 510.9M
670M - 609.4M
720M - 707.4M
799M - 902.3M
1.1B - 1.18B
1.38B - 1.41B
1.65B - 1.789B
2B - 2.19B
2.6B - 2.61B
3B - N/A

Not bad.  It will probably be +520M (20%) to 780M (30%) so 3.2B to 3.4B.

It is amazing nevertheless.  Soon all home heating will be done with bitcoin mining rigs :-)

[smoothie]

So in 5 months...

3,000,000,000 / 145,000,000 = 20.68965 <---- rough calc.

Difficulty went up more than 20 times.

 

[Chemistry1988]

It turns out to be 3,129,573,175 (19.39% increase)

[skuser]

Nice. I expect next difficulty to cross 4B

[AndrewGucci]

I wonder when the price will follow ? And what is the role of mtgox "problems" in that ?

[navigator]

Price won't follow because btc mining is currently too profitable. Mining profitability always trends towards barely profitable. Right now an antminer cost me .65 cents/day in electric and makes a lil over $20/day. Even after I expect ROI, it will still probably make ~$10/day and cost the same.

Most likely we will eventually reach a point that is similar to the profitability that gpu rigs were getting right before asic's arrived. I've noticed a low term trend of everyone expecting a ROI on whatever hardware within 3-6 months. If it falls below 1 month to ROI, you see everyone flourish to buy hardware, over 5 months or so and people stop buying.

And who is to say you should make money btc mining anyway? Satoshi never said he created bitcoin so home users can get rich mining. Why do so many users expect profit? They talk as if bitcoin owes them, when it's them that owes bitcoin.

I actually look forward to the day when the home user no longer makes money mining bitcoin because that's not why it was made.

[baritus]

3.75B next?