Why has difficulty increased so much in the last 4 months ?

[Dragonizer]

Hi Guy's

Why has difficulty increased in the last 4 months (see link below).

Is JUST because the increase in mining power ?

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-difficulty.html

It will be pointless mining in 2020 at the next halving unless more efficient chips/miners are produced...

Any thoughts ?

Thanks

[amster6699]

the last coins will belong to NSA bicouse they have the biggest Power computer in all world

[uncleduckerr]

Yes the mining hash rate is what increases the difficulty. Don't know why mining will be pointless in 2020 though, because there will still be block rewards as well as transaction fees.

[fattyforhire]

Hi Guy's

Why has difficulty increased in the last 4 months (see link below).

Is JUST because the increase in mining power ?

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-difficulty.html

It will be pointless mining in 2020 at the next halving unless more efficient chips/miners are produced...

Any thoughts ?

Thanks

The price of bitcoin rises in price and complexity of production increases. I think that is related. No wonder there was a calculation that bitcoins will be extracted not earlier than 2021.

[European Central Bank]

Of course it's just mining power increasing. It literally cannot be anything else.

Check the amount of money circulating these days. It's estimated bitmain made several billion dollars last year. Now Samsung are making mining chips plus GMO in Japan might be coming up with more efficient chips.

But even if mining doesn't advance and no more machines are added you know difficultly goes down, right? Mining will always, always be profitable for someone somewhere.

[coinlawyer]

Of course it's just mining power increasing. It literally cannot be anything else.

Check the amount of money circulating these days. It's estimated bitmain made several billion dollars last year. Now Samsung are making mining chips plus GMO in Japan might be coming up with more efficient chips.

But even if mining doesn't advance and no more machines are added you know difficultly goes down, right? Mining will always, always be profitable for someone somewhere.

And after this what are You thoughts about the future mechanism of confirmftion Bitcoin transactions?
Do You think it will be changed from PoW to PoS in future?

[bob3772]

Hi Guy's

Why has difficulty increased in the last 4 months (see link below).

Is JUST because the increase in mining power ?

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-difficulty.html

It will be pointless mining in 2020 at the next halving unless more efficient chips/miners are produced...

Any thoughts ?

Thanks

Difficulty increases when the hashrate is getting too high and bitcoin are being mined too rapidly. The difficulty is fully adaptable so that it will always ensure mining is profitable. It may not be possible for everyone or the average person, but the difficulty will always scale accordingly so that bitcoin are released at the correct rate.

[European Central Bank]

And after this what are You thoughts about the future mechanism of confirmftion Bitcoin transactions?
Do You think it will be changed from PoW to PoS in future?

Bitcoin will never manage a change of that magnitude. The only time it might is when there's an irrefutable existential threat like the cracking of its encryption or bitmain being taken over by the Chinese government.

Look how hard it's been to get a tiny capacity increase. I also don't think ethereum''s attempt to go pos will ever happen and if it does it'll be seriously messy. That's far more centralised than bitcoin with one guy who everyone will listen to.

There'll be mining for another 120 years. Who knows what the mining will look like but proof of work is staying unless something undeniably superior in every way arrives. Even then it may not be taken up.

[btcjoin14]

Yes the mining hash rate is what increases the difficulty. Don't know why mining will be pointless in 2020 though, because there will still be block rewards as well as transaction fees.

I think that the competition will be with the miners when that happens. Bitcoins difficulty is very high so it would appear to make sense.

[Meysa_richa]

Do not get too confused about the not rising bitcoin price during these 4 months, because with the current price actually bitcoin price is quite high, but I am sure soon the price of bitcoin will increase as soon as possible.

[jsmithuk]

Ever increasing ASIC power leading to a continuing arms race. The only way difficulty will decrease is if BTC crashes such that mining is so unprofitable the miners go offline (only to come back online in the future if price increases to profitable mining levels), or alternative coins that are mineable get general acceptance. Yes, that will bloat the crypto market cap and there are political battles vs. BCC, etc., but that's the only way to decrease difficulty is to introduce more mining opportunities.

TLDR: Everybody makes more $ as market cap continues to increase or it comes crashing down. Oh, and beware of Tether.

[Cryptohad]

not just because of it, but other reasons due to spreading and low volume. I think during correction, bitcoin will have difficulty increasing.

there's nothing we can do unless we spread bitcoin to the public, and make them to invest in bitcoin.

[Sachinist]

What exactly do you mean by efficient miners? I'm strongly opposed to ASIC miners to begin with. Difficulty is up because the hashrate has more than doubled in the past 4 months.

[JaredStein]

Whenever the price increases rapidly, miners will follow. Huge investors and companies will see an opportunity and will buy miners to mine themselves, many of them not realizing that many others are doing the same and difficulty will increase faster than expected.

[jseverson]

the last coins will belong to NSA bicouse they have the biggest Power computer in all world

No commercially available computer can hold a candle to ASICs when it comes to Bitcoin mining. This leads me to believe that there's no way the NSA can produce nearly enough hashpower to threaten the major miners, unless they, for some reason, invested an ungodly amount of resources to develop a supercharged ASIC and set up a farm themselves. The NSA, in all likelihood, doesn't have anything to do with Bitcoin in a large capacity.

[pooya87]

Whenever the price increases rapidly, miners will follow. Huge investors and companies will see an opportunity and will buy miners to mine themselves, many of them not realizing that many others are doing the same and difficulty will increase faster than expected.

it is not exactly unexpected. the difficulty rises to a point where it becomes the same level of profitable as before the price rise. it is always going to be like this. as price goes up it becomes more profitable so more miners come in and increase the difficulty so the profit drops to "normal" levels.
the opposite is also true. if price drops, profit will go down. so miners will leave and difficulty will drop until profit comes back up to "normal" levels.