And all the miners cried out in terror...

[jermwerty]

[1714932251]

1714932251

[1714932251]

1714932251

[madsusies]

And  i plan use my knc miner beyond 1000mil difficulty  for everyone using 60ghas less wishing happy New year 2014 , 1000's of usb erupter and jalapenos die 

[frankenmint]

And  i plan use my knc miner beyond 1000mil difficulty  for everyone using 60ghas less wishing happy New year 2014 , 1000's of usb erupter and jalapenos die 

try hundreds of thousands lol [goes back to cry in his mine-cave]

[klondike_bar]

pretty close to the moment where avalon, asicminer, and BFL units will use as much electricity to run as they return in bitcoins.

[GodfatherBond]

No reason cry yet, maybe end of 2014... however I think it´s not going to be so bad even then.

[Sitarow]

No reason cry yet, maybe end of 2014... however I think it´s not going to be so bad even then.

Even with projections predicting an increase using the yearly average is not a good metric when planning for future network difficulty increase.

However I have updated the ongoing document that breaks down each hardware vendors estimated return on a future difficulty increase of 30% every difficulty retarget.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmeuPljmUNHCdEpqX2RmMDFwemJyLURVUWFtZ3J3aGc&usp=sharing

Just realize that these estimates at best are good for the next 3 or 4 difficulty targets.

Make note that new hardware hitting the network will keep this network retarget rate high for the foreseeable future.

[frankenmint]

No reason cry yet, maybe end of 2014... however I think it´s not going to be so bad even then.

Your're right I need to get my head out of the mining.thegenesisblock gutter

[mgio]

pretty close to the moment where avalon, asicminer, and BFL units will use as much electricity to run as they return in bitcoins.

My electricy is $0.16198/kwh.

Here are the difficulties where the various miners (for me) will make only as much as the electricity costs to run to them:

BFL FPGA                             156,496,295
82GH/s Avalon                  1,770,608,552
BFL 7GH/s Jalapeno           3,067,327,400
BFL 60GH/s Singe             3,572,198,060


The FPGAs have been obsolete for 2 weeks now. The BFLs still have quite some time before they are obsolete. Avalon has less time but still a bit.

The newer machines will be obsolete in the 15-25 billion range depending (KNC is around 18 billion, HashFast is around 24). I don't know the exact numbers as I don't have those machines yet.

[Wesly]

That's old news already!  Check out today's chart...  It is topping 3PH and KNC has not finished shipping yet!  Looks like they are shipping at least 1000 more boxes = another 300-400TH and if Hashfast start shipping their 600 Batch 1 BabyJet end of this month, watch out for 4PH!

[Cluster2k]

Those BFL Monarch orders shipping in February 2014 at the earliest are beginning to look better and better...

[hulk]

That's old news already!  Check out today's chart...  It is topping 3PH and KNC has not finished shipping yet!  Looks like they are shipping at least 1000 more boxes = another 300-400TH and if Hashfast start shipping their 600 Batch 1 BabyJet end of this month, watch out for 4PH!

Doom, hardly can even break-even with existing mining equipment..

[Cluster2k]

Difficulty won't keep increasing 30% every 10 days.  Think about it.  Roughly doubling difficulty every 22 days or so.  In a year's time it would take the entire wafer production output of a company like AMD to maintain that sort of increase.  Eventually miners will realise too much gear has been ordered at an inflated price versus what they can hope to gain.  Orders will fall off a cliff while those waiting 6 months for their ASIC (hello BFL) will bitch relentlessly on these forums as they see ROI being impossible to achieve.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Difficulty won't keep increasing 30% every 10 days.  Think about it.  Roughly doubling difficulty every 22 days or so.  In a year's time it would take the entire wafer production output of a company like AMD to maintain that sort of increase.  Eventually miners will realise too much gear has been ordered at an inflated price versus what they can hope to gain.  Orders will fall off a cliff while those waiting 6 months for their ASIC (hello BFL) will bitch relentlessly on these forums as they see ROI being impossible to achieve.

No not forever but it can for some time.  The curve is unlikely to bend before 10 PH/s or so and that is optimistic.   Double that if you are a pessimistic.  The 10 to 20 PH/s range will be interesting because it starts to obsolete (value of electricity > value of BTC) the older gear (Avalon, ASICMiner, BFL).   The newer tech is operational but even if prices get cut in half new sales aren't going to look very attractive.  A simple thought exercise imagine you are looking to buy ASIC gear today, multiply all vendors prices by 10x.   That is how current prices are going to look with 10x the difficulty. 

[hulk]

Difficulty won't keep increasing 30% every 10 days.  Think about it.  Roughly doubling difficulty every 22 days or so.  In a year's time it would take the entire wafer production output of a company like AMD to maintain that sort of increase.  Eventually miners will realise too much gear has been ordered at an inflated price versus what they can hope to gain.  Orders will fall off a cliff while those waiting 6 months for their ASIC (hello BFL) will bitch relentlessly on these forums as they see ROI being impossible to achieve.

But it has been increasing 30% every 10 days for quite some time. I though it has slowed down but never...

[Cluster2k]

Difficulty won't keep increasing 30% every 10 days.  Think about it.  Roughly doubling difficulty every 22 days or so.  In a year's time it would take the entire wafer production output of a company like AMD to maintain that sort of increase.  Eventually miners will realise too much gear has been ordered at an inflated price versus what they can hope to gain.  Orders will fall off a cliff while those waiting 6 months for their ASIC (hello BFL) will bitch relentlessly on these forums as they see ROI being impossible to achieve.

But it has been increasing 30% every 10 days for quite some time. I though it has slowed down but never...

It will continue for some time to come.  Even BFL is still shipping units customers bought and paid for over six months ago.  I wonder if all ASIC companies are prepared for the order cliff, where customers suddenly stop placing new orders because they see the current ASIC units shipping with ROI in months or years, with a backlog of even more ASICs to come.  Even if no new orders were placed from today we would see difficulty more than double simply because there are so many orders in the pipeline and companies still doing R&D on building new designs.

[Puppet]

  Even if no new orders were placed from today we would see difficulty more than double

More than double? Thats gotta be the understatement of the year. Have a look here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=283820.0

Thats  ~20PH thats going to hit the network no matter what. And I suspect the actual number will be considerably higher, for instance I strongly suspect a boatload of BFL customers swapped their undelivered SC preorders to Monarchs. 

[Nemo1024]

And   i plan use my knc miner beyond 1000mil difficulty   for everyone using 60ghas less wishing happy New year 2014 , 1000's of usb erupter and jalapenos die  

try hundreds of thousands lol [goes back to cry in his mine-cave]

Die? Only because of a power surge. At my electricity cost ($0.0651) those 141 that I have hashing will be doing so with positive balance up to about 5.3 billion at today's BTC price. After that... they'll continue to hash for the greater good. Those 423W are barely noticeable on my electric bill next to a few 1000W heat panels.

[DeathAndTaxes]

  Even if no new orders were placed from today we would see difficulty more than double

More than double? Thats gotta be the understatement of the year. Have a look here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=283820.0

Thats  ~20PH thats going to hit the network no matter what. And I suspect the actual number will be considerably higher, for instance I strongly suspect a boatload of BFL customers swapped their undelivered SC preorders to Monarchs. 

Agreed.  I think <10 PH/s one just needs to consider the most likely scenario is the same rapid growth we have been seeing.   If there is a "slow" week it is likely just timing (i.e if HF is delayed a week but then dumps 500 PH/s the next week then difficulty changes will be "lumpy").   10 PH/s is the absolute earliest we will see the curve bend and 20 PH/s is more likely.  If one is pessimistic then change that to 20 PH/s and 30 PH/s.

However at some point it will get "interesting".  The economics at 30 PH/s are a lot different then 3 PH/s.   We are talking 5 billion difficulty and anything less than a bitfury with decent (<$0.10 per kWh) is likely no longer economical. 

[DPoS]

we all might end up solo mining too and just figure we are playing the block lottery instead of the trickle we'd all get from pools a year from now

[Nemo1024]

Which will be the best outcome re network security and decentralisation.