Don't expect another 8% Diff increase -- expect more

[BTC_Junkie]

Any thoughts on the recent spike being caused by NMC mining drying up, and a lot of people moving over from there?

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[iopq]

Any thoughts on the recent spike being caused by NMC mining drying up, and a lot of people moving over from there?

the smaller difficulty increase (previous 8% diff increase) was caused by some people switching over to NMC mining

[skyhigh]

Network is so big that it started its usual natural growth, which is from 6% to 12% per re-target. Unless there is some major change in the usage for bitcoins, most re-targets will fall within this 6 to 12%, with some extra variance from time to time. Bitcoin news from the May to July boom has spread around internet on various forums and news sites and we get new miners joining every day. This aren't dedicated miners buying 50Gh, but mostly random people who own a decent radeon card.

I'm sure there is 10+ million mid to high end radeons on the internet and even bigger number of people who will upgrade to 6x series in the next year. Bitcoin will keep penetrating wider audience and network will continue to grow at a high rate for some time. Network right now is at 13.5 Th and growing, expected to hit 20 Th by October. Difficulty will be around 3 million at that time. Bitcoin price, unless something major happens, will be most likely around $10 and EVERYONE will still keep mining as usual. It will still only cost less than $5 to make the coin worth $10. Not the gold rush times but still very nice way to subsidize your new radeon card.

[Cluster2k]

I'm sure there is 10+ million mid to high end radeons on the internet and even bigger number of people who will upgrade to 6x series in the next year. Bitcoin will keep penetrating wider audience and network will continue to grow at a high rate for some time. Network right now is at 13.5 Th and growing, expected to hit 20 Th by October. Difficulty will be around 3 million at that time. Bitcoin price, unless something major happens, will be most likely around $10 and EVERYONE will still keep mining as usual. It will still only cost less than $5 to make the coin worth $10. Not the gold rush times but still very nice way to subsidize your new radeon card.

Mm, not "everyone" will keep on mining.  I cut back, and just have a very energy efficient PC running a 6950.  $350 of hardware creating about a dollar per day after electricity and taxes.  Why so little?  It's partly due to the weak US dollar (Australian 'monopoly money' buys $1.09 US dollars) and high electricity costs.

If difficulty reaches 2.5M, I and many other people will quit if bitcoin's price remains at $12 to $13.  Some people may get excited about spending a dollar per megahash and making under a dollar per day on it.  I don't.  Investing money in rigs to maybe recover mining and hardware costs after a year doesn't sound like a great investment, especially as bitcoin could fall to zero at any time.

[iopq]

I'm sure there is 10+ million mid to high end radeons on the internet and even bigger number of people who will upgrade to 6x series in the next year. Bitcoin will keep penetrating wider audience and network will continue to grow at a high rate for some time. Network right now is at 13.5 Th and growing, expected to hit 20 Th by October. Difficulty will be around 3 million at that time. Bitcoin price, unless something major happens, will be most likely around $10 and EVERYONE will still keep mining as usual. It will still only cost less than $5 to make the coin worth $10. Not the gold rush times but still very nice way to subsidize your new radeon card.

Mm, not "everyone" will keep on mining.  I cut back, and just have a very energy efficient PC running a 6950.  $350 of hardware creating about a dollar per day after electricity and taxes.  Why so little?  It's partly due to the weak US dollar (Australian 'monopoly money' buys $1.09 US dollars) and high electricity costs.

If difficulty reaches 2.5M, I and many other people will quit if bitcoin's price remains at $12 to $13.  Some people may get excited about spending a dollar per megahash and making under a dollar per day on it.  I don't.  Investing money in rigs to maybe recover mining and hardware costs after a year doesn't sound like a great investment, especially as bitcoin could fall to zero at any time.

weak us dollar would mean there are more BTC per dollar

[symbian]

Here some difficulty rising prediction calculations: http://chasinggoogle.blogspot.com/2011/08/bitcoin-mining-calculate-difficulty.html

[AngelusWebDesign]

So it turned out to be an 11.8% increase, and to add insult to injury the BTC drops from 13.50 to 12.70.

I agree that 9 - 15% increases will be the norm going forward.

[kokojie]

difficulty will keep going up, until it reach an equilibrium with average electricity cost. Those who already have miners have no reason to stop mining, until it reaches equilibrium with electricity cost. Plus there will always be new miners coming into the game or people that just likes to mine, at a loss.

[btcbaby]

Liferealized:  I agree with you.  Especially as the supply of 5xxx series cards runs out.  The 6xxx series is not as cost effective.

At some point the difficulty has to level out.  But, is that point 2,000,000 or 10,000,000  ?

First and foremost, I cannot predict the future.

But from the looks of things, I would guess that we will not have too many more 10% increases and that this "new paradigm" of ever growing difficultly will not be sustainable. I would suspect that we might even have a difficulty decrease in the near future (2 - 3 months).

The costs of getting into the 3m difficulty range are in the 10s of millions of dollars and do not take into account the net effect of driving out smaller miners (less than 5Gh).

This assumes no new discoveries / technologies that have any great impact on mining.

Again, I cannot predict the future and have been known to be wrong before.

I like your thinking.  At some point lower end miners with compare their electric bill with what they are bringing in.  Hopefully everyone breaks even on hardware, but long term electricity cost will force many to drop out if the price of Bitcoin doesn't go UP UP UP.

[release]

difficulty will keep going up, until it reach an equilibrium with average electricity cost. Those who already have miners have no reason to stop mining, until it reaches equilibrium with electricity cost. Plus there will always be new miners coming into the game or people that just likes to mine, at a loss.

except for people who get free electricity, who can mine regardless, or people who pay a flat monthly rate.

[mvoss]

With the cost of BTC slowly dropping, I think more people that mine at home & pay their own electricity are gonna start dropping out.  This will cause the diffifculty to go DOWN, like we saw a few months ago. Right now it's not the best time to build more mining rigs, but I built 1 simply because my main PC just crapped out and I need a new computer anyway.  Since I am doing that, I decided to spend the extra couple of $$$'s to make it a strong BTC mining rig

[bcpokey]

grod kinda beat me to it. I'd be happy to lay out 8.5% for both but now I look like I'm copying him

Network growth rate has almost reached a 14day average of 1%/day due to many 3day average of sub1% (and some sub 0%). If no crazy ass price swings happen I see no reason for this trend not to continue. Like grod though, I'm not saying nothing can change, if some big event occurs all that crap goes out the window, which I readily stipulate to.

But for fun we can do 1990576 for block 141120. Your prediction I believe is 2130690 for the median.

Well block 141120 is almost upon us, so the numbers look pretty much in. We were both wrong, but it looks like our side was closer again

~1.81mil is what we'll be looking at.

~9% off for us, and ~16% for you, woo!

Obviously somewhat nullified because there was indeed a huge price swing, down to $6/coin at one point, but still fun to look back on.

I suspect with the re-rising of price the difficulty will not drop again, but will continue to rise and a sluggish pace.