Best way to predict difficulty?

[Morguk]

I'm looking to predict difficulty for March next year. What's the best way to do it?

Also, what's your personal opinion on the worst and best difficulty levels it could be in March?

Thanks.

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[perfectsquare]

I'm looking to predict difficulty for March next year. What's the best way to do it?


Thanks.

Urinate into the wind.

[Korbman]

This will get you started: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=283820.0

[Morguk]

What about 10 billion?

[Korbman]

Also, what's your personal opinion on the worst and best difficulty levels it could be in March?

Given the types of equipment that are scheduled to ship soon, I'd put the March 2014 difficulty at about 5B. But then again, that's only if just about all manufacturers ship on time and within spec (KnC, Hashfast, CoinTerra, BFL, Bitmine, and others), especially for December orders.
Call it 3-4B conservatively, 6-7B as a ceiling.

[Morguk]

Also, what's your personal opinion on the worst and best difficulty levels it could be in March?

Given the types of equipment that are scheduled to ship soon, I'd put the March 2014 difficulty at about 5B. But then again, that's only if just about all manufacturers ship on time and within spec (KnC, Hashfast, CoinTerra, BFL, Bitmine, and others), especially for December orders.
Call it 3-4B conservatively, 6-7B as a ceiling.

Appreciate that! I was putting 10B as a max ceiling, but thinking 5B is realistic. Cheers.

[joele]

I'm looking to predict difficulty for March next year. What's the best way to do it?

Also, what's your personal opinion on the worst and best difficulty levels it could be in March?

Thanks.

Try this
http://btc.re/miningcalc

[Morguk]

I'm looking to predict difficulty for March next year. What's the best way to do it?

Also, what's your personal opinion on the worst and best difficulty levels it could be in March?

Thanks.

Try this
http://btc.re/miningcalc

Great site, cheers! Is the default 30% right? I would have thought 15%. What do you think?

[merv77]

I'm looking to predict difficulty for March next year. What's the best way to do it?

Also, what's your personal opinion on the worst and best difficulty levels it could be in March?

Thanks.

Try this
http://btc.re/miningcalc

Great site, cheers! Is the default 30% right? I would have thought 15%. What do you think?

30% would be a safe estimate, what could happen as past results have shown us that when ASIC miner manufacturers start shipping hardware in the masses as did KNC last October we could even see some 40% difficulty rises.  After these massive difficulty increase's then there can/will be some tapering off down to the 20% level (maybe 15%).
I'd be more inclined in using and average rise of 25% from now, mid Dec 2013 to May 2014. 

This is my rough guesstimation.

Cheers
merv77

[Morguk]

I'm looking to predict difficulty for March next year. What's the best way to do it?

Also, what's your personal opinion on the worst and best difficulty levels it could be in March?

Thanks.

Try this
http://btc.re/miningcalc

Great site, cheers! Is the default 30% right? I would have thought 15%. What do you think?

30% would be a safe estimate, what could happen as past results have shown us that when ASIC miner manufacturers start shipping hardware in the masses as did KNC last October we could even see some 40% difficulty rises.  After these massive difficulty increase's then there can/will be some tapering off down to the 20% level (maybe 15%).
I'd be more inclined in using and average rise of 25% from now, mid Dec 2013 to May 2014. 

This is my rough guesstimation.

Cheers
merv77

Nice insight, much appreciated merv!

[pixl8tr]

30% would be a safe estimate, what could happen as past results have shown us that when ASIC miner manufacturers start shipping hardware in the masses as did KNC last October we could even see some 40% difficulty rises.  After these massive difficulty increase's then there can/will be some tapering off down to the 20% level (maybe 15%).
I'd be more inclined in using and average rise of 25% from now, mid Dec 2013 to May 2014.  

This is my rough guesstimation.

Cheers
merv77

I would think 30% is on the low side.   With the new Asic's shipping,  the network hash rate just jumped to 9.2 PH/s ,  it looks like the next rise in difficulty will be near 1 Billion, I suspect it (difficulty) will really start to take off soon. I would double that estimate for some "fudge factor".  A lot of deep pockets are joining the mining game now.  Will be a lot of chasing the tail of the dragon in order to ROI in the coming year.

Historical Difficulty Increase as of 12-14-2013
30 Day   78 %
60 Day   380 %
90 Day   707 %

Happy Mining!

[Coinkle]

First off, Difficulty calculations and predictions are all just estimates based on the past.

Below is a great resource to acquire past info:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiFMBvXvL2dtdEZkR2J4eU5rS3B4ei1iUmJxSWNlQ0E#gid=0

You can use the spreadsheet values, copy them & make your own based on the values in the above spreadsheet and then use them here:

https://coinplorer.com/Hardware/Simulate

The fact that you can choose "manual input" is a huge Plus.

I also like to use http://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty to calculate a BTC earned per day value and use that value to see how much ROI you will get per Difficulty change. It is useless to calculate ROI based on weekly or monthly BTC's generated since the Difficulty is changing every 9-12.5 days. If you use your calculated Difficulties and input all the other factors you'll have two ways to check your chances to break even. Bitcoinwisdom also has a historical display of Diff, % INC, Hashrate at the bottom of their page.

Good Luck.

[Morguk]

What I'm trying to calculate is if this is actually profitable: http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/rent-some-minions-4-months.html

At the start I was sure it was, but since using this site http://btc.re/miningcalc I'm really worried that it's not

Expert opinions please..

[hyperdallas]

I'm looking to predict difficulty for March next year. What's the best way to do it?


Thanks.

Urinate into the wind.

It worked, once the piss hit the wind it flew all over me and then dripped to the snow, and said 2.5b

[Puppet]

Also, what's your personal opinion on the worst and best difficulty levels it could be in March?

Given the types of equipment that are scheduled to ship soon, I'd put the March 2014 difficulty at about 5B. But then again, that's only if just about all manufacturers ship on time and within spec (KnC, Hashfast, CoinTerra, BFL, Bitmine, and others), especially for December orders.
Call it 3-4B conservatively, 6-7B as a ceiling.

Im not sure I can agree with that "ceiling". In the past 10 days, on average 300-350 TH was added to the network every day.
If you extrapolate that linearly, so you assume no growth in shipping rate compared to today, 75 days x 0.35 PH = 26PH or almost another 4B difficulty, resulting in ~4-5B.

That is conservative, especially if you consider in the past 10 days, I have no clue who has been shipping or deploying this hashrate, but for sure KnC werent shipping, nor was Hashfast, Cointerra, Bitmine, ActM or any of the other soon to be released miners. Its pretty safe to assume that when they all start shipping, hashrate deployment speed will go up, by a lot compared to today. Even if it just doubles compared to today, you would be well above your ceiling.

Of course its anyone's guess if/when all those companies will actually deliver and in what volume, but for a worst case scenerario, even 10B might be a low estimate for the middle of March.

[DrG]

The 350TH is probably the last of the BFL leftovers and some Ants/Cubes for people who just had to have mining eq.

But yeah 1 batch of Cointerra smashes everything shipping from June-October combined 

[Korbman]

Given the types of equipment that are scheduled to ship soon, I'd put the March 2014 difficulty at about 5B. But then again, that's only if just about all manufacturers ship on time and within spec (KnC, Hashfast, CoinTerra, BFL, Bitmine, and others), especially for December orders.
Call it 3-4B conservatively, 6-7B as a ceiling.

Im not sure I can agree with that "ceiling". In the past 10 days, on average 300-350 TH was added to the network every day.
If you extrapolate that linearly, so you assume no growth in shipping rate compared to today, 75 days x 0.35 PH = 26PH or almost another 4B difficulty, resulting in ~4-5B.

That is conservative, especially if you consider in the past 10 days, I have no clue who has been shipping or deploying this hashrate, but for sure KnC werent shipping, nor was Hashfast, Cointerra, Bitmine, ActM or any of the other soon to be released miners. Its pretty safe to assume that when they all start shipping, hashrate deployment speed will go up, by a lot compared to today. Even if it just doubles compared to today, you would be well above your ceiling.

Of course its anyone's guess if/when all those companies will actually deliver and in what volume, but for a worst case scenerario, even 10B might be a low estimate for the middle of March.

You're quite correct, and I was just basing my guesses off already known info. For all I know, there are probably a few "secret" developers out there looking to get into the mining game in a big way...and I'm sure stuff like this will continue for as long as mining remains marginally profitable for people with the time and resources to complete their projects.

I wouldn't be surprised if we saw 15B by March if random power keeps being added to the network...but I'd rather keep my hopes up

[Puppet]

The 350TH is probably the last of the BFL leftovers and some Ants/Cubes for people who just had to have mining eq.

300-350 TH per day. THats equivalent to ~10000 cubes or  7000 BFL 50GH/s miners. Those arent leftovers, I dont believe BFL ever shipped anything like that volume ever.

But yeah 1 batch of Cointerra smashes everything shipping from June-October combined  

As far as I know, CT batch 1 is "only" 2-2.5 PH.
Thats kind of the funny thing. Whoever is shipping/deploying now,  in less than 2 weeks they are deploying considerably more than KnC's batches 1 and 2, almost as much as both combined in fact, also more than Cointerra's projected batches, and far more than Hashfast.