17 blocks in the last hour?

[Cryptoman]

At this rate, the difficulty will be 100,000 in no time.  I guess it's the end of easy mining profits.

[1715587304]

1715587304

[1715587304]

1715587304

[1715587304]

1715587304

[1715587304]

1715587304

[kiba]

At this rate, the difficulty will be 100,000 in no time.  I guess it's the end of easy mining profits.

I call it: The Lucky Time.

[ribuck]

Six blocks in ten minutes, between 14:51 UTC and 15:01.

[Cryptoman]

The upside is that transactions are confirmed very quickly and the network is very resistant to attack.  Unless, of course, this is an attack.

[Mahkul]

Only shows how small we have been and how little is needed to come up with the processing power greater than the network provides...

[dust]

This is probably just variance.

[theGECK]

One hour does not a trend make. Wasn't there a time when a block wasn't solved for almost 10 hours? Maybe this is the other side of that. Just shows that even half of a day isn't enough to say that a trend has been spotted.

[Mahkul]

Code:

Difficulty	        36460
Est. difficulty	51742
Diff. changes in	691 blks

Another significant jump is awaiting us.

[Raulo]

This is probably just variance.

A bit. But last 24 hours network hashspeed is 399 GH/s anyway which corresponds to difficulty 55702.

For a broader perspective, at difficulty of 100k, the network speed will be roughly equal to Tianhe-1A, the fastest supercomputer and at difficulty 200k roughly to Folding@Home, the most popular distributed computing project. This is no longer small potatoes and we are very close. 

But I wonder if anyone is surprised. The BTC jump to parity made mining extremely profitable (and I laugh at anybody who thinks it's good for him because due to resulting increase in difficulty, the individual mining output drops significantly). A lot of new people started mining (you can count mining related posts on the forum) and lot of people increased their previous mining capacity. If the BTC price stays the same, the increases in difficulty will slow down after about 50% jump during the upcoming round and likely 30%+ for the next one.

[ribuck]

For a broader perspective, at difficulty of 100k, the network speed will be roughly equal to Tianhe-1A, the fastest supercomputer and at difficulty 200k roughly to Folding@Home, the most popular distributed computing project.

I foresee two more slashdottings on the way then!

[casascius]

At this rate, the difficulty will be 100,000 in no time.  I guess it's the end of easy mining profits.

I will agree wholeheartedly when there is a flood of 5970s on eBay that are hard to sell.

Obviously I have been promoting a lot of mining lately. And as you know from my YouTube video, I am pretty heavily invested into mining myself. So why would I want to shoot my own production in the foot?

I believe difficult mining will pave the way for BTC to go up and stay up for real.  Who will pay $10 for a BTC if it can be mined for 5 cents?  Solve that problem by promoting mining.

[casascius]

I am going to make a large buy of BTC at MtGox in the next 10 seconds.

[casascius]

I am going to make a large buy of BTC at MtGox in the next 10 seconds.

There, now we are one hundredth of a cent away from dollar parity again.

[Cryptoman]

Good job, thanks!

[kiba]

Then it got plopped down.

[casascius]

Then it got plopped down.

Yeah true, only because someone sold 10 BTC... will pop right back up with the next buy of 10 BTC.

[Ricochet]

Wasn't there a time when a block wasn't solved for almost 10 hours? Maybe this is the other side of that.

I know there was a time in which slush's pool did not solve a block for 10 hours, but I suspect other blocks outside the pool were solved during that timeframe.

[theGECK]

Wasn't there a time when a block wasn't solved for almost 10 hours? Maybe this is the other side of that.

I know there was a time in which slush's pool did not solve a block for 10 hours, but I suspect other blocks outside the pool were solved during that timeframe.

I thought that the network was always working on the same block, and the first one to find it was considered the winner. Perhaps I've been sorely mistaken this whole time.

[Mahkul]

Wasn't there a time when a block wasn't solved for almost 10 hours? Maybe this is the other side of that.

I know there was a time in which slush's pool did not solve a block for 10 hours, but I suspect other blocks outside the pool were solved during that timeframe.

I thought that the network was always working on the same block, and the first one to find it was considered the winner. Perhaps I've been sorely mistaken this whole time.

You are 100% right. The fact that slush's pool did not solve a block doesn't make any difference; the pool was just unlucky, while others were solving blocks with no problems (but the OP said that no block was solved for almost 10 hours generally, not just by slush's pool - I guess?).

[eMansipater]

Wasn't there a time when a block wasn't solved for almost 10 hours? Maybe this is the other side of that.

I know there was a time in which slush's pool did not solve a block for 10 hours, but I suspect other blocks outside the pool were solved during that timeframe.

I thought that the network was always working on the same block, and the first one to find it was considered the winner. Perhaps I've been sorely mistaken this whole time.

Technically, each and every block attempt is unique:billions and billions of them every second.  It's just that once a new block is made you have to be sure to include its hash in your continuing attempts.  There's not really any sense in which everybody is working on the *same* block, except that if you are very unlucky and make a new block just after someone else did, but failed to include theirs, your attempt fails.  It's much more like each hash attempt is a lottery ticket, where you can make as many lottery tickets as you want and the odds of winning per ticket don't change until the difficulty is adjusted.  So when someone outside the pool finds a block, the pool doesn't "give up" and move on.  It just adds in that information, just like it did all the transactions that were coming in as it worked away.

Wasn't there a time when a block wasn't solved for almost 10 hours? Maybe this is the other side of that.

I know there was a time in which slush's pool did not solve a block for 10 hours, but I suspect other blocks outside the pool were solved during that timeframe.

I thought that the network was always working on the same block, and the first one to find it was considered the winner. Perhaps I've been sorely mistaken this whole time.

You are 100% right. The fact that slush's pool did not solve a block doesn't make any difference; the pool was just unlucky, while others were solving blocks with no problems (but the OP said that no block was solved for almost 10 hours generally, not just by slush's pool - I guess?).

No, the OP meant only that none of the pool's lottery tickets turned out to be winners for 10 hours straight.  The network rate of wins varies but these days it would be extremely rare to go 10 hours without a winner anywhere on the network.

sincerely,
eMansipater

[Raulo]

The largest time with no blocks in the recent history (not counting difficulty = 1 prehistory) was slightly above 2 hours:
http://blockexplorer.com/b/105909

The probability of such long time without blocks is 1:160000 assuming 6 blocks/hour hashspeed.

There was a 7h time between blocks at
http://blockexplorer.com/b/74638

but I guess this was due to the infamous bug in pre-0.3.9 bitcoin.

[theGECK]

So, when slush's pool was working for 10 hours, it just meant that they hadn't found the answer to a block in that amount of time. The entire time, blocks were being discovered, and that information was being updated into the pool so they could try to find the next one. Correct?

[eMansipater]

So, when slush's pool was working for 10 hours, it just meant that they hadn't found the answer to a block in that amount of time. The entire time, blocks were being discovered, and that information was being updated into the pool so they could try to find the next one. Correct?

Precisely.

[bitjet]

I've been lucky today. Just started my first ever solo mining attempt today. Hit my first block in the first 12 hours. 8 hours later I shut down the miners to do somthing, when I finally got them going a few minutes ago and literally a minute into it I hit another block... Shit I just looked at the screen THREE MORE BLOCKS WTF?


... ok that last sentence was complete bs, but I feel like I nailed a solo block now I should jsut jump back in the pool for 24 hours, then hit the solo miners again for 24 hours. Alternation maybe my luck?

What block is next diff?

[FreeMoney]

What block is next diff?

Take current number of blocks and divide by 2016. The decimal part tells you the % of the way to the next diff update. Subtract it from 1 and multiply that decimal by 2016 to get blocks to next diff update.