Could the Bitcoin difficulty go down?

[desertfox470]

I am just wondering if a lot of miners would stop mining (I know this is next to impossible) could the bitcoin difficulty go down instead of up? Thanks

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[DeathAndTaxes]

Yes.  It has on more than one adjustment in the past.

Is it likely that it will go down anytime soon?  No.

[roslinpl]

I am just wondering if a lot of miners would stop mining (I know this is next to impossible) could the bitcoin difficulty go down instead of up? Thanks

Yes. That is normal. You can see all time charts of BTC diff and you can clearly see that it just a value that might go up or down.

[roslinpl]

(...)
Is it likely that it will go down anytime soon?  No.

[af_newbie]

(...)
Is it likely that it will go down anytime soon?  No.

The only way for it to come down is if BTC price drops to <$5 again and most miners walk away and get real jobs.

Right now, there is so much noise in the media about bitcoin that people are putting new mining hardware online regardless if it makes money or not.

Too much optimism.  Evangelists are projecting $10,000 by the end of 2014.  No way difficulty comes down unless price adjusts dramatically.

[empoweoqwj]

I am just wondering if a lot of miners would stop mining (I know this is next to impossible) could the bitcoin difficulty go down instead of up? Thanks

Yes of course the difficulty would go down if lots of miners stopped mining. Is it going to happen? Only if price of BTC crashes spectacularly.

[jhansen858]

price is crashing.  if price went down to 200 that would be great. everyone would shut their rigs off.

[roslinpl]

price is crashing.  if price went down to 200 that would be great. everyone would shut their rigs off.

do you know what would happen if everyone would shut their rigs off?
do you know how bitcoin works?

this is p2p network.

try to download a torrent with no seeds.

[Rannasha]

price is crashing.  if price went down to 200 that would be great. everyone would shut their rigs off.

do you know what would happen if everyone would shut their rigs off?
do you know how bitcoin works?

this is p2p network.

try to download a torrent with no seeds.

It'll take a pretty impressive price-crash (hint: far lower than $200) for everyone to shut off their rigs.

The limiting factor in earning back your mining investment is the initial cost of purchase, not the ongoing electricity costs. Even at $200 per Bitcoin, almost all current ASICs will produce more income than they cost to keep running. So while a low BTC-price may lower sales of new devices (or a price drop of those new devices), it's not going to cause people to turn off their rigs until things get really crazy.

[roslinpl]

price is crashing.  if price went down to 200 that would be great. everyone would shut their rigs off.

do you know what would happen if everyone would shut their rigs off?
do you know how bitcoin works?

this is p2p network.

try to download a torrent with no seeds.

It'll take a pretty impressive price-crash (hint: far lower than $200) for everyone to shut off their rigs.

The limiting factor in earning back your mining investment is the initial cost of purchase, not the ongoing electricity costs. Even at $200 per Bitcoin, almost all current ASICs will produce more income than they cost to keep running. So while a low BTC-price may lower sales of new devices (or a price drop of those new devices), it's not going to cause people to turn off their rigs until things get really crazy.

serious? it will stop bitcoin network.

NO bitcoin transaction can be made if hashrate = 0 (all rigs off)

So even if you will have 10000 BTC you cannot sell them. Because blockchain would NOT work.

Let say you have a lamp in your room. When it is on it gives a light. When it is off it does not.

[Cyberdyne]

all rigs off

All rigs off implies that every single miner on the planet is doing it for profit, and for no other reason.

I doubt that is true.

[hostmaster]

price is crashing.  if price went down to 200 that would be great. everyone would shut their rigs off.

yes its possible

[OnkelPaul]

Even if the bitcoin price drops very quickly, miners will not react immediately all at the same time. Some will switch off earlier than others, maybe because they're more fearful, maybe because their energy costs are higher. At some point, remaining miners will decide that their best choice is to continue mining because enough miners have left the scene to make mining attractive for the others again. Of course, block rate will go down quite a bit until the next difficulty adjustment, so you might have 1-2 weeks of average 2-3 blocks per hour instead of 6. So what? It's very unlikely that this will happen at all, and even if it does happen, bitcoin transactions will only be slowed down a bit, not stopped.

Onkel Paul

[jhansen858]

when I said everyone I was speaking figuratively not literally. but captain literal over here went there.

[roslinpl]

Guess diff will go down a bit in a day

but it will change like nothing.

[jamesc760]

I remember difficulty starting to skyrocket at $100 a coin. Even at $20, people were mining like crazy. Miners will be miners.

[iglasses]

Guess diff will go down a bit in a day

but it will change like nothing.

I don't see that happening at all.  Forget the dam btc price because it's meaningless to the difficulty.  Right now the hashrate of the network is up to 24,673,812 GH/s and block generation is at 8 minutes.

I still see an over 20% increase tomorrow...there is so much fast hardware being thrown at the network right now because people that pre-ordered equipment months ago are just receiving it so the ongoing disaster on the exchanges doesn't make a difference. No one is going to take their multi-thousand dollar asic and not mine with it.

[odolvlobo]

I assume that the difficulty will keep climbing until the cost of power equals the mining revenue.

New mining equipment consumes about 0.75 kW per TH/s, or 18 kWH/day per TH/s At $0.10/kWH that's $1.80 per day per TH/s. 1 TH/s mines about 0.192 BTC/day and that will equal the power cost when 1 BTC is worth about $10.

So, difficulty will fall if BTC falls below $10, or will stop rising if the price remains at $650 and the difficulty rises by a factor of about 65. Both are possible, but I think neither is likely (at least in the short term).

[AndrewGucci]

Most probabl difficulty will continue to rise.

[iglasses]

+19%
meh.