Could the Bitcoin difficulty go down?

[Chemistry1988]

Theoretically, yes

[smoothie]

It will some day. Just not sure when. Perhaps once the market is over saturated and the price can't sustain miners to keep their operation financial able to keep running.

[DrG]

It might have a small blip downward when people turn off the original BFLs/Avalons/ASICMiners - but remember these units put out measly amounts compared to the new beasts.  You turn off 60 SC Singles for every Cointerra rig and you're even.

The only real way to see a drop is maybe a severe price crash or a network issue where many big pools get DDOS or providers go down.

Or my favorite - massive solar ejection wipes all crypto off the map.

[devphp]

If price stays a $600-700 for another 6 months, what are you projections for hashrate/difficulty?
Current upwards almost vertical line is unsustainable if price doesn't catch up.

[iglasses]

If price stays a $600-700 for another 6 months, what are you projections for hashrate/difficulty?
Current upwards almost vertical line is unsustainable if price doesn't catch up.

Once again you are failing to take into consideration that miners have been bought and paid for beyond this point.  When someone gets the miner that they paid thousands of dollars for months and months ago they are turning it on regardless of what the btc to usd price is that day.

[roslinpl]

If diddicult will go down a lot miners will be so so happy because .. it will go up soon for sure.

[DrG]

The only reason is went down with GPUs was because GPUs had an option of doing something other than mining.  As far as I can tell SHA256 are going to be mining coins or going bust.  The only time they would go offline is if they die or if the owner thinks electricity is too high - in which case he sells them to somebody with cheap electricity (assuming shipping is worth it).

Don't expect difficulty to go down, ever.

[devphp]

If price stays a $600-700 for another 6 months, what are you projections for hashrate/difficulty?
Current upwards almost vertical line is unsustainable if price doesn't catch up.

Once again you are failing to take into consideration that miners have been bought and paid for beyond this point.  When someone gets the miner that they paid thousands of dollars for months and months ago they are turning it on regardless of what the btc to usd price is that day.

But what about 1) electricity cost, if daily bitcoin rewards coming from mining = $21->$20->$19->$18->$17 due to growing difficulty, and electricity is constant $20/day, that's losing money at some point, no matter that the hardware is fully paid for.
2) new miners will stop ordering new hardware, since the price is not catching up and profitability is close to zero after electricity or even negative.

I am not saying everyone will stop mining, but hashrate increased 10x over just 3-4 months, it can't go like that forever unless the price catches up, just laws of economics. It can only grow till it's at least marginally profitable. Just like it did go down in the past, in can go down again, before it can go up again when the price has caught up.

6 months of current level of bitcoin price can make a lot of miners re-think if they should temporarily suspend operations or keep losing money.

[AndrewGucci]

If price stays a $600-700 for another 6 months, what are you projections for hashrate/difficulty?
Current upwards almost vertical line is unsustainable if price doesn't catch up.

Once again you are failing to take into consideration that miners have been bought and paid for beyond this point.  When someone gets the miner that they paid thousands of dollars for months and months ago they are turning it on regardless of what the btc to usd price is that day.

But what about 1) electricity cost, if daily bitcoin rewards coming from mining = $21->$20->$19->$18->$17 due to growing difficulty, and electricity is constant $20/day, that's losing money at some point, no matter that the hardware is fully paid for.
2) new miners will stop ordering new hardware, since the price is not catching up and profitability is close to zero after electricity or even negative.

I am not saying everyone will stop mining, but hashrate increased 10x over just 3-4 months, it can't go like that forever unless the price catches up, just laws of economics. It can only grow till it's at least marginally profitable. Just like it did go down in the past, in can go down again, before it can go up again when the price has caught up.

6 months of current level of bitcoin price can make a lot of miners re-think if they should temporarily suspend operations or keep losing money.

Good point actualy.

[DrG]

If price stays a $600-700 for another 6 months, what are you projections for hashrate/difficulty?
Current upwards almost vertical line is unsustainable if price doesn't catch up.

Once again you are failing to take into consideration that miners have been bought and paid for beyond this point.  When someone gets the miner that they paid thousands of dollars for months and months ago they are turning it on regardless of what the btc to usd price is that day.

But what about 1) electricity cost, if daily bitcoin rewards coming from mining = $21->$20->$19->$18->$17 due to growing difficulty, and electricity is constant $20/day, that's losing money at some point, no matter that the hardware is fully paid for.
2) new miners will stop ordering new hardware, since the price is not catching up and profitability is close to zero after electricity or even negative.

I am not saying everyone will stop mining, but hashrate increased 10x over just 3-4 months, it can't go like that forever unless the price catches up, just laws of economics. It can only grow till it's at least marginally profitable. Just like it did go down in the past, in can go down again, before it can go up again when the price has caught up.

6 months of current level of bitcoin price can make a lot of miners re-think if they should temporarily suspend operations or keep losing money.

As it is currently, mining income easily exceeds electricity costs.  See my post above.  When the electricity costs exceed revenue the person will sell the miner to somebody who has cheaper power or will take the miners offline.  But those would be 1st gen ASICs which are becoming increasingly insignificant to the total power.

ASICs were made for Bitcoin.  The only time they stop mining is when Bitcoin dies or the miner dies.

[Equate]

It will never go down unless Bitcoin crashes.

[ajw7989]

I doubt it will go down but it will definitely slow down in terms of increases as we can see recently no more 25% plus increases FOR NOW

[roslinpl]

I doubt it will go down but it will definitely slow down in terms of increases as we can see recently no more 25% plus increases FOR NOW

indeed.

Just see alltime diff charts - you can clearly see how this is working .

[ssbn506]

There is another situation where the difficulty could go down. You se it all the time in altcoins like litecoin. If another SHA256 coin we to be more profitable to mine people would point their miner to that coin reducing BTC difficulty. But I don't se any SHA256 coins even remotely close to BTC. Most alts are script to try and avoid the arms race we se in BTC now. lots of competition in scripts no competition in SHA256.

[beegatewood]

yes but never...

[ssbn506]

yes but never...

Good thing it didn't say that.

[roslinpl]

yes but never...

yes but never will??

It will probably never go down - but it might stuck for a moment and stops growth for a while...

when price will hit 100$

[Zickafa]

It's unlikely that it will go down soon but no one knows what will happen in far away future

[roslinpl]

It's unlikely that it will go down soon but no one knows what will happen in far away future

it would not go down. It can stay for a while at it's value. But it will not go down.

Check difficulty charts, and see that it is not going down from a loooooooooong time

[thy]

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 the Difficulty can go down and it has in the past, but it will most likely only be for one or a couple of difficulty changes before it will start rising again.

One possibility would be if for example a very large Bitcoin mining farm would be down for a longer period of time for example if there having technical difficultys or need to relocate to another country or sells the hardware because of electricity cost is making there mining less profitable or unprofitable.

Another possible could be if bitcoin price would make a relatively rapid and big change down in price(ex 10 000 usd/coin down to 2000 usd/coin) and it stayed there for several weeks/months sometime in the future when the "normal" hash-rate increase per difficulty-period is small(1-3%) that could lead to people in large numbers would stop mining or selling/relocating hardware to places/people/country's where electricity price would be lower or in some cases possibly even free.

A third possibility would be that large amount of obsolete mining equipment would end there life as seasonal dependent heating devices replacing/backing up existing electrical heaters witch could then lead to that difficulty could see some decrease in the spring/summer period if the majority of those miners is located on the northern hemisphere.

Last time bitcoin difficulty went down was 23 jan 2013 when the difficulty went down 8,64%

Date              Difficulty     Change    Hash Rate
Feb 05 2013    3,275,465    10.33%    23,447 GH/s
Jan 23 2013    2,968,775    -8.64%    21,251 GH/s
Jan 08 2013    3,249,550     9.06%     23,261 GH/s