Could the Bitcoin difficulty go down?

[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

[devphp]

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.

You can't be sure of that, it all depends on how quickly the price recovers. If the price rests below profitability level for an extended time, the difficulty could stay about the same or even go down for some time as well. Just common sense and economics 101. In any case, there is no reason to be afraid of the lower difficulty, there is more than enough hash rate on the network, even if some miners drop off, there is still plenty left.

[pjviitas]

Difficulty will be forced to level off due to technological limitations.

[EasyQuest]

Difficulty will be forced to level off due to technological limitations.

And buying demands

[E.exchanger]

NO and there are miners being developed and used more and more everyday i don't think there is any chance of the difficulty getting low !!!

[pjviitas]

NO and there are miners being developed and used more and more everyday i don't think there is any chance of the difficulty getting low !!!

Current technology will max out at 1W/GHs

If difficulty continues to rises at around 20% every 2 weeks, a year from now you will need around 100,000GHs in order to make 1 BTC a month.

Assuming you are using the very latest hardware, 100,000GH/s translates to around 100kW of power.

Assuming you are using a residential service, 100kW of power translates to around 416A.  A modern residential service is typically 200A.

With this in mind, most normal people will be forced to stop mining unless difficulty levels out.

So lets expand this example to a data centre

If difficulty continues to rises at around 20% every 2 weeks, by the end of 2015 you will need around 8,000,000GHs in order to make 1 BTC a month.

Assuming you are using the very latest hardware, 8,000,000GH/s translates to around 8,000kW of power.

Assuming you are using a heavy commercial service, 8,000kW of power translates to around 7700A.  The largest heavy commercial service is typically around 6000A.

With this in mind, most data centres will be forced to stop mining unless difficulty levels out.

In conclusion, in order for difficulty to continue to increase at the current rate, technology will need to provide a mining solution that is more efficient than 1W/GHs within the next year or so

[ZiG]

That is VERY true...the real problem for miners is so called "Power Wall"...very important...if not the most important limitation...than difficulty will stabilize...or could even go down...

This...or next year...we will see...

[freebit13]

NO and there are miners being developed and used more and more everyday i don't think there is any chance of the difficulty getting low !!!

Current technology will max out at 1W/GHs

If difficulty continues to rises at around 20% every 2 weeks, a year from now you will need around 100,000GHs in order to make 1 BTC a month.

Assuming you are using the very latest hardware, 100,000GH/s translates to around 100kW of power.

Assuming you are using a residential service, 100kW of power translates to around 416A.  A modern residential service is typically 200A.

With this in mind, most normal people will be forced to stop mining unless difficulty levels out.

So lets expand this example to a data centre

If difficulty continues to rises at around 20% every 2 weeks, by the end of 2015 you will need around 8,000,000GHs in order to make 1 BTC a month.

Assuming you are using the very latest hardware, 8,000,000GH/s translates to around 8,000kW of power.

Assuming you are using a heavy commercial service, 8,000kW of power translates to around 7700A.  The largest heavy commercial service is typically around 6000A.

With this in mind, most data centres will be forced to stop mining unless difficulty levels out.

In conclusion, in order for difficulty to continue to increase at the current rate, technology will need to provide a mining solution that is more efficient than 1W/GHs within the next year or so

The main problem with the limitation in your model is that it's centralized... this might just mean that it will no longer be possible for large mining operations to dominate the network so easily and will have more competition from the decentralized part of the network...

[Warning__3]

People have already invested way to much money into asics to just walk away without a fight
I still use my single Antminer U2 xD

[pjviitas]

NO and there are miners being developed and used more and more everyday i don't think there is any chance of the difficulty getting low !!!

Current technology will max out at 1W/GHs

If difficulty continues to rises at around 20% every 2 weeks, a year from now you will need around 100,000GHs in order to make 1 BTC a month.

Assuming you are using the very latest hardware, 100,000GH/s translates to around 100kW of power.

Assuming you are using a residential service, 100kW of power translates to around 416A.  A modern residential service is typically 200A.

With this in mind, most normal people will be forced to stop mining unless difficulty levels out.

So lets expand this example to a data centre

If difficulty continues to rises at around 20% every 2 weeks, by the end of 2015 you will need around 8,000,000GHs in order to make 1 BTC a month.

Assuming you are using the very latest hardware, 8,000,000GH/s translates to around 8,000kW of power.

Assuming you are using a heavy commercial service, 8,000kW of power translates to around 7700A.  The largest heavy commercial service is typically around 6000A.

With this in mind, most data centres will be forced to stop mining unless difficulty levels out.

In conclusion, in order for difficulty to continue to increase at the current rate, technology will need to provide a mining solution that is more efficient than 1W/GHs within the next year or so

The main problem with the limitation in your model is that it's centralized... this might just mean that it will no longer be possible for large mining operations to dominate the network so easily and will have more competition from the decentralized part of the network...

Unless people start upgrading the services in their homes to commercial distributed mining is also gonna end.

This question of power availability for mining is a technology problem...if better than 1W/GHs doesn't become available in quantity difficulty will be forced to go down...math does not lie.

[freebit13]

Unless people start upgrading the services in their homes to commercial distributed mining is also gonna end.

This question of power availability for mining is a technology problem...if better than 1W/GHs doesn't become available in quantity difficulty will be forced to go down...math does not lie.

And if it does become available the difficulty goes up, right? Math does not lie, but it can be misrepresented to suppoort one's own arguments.

[pjviitas]

Unless people start upgrading the services in their homes to commercial distributed mining is also gonna end.

This question of power availability for mining is a technology problem...if better than 1W/GHs doesn't become available in quantity difficulty will be forced to go down...math does not lie.

And if it does become available the difficulty goes up, right? Math does not lie, but it can be misrepresented to suppoort one's own arguments.

There are currently no hardware predictions for better than 1W/GHs in the next 2 years.

[film2240]

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

I really hope so as it'll make my Ant Miner ASIC worthwhile again (as I'm getting rid of my GPU now thanks to the scrypt ASICs I got recently.) and I can mine a lot more BTC when difficulty drops (a lot),if it does that is.

[devphp]

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.

You can't be sure of that, it all depends on how quickly the price recovers. If the price rests below profitability level for an extended time, the difficulty could stay about the same or even go down for some time as well. Just common sense and economics 101. In any case, there is no reason to be afraid of the lower difficulty, there is more than enough hash rate on the network, even if some miners drop off, there is still plenty left.

Now let's see if it will only be for one or two difficulty changes ) My prediction it will be more than two.