Will btc difficulty go sideways for rest of the year?

[mikeywith]

I think one of the main reasons for the recent spike in hashrate was the migration of the hashpower from BCH and SV due to these 2 shitcoins dropping harder in price than BTC.

The last 7 days change in price is as follows :

1- BTC :  -9.59%
2- BCH : -24.45%
3-  SV : -20.06%

Last week it was more than 20% more profitable to mine BCH and/or SV over mining BTC

looking at this chart >



on 12/12/2018 hashrate for BCH dropped from 1,620PTH to 672PH and currently at 867PH
on 13/12/2018 hashrate for SV dropped from 1,729PH to 690PH and currently at 1,130PH

I am pretty sure this case applies to every other SHA-256 based coin, it is quite usual during a bear market for people to turn to mining BTC as it usually has the least drop in fiat value among other coins, but i am guessing whatever we see on the difficulty chart is simply a dead cat bounce, and more dips are coming if the price does not make any considerable spike to the upside, more people will have to leave as many of them are probably mining at lose by now.

[1714004338]

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[1714004338]

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[philipma1957]

@mikeywith

good info so I gave you a merit.

[mikeywith]

@mikeywith

good info so I gave you a merit.

who does not love merits ? thanks buddy

[philipma1957]

who does not love merits ? thanks buddy

your info helps track the trends it was worth the points.

[Norm MacDonald]

A good example of how transient the Hashing power is today. BTC rallies $350.00 and Machines get turned back on in an instant.

Bitcoin Difficulty:   5,646,403,851,534
Estimated Next Difficulty:   5,140,615,742,481 (-8.96%)     This was -10.75% just last night.
Adjust time:   After 126 Blocks, About 22.4 hours
Hashrate(?):   39,683,393,032 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):   
1 block: 10.7 minutes
3 blocks: 32.0 minutes
6 blocks: 1.1 hours

I'm willing to bet that without new lows in BTC the next jump will be....well... a "jump".

[philipma1957]

be interesting to see if it is 1-3%  or a bigger number.

[Norm MacDonald]

be interesting to see if it is 1-3%  or a bigger number.

I gotta wonder...the wild card in the deck now is, do more miners come on due to the drop or do more fall off due to overbuilt, overpriced operations finally bleeding out? Based on your recent analysis, without new lows in price, we may see a type of equilibrium on difficulty moves for the near term for those paying around .055 per KWH. I am writing calls against my BTC position today because this " revived hashing power " is basically in need of USD's to pay overhead and expenses. Once Mining Pool deposits hit tonight in the wee hours, we should see a selling of any recent miner earnings. I'm taking a stand at $3,500.00 - $3,600.00 at least for the next week or two.

[mikeywith]

[...]

I'm willing to bet that without new lows in BTC the next jump will be....well... a "jump".

I doubt it will be a jump , it could be less % to the downside but most likely not a jump. I am almost certain than a good amount of miners are now running at loss or break even (which is a loss too), but many people won't turn their miners off immediately and just hopping that by the time they have to pay their bills this bear market would have ended. and since this is not likely the case, then sooner or later they will have to go offline.

[minefarmbuy]

I expect an upswing, new gear is hitting racks. Just makes sense.

[mikeywith]

Dec 18 2018   5,106,422,924,659   -9.56%   36,553,199,102 GH/s
Estimated Next Difficulty:   5,288,075,498,978 (+3.56%)
Adjust time:   After 1972 Blocks, About 13.2 days
Hashrate(?):   38,179,255,728 GH/s

we are back to late Jun difficulty which is not bad. 

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

High - 51 exahashes
Low -  31 exahashes

Difficulty retarget

Date EST - Jan 1st, 10:02    -
Remaining    1 week, 6 days (1907 blk)    -
Change    +4.21%    -

[Steamtyme]

we are back to late Jun difficulty which is not bad.

Nice to see. So we didn't quite make it for another 2 digit drop but it was good to see it stayed close. Now lets get back to some late June BTC prices.

I think this is where we find some more flat line stagnant Diff adjustments. Maybe 1 or 2 rounds. Sure there should be some new gear hitting the racks, but unless they are profitable still at the moment they arrive I don't expect them to run. This would be similar to the people who bought pallets of Canaan hardware in Nov/Dec, and then by Feb never set them up instead opting to try and sell to profitable markets.

We'll probably see a return of some large centers that have been in a small Limbo. They may have shutdown for a bit to see what happens( no sense pissing away money on an electric bill), possibly used the time for facility maintenance. A lot of them will be profitable again for now and if this is the start of a slow steady climb again, they'll be glad they flipped the switch back on.

I'm guessing we stay within a +3% to -3% window. Barring any large swings in price.

[windjc]

Again, price leads. Hashrate lags behind. Chances are we still have 6+ months more of bear market. Hash rate mostly likely isn’t going to do much.

[philipma1957]

well  since first day of thread

Difficulty History

Date   Difficulty   Change   Hash Rate
Dec 18 2018   5,106,422,924,659   -9.56%   36,553,199,102 GH/s
Dec 03 2018   5,646,403,851,534   -15.13%   40,418,533,137 GH/s
Nov 16 2018   6,653,303,141,405   -7.39%   47,626,199,005 GH/s
Nov 01 2018   7,184,404,942,701   0.02%   51,427,973,784 GH/s
Oct 18 2018   7,182,852,313,938   -3.65%   51,416,859,634 GH/s
Oct 04 2018   7,454,968,648,263   4.23%   53,364,744,228 GH/s

we are back to this

Jun 19 2018   5,077,499,034,879   2.77%   36,346,153,834 GH/s

but price was 6650  and is now 3700

so  7454/5,077  = 1.468

6650/3700 = 1.792

that means miners profits are down  prices needs to be 6650/1.468 = 4529

so I say diff is leading price = rally to 4529 soon

and windjc says price is leading diff.

So diff will drop more 7454/1.792 = a diff of 4159  is correct.

and both are not accounting for better more efficient gear.

which means a blended number say flat diff and better price .

but who really knows

[windjc]

Hash rate is a looooong lagger. Its not immediate. Price is leading by about 8-10 months. Look at when price peaked and when hash peaked.

[mikeywith]

I will take June prices  

i agree I think the difficulty will adjust slowly from now on, there are no probably no more large swings , i am guessing pretty soon we will enter a low volume market with barley not a single considerable move. the difficulty should act accordingly.

[HagssFIN]

The price is going up a little now, close to 4.1k USD.

[philipma1957]

Hash rate is a looooong lagger. Its not immediate. Price is leading by about 8-10 months. Look at when price peaked and when hash peaked.

It no longer 6 to 8 months  lag time as we have 15,000,000,000 gh  maybe 18,000,000,000 gh off line.

if coins went to 12,000 usd in 2 days  diff would jump quickly

[mikeywith]

[...]

when i saw this yesterday, i was like "what is phil smoking ?  " thinking price will follow diff. ! but guess what, we are so close to 4.5k . i will be adding this strategy to my TA if we do hit 4.5k.

[Norm MacDonald]

Well I can say one thing with absolute, utter certainty. Bitcoin difficulty will now, absolutely, without a doubt, " go sideways for the rest of the year ".

HA! Ya see what I did there.