Mining difficulty slowing down over the next 3 months?

[flounderella]

The limit on difficulty is a combination of hardware efficiency and BTC value. At $600 BTC, 28nm tech has a very hard time reaching ROI when the difficulty goes over 100B. 65 and 40 nm tech limits out much lower, so regardless of how much hashpower ships the 20% increases every 11 days are only going to continue for 3-6 more months, or until BTC value jumps again.

I personally think we will see 20 to 25B by mid-July, then BTC will go on another run.

Given all the ants everyone has bought in the past month, this is actually not bad at all...

Bitcoin Difficulty:   4,250,217,920
Estimated Next Difficulty:   5,006,352,807 (+17.79%)
Adjust time:   After 11 Blocks, About 1.4 hours
Hashrate(?):   41,271,164 GH/s

[J_Dubbs]

This is merely the calm before the storm.

BFL, KNC, AsicMiner, and Black Arrow have yet to ship.  Expect late spring to mid summer to see the difficulty spikes.

*said everyone back in NOVEMBER.


This is the constant cycle, everyone is on the sidelines waiting for the next big thing. ASICs were revolutionary, everything else has been evolutionary. I'm not convinced the next big jump is ever right around the corner. I mean, maybe by now I'm wrong, eventually time is against me and I will be wrong, but correct me if I'm wrong everyone was supposed to have 1th/s $400 Black Arrow shit in February- what happened to all that hype? Whole time people have been waiting I've been mining, opportunity cost is a real cost.

[lightfoot]

Well yeah. Technically I cheer at every delay and boo at every chinese clone. Because I'm thinking of numero-uno here now :-)

We'll see what happens.

[elysid]

tl;dr - my mind tells me that short term price (fueled by bad news & the long wait for the insititutional whales to come to the rescue) & marginal performance improvements to untested ASIC hardware will result in lackluster demand for mining hardware in the next few weeks, slowing difficulty increases.

my gut feeling tells me that the desire to corner the market of future BTC income by smart money will result in unprecedented hashrate increases, and that I should just sell my antminer right now.

and i'm probably gonna follow my gut on this one.

----------------
the long version:

What I think about, much like the way bitcoin is still in its' early adopter phase & hasn't hit its' "NASDAQ IPO" moment where the market cap approaches something like Apple or Google (whereas it would now be considered a micro-cap OTC), is the fact that these 1TH machines are relatively new and haven't been extensively tested by the general public for longevity, whereas Bitmain, ASICMINER & BFL have track records that move units en masse regardless.  plus, $3.5K to drop on such tech doesn't come easy for most, i'd think.  then there's the fact of BFL shipping their soon to be obsolete units two weeks from now, and ASICMINER... ehh, we'll see, I guess.  For the time being, it seems that Bitmain is where ASICMINER used to be some months ago (for now) with relatively inexpensive gear that ships ASAP. 

not only that, but r/bitcoinmarkets seems to be short-term bearish and long-term bullish, mostly waiting on the development of regulated exchanges & financial instruments which will take a few weeks [if not months] at the very least.  Given the price stagnation and the negative press stemming from recent crypto exchange hacks/failures, I don't think that there are too many new people at the moment interested in mining.

however,

I think that I may be severely underestimating the demand of existing & current prospective miners to corner the future supply of BTC, considering how bullish everyone is in general.  Also, after the legacy financial institutions start buying into bitcoin en masse, it wouldn't be hard to envision companies ('specially publicly traded ones) creating ASICs on a mass market scale, 1TH for $500 at your local Target store.  Also (maybe a bit off topic) considering the relative success of such an altcoin such as Dogecoin [as niche as the scrypt mining scene is right now], I could also envision a flood of SHA-256 equivalents also boosting the demand for said ASICs.  How long that would take, I dunno.  But considering how relatively easy it is to work SHA-256 miners as compared to tuning a video card just right, I think it's inevitable.

this perspective is coming from a person relatively ignorant of bitcoin stuff outside the U.S. though, so take all of this with a grain of salt.

[clem84]

http://www.vnbitcoin.org/bitcoincalculator.php

This calculator predicts a 99,416,291,020 difficulty by year's end. They assume a 14.55% increase every cycle. Is this really a possible scenario? With predictions like these, no ASIC hardware will break even.

Isn't it more likely that the difficulty rise will slow down a bit at some point? If I understand this correctly, a 99 billion difficulty would mean that the network's total hashing power would be 20 times what it is now by year's end. I find that hard to believe. Thoughts?

[ujka]

Difficulty growth RATE is slowing down for the last 5 months:


We were waiting for several new 28nm hardware manufacturers, and they failed or were delayed. Now something started happening - Chinese manufacturers with some new chips?

[ajw7989]

I doubt the difficulty will go down in the next 3 months if anything its going to start increasing more rapidly with all the newer miners coming out

[Salmon1989]

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Bitcoin Difficulty:    5,006,860,589
Estimated Next Difficulty:    6,147,100,851 (+22.77%)
Adjust time:    After 1465 Blocks, About 8.9 days

[Searing]

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Bitcoin Difficulty:    5,006,860,589
Estimated Next Difficulty:    6,147,100,851 (+22.77%)
Adjust time:    After 1465 Blocks, About 8.9 days

i just got 23.89 percent in 8.6 days sheesh

(why i dumped my neptune...too much too fast for ROI imho with a 320 usd elec rate / month not to
mention a/c etc this summer

now say august i can see a big 'stall' and flatline on difficulty esp with the price drop and china news this week and IRS rules in usa etc

this is because KNC and others are already 'in the works on current gh farms/plans etc)  but who would be dumping $$$ in to that NOW
with the current news (ie knc wants 3 large gh farms....that may go down to 2 or 1 with recent events imho)

but for the next 3 months or so whatever was started for gh farms at 800 btc will continue at 100btc if it is that bad ...if for the
deductions on loss and such if nothing else

imho thou ..but yeah august sept could be flat as helll with no high end eguip alt or btc in sight or at least what a personal miner could afford

as always my view feel free to correct me and such..(i've no pride i mine bitcoins in my bsmt i'm so sad)

Searing

[lightfoot]

Yep, this is going to be brutal. And I don't even see much new stuff coming out, so when the big stuff hits, oh well.

But it points out a truth: As long as there is a difference between electricity price and bitcoin mining profit, there will be more miners sold. However with the price drops in bitcoin overall and the cost of miners, one can easily run into a place where there is no proverbial "air" to breathe. Buy stuff with care.

Part of the reason I gave 40gh (my 20gh Jally, a 10gh jally, and two 5gh units) to my son was to teach him this very important lesson: Don't run a business at a loss. When the cost of electricity exceeds the profit from the miners, he will shut them down no matter how much he loves them.

I will follow with my 900gh of Singles. Never run a business at a defined loss.

C

[polarhei]

No one knows about future. If there is only little new devices, then it may be healthy...

[Tammy Chan]

Difficulty will never go down.

Not necessarily.
If bitcoin price is stable and difficulty keeps increasing, sooner or later, people with less efficient equipment and high electricity cost will shut down their machines. The difficulty will then drop, until it reach an equilibrium.

[lightfoot]

Sort of. Problem is this could also be the ultimate "dollar auction" where people have to mine continiously to cover and minimize their losses.

C

[klondike_bar]

I think we are slowing down. the last jump was fed mostly by the huge output of 1TH machines coming from china based on the A1 chip, as well as the new spondoolies machine. Asicminer is right around the corner with its new chip too.

we might see another jump close to 20% as all these flood the market, but after that we should continue the trend of 16% and lowering per jump. My estimate is that by september we will have jumps averaging around 10-14%

[taipo]

The limit on difficulty is a combination of hardware efficiency and BTC value. At $600 BTC, 28nm tech has a very hard time reaching ROI when the difficulty goes over 100B. 65 and 40 nm tech limits out much lower, so regardless of how much hashpower ships the 20% increases every 11 days are only going to continue for 3-6 more months, or until BTC value jumps again.

I personally think we will see 20 to 25B by mid-July, then BTC will go on another run.

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty
Estimated Next Difficulty:   10,457,675,910 (+18.12%)
Adjust time:   ...about 6.8 days

Looking like a pretty good prediction as it looks like it might be 14B to 18B by mid July.

If the price of BTC does not rise before the time 25B arrives, any home miner not running at 0.5 watts per GH will be worthless - income wise.

At 40B without a price shift in BTC, a 1TH/s 28 nm miner will mine 0.01257 BTC a day ( $5.52 USD ). After cooling, storage and power costs, this will leave about $0.80c

For a home miner this would be ridiculous, but for hosted mining this would represent a 15% profit margin. Enough at least to maintain, and slowly increment rather than exponential incrementation that we are seeing now - as many businesses can and do function at a 15% profit margin.

As for the price of BTC, my guess is the primary trading of this cryptocoin at the moment is done by the mining communities desparate to recover their capital purchase costs, and manufacturers dumping their earned BTC on the market. Until we see the day where I can go into town and buy some BTC the same way I can buy cell phone credit, i.e. have a shop worker hand me a till receipt / paper wallet with $20 BTC credit on it, and until the day an E-Bay that is BTC only becomes as big as EBay itself becomes established, and/or someone creates a prepaid cellphone that only takes BTC as credit, then don't expect the price of BTC to go anywhere but slowly go down.

For those that have invested their life savings into their home mining operations, this is a lesson in the nature of the beast, small independent business venture getting captured by large bank funded cronies, then having the swamp drained by them - capitalism at its finest.

[fairlay]

Here you find predictions for the difficulty mid June and by the end of the year.

https://www.fairlay.com/event/category/bitcoin/difficulty/

The percentages are "upper bounds" since someone else is willing to put money on the opposite event.
Thus if you think one of this percentages is still too small you can make money with it...

[lightfoot]

I don't think it's *quite* that bad, however this next jump should be my last with the 65nm BFL gear. After this I will power things down for the summer and see if there is an uptick in the fall when I need heat for my room again. :-)

C

[s1gs3gv]

This is merely the calm before the storm.

Make hay while the sun shines.

[fubly]

                                                                                       Bitcoins (1Gh/s)
Days      Date        Difficulty   Change   Hash Rate      per Timeframe
5     24.05.14       8853416309      18        63375223   0,000056800
14   07.06.14     10447031245      15        69712745    0,000050990
14   21.06.14     12014085932      15        76684020    0,000046968
14   05.07.14     13816198822      15        84352422    0,000040844
14   19.07.14     15888628645      15        92787664    0,000035518
14   02.08.14     18271922942      15      102066430    0,000030887
14   16.08.14     21012711383      15      112273073    0,000026860
14   30.08.14     24164618090      15      123500380    0,000023357
14   13.09.14     27789310804      15      135850418    0,000020312
14   27.09.14     31957707425      15      149435460    0,000017663
14   11.10.14     36751363539      15      164379006    0,000015360
14   25.10.14     42264068070      15      180816907    0,000013357
14   08.11.14     48603678281      15      198898598    0,000011616
14   22.11.14     55894230023      15      218788458    0,000010101
14   06.12.14     64278364526      15      240667304    0,000008784
14   20.12.14     73920119205      15      264734034    0,000007639
14   03.01.15     85008137086      15      291207437    0,000006643
14   17.01.15     97759357649      15      320328181    0,000005777
14   31.01.15   112423261296      15      352360999    0,000005023
14   14.02.15   129286750490      15      387597099    0,000004368
14   28.02.15   148679763064      15      426356809    0,000003799
14   14.03.15   170981727524      15      468992490    0,000003303
14   28.03.15   196628986653      15      515891739    0,000002873
14   11.04.15   226123334651      15      567480913    0,000002498
14   25.04.15   260041834849      15      624229004    0,000002172
14   09.05.15   299048110076      15      686651904    0,000001889
14   23.05.15   343905326587      15      755317094    0,000001643

Table by fubly

[taipo]

Antminer S1
- 180 GH/s
- 360w
- 15c a kW
- $440 USD per BTC
_________
  $1.29 a day for power costs

07.06.14 - $3.82 at 10447031245
05.07.14 - $2.88 at 13816198822
02.08.14 - $2.18 at 18271922942
30.08.14 - $1.65 at 24164618090
27.09.14 - $1.25 at 31957707425

If this pans out as the graph estimates, then mid to end of Sept, an Antminer S1 at current figures, will be done for.

The retail price of these S1's things should be set at about 28 days ( or 2 shifts in difficulty ), worth of mining, currently its about 42 days. Basically most miners are reinvesting all of their mined coin into hardware expansion, the net result will be a pile of miners and PSUs that cost more to run than what they are worth switched on.

What I think I need to do is not buy any more, let these 6 ants mine their way to their eventual death by difficulty, and take the BTC between now and then and have a good time...maybe buy something other than miners with the BTC. Food for thought anyways, will see how this next month pans out...( spoken like a true mining addict )