2021, time for a new general & diff speculation thread...

[philipma1957]

as of now we should be at 110 blocks and we are at 117 so we are +6%

far too soon 🔜 for accurate guesses.

I am hoping to be in the +2 to + 4 slot.

A +10 or +15 would feel superheated.

another - number would be a bit nerve wracking.

we will wait and see what happens in more time.

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[PrimeNumber7]

Meanwhile while there's no chance of it actually being accurate - since it's only 89 blocks so far - the diff calc on those 89 blocks is +8.71%

Will be interesting to see what it is at around 1008 blocks/half way into this diff change ...

I was thinking this exactly. A half-day or a day's worth of blocks is not enough to even measure if difficulty is going to increase or decrease with these small of changes. I don't think it would be unusual to see swings of 10% in the number of blocks found per day from one day to the next with constant equipment mining. Variance in luck regarding orphans alone could contribute a 2-3% change in the number of blocks found.

Absent a 10+% change this far into a difficulty period, I would not read much into it.

[kano]

... and thus to prove the math that you need a lot more blocks to get any idea of where the diff change is heading ...

Now at 147 blocks and the calc on those 147 blocks says: -0.17%

[philipma1957]

... and thus to prove the math that you need a lot more blocks to get any idea of where the diff change is heading ...

Now at 147 blocks and the calc on those 147 blocks says: -0.17%

Still early but if we drop -2 to -4% again I would be shocked.

yesterday my gear

was making  0.00000885 btc per th

today it is doing 0.00000904 btc per th

two weeks at those numbers would be nice.

[kano]

Yeah my point was that it's random for quite a while, not that my 2nd one was 'more' accurate.

e.g. current 205 blocks (again this is not in any way going to be accurate)
history calc is now +1.78%

Edit: ... and now 311 blocks into the diff and it's ... +7.95%
Going all over the place ... random is as random does

Edit: in fact to make it even more obvious the last 2 hours have been +67% for those 2 hours (UTC 22:00:00 - 23:59:99)

[mikeywith]

Still early but if we drop -2 to -4% again I would be shocked.

The average price for the past epoch was between 33-34k, so far it has been below that by about 5%, but despite that fact, it will be extremely difficult for the difficulty to drop below its current levels, the model i use isn't something you can count on 100%, but I believe it has a fairly good chance of being accurate, and it's rather simple, gear prices in China go up = difficulty will go up and the opposite is also true, so far the prices have been climbing up every day, it means more and more gears are being sent out to new places, what we can hope for is that the process of re-powering all gears will take many months.

The other possible scenario would be a large drop in BTC price, something like 20-30% to the downside (which is very possible), that should suppress the difficulty for a while, but overall, the only way is up.

[stompix]

I was checking some numbers about blocks mined before the adjustment, and I really thought they would say a different story.
In the last 72 hours before the adjustment, we mined 422 blocks between 691065 and 691487, which would be 140.6 per day so compared to the previous difficulty just a -2.36% drop, but if we add the previous day it suddenly becomes 591, an average of 147.75, so 2.6% on top of what we had 2 weeks ago.
I expected the numbers to be a bit higher.

So if we take only these days anywhere between 2-7% seems likely even with no more gear added but I doubt there won't be any at all.
Of course, we touched $29 558 but I don't think this will stop somebody who has already spend hundreds of thousands on gear and assumingly already has setups ready to start mining.

Current Pace:   106.1348%  (339 / 319.41 expected, 19.59 ahead)

The pace is all over the place, somebody had a rough weekend 


 

[kano]

...
The pace is all over the place, somebody had a rough weekend  

Well that's to be expected on every diff change

Adding to the usual random effect, there's also the usual miner (going offline/coming online) effect that can often have close to zero predictability.

That's why those site future estimates are guesses only, not based on any reliable math.

Current history calc is +0.53% at 446 blocks

[philipma1957]

Well the diff website makes a guess for the future and as we all know when we are at block 100 of 2016 it is a shot in the dark.

Of course at block 2000 its guess will be fairly close.

I no longer care about the exact number of the next diff.
I look at Current pace in bold below
I try to see if it fits my guess for the next jump
My guess for the next jump is +2 to +4% current pace is +2.37%.
It is in my guess zone.
So I am happy.  I would be worried if we were dropping again. As that would be out of my projections.
I would be less worried if the rise was +5 to +10% as It would mean a few big farms have found a new spot more quickly than I thought they would.




 

]https://www.bitrawr.com/difficulty-estimator

Latest Block:   692018  (3 minutes ago)

Current Pace:   102.3693%  (531 / 518.71 expected, 12.29 ahead)

Previous Difficulty:   14363025673659.96                            
Current Difficulty:   13672594272814.14                            
Next Difficulty:   between 13819071324707 and 13996947703433
Next Difficulty Change:   between +1.0713% and +2.3723%
Previous Retarget:   last Saturday at 7:32 PM  (-4.8070%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   July 31, 2021 at 11:45 AM  (in 10d 1h 46m 17s)
Next Retarget (latest):   July 31, 2021 at 3:58 PM  (in 10d 5h 59m 28s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 16h 13m 23s and 13d 20h 26m 34s
...

My larger spot for farming is using 130kwatts it is a mix of sha-256 gear and LTC/doge gear all gear is paid and it makes money split 4 ways.

40 L7 asic pull  136 kwatts
40 Eth asic pull 132 kwatts

so we could have this gear

or 40 s19pro which would pull 132kwatts


look at this from Bitmain viewpoint .

A room that is 8 foot by 20 feet burning 136kwatts  could earn

10.4 ltc + 20,800 doge a day this is  5137 usd worth of coin
3.63 eth a day>>>>>>>>> this is 6534 usd worth of coin
0.03955 btc a day >>>>>>  this is 1265 usd worth of coin

this is not to say I like 1 coin over another.

But bitmain makes all 3 machines I describe
they sold the s19pro to us when times were terrible for mining at 2500 usd.

Which leads me to believe
the L7 cost them under 2500 usd to build
the Eth cost them under 2500 usd to build
the s19pro. cost them under 2500 usd to build

All the hash rates above dropped
all of them are growing back.
I use the diff website to track grow back.

unfortunately I have to factor all 3 al gore rhythms
I know it pisses off people but so be it.

I feel that all 3 algorithms  will gain the hash back.

I FEEL BITMAIN IS FULLY AWARE OF MY ANALYZSIS.

Not that they clock me but they have a guy or 2 like me that have drawn the same sets of numbers.

I think they do not need to know the exact diff but that they will add back gear in ratios that do not hurt their profits.

Remember they can't sell a ton of gear yet. Due to lack of chips.


so back to my point this diff chart simply gives me a trend of where to diff is headed.


It think it is all unfolding to BITMAIN'S master plan.

[mikeywith]

Phill, you have a good point there, I see some lack of interest in SHA256 gears on major telegram mining groups, many folks are looking at the altcoin Asics, while I genuinely believe they will all get rekt because those coins' difficulty can double with 1 or 2 batches of gears, it's a net positive for bitcoin's difficulty, think of someone who wants to invest 10M in mining, if they buy L7+s instead of S19 pros or M30s, it's a good thing for all the folks that mine BTC.

[kano]

...
I no longer care about the exact number of the next diff.
I look at Current pace in bold below
...

Yeah it's a reasonably simple calc (that's the number I've said each time)

E = Elapsed (seconds) = Time of most recent block - Time of diff change
B = Blocks = Most recent block height - Diff change block height

So blocks per day BPD = B / (E / (24 * 60 * 60))

10 mins per block is 144 blocks per day, so you can see the current diff change calculation quite easily as:
 BPD / 144

e.g. if it says 1.02 then it's +2%
if it says 0.98 then it's -2%

However, it's not actually exactly the same since the diff change calc in bitcoin has a 'bug' in it.
A loop one-off bug that only uses 2015 of the 2016 blocks.

[PrimeNumber7]

...
I no longer care about the exact number of the next diff.
I look at Current pace in bold below
...

Yeah it's a reasonably simple calc (that's the number I've said each time)

E = Elapsed (seconds) = Time of most recent block - Time of diff change
B = Blocks = Most recent block height - Diff change block height

So blocks per day BPD = B / (E / (24 * 60 * 60))

10 mins per block is 144 blocks per day, so you can see the current diff change calculation quite easily as:
 BPD / 144

e.g. if it says 1.02 then it's +2%
if it says 0.98 then it's -2%

However, it's not actually exactly the same since the diff change calc in bitcoin has a 'bug' in it.
A loop one-off bug that only uses 2015 of the 2016 blocks.

You can account for this "bug" by changing "Time of diff change" in "E" to "Time of 1st block after diff change" and "Diff change block height" in "B" to "(1 + Diff change block height)".

Bitrawr appears to use a static range differential to estimate the next difficulty. The range should decrease over time based on the fixed population size of the difficulty period (2015), confidence level (arbitrary percentage the site wants to use), and changing sample size (number of blocks found since one block after the difficulty last changed). 

[kano]

...
However, it's not actually exactly the same since the diff change calc in bitcoin has a 'bug' in it.
A loop one-off bug that only uses 2015 of the 2016 blocks.

You can account for this "bug" by changing "Time of diff change" in "E" to "Time of 1st block after diff change" and "Diff change block height" in "B" to "(1 + Diff change block height)".

Well it's not that either.
I just prefer to ignore it, since whatever value anyone comes up with won't be correct anyway.

But the code itself is the first two functions here:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/pow.cpp

The first issue is that it actually uses the time in the block header, which isn't when the block was found.
(thus you can do that if you get the times out of the block header, not use the times the blocks were found)
But yes it ignores the first block 'time', but still divides it by 2016.
Thus if you move B one forward (call it B1), you'd actually have to average that adjustment out in the calc I gave as: B = B1 * 2016/2015

The simple calc is not all that different, and less brain cells damaged doing it

...
Bitrawr appears to use a static range differential to estimate the next difficulty. The range should decrease over time based on the fixed population size of the difficulty period (2015), confidence level (arbitrary percentage the site wants to use), and changing sample size (number of blocks found since one block after the difficulty last changed).  

Well as I've shown, even with 250 blocks you can expect the result to be more than 5% wrong almost 50% of the time.

But any math estimate won't take into consideration the actual changes occuring in hash rate - which, to be blunt, no one will know.

[philipma1957]

nice numbers so far

https://www.bitrawr.com/difficulty-estimator

Latest Block:   692447  (25 minutes ago)

Current Pace:   100.9389%  (960 / 951.07 expected, 8.93 ahead)

Previous Difficulty:   14363025673659.96                           
Current Difficulty:   13672594272814.14                           
Next Difficulty:   between 13765659058909 and 13801180131665
Next Difficulty Change:   between +0.6807% and +0.9405%
Previous Retarget:   July 17, 2021 at 7:32 PM  (-4.8070%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   July 31, 2021 at 4:24 PM  (in 7d 6h 21m 46s)
Next Retarget (latest):   July 31, 2021 at 5:16 PM  (in 7d 7h 13m 13s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 13d 20h 52m 29s and 13d 21h 43m 56s
...

and price is near 34k

[stompix]

Yeah, it is almost a week since the adjustment at this point and from the flat numbers I start to believe that:
- we won't have a spike of 5-7%, nice breather especially with the price climbing
- relocation of gear will indeed take a lot more, that news about miners flying gears to new locations was just news hype
- it's also probably a lot of gear will never mine with its current owners and if relocated it's waiting to be picked up or it's in transit, I see 35-40 days for cargo between Guangzhou and Houston
- maybe we underestimated the number of old gear that was mining at really really cheap if not for free prices that still can't find a buyer

ps
Price touched $34.5 back to under $34 for now

[philipma1957]

Yeah, it is almost a week since the adjustment at this point and from the flat numbers I start to believe that:
- we won't have a spike of 5-7%, nice breather especially with the price climbing
- relocation of gear will indeed take a lot more, that news about miners flying gears to new locations was just news hype
- it's also probably a lot of gear will never mine with its current owners and if relocated it's waiting to be picked up or it's in transit, I see 35-40 days for cargo between Guangzhou and Houston
- maybe we underestimated the number of old gear that was mining at really really cheap if not for free prices that still can't find a buyer

ps
Price touched $34.5 back to under $34 for now

My biggest fear was two more solid drops 💦 say 5-7 and 6-8 it would mean more than the China shut down was happening.

So far we do not see it. we could have a string of 1-3% jumps say 1-2 on august 1 and 2-3 on august 15
followed by 3-4 on aug 31. price floats from 32-38 would be a very nice winter for kano. and my other australian friends.

[mikeywith]

- relocation of gear will indeed take a lot more, that news about miners flying gears to new locations was just news hype

I mentioned this a few weeks ago but some folks said it would be easy to migrate all of these gears,  it's easy to underestimate the implications of running a mining business, it's also easy to ignore the fact that the shut-down happened in the midst of the rainy season in China, in other words, many gears were running at power rates as cheap as 1-2 cents, so where else can they mine and make a profit? also, there is probably no single place on planet earth that has the infrastructure to run all those gears.

Core Scientific that owns one of the largest mining operations in the world said they have 80k gears this year, and that they are trying to build the infrastructure needed to host 220k miners by the end of 2022, that will hardly hit 20EH assuming they use only the most effienct gears in the market, of course, they are not alone, but this should give you a general idea of how difficult it is to gain back the 70 or 80 EH we lost, it will take some time.

[fr4nkthetank]

Maybe the season is a little TOO rainy...

[PrimeNumber7]

...
Bitrawr appears to use a static range differential to estimate the next difficulty. The range should decrease over time based on the fixed population size of the difficulty period (2015), confidence level (arbitrary percentage the site wants to use), and changing sample size (number of blocks found since one block after the difficulty last changed). 

Well as I've shown, even with 250 blocks you can expect the result to be more than 5% wrong almost 50% of the time.

If you want to be 95% confident your estimate will be within 5% +- of the actual change, you need 323 blocks in the current difficulty period, or 501 to be 99% confident.

But any math estimate won't take into consideration the actual changes occuring in hash rate - which, to be blunt, no one will know.

Right.

[philipma1957]

So here we are at block  1282. and up 2.98%. still in my 2-4% guess for this jump.

Andddd we moved to 38k for coins. I wonder if this puts some pressure on the diff and we do close to 5% this jump.

Best case is 38-42k price slot for next 3 weeks

with a +4%  for August 1

followed by a 3-5% for august 15



this keeps us under a diff of 15.0 up to august 29th.  That is 60% of the high of 25.0

I actually think the above case of a 15.0 diff or under til August 29 and a price in the 38-42k slot is a viable guess for august 28th

would be a very nice  33 days if that happens.