★☆ Get Help Here | The Ultimate Help Thread! | Free Giveaways ★☆

[devthedev]

Welcome new users!
I've been in the community for a while now and have an immerse knowledge of Crypto and related topics.

Feel free to ask me any questions you have about the Bitcoin Protocol, Mining, Legalities, Wallets, etc.
I'll try to answer each and every question posted in the thread!

Looking forward to answering your questions!

For every 50 questions asked I'll be giving away a product or service!
The next one up is a $200 Amazon gift card.
The card will be given to a random user who's asked a question or helped others in the thread!



Tips are appreciated (: 1FLFWupqsssVgGC7jUVDYX2Cz8UtJ7xGHa

[1714873695]

1714873695

[Bernard Lerring]

When the difficulty changes how is it set?

There can't be some kind of signal dispersed around the network, saying "difficulty change ... ...NOW!", can there?

[Acidyo]

When the difficulty changes how is it set?

There can't be some kind of signal dispersed around the network, saying "difficulty change ... ...NOW!", can there?

It retargets every 2 weeks or so for bitcoin. Depending on the hashrate during the change, it will stick to it and after another 2 weeks change again depending on how many are mining then.

Sorry to hijack the thread, OP may give out a more detailed explanation if he wants to.

[devthedev]

Yep, this is a good explanation

It retargets every 2 weeks or so for bitcoin. Depending on the hashrate during the change, it will stick to it and after another 2 weeks change again depending on how many are mining then. :)

Sorry to hijack the thread, OP may give out a more detailed explanation if he wants to. :)

This is how the difficulty is calculated,

The highest possible target (difficulty 1) is defined as 0x1d00ffff, which gives us a hex target of

Code:

0x00ffff * 2**(8*(0x1d - 3)) = 0x00000000FFFF0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Pooled mining often uses non-truncated targets, which puts "pool difficulty 1" at

Code:

0x00000000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

So the difficulty at 0x1b0404cb is therefore:

Code:

0x00000000FFFF0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 /
0x00000000000404CB000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 
= 16307.420938523983 (bdiff)

You can read up more about Bitcoin difficulty here as well, https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty
Let me know if you have any other questions (:

[Cancan]

Great idea for a thread. While I don't have any questions, I would just like to leave this link here, as it's a list of interesting questions a newbie might have: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/19/12-questions-you-were-too-embarrassed-to-ask-about-bitcoin/

[DannyHamilton]

When the difficulty changes how is it set?

There can't be some kind of signal dispersed around the network, saying "difficulty change ... ...NOW!", can there?

Yes, there is.

When a block is solved, that block is relayed throughout the network.  The difficulty is recalculated every 2016 blocks.  So each node knows it needs to recalculate the difficulty it's using before it starts working on its next block whenever its blockchain increases in length by another 2016 blocks.  Each node calculates the difficulty for itself, and they all use the same rules for that calculation so that they end up with the same difficulty.

[devthedev]

Great idea for a thread. While I don't have any questions, I would just like to leave this link here, as it's a list of interesting questions a newbie might have: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/19/12-questions-you-were-too-embarrassed-to-ask-about-bitcoin/

Thanks!

[Cancan]

While I wouldn't use Washington Post as a reliable news source for Bitcoin, most of those answers were pretty spot on.

I know right? Times are changing, and we're starting to see major news websites actually doing their homework on Bitcoin.
But, so I won't be completely off-topic, I'll also add a question that a lot of newbies might have, as I noticed some tend to confuse the two:

What is the difference between nodes and miners?

[devthedev]

What is the difference between nodes and miners?

Well to start off, a node refers to a "full" client. A "full" client is a client that shares transactions and blocks across the network. Each node has a complete copy of the ledger, which is a record of every Bitcoin transaction that ever took place. Such as Bitcoin-qt or bitcoind (headless).

When you're talking about miners I'm assuming you're talking about mining software. If so, "miners" don't need the full blockchain to operate. When you're using mining software such as Cudaminer and cgminer you're getting work from a pool that's running a Bitcoin client. The pool is essentially sending you a partial header for a new block and the software tries a lot of random numbers (nonces) in order to find one that creates an extremely low block header hash with a lot of zeros. Summing that up, a "miner" is not a node at all, it's just software that's doing basic calculations for a pool.

Let me know if that answers your question (:

[devthedev]

For every 50 questions asked I'll be giving away a free Woodwallet to a random user who's asked a question or helped others in the thread!

[JohnFromWIT]

Difficult one..
What is a woodwallet?

[devthedev]

Difficult one..
What is a woodwallet?

It's like a paper wallet, just engraved in wood.

[monbux]

Difficult one..
What is a woodwallet?

A very cool wallet
Check out the official thread, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=638832.0.  I already have one myself, and it makes a great gift.  DevTheDev is being very generous giving these away, they start at $19 USD plus shipping.  Great thread, man!

[devthedev]

Difficult one..
What is a woodwallet?

A very cool wallet
Check out the official thread, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=638832.0.  I already have one myself, and it makes a great gift.  DevTheDev is being very generous giving these away, they start at $19 USD plus shipping.  Great thread, man!

Thanks monbux! There's nothing better than answering questions about Crypto and teaching people safe storage techniques with these WoodWallet giveaways (:

Are you new to the Bitcoin community? Let us know what kind of questions you have and we'll do our best to answer each and every one of them!

[monbux]

I have contacted devthedev and I am willing to also provide a small prize (for the time being) of a 1GH/S voucher on cex.io.
Worth ~ 0.00729 BTC, or almost $5 worth!  Yay!  May contribute more prizes in the future, not sure... I'll try and help as much as I can in this thread... thanks devthedev

[Acidyo]

This thread is turning out to be pretty awesome!

Nice idea!

[devthedev]

Bump, bump. I know you have questions (:

[kuverty]

This is a nice thread, will be helping others when I have the time. Winning one of those cool things would be even better than buying one.

[devthedev]

This is a nice thread, will be helping others when I have the time. Winning one of those cool things would be even better than buying one.

Thanks! Good luck

[Parham6]

Well I still haven't got the answer to my question: I'm using multibit and I want the Public Key (It's different than address) of my address, how do I get it? I don't want to know how a public key is calculated, I don't wanna read a dozen pages of math, I just want to know how to get it, period.