When's the next difficulty change?

[zpinto]

Hi!
When's the next difficulty change. How much will it raise, 40%, 50%,etc?

[proudhon]

Should be sometime today.  A few hours maybe?  And, it looks as though the difficulty is going to increase by around 50%.

[VPoro]

From BitcoinCharts:

Estimated   233521 in 374 blks
Blocks/hour   11.11 / 366 s

Which means that there's going to be an increase in difficulty in ~34 hours, and the difficulty will increase by 48%.

[proudhon]

From BitcoinCharts:

Estimated   233521 in 374 blks
Blocks/hour   11.11 / 366 s

Which means that there's going to be an increase in difficulty in ~34 hours, and the difficulty will increase by 48%.

I was only off by a day and half. 

[bcpokey]

I'm curious about peoples predictions of what happens next.

Difficulty is bumping up 50%, meaning drastically reduced mining rates for... everyone. Price seems to have stabilized / capped around 7USD per bitcoin for now.

Will the price shoot up to offset the difficulty again or will it remain stable/drop in response to people dropping out of the bitcoin game?

[FooDSt4mP]

I'm curious about peoples predictions of what happens next.

Difficulty is bumping up 50%, meaning drastically reduced mining rates for... everyone. Price seems to have stabilized / capped around 7USD per bitcoin for now.

Will the price shoot up to offset the difficulty again or will it remain stable/drop in response to people dropping out of the bitcoin game?

Price depends highly on demand.  If price stays near 7, or declines, difficulty will not grow, and may actually shrink slightly.  If enough buyers show up to drive the price up, difficulty will continue to increase.

[tomcollins]

I'm curious about peoples predictions of what happens next.

Difficulty is bumping up 50%, meaning drastically reduced mining rates for... everyone. Price seems to have stabilized / capped around 7USD per bitcoin for now.

Will the price shoot up to offset the difficulty again or will it remain stable/drop in response to people dropping out of the bitcoin game?

Price should rise a little due to decreased supply.  Right now there are 10 blocks mined per hour, rather than the 6 that should be.  That's a big supply difference.

As for difficulty not going up any more, we still have a much lower difficulty than the price has historically dictated.  Rigs that are already set up are profitable vs. their variable costs, so it's not like they are going anywhere.  The increase in new rigs may decrease, but someone who already has hardware might find out about Bitcoin and start mining.

[tomcollins]

Price should rise a little due to decreased supply.

Debatable- the newly generated coins aren't where all the trading is coming from.  To me the price seems more dependent on the perceived growth of the project, which may in fact be adversely affected by the lack of furious mining

Perfectly reasonable- it's hard to tell how much of the mining market is selling right away.  I'd figure at least some significant portion is (>10%).  That could be miniscule compared to early hoarders diversifying holdings at the current price.

Number of new users is probably a much bigger factor.