New Year, New Record — Bitcoin's Difficulty Rises 1.65% in First 2024 Retarget

[sirty143]

New Year, New Record — Bitcoin's Difficulty Rises 1.65% in First 2024 Retarget

Bitcoin’s network difficulty experienced its first increase of 2024 on Jan. 5, at block height 824,544, rising 1.65% to an unprecedented network peak of 73.2 trillion... See more for yourself here.

Your opinion is greatly appreciated.

[paid2]

-snip-

Bitcoin’s network difficulty experienced its first increase of 2024 on Jan. 5, at block height 824,544, rising 1.65% to an unprecedented network peak of 73.2 trillion... See more for yourself here.

Your opinion is greatly appreciated.

Yeah, as a miner I am pretty satisfied that (for now) the next difficulty is supposed to be around -10% for now. Of course it changes every day and means nothing until the last moment of the current epoch.

Latest Block:   825001  (7 minutes ago)
Current Pace:   89.8263%  (458 / 509.87 expected, 51.87 behind)
Previous Difficulty:   72006146478567.1                             
Current Difficulty:   73197634206448.34                           
Next Difficulty:   between 65818282821395 and 70035161762445
Next Difficulty Change:   between -10.0814% and -4.3205%
Previous Retarget:   last Saturday at 1:36 AM  (+1.6547%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   January 20, 2024 at 4:55 PM  (in 11d 2h 20m 52s)
Next Retarget (latest):   January 21, 2024 at 3:39 PM  (in 12d 1h 4m 35s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 15h 19m 36s and 15d 14h 3m 18s

Somes major pools are probably manipulating the hashrate in order to lower the difficulty, they probably take the bet of high fees thanks to a potential ETF approval.

[Husires]

Somes major pools are probably manipulating the hashrate in order to lower the difficulty, they probably take the bet of high fees thanks to a potential ETF approval.

ETF approval will lead to adverse results, as more people will refrain from making transactions, either because they believe that the price will increase or because some people prefer to safely invest in Bitcoin through these funds instead of buying Bitcoin directly. Therefore, with the decrease in fees, we should see 30 sat or less by the end of the month.

[Stompix]

Somes major pools are probably manipulating the hashrate in order to lower the difficulty, they probably take the bet of high fees thanks to a potential ETF approval.

For a moment I thought Phil teleported too. 
A 10% loss in hashrate means 90 BTC lost if everyone contributes to this, so if only half does they are losing twice as much, last day fees were 104.2 BTC but mining only half of that would get you only 50 BTC, so....what would be the point? You're losing on all sides!
You lose blocks, you have to keep you remaining gear mining longer for the same reward as block times will push the epoch to 15 days, fees are just as they were before.
Not going to copy mikey's response to this but you can check it on the other board, he explained perfectly, no sense and no way this will ever make finacially!
Besides, we have that stats for all blocks mined by pool, I've been looking at this for months:
https://explorer.btc.com/btc/insights-pools
there is absolutely no anomaly that hasn't also been present in the past at completely different adjustment/fees/ everything!

Furthermore, you have one big ass problem!
There is luck involved in this, so just how you had a 2 hours interval between two blocks and then you have 6 blocks in 10 minutes, you can't actually predict how many blocks you will mine with 10% less hashrate, you might get the surprise of your lifetime and mine more than usual! Viabtc managed with the same reported hashrate to mine a 20/10/20/10 streak, no fine tuning would be able to ever reproduce this but luck will do it even better than this at one point!

ETF approval will lead to adverse results, as more people will refrain from making transactions, either because they believe that the price will increase or because some people prefer to safely invest in Bitcoin through these funds instead of buying Bitcoin directly. Therefore, with the decrease in fees, we should see 30 sat or less by the end of the month.

Fees don't always follow volume of transactions.
We have an actual buildup in the mempool, 10k tx more than one week ago and 5vMB more but a decrease in the actual fee paid.
Rather than people buying into ETFs and not on chain, this combined with the price makes me think more of an ETF flop than anything else.

[paid2]

ETF approval will lead to adverse results, as more people will refrain from making transactions, either because they believe that the price will increase or because some people prefer to safely invest in Bitcoin through these funds instead of buying Bitcoin directly. Therefore, with the decrease in fees, we should see 30 sat or less by the end of the month.

Yes you're right, we had yesterday some hours with an average of 30 sat/vB fees, which is almost "low". It was a nice opportunity to consolidate and move some coins!

But for now we are back to 100-200 sats again unfortunately.
Crazy to see people able to spend so much on a tx.

[MrSpasybo]

Fees don't always follow volume of transactions.
We have an actual buildup in the mempool, 10k tx more than one week ago and 5vMB more but a decrease in the actual fee paid.
Rather than people buying into ETFs and not on chain, this combined with the price makes me think more of an ETF flop than anything else.

+1
In my opinion, transaction fees depend on the pending order status (mempool) of network and psychology of person transferring coin: the more orders waiting to be processed and the less patient the investor is, the higher the transaction fee will be pushed up. The Inscription wave caused many people FOMO, filled the mempool and pushed transaction fees to high levels, so much so that BTC miners are earning the same income as what they had at the peak of bullrun 2021 Nov.

Spot ETFs encourage BTC purchases when traditional investors are already able to participate, but CEX transactions do not generate transaction fees for miners, nor do some OTC purchases generate large volumes of transactions like Inscription.

I expect a continuous increase in mining difficulty, so mining costs will increase, supporting BTC price during the bullrun, while increasing the decentralization and safety of Bitcoin network.

[Stompix]

I expect a continuous increase in mining difficulty, so mining costs will increase, supporting BTC price during the bullrun, while increasing the decentralization and safety of Bitcoin network.

Right till this point and this is were we stop, this part doesn't follow this route.

The subtle difference is first that the increase in difficulty is not an increase in costs, it's a decrease in revenue, my miners will pull the same electricity, I will pay the same bill, it's just that I'm receiving less coin for it. It might not sound as much but:
- I make $1 for every burned 50 cents, my power increases by 10%, I only make 45 cents.
- I make $1 for every burned 50 cents, my revenue goes down by 10% , I only make 40 cents
The better your profitability the harder you get hit, thus putting pressure on expanding, putting pressure on future increase, diminishing the probability of a difficulty rise.

Second, miners don't really influence the price, this is a sort of meme thing, and to be honest I would love to hear how we could do so because it's been 2 rough years and it's not just me , it's many others that would love to have this plan, unfortunately our mining costs don't determine the price, the price determines the hashrate, putting the brakes when the profitability evaporates not he other way around.

Now the third, this is the bad thing about it.
If the difficulty continues to build on as major farms are running on investors money and and afford to mine at a loss, I'm paying each bill out of my ow pocket, for me it's just stupid to pay 100 euros in electric bills to get 90 euros worth of bitcoin, I would just unplug the miners and buy BCT directly from an exchange. So bad times in profits will only kick out little guys, letting only big farms with big pockets survive  and that's the total opposite of decentralization. You can see it even now, Foundry is a closed pool, you need 20 PH (that's 200 S19 and 600KW) to join , as well as being us based, and they control almost 30% of the hashrate.
Plus, it's manufacturers that kill individual miners.
Microbt released a 7000W miner, it wasn't enough that Bitmain got a 5500W one, those can't even run in a normal house, it will blow your breakers in the second you put them in, and this help again guys with access to datacenters and cheap electricity, as well as deep enough pockets to keep buying the latest most efficient model.

Unfortunately, ETF or no ETF, the decentralization in mining is starting to become an utopia!

[philipma1957]

I expect a continuous increase in mining difficulty, so mining costs will increase, supporting BTC price during the bullrun, while increasing the decentralization and safety of Bitcoin network.

Right till this point and this is were we stop, this part doesn't follow this route.

The subtle difference is first that the increase in difficulty is not an increase in costs, it's a decrease in revenue, my miners will pull the same electricity, I will pay the same bill, it's just that I'm receiving less coin for it. It might not sound as much but:
- I make $1 for every burned 50 cents, my power increases by 10%, I only make 45 cents.
- I make $1 for every burned 50 cents, my revenue goes down by 10% , I only make 40 cents
The better your profitability the harder you get hit, thus putting pressure on expanding, putting pressure on future increase, diminishing the probability of a difficulty rise.

Second, miners don't really influence the price, this is a sort of meme thing, and to be honest I would love to hear how we could do so because it's been 2 rough years and it's not just me , it's many others that would love to have this plan, unfortunately our mining costs don't determine the price, the price determines the hashrate, putting the brakes when the profitability evaporates not he other way around.

Now the third, this is the bad thing about it.
If the difficulty continues to build on as major farms are running on investors money and and afford to mine at a loss, I'm paying each bill out of my ow pocket, for me it's just stupid to pay 100 euros in electric bills to get 90 euros worth of bitcoin, I would just unplug the miners and buy BCT directly from an exchange. So bad times in profits will only kick out little guys, letting only big farms with big pockets survive  and that's the total opposite of decentralization. You can see it even now, Foundry is a closed pool, you need 20 PH (that's 200 S19 and 600KW) to join , as well as being us based, and they control almost 30% of the hashrate.
Plus, it's manufacturers that kill individual miners.
Microbt released a 7000W miner, it wasn't enough that Bitmain got a 5500W one, those can't even run in a normal house, it will blow your breakers in the second you put them in, and this help again guys with access to datacenters and cheap electricity, as well as deep enough pockets to keep buying the latest most efficient model.

Unfortunately, ETF or no ETF, the decentralization in mining is starting to become an utopia!

Miners are the foundation of btc. DO THEY RAISE IT no not much they support it.

CASE in point in 2021 1/2 the hash was shut down and price tanked from 66k to under 40k. IT then rallied back to 69K as hash went up.

[Stompix]

~

Miners are the foundation of btc. DO THEY RAISE IT no not much they support it.

CASE in point in 2021 1/2 the hash was shut down and price tanked from 66k to under 40k. IT then rallied back to 69K as hash went up.

Look who's here 
I was waiting for you top open the difficulty topic!

But now, back on the 2021, as a counterpoint:
The price was 41k on at the beginign of 2022, it dropped to 16k at the end of 2022!
Hashrate was 200 Exashash and ended up to 260 Exahash!
So despite the hashrate going up 25%  the price went down 60%.

I still think we need a flat period when profitability is just a bit over 10-20% on ROI over the year to have a track of growth related to price, growth that is based on gear ordered with investors money when returns were 2x time what's now because Bitmain delivers  6 months late screw those graphs really bad!

[philipma1957]

~

Miners are the foundation of btc. DO THEY RAISE IT no not much they support it.

CASE in point in 2021 1/2 the hash was shut down and price tanked from 66k to under 40k. IT then rallied back to 69K as hash went up.

I will be starting that soon. I need to set up a signature for now.
Look who's here 
I was waiting for you top open the difficulty topic!

But now, back on the 2021, as a counterpoint:
The price was 41k on at the beginign of 2022, it dropped to 16k at the end of 2022!
Hashrate was 200 Exashash and ended up to 260 Exahash!
So despite the hashrate going up 25%  the price went down 60%.

I still think we need a flat period when profitability is just a bit over 10-20% on ROI over the year to have a track of growth related to price, growth that is based on gear ordered with investors money when returns were 2x time what's now because Bitmain delivers  6 months late screw those graphs really bad!