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Questions tagged [difficulty]

This tag should be used for questions regarding difficulty which encodes the likelihood of one hash to succeed at mining a block. Indirectly, it is a measure of the total hashing power of all miners for a given cryptocurrency.

Difficulty is a measure of the likelihood that a given hash is a valid hash for a block. It is calculated by taking the target at difficulty 1 divided by the current mining target. The difficulty is directly correlated to the total mining power of all miners on the network. The difficulty will increase as more hash rate is brought online and will decrease when hash rate decreases.

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How is difficulty calculated?

Can anyone explain me in the plain English how difficulty is calculated. I have a very approximate understanding that it is calculated based on the amount of hash power in all the bitcoin community over a specific period of time. But this is very…
Salvador Dali
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What keeps the average block time at 10 minutes?

I've been told "the network" sets the difficulty level such that there will be one new block mined every ten minutes. I imagine the rich would instead prefer to keep difficulty as high as possible to prevent other people winning their 50 BTC and…
billpg
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Can bitcoin exist without miners?

In the past year only, the bitcoin mining difficulty has increased fivefold. If in the coming years the difficulty increases so much that mining is no longer profitable (i.e. consumes more power than money is earned), can the bitcoin network exist…
Eduard Avetisyan
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Do these new ASIC miners really pay for themselves in 5 days?

The Bitforce 50GH/s miner costs $2,500 today, and according to the following calculation it would mine enough coins in about 5 days to pay for itself. I am sure I am missing something here. Why would they even sell this hardware at all? Surely it…
Simon
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What is "difficulty" and how it relates to "target"?

I don't understand what "difficulty" means and how it really relates to "target". I understand what "target" is - it tells the miners, how small the resulting hash should be. (Basically, how many zeroes are there at the beginning, altough not…
Karel Bílek
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Relationship between Hash-Rate and Difficulty

What is the algebraic relationship between Total Network Hash-Rate and Difficulty?
Kinnard Hockenhull
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How does the Kimoto Gravity Well regulate difficulty?

Maxcoin will use the Kimoto Gravity Well (KGW) to regulate the difficulty. From what I could find about the KGW, it retargets after every block and adjusts very quickly, e.g. when multipools add and retract mining power to a smaller coin's network.…
Murch
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What does the mining difficulty number really mean?

I'm new to bitcoin; please bear with me. I'm looking into mining, how it works, and how to get started. I see a "mining difficulty" from many sources and list a 3 billion something number without units. What exactly does this number mean and how…
frеdsbend
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Can casual people still mine for bitcoins, now that the difficulty is much higher than it was?

Can casual people still mine for bitcoins? As of October 2012, the difficulty seems very high, being over 3,000,000. I've seen a ad for bitcoins, and watched the video. It said I could mine for them with my computer, so can I?
Rook Ward
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Why can't they use super computers to mine all the bitcoins?

I have very limited knowledge of bitcoin, but, I hope you don't mind my asking this question: As I understand it, "mining bitcoin" requires "significant" computational prowess. A lot of dedicated mining rigs have been built out of FPGAs, ASICs and…
thatmaheshrs
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How to calculate new "bits" value?

Every 2016 blocks one needs to calculate new bits value. What is the formula to calculate it?
ThePiachu
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What happens if hash rate decreases rapidly?

Since difficulty is only adjusted every 2016 blocks, what would happen if hash rate was to decrease rapidly? Wouldn't this cause blocks to be created less frequently and also making the time until difficulty is adjusted even longer? Here's a…
D.H.
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How many Integer Operations on a GPU are necessary for one Hash?

I thought it was the ALU OPs like here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7964.0 ArtForz speaks of much higher values, though: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4689.msg68933#msg68933 Does the kernel run more than once for a hash? What…
kermit
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Is there empirical data about a relationship between bitcoin price and difficulty?

There have been claims that Bitcoin price and difficulty correspond. Is there empirical data to support or refute this?
ripper234
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What are the equations to convert between bits and difficulty?

If we take block hash 0000000000000006770c3806960539ca83a24facbd99ea212f37f2a0e6a5629a for example. The difficulty as a 32 bit float is 50810339.04827648. The difficulty in bits as an unsigned 32 bit integer is 424970034? What are the equations to…
Dan
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