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My ignorant TL;DR: BCH may temporarily more profitable in part because hardware goes a lot further against the reduced difficulty. As more miners are attracted

by j_s 9y ago

My ignorant TL;DR: BCH may temporarily more profitable in part because hardware goes a lot further against the reduced difficulty. As more miners are attracted to BCH, the difficulty should theoretically balance in correlation with the "in-practice"/exchangeable value of BCH. Clicking on the 'difficulty' tab seems to confirm this: http://fork.lol/pow/difficulty http://fork.lol/pow/difficulty -- I barely remember some mention of (at least the potential for) miners cooperating to reduce the difficulty for BCH after the fork. If I'm understanding this right (unlikely!), the relative hashpower is a pretty bad metric for comparison unless difficulty is also factored in? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14901033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14901033 -- I personally use the open source NiceHash client to earn what currently works out to $.06/day with a single older desktop GPU (thanks "free" internet + electricity!) because I don't want to be bothered with micro-managing to point the infinitesimally small fraction of mining power I experiment with in the optimal direction.

pmorici 9y ago
The difficulty re-targets once every 2016 blocks. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has a added feature that re-targets the difficulty downward if blocks are being found too slowly. Bitcoin's Legacy chain doesn't do this so if enough hash power leaves the legacy chain in a short period of time it causes slow block times and people hope that if it gets bad enough there will be an inflection point where people abandon the legacy chain for Cash. The likely hood of that happening is anyone's guess. [0] https://medium.com/@jimmysong/bitcoin-cash-difficulty-adjustments-2ec589099a8e https://medium.com/@jimmysong/bitcoin-cash-difficulty-adjust...
- tradersam 9y ago
  That downward adjustment is total bs, and can enable (like is happening currently) a scenario where miners lower their hashpower for ~12 hours, the difficulty drops, and they all pile back on and get ~2 minute blocks for 2016 blocks and earn a shit ton of money.
- j_s 9y ago
  So the delay between BCH's new rapid/emergency 'difficulty downward' and its re-targeting back upward using the standard method is the window of opportunity/market inefficiency/whatever you want to call it? This was linked elsewhere in this discussion: http://fork.lol/pow/retarget http://fork.lol/pow/retarget

by j_s 9y ago

pmorici 9y ago

The difficulty re-targets once every 2016 blocks. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has a added feature that re-targets the difficulty downward if blocks are being found too slowly. Bitcoin's Legacy chain doesn't do this so if enough hash power leaves the legacy chain in a short period of time it causes slow block times and people hope that if it gets bad enough there will be an inflection point where people abandon the legacy chain for Cash. The likely hood of that happening is anyone's guess. [0] https://medium.com/@jimmysong/bitcoin-cash-difficulty-adjustments-2ec589099a8e https://medium.com/@jimmysong/bitcoin-cash-difficulty-adjust...

tradersam 9y ago
That downward adjustment is total bs, and can enable (like is happening currently) a scenario where miners lower their hashpower for ~12 hours, the difficulty drops, and they all pile back on and get ~2 minute blocks for 2016 blocks and earn a shit ton of money.
j_s 9y ago
So the delay between BCH's new rapid/emergency 'difficulty downward' and its re-targeting back upward using the standard method is the window of opportunity/market inefficiency/whatever you want to call it? This was linked elsewhere in this discussion: http://fork.lol/pow/retarget http://fork.lol/pow/retarget