Difficulty

What is "difficulty"?

Difficulty is a measure of how difficult it is to find a hash below a given target.

The Bitcoin network has a global block difficulty. Valid blocks must have a hash below this target. Mining pools also have a pool-specific share difficulty setting a lower limit for shares.

How often does the network difficulty change?

What is the formula for difficulty?

difficulty = difficulty_1_target / current_target

(target is a 256 bit number)

difficulty_1_target can be different for various ways to measure difficulty. Traditionally, it represents a hash where the leading 32 bits are zero and the rest are one (this is known as "pool difficulty" or "pdiff"). The Bitcoin protocol represents targets as a custom floating point type with limited precision; as a result, Bitcoin clients often approximate difficulty based on this (this is known as "bdiff").

How is difficulty stored in blocks?

Each block stores a packed representation (called "Bits") for its actual hexadecimal target. The target can be derived from it via a predefined formula. For example, if the packed target in the block is 0x1b0404cb, the hexadecimal target is

Note that the 0x0404cb value is a signed value in this format. The largest legal value for this field is 0x7fffff. To make a larger value you must shift it down one full byte. Also 0x008000 is the smallest positive valid value.

How is difficulty calculated? What is the difference between bdiff and pdiff?

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

It should be noted that pooled mining often uses non-truncated targets, which puts "pool difficulty 1" at

So the difficulty at 0x1b0404cb is therefore:

Here's a fast way to calculate bitcoin difficulty. It uses a modified Taylor series for the logarithm (you can see tutorials on flipcode and wikipedia) and relies on logs to transform the difficulty calculation:

To see the math to go from the normal difficulty calculations (which require large big ints bigger than the space in any normal integer) to the calculation above, here's some python:

What is the current difficulty?

Current difficulty, as output by Bitcoin's getDifficulty.

What is the maximum difficulty?

There is no minimum target. The maximum difficulty is roughly: maximum_target / 1 (since 0 would result in infinity), which is a ridiculously huge number (about 2^224).

The actual maximum difficulty is when current_target=0, but we would not be able to calculate the difficulty if that happened. (fortunately it never will, so we're ok.)

Can the network difficulty go down?

Yes it can. See discussion in target.

What is the minimum difficulty?

The minimum difficulty, when the target is at the maximum allowed value, is 1.

What network hash rate results in a given difficulty?

The difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks based on the time it took to find the previous 2016 blocks. At the desired rate of one block each 10 minutes, 2016 blocks would take exactly two weeks to find. If the previous 2016 blocks took more than two weeks to find, the difficulty is reduced. If they took less than two weeks, the difficulty is increased. The change in difficulty is in proportion to the amount of time over or under two weeks the previous 2016 blocks took to find.

To find a block, the hash must be less than the target. The hash is effectively a random number between 0 and 2**256-1. The offset for difficulty 1 is

and for difficulty D is

The expected number of hashes we need to calculate to find a block with difficulty D is therefore

The difficulty is set such that the previous 2016 blocks would have been found at the rate of one every 10 minutes, so we were calculating (D * 2**48 / 0xffff) hashes in 600 seconds. That means the hash rate of the network was

over the previous 2016 blocks. Can be further simplified to

without much loss of accuracy.

At difficulty 1, that is around 7 Mhashes per second.

At the time of writing, the difficulty is 22012.4941572, which means that over the previous set of 2016 blocks found the average network hash rate was

How soon might I expect to generate a block?

The average time to find a block can be approximated by calculating:

where difficulty is the current difficulty, hashrate is the number of hashes your miner calculates per second, and time is the average in seconds between the blocks you find.

For example, using Python we calculate the average time to generate a block using a 1Ghash/s mining rig when the difficulty is 20000:

and find that it takes just under 24 hours on average.

Bitcoin Exchange Rate Chart and Difficulty Prediction Chart

Last updated on January 2nd, 2018 at 12:00 am

The bitcoin exchange rate chart and bitcoin difficulty prediction chart. Difficulty plays a huge role in the bitcoin market. It determines exactly how hard it is for new coinage to enter the market. When new coinage appears it only appears in small quantities. Having a prediction chart can help you determine when the market is going to receive new coinage and ready to purchase it. The exchange rate chart data along with the prediction data can help you determine what the value of the bitcoins will be when they are released often based on the difficulty rating for solving the equations that will release that block.

Whenever you are dealing with currency, no matter what form it might take, it is important that you have a clear analytically understanding of what happens. You should be mentally geared up beforehand if you are working as a trader or interested in assisting, in this case, to generate bit coinage for the market. The bitcoin exchange rate chart and bitcoin difficulty perdition chart listed here can help you to understand what is going on within the market and help you to track past data in order to help predict future movement of the market. All of this is an important part of getting involved in digital currency.

Bitcoin Exchange Rate Chart & Bitcoin Difficulty Prediction Chart

NOTE: These are live charts!

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Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

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Bitcoin Profitability Calculator – BTC Mining Profit Calculator

Enter your set up information in the form below. Do not enter commas, only dots for decimal separator.

Nothing guaranteed, of course this is only a rough estimate!
Do not enter commas, only dots for decimal separator. You can also calculate rented mining by setting “Power consumption” to 0 and “Cost of mining hardware” to the rent per time frame. Default values are for a system of four 6870s.

Estimate Strategy

Extrapolating bitcoin difficulty or price is pure voodoo. It is much easier to predict the relationship of the two parameters in form of the Mining Factor. The Mining Factor 100 is the value in USD of the bitcoins you can generate if you let a 100MHash/s miner run for 24 hours. If the Mining Factor 100 rises above $2 or so everybody buys mining equipment and thus increases difficulty. If it falls people will stop mining eventually. The estimate starts with the current Mining Factor and decreases it exponentially such that the decrease accounts for the factor decline per year. Please note that a profit/loss by holding the coins is not accounted for in this estimate.

What is Bitcoin Mining Difficulty

What is Bitcoin Mining Difficulty?

The Computationally-Difficult Problem

Bitcoin mining a block is difficult because the SHA-256 hash of a block's header must be lower than or equal to the target in order for the block to be accepted by the network.

This problem can be simplified for explanation purposes: The hash of a block must start with a certain number of zeros. The probability of calculating a hash that starts with many zeros is very low, therefore many attempts must be made. In order to generate a new hash each round, a nonce is incremented. This is based on the hashcash function.

The Bitcoin Network Difficulty Metric

The Bitcoin network difficulty is the measure of how difficult it is to find a new block compared to the easiest it can ever be. It is recalculated every 2016 blocks to a value such that the previous 2016 blocks would have been generated in exactly two weeks had everyone been mining at this difficulty. This will yield, on average, one block every ten minutes.

As more miners join, the rate of block creation will go up. As the rate of block generation goes up, the difficulty rises to compensate which will push the rate of block creation back down. Any blocks released by malicious miners that do not meet the required difficulty target will simply be rejected by everyone on the network and thus will be worthless.

The Block Reward

When a block is discovered, the discoverer may award themselves a certain number of bitcoins, which is agreed-upon by everyone in the network. Currently this bounty is 25 bitcoins; this value will halve every 210,000 blocks. See Controlled Currency Supply.

Additionally, the miner is awarded the fees paid by users sending transactions. The fee is an incentive for the miner to include the transaction in their block. In the future, as the number of new bitcoins miners are allowed to create in each block dwindles, the fees will make up a much more important percentage of mining income.

Bitcoin Exchange Rate Chart and Difficulty Prediction Chart

Last updated on January 2nd, 2018 at 12:00 am

Bitcoin Exchange Rate Chart & Bitcoin Difficulty Prediction Chart

NOTE: These are live charts!

Major Belarusian Bank Starts Offering Bitcoin CFD as Belarus Gets Less Crypto Friendly

A well-known bank in Belarus will begin offering a bitcoin contract for difference (CFD) product through its platform, a joint project with a Swiss bank. Meanwhile, Belarus is growing less crypto friendly, reportedly amending its decree to impose strict KYC rules.

New Bitcoin CFD Product

Mtbankfx is an accredited FX dealer and the first banking forex platform in Belarus. Launched in July 2016, it is a joint project between Minsk Transit Bank (Mtbank), one of the most well-known banks in Belarus, and Swiss Dukascopy Bank SA.

The platform will start offering a bitcoin CFD product next week, according to local media. It has already added information and updated its terms of service to reflect this new offering.

Mtbankfx explains in its terms of service that its tools, including the BTC/USD tool with 1:3 leverage, are “available for transactions around the clock – from the opening of the market on Sundays at 21:00 GMT in the summer (22:00 GMT in the winter) until the market closes on Fridays at 20:00 GMT in summer/winter time.” For the bitcoin CFD specifically, the company wrote:

All open positions as of 20:00 GMT Fridays will be forcibly closed.

While the platform offers CFDs for many underlying assets, the bitcoin CFD is the only one that will be forcibly closed.

On March 29, Switzerland’s Dukascopy Bank SA launched its own BTC/USD CFD product for European clients. “Bitcoin to US Dollar (BTC/USD) with leverage 1:3 has been added for live trading,” the company stated.

Belarus Becoming Less Crypto Friendly

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko signed the decree “On the development of the digital economy” in January that legalized cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings, and smart contracts. The decree went into effect in March.

However, local media reported this week that amendments to that decree are already being prepared to obligate cryptocurrency exchanges operating within the High-Tech Park (HTP) to disclose their data and identify customers.

Ria Novosti’s source explained that “beneficiaries must meet the requirements for reputation” such as having no criminal record and no bankruptcy proceedings against them, in whole or part. “They should [also] show the availability of funds in accounts of at least $5 million and confirm the sources of their origin.” Additionally, Forklog elaborated:

Operators are required to identify the clients of the exchanges, as well as record and store all types of communications with them. In certain cases, exchange-residents of the HTP will be required to conduct customer verification procedures.

The news outlet added, “information about customers and their transactions should be stored at crypto exchanges for at least five years.”

Do you think Belarus will become even less crypto friendly? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Mtbankfx.

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

Mining Difficulty Increases by over 10% Due to Bitcoin Price Increase and next-Generation Chips

As the bitcoin price has risen out of the $200â€™s over the past month, the price increase has driven another important event: more mining hardware is being brought online.

Miners earn revenue two ways. The first is with the block reward, which is 25BTC approximately every 10 minutes. The other way is with transaction fees. The block reward also acts as the mechanism in which new supply of bitcoin is generated. Because mining tends to reward those that can do the most work, miners deploy increasing amounts of hardware to try to be the first to mine each block. To keep a steady block creation rate, Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto put in place a rule that updates the network difficulty every 2016 blocks, or approximately two weeks.

According to Bitcoin Wisdom, the difficulty increase that took place today rose by 10.44%. The last time the difficulty increased by more than 10 percent was on November 5, 2014, when the difficulty increased by 10.05 percent. Further, Bitcoin Wisdom is predicting that the next bitcoin difficulty increase in 2 weeks will be 10.25%. The last time there were two double digit percentage increases in difficulty was August 19, 2014 and August 31, 2014.

But the increase in difficulty makes sense.

The next generation of bitcoin miners have been released by three of the top companies in the space. In August, Bitmain announced the launch of the Antminer S7, which contains the BM1385 ASIC. Each S7 can generate upwards of 4,850 GH/s while only using 0.25 J/GH of power.

In October, the Chinese mining firm BW announced that it was releasing its next stage bitcoin miner, which would contain a 14nm chip. Virgilio Lizardo Jr., head of international at Bitbank, told Bitcoin Magazine that the first batch of servers released would be 48 petahash total. For context, the current network has a hash rate of 550.5 PH/s.

Finally, the original creator of the ASIC miner, Avalon, announced that it was releasing its latest miner, the Avalon6, which would contain the new A3218 mining chip. Each miner would be able to generate 3.65 TH/s of hashing power. While these new miners have just hit the market, it is additional hardware that should come online over the coming weeks.

The reality is simple: As the price of bitcoin increases, the number of people who can make a profit mining increases. That encourages more participation in securing the network, which results in the need for a difficulty increase. As these next generation of bitcoin miners come online, it is expected that the difficulty will continue to counteract the additional hash rate in the network.

Jacob Donnelly is a freelance journalist and a consultant in the bitcoin/blockchain space. He runs a weekly digital currency and blockchain newsletter called Crypto Brief.

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Repair the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

We can go to www.yahoo.com and search for any topic or website. It's just the Yahoo Search App that won't allow anyone to do web searches at all.

I let Google know that the Yahoo Search App installed from their Google Play Store had completely stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I told them that Yahoo has made sure that their Yahoo members can't contact them about anything.

This is the same thing that happened when Samsung and At&t tried to do any kind of searches thru the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo needs to fix the problem with their app.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

Btc difficulty

How Bitcoin Mining Works

Where do bitcoins come from? With paper money, a government decides when to print and distribute money. Bitcoin doesn't have a central government.

With Bitcoin, miners use special software to solve math problems and are issued a certain number of bitcoins in exchange. This provides a smart way to issue the currency and also creates an incentive for more people to mine.

Bitcoin is Secure

Bitcoin miners help keep the Bitcoin network secure by approving transactions. Mining is an important and integral part of Bitcoin that ensures fairness while keeping the Bitcoin network stable, safe and secure.

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Bitcoin Mining Hardware Comparison

Currently, based on (1) price per hash and (2) electrical efficiency the best Bitcoin miner options are:

AntMiner S7

AntMiner S9

Overview - Table of Contents
Mining Hardware Comparison
What is Bitcoin Mining?
What is the Blockchain?
What is Proof of Work?
What is Bitcoin Mining Difficulty?
The Computationally-Difficult Problem
The Bitcoin Network Difficulty Metric
The Block Reward

Bitcoin mining is the process of adding transaction records to Bitcoin's public ledger of past transactions or blockchain. This ledger of past transactions is called the block chain as it is a chain of blocks. The block chain serves to confirm transactions to the rest of the network as having taken place.

Bitcoin nodes use the block chain to distinguish legitimate Bitcoin transactions from attempts to re-spend coins that have already been spent elsewhere.

What is Bitcoin Mining?

What is the Blockchain?

Bitcoin mining is intentionally designed to be resource-intensive and difficult so that the number of blocks found each day by miners remains steady. Individual blocks must contain a proof of work to be considered valid. This proof of work is verified by other Bitcoin nodes each time they receive a block. Bitcoin uses the hashcash proof-of-work function.

The primary purpose of mining is to allow Bitcoin nodes to reach a secure, tamper-resistant consensus. Mining is also the mechanism used to introduce Bitcoins into the system: Miners are paid any transaction fees as well as a "subsidy" of newly created coins.

This both serves the purpose of disseminating new coins in a decentralized manner as well as motivating people to provide security for the system.

Bitcoin mining is so called because it resembles the mining of other commodities: it requires exertion and it slowly makes new currency available at a rate that resembles the rate at which commodities like gold are mined from the ground.

What is Proof of Work?

A proof of work is a piece of data which was difficult (costly, time-consuming) to produce so as to satisfy certain requirements. It must be trivial to check whether data satisfies said requirements.

Producing a proof of work can be a random process with low probability, so that a lot of trial and error is required on average before a valid proof of work is generated. Bitcoin uses the Hashcash proof of work.