Quote from: TheMoneyStorm on June 15, 2011, 10:33:44 PM

They'll level out over the next 24-36 hrs, Relax people

I would prefere to believe your soothing words.
But I am sorry to tell you you are wrong.

Look at blockexplorer.
12+ block per hour (for instance block 131117 to 131128 were all found between 2011-06-15 21:00:00 and 22:00:00).
And all these blocks were generated at difficulty 876954

There really is at least twice as much hashing power now than before the difficulty increase, and the network is minting twice as many bitcoins an hours as expected.

Whoever jumped in doesn't mind being noticed.
At any rate, that's a very strange strategy.
Whether you want to take over the block chain to control the currency, or make tons of money by forerunning everybody, you'd better get in progressively if you don't want to frighten everyone and end up with full control over a left over currency.

The only reasons I can see are :
- this new joiner wants to ruin bitcoin, so the fact of being noticed and make people panic is part of the plan.
- this is an agressive IPO from a government or a financial institution who wants to be able to claim ownership of bitcoin at a later stage (hence must have some evidence that it is indeed controlling half of the computationnal power).
- the guy is greedy to the point where he doesn't care being noticed so long as he makes more money.