Quote from: novello on January 15, 2014, 11:06:29 PM

Quote from: Maddin on January 15, 2014, 05:32:31 PM

I did also a forecast, but only based on history:

Development of difficulty since 15.09.13
Dates   days to solve 2016   difficulty    increased in %
15.09.13- 26.09.13   11   112628549   --
26.09.13-7.10.13   11   148819200   32,13
7.10.13-17.10.13   10   189281249   27,19
17.10.13-26.10.13   9   267731249   41,48
26.10.13-06.11.13   11   390928788   46,02
6.11.13-18.11.13   12   510929738   30,07
18.11.13-30.11.13   12   609482680   19,29
30.11.13-11.12.13   11   707408283   16,07
11.12.13-22.12.13   11   908350862   28,41
22.13.13-03.01.14   12   1180923195   30,01
03.01.14-14.01.14   11   1418481395   20,12
14.01.14- ??       1789546951 26,15

= average time to solve 2016 Blocks: 121/11 = 11
= average difficulty increase: 316,94 / 11 = 28,81 %

Forecast
dates    days for solving 2016   difficulty    increased in %
14.01.14-25.01.14    11   1789546951   26,15
25.01.14-05.02.14    11   2305115427   28,81
    11   2969219182   28,81
    11   3824651228   28,81
    11   4926533247   28,81
    11   6345867476   28,81
    11   8174111896   28,81
    11   10529073533   28,81
    11   13562499618   28,81
        11   17469855758   28,81
    11   22502921202   28,81
    11   28986012801   28,81
    11   37336883088   28,81
17.06.14-28.06.14 11   48093639106   28,81

I was to lazy to put in all the dates :-D

We've spent a lot of time on a Behavioral Model to try to make some sense of what's going on. It pretty soon became clear that there is tipping point where miners will stop buying new kit, because they simply will never make a profit. The difficulty can't keep going up exponentially as a result (unless the Bitcoin value follows the same trend).Our prediction shows difficulty in mid-June at around 18,000,000,000, 25,000,000,000 by end 2014. At that time a TH will earn about $400 a month and eat a good portion of that in electricity costs. As a result, it's worth less than $1.3 per Gigahash/sec.

Due to the preorder cycle, it will take 3-4 months for the feedback of difficulty to impact buying behavior. So difficulty continues ramping up way beyond your expectation, and prices in the secondary markers collapse. The overshoot might be moderated by a major supplier going bankrupt and not delivering but otherwise expect your year end prediction to be reached in July.