I'm surprised to see this misunderstanding persist today, though it was one I frequently saw in 2010/2011.
Bitcoin's mining difficulty automatically adapts both up and down to keep blocks at roughly 10 minutes, whatever the offered resources are. It doesn't monotonically become more difficult.
Of course, I never meant that it couldn't get easier. It just won't for as long as there's demand for it. As long as there's money to be made in mining, resources will be thrown at it. As more resources are thrown at it, it gets less efficient. As resources improve, it becomes less efficient. The only thing that would allow it to get more efficient is if nobody cares anymore, as happened across the lions share of 2018.
Nothing about this graph suggests we should expect anything else [1]. The perceived misconception seems more like a technicality :)
Comments
I'm surprised to see this misunderstanding persist today, though it was one I frequently saw in 2010/2011.
Bitcoin's mining difficulty automatically adapts both up and down to keep blocks at roughly 10 minutes, whatever the offered resources are. It doesn't monotonically become more difficult.
Of course, I never meant that it couldn't get easier. It just won't for as long as there's demand for it. As long as there's money to be made in mining, resources will be thrown at it. As more resources are thrown at it, it gets less efficient. As resources improve, it becomes less efficient. The only thing that would allow it to get more efficient is if nobody cares anymore, as happened across the lions share of 2018.
Nothing about this graph suggests we should expect anything else [1]. The perceived misconception seems more like a technicality :)
[1] https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/difficulty?timespan=all