user5751: Is it correct to say that, since the difficulty will keep the block generation rate at 6 per hour on average, that with one-sixth of the network computing power, I will get one block per hour, on average?
Put differently, can I express my expected average block discovery rate to always be 6 per hour multiplied by the fraction of total computing power I own?
I'm asking this because I keep getting confused by the profitability calculations that rest on the difficulty, which is a totally opaque value for me, even though I know in theory what it means. I would like to employ some measure that I can use more intuitively.

user85: This is approximately correct. You will actually get a bit more than one block per hour because so long as hashing power is increasing, the difficulty will lag behind the actual computing power.

5751: <p>Is it correct to say that, since the difficulty will keep the block generation rate at 6 per hour on average, that with one-sixth of the network computing power, I will get one block per hour, on average?</p>

<p>Put differently, can I express my expected average block discovery rate to always be 6 per hour multiplied by the fraction of total computing power I own?</p>

<p>I'm asking this because I keep getting confused by the profitability calculations that rest on the difficulty, which is a totally opaque value for me, even though I know in theory what it means. I would like to employ some measure that I can use more intuitively.</p>
 85: <p>This is approximately correct. You will actually get a bit more than one block per hour because so long as hashing power is increasing, the difficulty will lag behind the actual computing power.</p>
