Bitcoin Forum

As the mining difficulty increases, it becomes harder and harder for individuals to mine, making Bitcoin mining farms the only profitable way to mine. As the mining difficulty increases even more, only mega Bitcoin mining farms can be profitable. This design of the Bitcoin network makes centralization inevitable.

I think it would be fair if everyone hashed on CPUs and GPUs instead of ASICs. Bitcoin should have been ASIC resistant, or the network should have a cap on the maximum number of Bitcoins an induvidual miner can mine or something. What do you guys think?

Mining difficulty increases make it harder for everyone big or small. Profit per TH is governed by the price you pay for the hardware, it's management & maintenance cost and the single most important factor Electricity price.

The only edge that a Farm has is their purchasing Power, earlier and sometimes exclusive access to the latest hardware and of course Electricity prices. An individual with low priced electricity will be able to mine profitably for as long as the largest farms.

Yes many individual miners have pulled out, many more will after the halving, but they will not make as big a crash as when some of the Farms go under. Individual Miners are a resilient and resourceful group and will play a part for a long time to come.

As to fairness I am afraid that this is all about money if Bitcoin was ASIC resistant something else would have been produced...

Rich

Yes it is, however it can take years maybe even decades.. With 1 GH why not, but 1 MH.. you are really wasting energy at that point..

There's no such thing as asic resistant.

don't forgot that every zone in the world have a max electrcity output, so they can't simply add more mienrs forever on the same place, not matter how free space they have

this will cut centralization, unless the same guy control more bitcoin farm around the world, but i don't believe there is a single entity so rich at the moment

Once the rewards drop and the halving occurs who's to say that these huge minng operations will even stick around.  They could move onto another coin, unless the bitcoin price shoots up in price they will need to re-evaluate, so the small miner may have more chance of hittng a block.

Bitcoins are designed to become decentralised and this is the way it's going to stay. If there is a flaw in the system I'm sure the devs will fix it soon enough.

Some will argue that Bitcoin is already too decentralized with the mining pools. Others will argue that the users of these pools still have saying as they can switch pools in a matter of minutes if they want to.

I think that Bitcoin is going exactly towards what Satoshi has imagined. Even he has said that one day Bitcoin will be mined by the big data centers and this is slowly happening!

Litecoin is ASIC resistant, you can only use GPUs, CPUs and similar hardware. You cannot use Application specific chips to mine Litecoin. You can look that up for yourself.

There are scrypt asics for well over a year now. Please do some research. :)

It would be nice if there was something to reward the little guy out there, sadly there isn't.  Technically, you can mine and still have the same opportunity to solve a block as a huge megafarm in china, but just with very low probability.  It's highly unlikely any of the core developers will introduce a BIP to change the reward system.  Right now there's no practical fairness in bitcoin mining today, just the fairness of math.

Maybe sometime in the future, Bitcoin would become ASIC resistant thus rendering it minable by only a CPU or GPU. If Bitcoin would fix this issue (not to mention the block size debate) then it would be a much more decentralized and successful crypto. Even still, it is successful despite these facts and Bitcoin itself is just starting. A few more years and it will improve in both development and adoption. Just my opinion.  ::)

There seems to be a naive view among some posters that mining should be profitable for someone mining in their spare room or on their PC.  This was never the intention of the bitcoin developers.

From Satoshi on
 Development & Technical Discussion > Post reply ( Re: Scalability and transaction rate )


People need to remember Bitcoin was created to provide a way of moving electronic cash without needing to go through a trusted third party, for example a bank.  Mining is not the reason cryptocurrencies exist.

Mining is simply part of making cryptocurrencies possible.  Mining is mainly done in large mining farms using specialist hardware not available to the general public.  Just be thankful that there is still one miner manufacturer (Bitmain) selling an admittedly marginal miner to the general pubic.  

Without mining being profitable, bitcoin wouldn't have advanced to what is now in the first place. If it won't be profitable for the long term after the halving, more likely, it'll be the start of bitcoin's downfall.

Maybe forking the wallet to stake transactions fees in the future will be healthier to earth from this damn mining, nothing is worth ruining the atmosphere even if it was peer to peer currency or the blockchain, that wont exist when we lose earth years later, it should have been POS since the beginning, salut to whoever created POS.

Bitcoin will become environmentally friendly soon, because mega-miners will start using solar panels to mine more efficiently. LOL

It should be more friendly to usual guys to mine bitcoins, like that was with cpus and gpus back in a days, is it possible to change this asic race ?

There's no such thing as asic resistant.


Are you a troll ?

Maybe we should initiate some kind of vouting about making bitcoin asic proof here in bitcointalk to draw attention to this oppinion of most bitcointalk users, bitcoin community? Maybe some of the devs would start to think about that. I liked those good old days when everyone could mine some coins in home just with a cpu or gpu, easily ordered some more hardware, not beeing afraid of scamy companies. That is additional problem that has been huge lately when the asics came out. If you buy new gpu or cpu , you are close to 0% to get scammed, if you are buying them new, and you have a warranty. That would really help decentralise bitcoin. And another good thing would be that everyone that is mining altcoins would be able to mine btc again, more decentralised power for BTC, less hype about other coins that usually dies and are just pump and dump. Another thing could be that there is some place to register your miners, so that it is possible to put some limitiations for one user hashpower, offcorse it is possible to avoid it a little bit, by attracting friends and family members, but it should help decentralise it more. What do you guys think about making better our good old BTC, but not making 1001 altcoins everyday ?

You are in a dream World, there is no going back. As has already been said no algorithm is safe against the correct design of an ASIC solution. Also to be successful into the future we need large scale farms to handle the vast number of transactions that will be produced.

Rich

Algorithm can be changed to avoid new asic development, when for example bitcoin algorithm would be changed to current asic proof, if someone crazy company would start to develop new asic suitable for new algorithm, it would take a while when they succed, after that, algorithm can be changed to avoid that nwe asic too, and thats about it, i would like to see which crazy company would invest in researching technology that would not be needed soon after it is developed. There would be plenty of miners for supporting transactions, you can be sure about that, there just need to be correct information about that for potential miners. I am not in a dream world, unless bitcoin developers are close to large companies that gain profits from asic development, that this all idea is not real. It should not be like that is now, everyone is supporting greedy companies, that is making money by producing miners for dummies, that will most probably get back their money.

Bitcoin should be decentralized and those who support transactions should be rewarded.

In a way you are saying that we would need no "professional" mining companies, aren't you? Can you say a bit more? I would also like to have a time again in which we could all participate into the mining process: not for profit purposes, but to be again a part of the development.

So you are proposing that the algorithm be changed to render all the existing hardware inoperative, then if a new ASIC is developed that process is repeated. Just so that you can go back to mining with your CPU?

Sounds like a great way of killing Bitcoin stone dead....


Rich

Think a little bit out of your box. it would not kill btc, it will decentralize it and make all again the part of the developing bitcoin. It can be done smart.

It would be impossible to get consensus when so much of the existing hash is being done by these hardware companies. It's logical that they built farms with significant enough hash power to prevent this sort of disruption from happening and to protect their hardware business. I'm curious how you would deal with that.

EDIT: Oops I managed to post in a thread whose primary purpose is for people to get their quotas for their advertising campaigns. The ignore button is getting hot.

Yes, Bitcoin mining is centralizing and will continue to do so until it gets to a point where it is breakeven for the most part or very small margins.

I think that Bitcoin mining is centralized due to the fact that mining farms have most control of the network's hashrate and thus, rendering an average Joe impossible to mine them using their own ASICs or PC. Just my opinion.  :)

1 - The is no asic resistant algorithm.
2 - Changing the algorithm of Bitcoin is impossible (without killing it).


No one like them but without them Bitcoin doesn't exist. Your bitcoins are worth zero on a different fork.

You can do it right now yourself : clone the Bitcoin code, change the algo, that's it.
Now you are on the temporary asic resistant chain but no one will ever give you a cent for your bitcoins.

True the mining centralization is a security hazard, luckily the network also counts on numours bitcoin nodes and they are 'quite' well spread. So there is hope.

However we need to see some diversification towards the mining farms. 2 parties eating up 50% is never good.. In finace we call this a oligopoly and no governement likes it.

Because it gives both party too much power to influence the price of their product.

no please not this shit again, algo cannot be changed at this point, because all miners need to change their asic, which will kill bitcoin completely

you see vertocoin, when they changed their algo the whole coin died and that was much less painful than something like a "400 peta of algo to be changed"

And really if a coin is profitable... move will be moved find a way to mine it.  Think about all the CPU coins there was at one time, now almost all can be done by GPU.  There is not even a CPU coin worth mining. 

Think of scrypt.... it was big money and what happened? Investments came in and they made a scrypt asic.  So it is not surprising if there is technology that comes out such as asics if a certain algo is worth it.  But the sad truth is besides BTC and LTC the rest don't really tend to be as stable, and I was someone that loved Dodge but it lost a lot it's popularity.  There is a lot of pump/dump now.

The difference with VTC was that Vertcoin was already on a demise and they hoped this would bring new life in their coin, they failed badly however.

I don't understand why folks think that for Bitcoin to succeed that there must be 1 million or more miners. If folks are worried about the dreaded 51% attack, then won't 100 equally sixed mining pools cover that? If it's going to be some kind of useful payment scheme, then it's going to need to have low transaction costs, or it will be a failure compared to existing systems. Some degree of centralization will almost be a requirement in order keep economies of scale up.

Yes, it was cool when folks could all mine Bitcoins on GPU's. That was an interesting starting, point, but it's not the long term (i.e. more than 10 years out) future of BTC, nor it's final destination.

Millions of miners are not needed, but people are rightfully worried about thetop 3/4 mining pools. Instead of new competition they are getting bigger (bigger distance with th no 3, etc.).
Like CEX.io a year ago had. Now people are worried too.

Answer: Yes

It's good however because not 1 pool/party can do a 51% attacked. Compared to 2 years ago, there are more miners and also more bigger pools.

It is getting more centralized and yes i agree it is not a bad thing actually. As long there is enoug competition between large pools/ miner centra. the safety of the network against 51% attacks is guaranteed.

The other side of the coin is a bigger network more power to compute transactions.  The network today is centralized to a point being major company's house the majority of the network power.  Cexio at a point had 50% of the network but they have downsized to prevent a overtake and endangering the coin.  So we will continue this trend and the big company's will continue to be the majority of the backbone.  Its more of a unavoidable future that will happen once something becomes mainstream.

When someone makes a product it might start in his garage and then some small producers but eventually to reduce costs and be efficient your product will be produced in China for less money on a mega scale.