Bitcoin Forum

Eventually someone will bring up this topic, so why not just start here...

If AsicMiner will add 800-1000TH to mining, then the individual's small machines will be useless. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=247168.msg2622243#msg2622243

When this happens, will anyone think it is justifiable to block mining power from China? Will this cause too much collateral damage since there are so many individual miners in China as well?

If it is justifiable, then how to do it technically or what is the process to seek consensus?

Why would anyone block miners from China, are you crazy?

Nobody should block AsicMiner itself, let alone whole country.

If Gavin Andresen modifies the code to make it impossible for Asics, that would stop the excessive growth of difficulty. Until he does that, people will have a hard time taking Bitcoin seriously.

Hmm... IMO that should read IF he did that then people would have a hard time taking Bitcoin seriously.

If the core dev at a whim decided to just "change the rules" and turn millions of dollars of hardware investment into electronic trash then Bitcoin would indeed be considered a bad joke.

This is the strangest thread I have read so far in bitcointalk.

This

I can't stand asics and specially most of it's manufacturers but someone would probably pay for Gavin's execution if he'd do it :)

Anyway GPU Mining is DEAD, with actual diff and price of 91 USD it's not profitable to GPU mining anymore

The stuff I read on here sometimes.  You do realize that the higher the network hash rate is, the more stable bitcoin is?  One of the largest risks to any blockchain-based cryptocurrency is the danger of a 51% attack.  The higher the overall network hash rate is, the less likely it is for a 51% attack to succeed.  So no, invalidating asics won't make people "take bitcoin seriously."

In order for Bitcoin to increase in value, the general public will have to take it seriously. When they find out what's happening to mining, they will stay away. Million dollars of hardware can easily turn into electronic trash if bitcoin drops back down to $30.

There are some real idiots on this board, and do I catch a whiff of Chinese-directed racism in the air?

Let's ban all American miners instead. Oh sorry I forget, it wouldn't be worth the effort.

Psst... start working together with others and pool your resources. COOPERATIVES. Why fear Asicminer... any group of miners could "corner" a fair chunk of the market in the coming months. Blocking "China" won't help given that Asicminer is diversifying their mining to other locations. Don't kid yourself if you haven't spread out globally you can be shut down easily. I doubt that blocking anyone is what we want or need to spread BTC worldwide.

They might stay away from mining.  I don't see a reason why they would stay away from bitcoin as a virtual currency to buy coffee or computers.

You have no idea what is happening to mining, you are as clueless as the general public. ASICMINER will never get near 51%, they have stated that. Why do anything to risk trust in the network they are profiting from every week? Idiot thinking, plain and simple

Ok then stop mining.  Simple solution.  Bitcoin needs miners to protect the network.  It doesn't necessarily need you (or me, or any individual miner) to mine with your specific inferior hardware.

Mining isn't a "free money for nothing" game.  It has a purpose.  That sole purpose is to protect the network.  Higher difficulty means more protection for the network.  Coins only have value because people believe the transactions are irreversible.  Lower difficulty enough so that someone can easily attack the network and it doesn't matter how many coins you have because they will be worthless (x BTC * 0 = 0).

If that's the case, Bitcoin will continue to be marginalized.

Bitcoin is decentralized, you are not going to block a thing try as you may.


Why would you want to?  It's the most foolish piece of selfish nonsense I have read all day.

Yeah! thats why is illogic "Ban" chinese people.

You can't forbid anyone to mine because of the nature of bitcoin. you can or cannot mine for profit, but that people who does (like ASICMINER) shouldn't be ban to mine.

Maybe I, or you, don't have powerful hardware. That's why we search other investments. In ASIC ways or Shares of some type.

Anyone can use bitcoins and you can't exclude anyone.

Agree. Stupid is a more appropriate word however.

Ya'll got trolled.

...or this forum is diving into new depths of idiocy.

As the diffculty increases, less individuals get involved in Bitcoin mining and it turns into a corporate venture. In theory this should protect the network, but it turns Bitcoin into a centralized operation. When these groups amass a significant amount of Bitcoin, they can control the exchange side of things. In the end, we get the same problems we are having with fiat currency.

For $7.80 you can buy a chip with about 800 MH/s capability.  Are you unable to get involved at this level?

Then no cryptocurrency will ever be successful.  The idea that 100% of users will be miners is a dubious pipe dream.  Did 100% of gold owners miner their own gold from their own mine, using their own mining equipment.  The number of miners in nominal terms may increase but the miners as a % of user base will continue to decline.  There is never going to be a cryptocurrency with 20,000,000 miners for example.  It just isn't going to happen.  Time, resources, skill, risk appetite, and finite reward will constrain the number of miners.

If cryptocurrencies can't grow beyond a base of miners well then the whole experiment (not just Bitcoin but all derivatives as well) never had a chance of success anymore than if the only people using Personal Computers were people with the equipment and skill to build one by hand.

Fewer individuals will start or continue to mine... that is why you would be better off pooling resources into collectives. Why do you want CONTROLS put in place?

Ways to fight against corporate control.

NO LAWS, CENTRAL BODIES OR RULES that will eventually be manipulated by the same companies you want to control.
OPEN SOURCE HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE.
COLLECTIVES sharing vast resources of 1000s of people.

And for an additional $200 you can get a populated board to put that chip on. :)

And you'll be making $2/day in the short term and never makes your investment back.

I remember when CPU miners were whining that GPUs meant the end of bitcoin due to the "home user" being shut out of mining.  

Remember one thing.  Miners work for those who buy the bitcoins.   The least efficient workers (i.e., power-hungy GPU miners) are being displaced with more efficient workers (ASICs).

This was telegraphed well in advance, and getting to this point actually took much longer than many of us expected.  But progress from here (i.e, difficulty continues shooting up) is right on cue:

https://i.imgur.com/Odu4CSO.png

If you are still GPU mining on bitcoin, please do not be deluded into thinking this is something that will blow over.  If you haven't done so already, prepare to shut down your GPU rigs -- and the sooner the better.

As far as blocking mined blocks based on geographic area, Bitcoin was architected to protect against this type of corruption.  Miners relay their mined blocks to their peers, so every peer would need to reject an IP range.   That would never happen.

It's an evolutionary process. Bitcoin will die and a better cryptocurrency will be created.

OK, now it's apparent this was just trolling.

After reading this thread, I wish Bitcoin would ban blue people.

bitcoin miners are basically dead.
there is no way for any individual to profit from it aside from spending, at this moment, tens and thousands of dollars to merely compete.
this is a phase of adjustment and we'll see how this goes, but the only refuge at the moment is litecoin.

For $75 I can produce a 1st board of a design run that will use that chip.  Later boards should drop to about $20.

I feel trolled after reading this... I really do :D

Anyway, this thread has been likely created by someone whos GPU mining operation is getting less profitable by the hour.

Those guys should switch to the next most promising Altcoin, check out this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=224383.0

Hold on cowboy,

let's get an open-source, crowd sourced, asic developed instead, and convince intel or glofo to manufacture it for us. I donot see any other means to stop the AM tsunami.

This is 100% correct.

There is no difference between central banks and massive centralised "corporate" mining operations. (Technically there is a difference - but to the man on the street their is none) ASICS's have driven DOWN the price of Bitcoins.

Looking at ASICMiners charts it looked as though they used to use mining pools to spread some of the hashing power - now they mine solo.

http://www.asicminercharts.com/

Their infrastructure is an absolute joke - no resilience - no redundancy - Look at the massive swings in their network hashing power - What are their disaster recovery plans - I would hazzard a guess and say none. The chances of them having another data centre mirroring their primary with the equivalent number of ASICS is zero - because they would just mine with those as well. All they care about is filling their pockets as quickly as possible.

If they go offline because of a Data Centre fire then what?

Zero commitment to ensuring the stability of bitcoin - recently there have been massive variations in transaction times due to ASICminer.

They have gone completely against the ethos of Bitcoin.

If hardware can not be bought off the shelf for next day delivery then it just makes the entire mining game and ELITIST business just like the banks.

AVALON mining with customers fully paid hardware driving up the difficulty then making all kinds of bullshit excuses just so they can fully "rape" their customers equipment.

BFL don't even start me on those comedians - honestly I have never seen such a level of incompetence in my entire life - literally stringing their customers along with the 2 week story.

If asics had been rolled out in a fair and even manner then it would be slightly different. But the case is this I would estimate that 70% - 80% of the network hashing power is asics - considering fewer than 10% of miners actually have them does not make for a level playing field, causes resentment and hence the rise of the ALT scrypt coins.

If someone is late to the mining game, it doesn't mean the concept of a digital currency is a lost cause, it just means that they lost their chance to be among the early adopters who got the highest return on their investment. Bitcoin is an idea, and a new medium of exchange bypassing the negative ROI that is fiat currency. Losing interest in bitcoin because the ability to mine for yourself is becoming less profitable, is like saying that people wouldn't use or invest in gold because they lost their chance to start a gold mining company.
Not to mention the fact that if it does increase in popularity and make its own niche into mainstream usage, then some of the predictions of increase in value (that are fairly well researched and thought out such as this for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7LQu-eIOO0) it would still give people who are buying and using them now, quite a good ROI in the long run, even if the true value 5 years from now falls well short of some of these predictions...

Don't worry, BFL will catch up later with 2PH, so far they just warmed up

Any source? or is it just a conjecture?

I think he was joking. BFL couldn't catch a cold.

Unless "later" means delivered around 2140, just in time to mine the last satoshi.

This is an example of the BFL 2 week delay that keeps adding up until it reaches 18 months past the time the last satoshi is mined.

And if hardware could be bought off the shelf for next day delivery, then most people would not bother to mine because they would only be earning pennies on top of ROI.

Don't worry though, the day will come when ASICs become a readily available commodity. Once that happens people will be spending their resources searching for other things, such as cheap 0.02 cent/Kwh electricity.

That argument is so flawed - so no one was mining bitcoins until ASICS became available? So what were people mining with back in 2008? I think you will find a great deal more people were mining Bitcoins with off the shelf hardware than they were with ASICS for the past 5 years.

When ASICs become readily available you will have to spend $100,000 on hardware just to have any kind of decent profit. I don't know many people accept for large businesses that will throw $100,000 at hardware so kind of putting it in the elitist territory.

This guy nailed it...

I am willing to bet that are more people mining with ASICs today (including USB block eruptors) than there were CPU miners in late 2010.

That wasn't my point though. Mining will always be competitive and the so-called "elitists" will always control the hashrate. For example, in early 2011 when GPU mining was very profitable picking up ATI 5870's and 5970's were is short supply. People like Vladimir who had direct access to a hardware distributor cornered all the available high end GPUs and built his giant GPU farm. Other people like myself were left with low-end 5830's. (I still manged to mine over 1000 BTC with 8 5830's in the spring of 2011).

Dude you have completely contradicted yourself - first you say no one would mine with off the shelf hardware and then go on to say that GPU's were very profitable in 2011. Which one is it - people do or do not mine with off the shelf hardware?

The difference between a 5830 and a 5970 is not 100X like the jump from GPU's to ASICs.

And furthermore what ASICs? There have been 3 batches of AVALON units with all of batch 2 not even been delivered yet - let alone batch 3 - Very few USB Erupters because at the price ASICminer were charging they would never pay for themselves and most people could do the maths on that one.

AVALON have been selling chips with only the developer samples actually delivered. BFL have delivered at best maybe 1000 5ghs and a few 500ghs units. Who else is there?

So in essence very few people have them yet they are now cornering the market - which again is totally against the ethos of bitcoins.

Lol, yea, let's DDOS China. They have it coming.

I think they mined with their right hands, and they didn't produce bitcoins.

Another stupid thread....
Go learn about tunneling and VPN before you make any more stupid suggestions....

Well...they keep DDOSing our datacenters so maybe we should.  :P