Bitcoin Forum

Why is everyone avoiding this problem? Everyone should be concerned about this.

• Companies are required to apply for a permit to make ASIC
  
  
• The state can withdraw those permits
  
  
• Less than 5 companies make ASIC
  
  
• Those companies can work together to control all Proof of Work ASIC mining

Its our time to explore more decentralized and greener mining alternatives.

• I don't know where you live but anywhere in the world that I can think of, when you want to start a business/company and produce and sell stuff to people you need to apply for some sort of "permit" or "license" to run your business. this has nothing to do with bitcoin mining
  
  
• then if your company starts scamming people, your "permit" can be revoked and you have to answer for your crimes in a court of law. unless of course you live in a lawless country! again this has nothing to do with bitcoin mining
  
  
• number of companies producing hardware doesn't make mining centralized!
• the companies are producing hardware not controlling POW. if they want they can (like anybody else) start a farm, spend money and electricity and pay employees,.... to have hashing power and that is how PoW works, it doesn't give any advantage to the producers compared to others.

and we are all ears for real suggestions not imagination. and we need to see actual proof of the suggestion working not some hype about some altcoin that uses a different method without any tests to prove its superiority.

Asics miners made mining centralised. Some cryptocurrencies adopted asics resistant algorithm but as far as I know they aren't that famous.
The problem for bitcoin is that asics are expensive and for more profits you have to own several ones which require a huge investment which isn't possible for everyone.

there is no such thing as ASIC-resistant.
that term is like a buzzword that some altcoins started back in the days only to advertise themselves as a coin that can always be mined with GPUs. but the fact is they changed the algorithm so that bitcoin ASICs can not be used for them.
in other words the correct term is BTC-ASIC-resistant. but nothing is stopping a company from creating a new ASIC that can mine them.

you have very little knowledge about modern pow algos

Expand a little bit your idea so everyone gets more knowledge.

I am less active than before in the altcoins sections and news but as far as I know all asics are made to mine bitcoin in the first place?

Decentralization is a very vague subject and when you consider the concentration of mining rigs and bitcoin supply in very few hands, it debates the true decentralization of bitcoin.

No algorithm can be completely fool proof and perfect, but POW goes a long we in diversifying control to the entire ecosystem.

computers are centralised

there is only:
intel
AMD

ahhhh kill all computers
(^note sarcasm^)

mining is not centralised because although some reddit/twitter PR campaign screams "china51%".. thats fake news
even 'antpool' which suggest to have 12.8% at time of post. is actually:
half a dozen stratums in half a dozen countries with half a dozen different coin reward addresses

some of these separate entities tagged as "antpool" do different things, such as:
some do empty block mining
some do rewards to bech32(bc1q segwit) addresses and add segwit transactions from mempool
some just handle legacy.

all revealing that "antpool" is diverse in power/decisions/location
things like slushpool is tagged under the "china51%" yet they are managed in thailand and world wide stratum for asics anywhere
F2pool is world wide gateway for asics anywhere
btc.com has stratums and farms in many locations

so.. dont take reddit/twitter screams too seriously unless you background check/find the source stats.
in short
DYOR(do your own research)

ASIC is not even about mining. it is basically an electronic circuit that is designed for a specific use. a bitcoin miner is a type of ASIC which is short for Application-Specific Integrated Circuit. but ASICs have other usages too.

in crypto space so far since bitcoin has been the most solid Proof of Work cryptocurrency that is worth mining the focus of ASICs have bee on mining bitcoin's PoW. but there are other ASICs too. for example the scrypt mining ASIC that is used for mining litecoin (called Antminer L3) and recently Ethereum ASIC miner (Antminer E3)

centralize is not coincident. not everyone can afford expensive ASIC mining rig. to reduce cost of operation, some company provide pool mining.

its natural for the lawful state to issue permits to company. Any company is making profit of any service is require to report their operation, else it would be illegal.

you really need to study the facts and stop believing everything you found on the web, especially such conspiracy theories that presents only fallacies,, no logic.

that is not called centralized at all to be coincidence or not. it is done by choice and under different circumstances so it is not centralization.
centralization of mining would be if someone (the centralized authority) could prevent you from mining bitcoin which is not true so it is decentralized.

Not the actual btc mining is centralised but the business establishment if you have a huge mining farm cost a million dollar of course you have comply the proper paper inorder to operate just like a normal business procedure.

I would be more than happy to hear about the green options that you are talking about. I am not that involved in the crypto industry, but if BTC that was the first is centralised, what more should be looking for? The system of the others, outcomes is alternative of the BTC system, so where should we look for that greener option? What is the green option in crypto industry anyway?

at a recent hashrate of 36exa, thats:
36,000,000 terrahash
36,000,000,000,000 megahash

if we stuck with PC (cpu) mining that would be
trillions of PC's needed. imagine a PC with a 500w Power supply each

but with asics thats only 1.28million ASICS using near-off 3 PC power supplies
so the equivelent of just ~4mill PC's worth of power

4mill vs trillions... which is greener?

i know some foolish people think signing blocks using PoS is greener. but they have no cost/risk in signing. it doesnt cost a penny to sign a block. meaning there is no cost for people to pool up 'stake' and syndicate themselves into controlling block creation which is a SECURITY RISK

by having a cost to mine prevents outsiders from attack and also makes bitcoin have a viable bottomline value because it actually costs funds to mine it. thus those mining it will not sell at a loss and wont sell it down to a penny

altcoins using PoS have no underlying cost of production and the price is pure speculation

Thanks Pursuer and other members for those useful information :)
Some people said press sub board is not useful anymore, i found the opposite so far.

Pure proof-of-stake is obviously problematic because it costs large stakers nothing to attack the network. What do you think about hybrid POW/POS protocols, where traditional mining is used as a check to ensure honest staking? I haven't actually researched it too deeply, but a couple miners have mentioned it to me in a positive light.

I don’t think that Bitcoin mining is very centralized. Even major miners have a large share of the network, but not one miner has a critical advantage. I think it’s natural that small miners find it difficult to compete with major miners. This is called rivalry.

We can agree in Proof of Stake as a bad idea. The greener alternative technology available to us is Proof of Capacity and Proof of Space and Time.

Having that said, electricity isnt the only physical property we have available to secure the digital with the physical. The world has a huge capacity of unused disk space that can be accured to secure a cryptocurrency.

I Agree 100% These are  some of the reasons for believing that bitcoin it is centralized not only the mining per se  :'(

I guess you missed the latest news about GPU manufacturers that are designing specialized Graphic cards that are targeted at Bitcoin/Crypto currency mining.  ::)

Most people only have a problem with this, because China was smart enough to dominate the ASIC manufacturing scene <racist much?> 

If the people in Silicon Valley wanted to be smart, they could have jumped onto the Bitcoin bandwagon a long time ago, but they were more worried about the political implications, than the technological advancement and innovation that Bitcoin brought to the world.  :P

I think btc is the coin which has the most liquidity in the market, that's why companies making bitcoin ASIC miner to mining it.
When some company make btc ASIC miner, the others can buy from them and start mining, not only the ASIC company and that means it is not centralized.
Except they make it and not selling publicly. But even if that occurred, we will know by the sudden abnormal increasing hashrate on mining btc.

That doesnt solve the energy inefficiency problem of Proof of Work. The GPU manufacturers are adding more problems to inefficient energy usage and waste instead of searching for answers.

Having that said, this blog by nixops, who's an early BTC adopter, is a good piece. He has also talked about the insecurities of PoW.

Energy Efficiency and Security (https://medium.com/swlh/energy-efficiency-and-security-b2b7222988df)

Bitcoin

• It introduces a heavy reliance on the power system, and for operating any Proof-of-Work coins you will need very large amounts of power. Heavy power usage is usually a red flag to anyone closely monitoring its people. Even in the United States, this happens often with law enforcement, usually in the silly war on indoor marijuana grow homes.

Dangers of Proof of Work

• The use of an ASIC or a GPU is a high risk in some of the most underserved areas of the world. You may laugh but you should really consider nations without good power infrastructure or a dictatorship.
  
  
• Electricity isn’t free and is often the first thing that is usually monitored in its’ usage by any good intelligence agency for reconnaissance. This is often how a regime may find counter groups or in some cases mining farms (https://news.bitcoin.com/mining-round-up-venezuelan-authorities-raid-miners-taiwanese-miner-shot-for-debt-to-investors-estonian-wind-farm-starts-mining/) and individual miners (https://hackernoon.com/extortion-police-raids-and-secrecy-inside-the-venezuelan-bitcoin-mining-world-6e97a25e7402) in which to raid.
  
  
• In these environments the ones in power are also very much so looking to stop those attempting to challenge that authority.

Proof of Capacity

• Burstcoin uses Proof-of-Capacity as a consensus, thus allowing for hard drive space to be used mining. This allows anyone to mine without using significant amounts of electricity and opens up the avenues of using the communication channels provided by the burst wallet.
  
  
• By remaining trustless the network can adapt accordingly with the needs of the people. This allows for flexibility and scaling necessary for economic systems. By using a consensus in which anyone can mine with a hard drive.
  
  
• This lowers the bar to entry and it also does not compromise the user for ordering a drive. I mention that a nod to an incident (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140124/10564825981/nsa-interception-action-tor-developers-computer-gets-mysteriously-re-routed-to-virginia.shtml) a few years ago. As intelligence agencies go they typically choke down to what the people are ordering or doing, in this way you can still mine without compromising that you are intending to mine.
  
  
• With this hard drives also do not need to be replaced each time a new model comes out to be competitive in the mining process. Which allows for miners and nodes to continue to operate well into the future with little infrastructure. Thus strengthening the network and providing further nodes to keep the ledger decentralized. This provides the most benefit to the individual as they too can have a voice in what is needed or not in the evolution of their use of cryptocurrency.