Bitcoin Forum

https://blog.sia.tech/the-state-of-cryptocurrency-mining-538004a37f9b

A fine overall read here from someone close to the front lines.

TLDR - unless you're Bitmain or someone similar you're probably eventual toast.

Excellent article.  It’s long but well thought out.  Thanks. Looks like if we start getting FPGA with a flexibility of about a 5-6 on your scale we could see them surviving so in the end centralization will go to those with more money than brains. Or ones that look to do harm later.  This system was designed on trust.  I’ll be damn if I trust bitmain to have over 51% control on any network.  They got their money now they could give a shit about what happens.  They keep selling the shovels and those that keep buying don’t even realize they are the ones dooming the entire system.  It’s a sad state of affairs.  Be a huge game of cat and mouse no different that what we have today with fiat.  There’s a reason satoshi needed it to be one pc one vote.  There also would have to be a way to prove you don’t have more than one vote.  Has anyone discussed a way to have a proof of decentralization.  Whereas the value of the system is actually based on the concept that it can’t be easily subverted.  I feel we are losing it with all coins currently in existence.  This will have to be addresses or we might as well all buy ripple. Or just keep with fiat and have blockchains that run on a few raspi. What’s the point of wasting all the energy if decentralization doesn’t matter to anyone here?


BR

Yes it's a good article and it's accurate. What's frustrating for those of us that lived through the conversion of bitcoin from CPU to ASIC is that the rules and issues have never changed, and we see the same mistakes being made over and over by both new manufacturers and newcomers into the game trying to capitalise on a market they think they understand. Bitmain have got the mining world by the balls and that is not going to change by anyone trying to take them on by the same rules they play by. I've been warning people since the first ASICs got announced but alas no one listened, and then I just gave up trying to warn them... No one seemed to want to believe me and for whatever reason very few every considered consulting me despite my obvious position in the mining world.

So given unlimited brain power and funds what would you do to try and change things? Or do you think it's too far gone regardless of what anyone does?

Mining is an area I understand very little of, but I'm surprised it wasn't foreseen that behemoths like Bitmain would rise and something wasn't done to attempt to address it before it happened.

Satoshi predicted it. He simply said people should be nice and hold off doing the inevitable... The rest of us predicted it too but there isn't actually anything we could do to "address" it as you have said. Bitcoin is a diffuse collaborative and there are no weapons to defend us against transient centralisation of power and hashrate. Proof of work will inevitably ALWAYS have some element of this happening at regular intervals. Changing the proof of work algorithm will NOT, as the article said, make any difference at all; a new asic arms race will simply replace the old one.

Probably the biggest mistake everyone makes is buying stuff off bitmain only to find themselves competing against bitmain... duh.

Surprisingly a very good, competent, and on-point article/blog post. Maybe I'm just jaded to have been expecting less but -- damn. Very accurate.
Original blog post (https://blog.sia.tech/the-state-of-cryptocurrency-mining-538004a37f9b)

My end of manufacturing insight come from my company being a supplier of equipment made for one thing - mass production of chips. Specifically, laser micro-machined ceramic heat spreaders that power chips are built on. Anywho, each system can produce over 10 million components per-month, biggest customer has over 100 of our latest systems. I get what the author is talking about and he is spot on about costs and equipment availability to make critical parts that are needed to actually produce your product. Very often there is no 2nd source for those components.

Despite such huge production capacity our customers machines are booked for months in advance for, call it limited run 'open availability', along with solid years-long dedicated use contracts for their huge long term customers. In short they run 24x7x365 and the world supply of some critical 'widgets' does have a limit.  The fact that Bitmain can (nearly) buy out a suppliers yearly production is no surprise.

On the ASIC scale, surprised the author has not mentioned Intel, Micron, and others cpu and memory makers developments with CPU on-memory chips that has been going on for at least 2 years now. General term I've read is 'Intelligent Memory'. Originally aimed at very-large database storage and analysis applications to eliminate the round trips between CPU cores, outside memory, and back again.  Each memory stick has a set of cpu's on it to pre-sort data, sort of like a programmable gpu with huge local memory cache.  Sounds like it is perfectly adaptable to flexibility mining algos. Being in fact mainly a DRAM storage memory stick, call it maybe a 5-7 on the author's ASIC scale?

Folks, do take note of the Author's mention of Halong and their dealings.... worthy of another thread methinks?

Again, very good article and very rare I give praise!
Merited.

Lots of good info.

I agree with much of it but I need to quote two paragraphs in a bit of time on a pc rather then the phone I am on.

Ya I never understood it.  Since ASIC's day 1 people have LINED up to give interest free loans to their competitors months in advance for a completely unproven product.  I have mentioned quite a number of times the simple math of buying a unit from Bitmain (or anyone really) and it gives them the ability to put multiple units of their own on line.  I was even basically called a nut job conspiracy theorist for suggesting such a ridiculous idea.  I asked a million times why the fuck is everyone so horny to become an investomer?  Why take ALL the risk of an investor but never be able to reap the rewards of an investor instead your BEST CASE reward is being a fulfilled order? Why are you funding your competition with interest free capital??  But it really wasn't a popular opinion (probably still isn't LOL) and I took my far share of heat for it!

Your're so right it's not a new concept. Some folks over the years have commented on the "near zero sum game" design of the system.  We all know that those with the lowest capital and operational expenses will always make the most money.  Again as obvious is that a company manufacturing miners will have the lowest possible capital cost's to start a mine.  Add to that some of the lowest operational cost's (manpower and electricity) are in the manufacture's backyard and you can see that in time they will be the only ones left mining (if nothing changes and coins retain fiat value).

And even after all the outright scams, the borderline scams, the failed business attempts, delay after delay, 10's of millions of dollars "lost" and every other excuse the wild west here had to offer it's still amazing to me how many people come here with a get rich quick attitude or a complete lack of basic understanding of how POW mining works.  But such is the capitalist way I guess and a new batch a wide eyed awe struck newbs will roll in here every time coin price spikes and BTC is in the news.

Gpus were good for two and a half years.

They drew in a lot of people long warranties with decent service make them very attractive to anyone with lost cost power.

The next run up will be gpu driven again as there are methods that prevent asics.

Best method is work hash rate limit per ip.

Zcash  2x 1080ti = 1400 sols

So cap hash rate to 1400sols per ip this means multiple ips for bigger farm and only small asics could compete with a two card gaming rig.  Still attracts a very large amount of miners.

As much as asics did well for bitmain. The big year of 2017 had a lot of gpus.

A limit to hash power at diff 1 from an IP address works for gpus.

Cross the limit and increase the difficulty 10 fold.

Cross a second limit and increase the difficulty 50 fold.

That stops asics fairly easy.

So at the sia guy how about that?

Would have made your coin truly asic resistant.  But no you thought building an asic miner was smarter.

In the long run there can be less then one of five coins using asics.

And if developers had simple tiered Mining by hash per ip the financial desirability to asic mine is lost.

I have 140th for btc if my difficulty was 100x because I crossed a preset level I would have stayed with lessor gear.

I have 10gh for ltc if my difficulty was 100x because I crossed a preset level i would only have moonlander usb sticks.

I have 13000 sols for zcash if the cut off was 1400 sols I might have three locations with two 1080tis.

Point is stopping asics is easy.  The method above works.

It simply punishes large sized hash of more efficient gear like asics .

Just think if the difficulty for the 10000 sol asic from bitmain was 20x that of the diff for two 1080tis.

I get what you tried to do.  And you pointed your efforts in the wrong direction.

My method stops asic Mining for any coin that wants to stop asic mining.  No endless forks just punish high hash gear.

IPV6 gives every person on earth quadrillions of their own IP addresses. You'd have to limit it to a subnet for IPV6...

Sure but at 1400 sols or 700 sols. Per ip no big hash machine works very well .

Or as you say make it a subnet.

I'm going to state the obvious here but..............

Mining has always been a zero-sum game. The only question is whether Bitcoin mining will be lucrative enough that newer manufacturers will be willing to fight the old established entities for the a piece of the pie.

Honestly if you are not willing to play dirty against bitmain, you already lost.

nope not so   simple

dedicated asics = by far =  zero sum or close to it.


gpus  with a vast array of other uses are much further away from zero sum concept.

I am sorry that you don't see the difference between a 2 x 1080 ti rig  that was purchased to game more then any other reason and 500 asic equihash miners at 10,000 sols a piece

one is a dedicated zero sum game the other is not although there are zero sum aspects to it.

That gamer will now buy a one card rig when the new video cards come out. Simple adjustment for that type of miner.

The truth is the 2017 boom was done on the backs of gpu expansion and asic leaching.

For me I am okay as I have a power deal that up to 20k-watts is pretty much unbeatable.  If mining was to last 15 years I would do well and the 20k-watts of cheap power will only grow for me.

But with bitmain doing the sell gear and sell gear and sell gear  and sell more gear I don't think the mining game lasts for 15 more years.
I had a lot of fun with it.

A big mine would simply buy a block of thousands IPV4 or millions IPV6 addresses and create software to seperate the hashrate up to the maximum hashrate per IP. Something that would be easier than you'd imagine and would mainly cripple small mines that couldn't afford the needed hardware & internet connection, it would only push more power towards the big miners.
This would turn into a proof-of-IP sooner or later.

I like the thinking of how to decentralize mining but in this case the execution of the idea is not good.

While I understand what you are saying Phil, I think you are missing the point.

GPUs are NOT meant to be mining! It is something that they conveniently were able to do better than GPUs. The inevitability of ASICs or rather, machines whose sole purpose is to "mine" coins is as sure as sunrise and sunset. It is just business sense. If you think that GPUs are good investment because of their resell value, then you are pretty much limiting yourself to at most a very small mining endeavor. In that case you are losing the benefits of scale. Can GPU mining be profittable? sure it can, but it will never be as profitable as ASIC mining......ever.

If you have cheap electricity, then great! I have cheap electricity as well, hell I think most of us serious miners have cheap electricity. But what we do with that electricity counts way more. And any calculation will tell you straight away that given the same Electric price and timespan: ASICs are going to out-perform GPU rigs by at least 2-3X per dollar invested. Thats just facts Phil. Even accounting for resell value of GPUs (which if you haven't noticed are tanking as we speak because as I said, ASICs for everything) If you are long crypto in general, it is far better to buy ASICs now, especially with newer chips and slowing development.

Personally, I think you are just too pessimistic about the whole issue, possibly because you were ignored for so long despite your openness.

Picking winners in the ASIC game is relatively easy if one isn't afraid of occasionally changing the source code. When properly designed, it even doesn't need to be hard fork, just the version number of the PoW function needs to be explicitly recorded.

At the moment I don't have time to write a longer discussion, so for now I'll repost what I wrote in another thread. We'll see which of those new threads will get most intelligent discussion.

Yeah, that is the key.

The thing is that it is relatively easy to write hash function that are very ASIC-proof or FPGA-proof.

Bytom folks are a good example. Their goal was not to be general-ASIC-proof but to make sure that the ASIC that is fast at implementing their hash it their ASIC. So they wrote a hash function that uses lots of floating point calculations exactly in the way that their AI-oriented ASIC does. The hard part of understanding Bytom's "Tensority" algorithm is finding exact information about the actual ASIC chips that are efficient doing those calculations.

But the general idea is very simple: if you don't want your XYZ devices to become, play to their strengths in designing the hash function.

For XYZ==GPU start with GPUs strengths. I haven't studied the recent GPU universal shader architecture, but the main idea was to optimize particular floating point computation used in 3D graphics using homogeneous coordinates, like AX=Y, where A is 4*4 matrix and X is 4*1 vector <x,y,z,w> where w==1. So include lots of those in your hash function. In particular GPUs are especially fast when using FP16, a half-precision floating point.

For XYZ==CPU made by Intel/AMD using x86 architecture, again start with their strengths. They have unique FPU unit with unique 10-byte floating point format and unique 8-byte BCD decimal integer format. Additionally they have dedicated hardware to compute various transcendental functions. So use a lot of those doing chaotic irreducible calculations like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_system . Of course one could write an emulation of those formats using quad-precision floating point (pairs of double-precision floats), but it will take many months.

During those months you have additional time to research more strengths of your GPUs or CPUs. Use them in a hard-fork to assure that the preferred vendor of your mining hardware continues to be Intel/AMD/Nvidia.

This whole speed limiting per IP is a ridiculously bad idea. It is so cringe worthy I cant even believe it was brought up and is being discussed as a remote possibility. Even the average miner with say 2 6 card rigs would have to own 3 IPs just to make like $250/mo mining. That would extend GPU ROI out so far it would be pointless to mine anyway.

People just need to understand that ASICs are part of the natural flow of crypto. Everything starts general purpose and as it ages it is refined and laser focused on doing only what needs to be done. People only protect GPUs as the "proper way to mine" because they are greedy and dont want their poor GPU investments to lose out even worse.

Pretty much everything about an ASIC miner is better than a GPU rig. Less failure points, less expensive hardware, higher hashrate, the list goes on. The only arguement that can be made about GPU versus ASIC is GPUs are quieter. I manage 10k ASICs and 10k video cards so I have more experience on both sides of the field than pretty much anyone else you are going to meet. GPUs are just a terrible investment when stacked up against ASICs. As much as nobody wants to hear it, these are just facts.

Wrong because you look at big scale. Which is what I am trying to get across a widespread small gear person creates interest . If 400,000,000. Gpus earn more then power and 200,000,000 are in your large 1k to 10k gpu farm and 100,000,000 are in a 50gpu to 1k gpu farm.  That means 100,000,000 are deployed in small setups. 100,000,000 gpus can earn as I type for the little miner. That is world wide distribution.
I have built and sold a ton of 2 card gaming machines.  They mine 6 to 12 hours a day to get a cheap gaming machine.

Destroy that widespread base and the zero sum aspect of asics come in.

Right now there are more then 1000 coins. Most are meh. But the volume of them create trading trading creates value for exchanges.  Asics simply flatten that out and coins will shrink.

Many coins sole value was or is they could be gpu mined at a profit.

And at thetaj I am not talking scale I am talking 50,000,000 worldwide gaming rigs owned by 1 person

Or 50,000,000 x 1


Not 5,000 x 10000 gpu  big farms

both are 50 million gpus.

and I 100% agree bigger miners want what works best for them.

In my case I will stay at a 20kwatt level for 2 years and maybe go to 40kwatt then 80 kwatt if buysolar and i can do the expansion of solar energy we want to do.

80kwatts is only 800th  of s-9s  which really isn't much at all

60 s-9's  in the scheme of mining is meh.

but  it means acres of paid for solar panels that have a 25 year life which is the real plan.

for buysolar and I  asics fpga gpus all work if they simply don't break.

My defense of gpus is not about my gear as I only have 16x of 100x gpus left.

I am all L3+ T1 and avalon 841

my defense of gpus is my belief that knocking off millions gpus as a mining possibility is bad for crypto coins .  Not for me.

And that's bullshit that dreamers always keep going on about just because they want another coin to make them rich by capitalising on first mover advantage again. Guess what, the first mover advantage is over. Bitcoin isn't going away.

And on that I agree with you. But we are moving away from that now that Crypto (especially Bitcoin) is becoming mainstream and actually quite relevant in society as a whole.

I do believe that the way forward is to commoditize Bitcoin mining into appliances and other forms of electrical "subsidies" for consumers. Honestly, that is really the most plausible route to decentralized mining that I can  if that is what we're aiming at. But I digress, right now we are in the sweet spot of Bitcoin mining (regardless of what people say about profitability etc). The mining curve vs. Adoption rate (growth) is at its peak right now. After this, price growth will flatten out, and mining profitability will shrink after the next halvening enough so that by the time 7nm chips become mainstream, it probably won't be fun to have a dedicated mining facility anymore.

....Bitmain posted a very "PR" driven rebuttal to this. It was transparent, weak and so typically Bitmain. This is the best and most accurate article I've ever read in this space. Ever. Unfortunately, the "truth" is like poetry. Everyone hates it.

Link to it please?

Here you go.

https://blog.bitmain.com/en/bitmain-sia-state-cryptocurrency-mining/

This is my absolute favorite quote from the article:


Oh yeah....Bitmain "Appreciates" David!! LOL. You KNOW they do. They used him and his Coin like a Golden Goose crapping Golden eggs! LOL.

Thanks. As with all PR there *is* some truth in BM's response. Namely the bit about parts availability. In short, ja BM could easily corner the market against others who also want to suddenly order a few hundred-k peices of something say, the specific buck inductors they use or the specific large filter caps they use. Fine.

Also keep in mind that when ordering very large quantities say, over 50k of parts, MANY common components are on an allocation basis. Those 'high-end Japanese capacitors' that everyone so rightly choose to use are a prime example. Don't care what value you want they are hard to source, even small quan of a hundred or so can have a lead time over 10 weeks. However, as an engineer who often designs electronic circuits/systems as a living I know there are always alternative design choices to let you use components that are more available.

yeah  buy a tv with a miner built in to it at a premium it then pays you back somewhat like an exotic rebate.

or buy a tv without a miner it is cheaper but never pays back.


say 1000 and earn 10 a month

or 800 and earn 0

it is a 20 month roi.

Still creates mainstream.

Get a cable box with a miner
get a cable box with out a miner.

ideas like this would be possible.

I was reading avalon stock prospectus



seems like avalon is looking to do more then just sell miners for the asics.

Phillipma....that is somewhat mind blowing. envisioning the various potential applications feels like drinking from a firehose.

I would love to have a Samsung tv that mines a bit while I watch my favorite movie

Most of us small guys been using the inefficient rigs for heat in winter.  This is bound to be the only way to keep decentralized make it cost more to mine than what it earns.  That would shut down all major farms in a big hurry.  Using Phil’s method imagine if they put one in tv and never tell us.  I’m sure some will watch and see.  They will then get rich off our power.  Kinda like the holders would be doing.  ESP when it costs more to mine then it returns.  Will be an interesting scenario to see play out.  Best Buy coins not dump anymore into rigs.  That’s my best educated look at the situation. 

BR

I think it would likely look more like 1000 and earn $0.10 a year and use an extra $50 a year in electricity

or 800 and earn 0

so after 24 months you have a $1099.80 TV.

An appliance miner is never going to compete with high density mining farms, we already have CPU's but no one use's them to mine to "reduce" its capital cost's.

This is absolutely correct. The equation can't possibly work in an appliance's favour in any way. The only thing that remotely has a chance is a space heater that mines to generate its heat. To that end, that's what I use my T1s for now that it's getting colder here, but they need to be dedicated to doing so in a fashion that is meaningful in normal households, not somewhere with tons of power and that can tolerate noise. There just is NO market for that kind of hardware though; it's all aimed at super giant fucking massive farms, and selling 10s of thousands of miners at a time, not a handful to the regular public. There's no money in making hardware for everyone else, so it's just not going to happen.

I think you will find necessity will motivate miner/entrepreneurs to find innovative profitable ways to use the waste heat.  My local Micro brewery is warming up to my miners. My winter greenhouse is profitable.

The only reason that ASICs are winning is that ASIC manufactures are bribing developers to do nothing about ASICs taking over an algorithm. It would be very easy for a coin like Zcash to tweak Equihash and prevent all of the Z9s from mining. (Monero showed how simple and effective it is.) Contrary to Vorick's claims, ASICs cannot easily get around such a change -- if they were able to, then they wouldn't be much more efficient than current GPUs.

The author of the blog sells ASICs, so it's in his best interest to make GPU miners think there is no hope. He's also a very sleazy person. He accepted crowd funding for five batches of Siacoin ASICs almost a year ago and has yet to deliver a single product. So given his behavior, I can't trust anything Vorick says. In fact, I'm inclined to believe he's a compulsive liar who will say anything to get money.

In the article, he stated substantiated facts. You posted a bunch of speculation, guess and conjecture glazed over with personal opinion and unwarranted optimism. In short....he's right and you're wrong.

he wrote that article as sour grapes he bet the farm to build an asic rather then securing his al-gore-rythm bitmain handed him his ass and he now spouts off that asics are god and other gear is shit.

I came up with a good analogy.  Asics vs gpus    is  kind of like cars vs bicycles.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
asics + cars  costly loud burn a lot of power.

gpus+bikes cheap quieter burn less  millions of people can afford them

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
asics + cars  go faster and carry more people and cargo, mine faster

gpus + bike go slow carry less people and cargo ,mine slower
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
asics + cars need decent roads and do not maneuver great only do 1 coin or algorithm

gpus + bikes do not really need roads and can be moved around obstacles easily do any coin


you could argue a fpga is like a vespa


my point is the writer of the blog is saying no more bikes they are worthless  go get a car.

And while he may have paved the road with his coin for asics since he wanted his own asic others will alter the roads to stop cars/asics

Should be fun to watch.

and to the Sia developer oh well as seth would say your'e burnt



BTW all of bitumen's moves are based on the simple fact that the .11 watt s-9 edge has been lost.

June 2016 s-9 .11 watts
next best s-7 .25 watts

avalon's gear was .29 in June of 2016

for a 256 miner to have the edge the s-9 once had it would need to do 30 th at 1200 watts and cost 700 usd to build you could sell it for 3k and once again be a true king of btc.

no one can do that with btc.

bitmain want to get far ahead in any algorithm to make tons of money and sia developer were burnt fucking with asics and not developing in the coin.

I hope that for the sake of GPU miners, the present car/bike ratio replicates itself in the ASIC/GPU world. I believe I saw a headline recently that bikes are now equal to cars worldwide in numbers. There's always hope.

Me too ck.  When ASIC first hit I told people this is now an arms race that will lead to ultimate centralization in to a handful of large mining operations that will gather a majority of the coins and fees.   I remember reading your posts on this too and you were right.

but why?
i dont see why private miners cant buy a few asics, instead uf gpu?
if enough miners place some asics next to their gpu miners, it would be just as de-centralised...
with current asic prices this shouldnt be an issue as well...

Because... from what I glean from the article, every time you order an Asic from a big player, even if it's the one with the quickest delivery time to order like Bitmain, you give them enough capital to make much more than 10 times what you ordered. By the time you receive your order, you get 1 ASIC, weeks or months closer to being obsolete, while the big player has more than 10 times more resources to add to their own hashrate or develop more efficient tech.

So the more you support by buying from them, the bigger their monopoly of hashrate. Yes, you're spreading out the hashrate, but it is the minority share that's getting more distributed. The majority, the big players, gets bigger.

People with dollar signs for brains have been giving interest free loans to their competition since late 2012.  Couple that with a system DESIGNED as a near zero sum game and then ask yourself "what the fuck could possibly go wrong with this scenario".

It's what humans do though, we push the boundaries, we exploit the smallest advantages, we work within systems to maximize our value.  When a system is designed to reward those with the biggest advantage (ie lowest capital cost of equipment and overhead) then we should expect those with the greatest advantage to exploit it at every turn, because we are human.

I'm not saying that there isn't some people who wouldn't exploit a system if they could.  Lots of reasons exist to not exploit something you care about, but it is naive at best to think a system such as this won't be exploited by the vast majority of people that CAN.  It's also interesting to see how many people who don't have the proper advantages try to "exploit" the system.

The current trend of "centralizing" miners in the hands of the manufacture (or large enterprise level farms) should be expected to continue unabated as their is currently no reason to NOT continue as is!

Note exploit in context could also be read as "work within a system designed to favour those with certain advantages".

Edit:  When someone figures out how Bitmain (or any company) can make MORE profits selling only to home miners and NOT by mining themselves AND selling to ANYONE with a couple satoshi's then and only then perhaps can we start to discuss true decentralization of POW mining.

Honestly I wish this wasn’t driven mostly by get rich traders.  They give two shits about how the system should be working. Honestly price should continue to head down as the whole idea of bitcoins worth is at jeopardy(decentralization).  It should be nearing 0$ per bitcoin.  Bitmain owns entirely too much of this space.  The only way to remedy this situation is for all devs to stand together for the betterment of mankind.  Not their own personal wealth.  EVERYONE!  If we just all walk away and ignore them what power do they have?  ZERO!    If we all succeed we all do better.  When the money lies in only the hands of a few well it don’t take a long look at history to see how that plays out.  Def a turning point for me whether this whole thing is a bust or will make it. 

BR

The people have ALWAYS had the power, who do you think back in 2012 was funding BFL and Avalon with millions in interest free loans?  It wasn't investment bankers!!!

Those earlier bitcoiners may have believed in the idea but they funded those companies because they saw an opportunity to work within the system to gain a MAJOR advantage over the other users.

Imagine if people said hey we won't give interest free loans to strangers on some wild west cowboy forum.  If people had simply never supported this kind of business model it wouldn't work LOL it really is not that complicated! But that isn't realistic, because people!

Bitcoin may yet become a "victim of it's own success" but everyone is playing within the coded rules so one might even argue it's working as intended.

I wonder how many bitcoiners know anything about mining other than it "secures the network".  This site is FULL of users new and old that simply now NOTHING about mining.  Extrapolate that to the general public of bitcoin users and it's doesn't seem hard to imagine mining is somewhat irrelevant to them.  Short sighted approach I think but also very plausible IMO.

Yes.....and if with the snap of a finger....all firearms could be removed from existence then no one else will be shot. Not gonna happen. I fantasize about Crypto terrorist groups forming and destroying the electric grids and networks of these fucking scum. Like the "Greenpeace" of Crypto. Alas, it is only a dream.......maybe.

BR

I actually wondered many times myself when the next Hollywood blockbuster would move away from Bitcoin and crypto as just simple tools used for crime, and focus instead on some of these unlikely cataclysmic events just as you mention. Cyber terrorists/hacktivists secretly taking over all Bitmain equipment and one day taking control over all of it to destroy it with a virus. Maybe several large EMP attacks all over the industrial rigs. But yeah, I'm surprised someone else thought of Greenpeace-like radicals doing something like this. Waiting to be turned into a book/script/film.

It would be SO cool. Especially if it were based on a "true story".

Indeed.  It seems like people forget there were plenty of other manufacturers.  I'm certainly no expert on mining, but even I know that KnC, BFL, GAW, HashFast, etc all had their various issues (to put it mildly in some cases) over the years.  Some of them were involved in some shady behaviour, others simply weren't profitable operations.  They were either marred by criminal proceedings, went bankrupt, or both.  Bitmain effectively won by default, simply because they didn't have much in the way of serious opposition.  I don't know why some people think it's a damn conspiracy.  It's just basic market forces at work.



Yeah, sorry, but no.  That's precisely what caused many of them to fail.  They played dirty, they suffered the consequences.  Consequences like their customers gave them negative publicity because the goods were delivered late, or worse still, never arrived at all.  Consequences like the owners got arrested.  Things like that.  Cause and effect.  This isn't revelatory stuff here.  Sad to say, but Bitcoin has simply had a pretty sordid history when it comes to hardware manufacturers.  Any one of those failed companies mentioned above could have done things differently and maybe we wouldn't have that one dominant company with a monopoly like we do.

https://medium.com/@salva.enkidu_89587/how-bitmain-indeed-mines-coins-in-secret-2ea179e7ab75

Another Sia fan writing a lengthy piece of loathing about Bitmain's tactics. I think at this point even if Bitmain were benevolent, they're such a lumbering beast that any smaller coin that attracts its attentions immediately starts foaming at the mouth and keels over.

Keep dreaming...

From the last article gentlemand posted:


The Sia community got betrayed by their own members, what do you expect from people that don't know anything about the past of Bitmain or their practices?
Do you think they will care about morality and stop thinking about $?

If it were like that Zara and H&M and the others would close their factories in South Asia, people would stop buying iPhones made by suicideconn, and the single real competitor that might be able to take on Bitmain, Samsung would be disbanded just like zaibatsus were after the ww2.

I've always said it, 99% of the world thinks and acts based on how much the balance and the possible balance in their wallet might be.

I’ll sum up the state in one word.  FUCKED!!!  Excuse my French

Br

If BTC onboards enough old school finance then its dominance will be sealed forever. It's not exactly threatened by anything as is and I've heard very few of them talk about any altcoin. Though they should be thinking about sustainability, that's the last thing any of them will care about and I'm sure more than a few won't understand what mining actually is. There'll always be miners ready to step up.

The best that can happen is that it drives development in renewables and miners get more efficient.

Thank you for this.  I haven’t time to read it all yet but just the beginning sentence already has me intrigued.  If this is possible in a world that is full of manipulation is yet to be seen. Look what happen to bitcoin.  I’m still trying to figure out why I’m so pessimistic about it’s outcome when I thought for sure this was a beautifully laid out idea.  I see now that no matter how good an idea money comes in and taints the shit outta it.  It’s sad that we allow this type of manipulation. Nothing should have this type of control over your lives.  Everything in moderation and that includes your wealth.  If you have a disporportionate amount means someone else is doing without.   In a free market this maybe is ok. Yet to be seen. But in today’s world the mainupation with money has everything fucking backwards.  How we come out of this on top hasn’t come to me yet.  Sure won’t be bitcoin I know that now. It’s sad.  

BR

I've always maintained a healthy distance from cloud mining.  Too many risks, too little reward.  And that's just for the genuine, reputable companies, never mind all the scams out there.  For the few fortunate people who did manage to make some money from it, many of them are now reporting that they aren't earning anymore.  Tread carefully before you hand over any money.

Hmm now where have I seen this before?😊

BR

Um, in this case cryptocurrency *is* money. That makes ^^ a rather redundant statement...

I did.

What else would anyone expect? Money and power congregates into small pools everywhere. Even if a coin's creator goes all out to prevent it the chances are someone will find a way around if there's the incentive to do it.

It's going to take someone or something exceptional to come up with a system that prevents it.

Ah, nice read from David, the biggest Conman himself....

Pitty he lives that far. i'd be happy to throw my A3 through his windows...

So how do you ensure the network stays decentralized? Or are we just set for centralized blockchains?

How does that affect your perception of the ecosystem?

---

Wow! That's a lot of Hate! This guy must have pissed you off!

There are people with way more understanding of the nuts and bolts and dynamics of it than myself. But as time passes it should becoming increasingly clear that at least maintaining the appearance of decentralisation is vital. Without it the whole thing is worthless.

Shitcoins like Bcash/BCH/BCHSV/BCHABC have effectively given up on it and that's going to bite them big time eventually or they'll remain insignificant enough for people not to care which is the case for most of them. BTC doesn't and shouldn't have that luxury.

There'll be ever more powerful factions. If there are enough of them then that maintains decentralisation. If there aren't then at least let's hope they won't be dim enough to rock the boat. Any overt assertion of power from one group would either turn the whole thing to dust or, hopefully, drive the effort towards less centralisation.

Unfortunately since humans are humans they may require a brutal lesson in why it's important before it's taken seriously enough. There's lots of posing about it. Not much action.

I put 0 trust that humans won’t fuck this up in order to keep their magic afloat.  Hipocracy in this world manifested by capitalism will be the downfall of humanity.  Whilst you all fight to keep it decentralized and lose your shirts I might add the ones in power with real money will centralize this.  Hell look at ibm they aren’t even gonna touch bitcoin. They made their own blockchain.  Ego’s at their finest. I can do it better no I can. Let’s not just all get together and figure this out. Capitalism has it to where we fight amongst ourselves even with a common goal.  How fucking sad is that!  

BR

I've been in bitcoin since 2012. Apparently, I was frightened about centralization, and I made a GitHub project in 2013 that I thought would solve this.

I know this sounds really stupid, and probably wouldn't do anything, but my idea was that when you spend the coins in any way, the value is divided by the balance squared of the address. My idea was that coins would be repelling each other like similarly charged electric particles.

I have forgotten about this for a while until reading this, but would this do anything to frustrate ASICs or disrupt centralization?

I apologize for wasting everyone's time. My programming is pretty weak and my ideas are probably fantastical.

this is the unicorn of crypto. a thing that people have only in their mind, i have yet to see a single solid proof about  this statement that many people keep on repeating.

don't get me wrong, bitmain are capable of doing worse stuff than this, but this theory of using the miners and then re-selling them is as stupid as mining bitcoin with a pentium 1 processor.

anyone who had experienced brand new miners and used miners can make certain that putting a used device back to brand new status is practically impossible. 

if you mine with the miner for 24 hours straight, it will be nightmare to try and bring it back to brand new shape, not to mention that smell of fresh launch that all electronics have, i can almost differentiate a brand new ASIC from a used ASIC with my eyes closed.

Some may think this.  but it is not what bitmain needs to do.

they simply hold back tech and or firmware.

An s9 now can magically do 750 watts and 9th with firmware up grade.

So lets see they build 2 s9's keep them run them at 750 watts an 9th or 1500 watts and 9th

sell the third one  to a miner for top dollar  set it to do 1500 watts and 14th.  it will burn up faster and it effectively pays for the 2 they use in house.

better yet  they had hashnest   with s7's and s9's   so if you purchased an s7 share they charged yo at 250 watts a th while they mined with an 82 watt a th miner.

they did sell old miners filled with dust years ago.  Until some clever motherfucker figured out the scheme I outlined above.

They also raped and pillaged gpu mining by simply selling endless amounts of gear  until it crashed all prices.

which is what I don't understand about them. As that was simply fucking stupid business on their part.

How do we walk away from their mining power??

Even if everybody stopped buying their stuff, they still make the best stuff..... So this seems like a catalyst for what they already have in motion.

Bitcoin will eventually die. Every form of currency every existed has/will off. Democracy didn't completely remove consolidation of power. It did improve the situation.

Bitcoin has to be taken not as a panacea but as a guideline with which new ideas can be developed.

This is not written in disagreement with you, it's intended to be a cheerful but firm reminder. Read the myth of Sisyphus. Remember, life is gritty, and the same problems are going to come back again and again. We can't control the repetition, but we can control our attitudes. We can move fwd with a sense of internal competition. Take things one step further. Do things a little better than we could do them last time.

It is what it is. The same thing happens in all areas of life. If economies of scale and finance produce enough advantage then it's going to congregate near the top. It'll be interesting to see how committed other coins remain to combating it. It seems a bit like trying to hold back the tide by shouting at it to me.

What is the point of Decentralized crypto then?  Why not just have one server run the whole network.  That would be efficient.  Why waste resources and heat up an already pissed off planet.  I mean hell let’s add solar to the mix and trap the suns heat here as well.  I mean what could go wrong.  What is the point of this if in ten years we end up right back where we started.  The top with all the means and the rest of us bottom feeding.  Why did satoshi put together all those other great people ideas if he didn’t see the problem at hand.  Centralized power corrupts even the purest of minds over time.  What exactly is the point of all this other than to sell snake oil to some to enrich others.  What do you feel this will accomplish?

BR

He did foresee it - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306

The requirement and incentives to keep others honest is still there, albeit moved up from individual to commercial entities. Each user mining and validating is long dead and getting deader by the second for Bitcoin at least.

Well hell... my apologies for being that guy screaming at the tsunami.  I guess I listened to far to many scammers trying to make us believe decentralization is something attainable.  Even satoshi knew decentralization in a world with unequal resources couldn’t happen.    Honest and crypto.  Two words that need to get a relationship with each other for crypto to even be considered.  But hell look at the fraud Coming out daily. .  Doesn’t look like honesty is a virtue people take pride in.  A symptom of the greater disease that is capitalism

BR