Well, the main thing is..
Higher profit per 1Ghash = more miners. (higher security)
Lower profit per 1Ghash = less miners. (lower security)
Every miner has a certain profitability they're trying to reach, otherwise they will drop out.
Sort of seeing this already, even at the current profitability. Network growth has basically stalled.
In the future, I can sort of see ultra high efficiencies in mining, with huge companies supporting the entire network, but that's years away. Bitcoin would have had to reach some sort of ultra-stability and high trust for that to happen.
No, I don't see it that way. More miners = higher difficulty = lower profit Less miners = lower difficulty = higher profit The network is self balancing. There will always be a number of miner sensible for the amount of money in the system. |
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You also have to factor in hardware depreciation costs.. New video cards come out all the time, usually once a year but can be sooner... and also the fact that other technology could come out and disrupt your entire "large scale" operation (ASICs etc). Technology moves very fast - it's going to have to be higher than $.30 per gigahash. At that rate you'll almost certainly go negative, unless you play the markets and make sure to sell your hardware at the right time.
I think only means it will get more difficult to even enter the mining business without the capital to put into the hardware. Which is really no different from any other type of competitive business. Only the businesses which invest in efficiency survive. More likely, if it reaches $0.30 per day per ghash, it will be more like F@H. Only enthusiasts will support the network. The rest will just buy. Of course, this means less security on the network overall. If it were at $0.30 per day per ghash, that means that either the prices is really low, or the network is HUGE. If the price is low, then the system didn't take off, security isn't a big deal. If the network is huge, then it is secure. |
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Saying there is no difference between 49% and 51% is somewhat misleading. At 49% you might get lucky and have a double spend accepted sometimes, but at 51% you will absolutely always be able to get a transaction rewritten.
Regardless, even if 50% wasn't specially, which I think it is. When do you think is the right time to talk about about this? When one kid turns on a CPU since he could get lucky enough? Or when I have 90%?
I don't mine, but deepbit must be freaking awesome for fully half of the network power to not care about the chance that feds show up with weapons to deepbit's house. This wouldn't permanently damage damage Bitcoin, but it would be annoying and it would damage reputation.
Really? I'm suppose to mine somewhere else on the off chance that the feds show up with weapons, and the programing skills to rewrite the system to start generating blocks backwards. And so what if they do? Deepbit stops making me money or showing up in the charts while it tries to slowly outrun the rest of the network (but with only a 1% advantage good luck getting very far). That is about when I'll switch. The feds have no more motivation to do that at the moment then the pool operator himself. It is a silly scenario that actually doesn't really have dire consequences. And you could only "absolutely get a transaction rewritten" given enough time, which, with only a 1% advantage would take a long, long time to play out. |
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It is up at the moment for me, but does time out every now and then. Guess they can't handle the load.
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It's a mistake to think in terms of USD profit.
The profit is really valued in the currency that you pay your electricity bill in. But since they are exchangable, it doesn't really matter. Furthermore, even if you don't care for Bitcoins, no one is obligated to sell at the current market prices, that's actually the stupidest way to go.
So who is buying above current market prices? At least for the time being, I think most people/companies who approach mining as business need to exchange the generated coins to another currency in order to pay the bills. He is talking of mining and holding, hoping for the price to go up. That is a valid strategy, but if you are counting on the price going up, you can often make more if you _buy_ and hold instead of _mine_ and hold. With rising difficulty, many cards will not ever make as many bitcoins as you could have bought with equivalent funds at the time. This is particularly true is you time your buy well, like the $11 dip yesterday. |
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The only real effect a >50% attack can have is mucking up bitcoin. And it only lasts as long as the 50% remains in control of an attacker. A pool isn't going to have that for long."
Thanks for the education, damienblack. All that you've said makes sense for a group of miners who in the end are motivated by their own selfish interests (nothing wrong with that). But what if bitcoin were attacked by an adversary with unlimited resources (say the western banking establishment) and sustained the attack for an extended period? That would kill it. If an outside attacker had a network bigger than ours, and the intent to destroy it, our network would not be able to run while under attack. This is why we "pay" miners so much, they secure the network. But, to put things in perspective, our network is many times larger then the top 500 supercomputers in the world combined. It would be very hard to mount that attack. If our network power keeps going up, in six months I would say it is downright impossible. |
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Very interesting. Ironically, it seems like a good time to invest in mining equipment, as the difficulty shouldn't be going up much in the next month, but if people did that, then the difficulty _would_ rise.
Then again, it is probably an even better time to just buy if you are interested in investing. The price:difficulty ratio indicates that compared to the past, it is a good time to buy, not mine.
I'm guessing this means you don't predict a big price rise soon. Late August?
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Anyone notice how close deepbit is to going 51%?  All right, you made the thread, I don't think I fully understand, please explain why DeepBit taking the 51% could or will mess things up? Will they have somehow more so control at that 51% over all of mining somehow? Aliens? I really don't know. Indeed I did make a thread, though I did not notice the security breach thread or else I would not have. I assume you don't need the lengthy security explanation Hero Member. Moderators feel free to kill the thread. The upshot is that there isn't any security threat at 51% that doesn't exist at 49%. In either case, you have to get a little lucky and make more blocks than the rest of the network over a short period of time. You can do this when your only got 40%. If you get really lucky, a single kid with a CPU can do it. There is nothing magical about 50% or 51%. |
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For god's sake man, the thread RIGHT BELOW this one is about the same thing, http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=26630.0So I guess I will repeat myself too: "For the thousandth time, having 50% doesn't really help your attack chances all that much compared to having 49%. And even if you do have that much, the worst an attacker can do is double spend their own coins. No one can take your bitcoins or anything (at least, not the ones with many confirmations). The best attack a pool with >50% could do is begin going backward in the block chain to rewrite it. During that time, no one in the pool would be getting paid, so people would be like, WTF. The network hash rate would drop by half so more people would be like WTF. Sooner or later the plot would be revealed and people would switch pools. No big deal. End of story. On top of that, the pool owner probably has a heavy investment in bitcoins. If he screws with bitcoins he is just hurting his investment. Who would do that? He could probably make many, many times more continuing to run his pool correctly then he could get from a few hours of double spends followed by a crash. The only real effect a >50% attack can have is mucking up bitcoin. And it only lasts as long as the 50% remains in control of an attacker. A pool isn't going to have that for long." |
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Well, all's well that ends well. Good luck in your future bitcoin endeavors. I did warn you that the search might not find stuff in the roaming folder. And yes, it is stupid. I'm used to searches finding what I need, but ever since XP they have slowly been scaling back the power of searches and including various limitations and silliness. Killed it and no auto restart for some 15 mins, so don't think regenerating trojan.
Virtually no CPU being used and none by bitcoin or guiminer, which I just re-started)
Sounds clean enough for me. Go forth and prosper. |
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Yeah,,, so you guys go figure that out. I'm going to make a sandwich.
If this is an argument for why bitcoins aren't useful, it is silly. I mean, "I need USD for X", "I need paypal for X", and "I need credit cards for X" are all only answerable with X = to pay for things at places that accept them. It is the same with bitcoin. I need bitcoin to pay for things at places that accept bitcoin. I was actually just kidding. Ah my bad. Didn't mean to go all serious on you then. My answer is I need bitcoins to become rich with just my graphics cards. |
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Indeed, glad you found it. I don't think this is totally your fault. Sounds buggy to me. I don't think we have enough info to diagnose the bug, but there it is.
If you are still a little paranoid, make a new wallet (I'm not really sure the easiest way... do you have a second computer?) and move the coins to the new wallet. And this time, back it up.
I'm not really sure if moving it is necessary. You don't sound compromised to me. But do back up the wallet.
What version of the client are you using?
PS - Please change the title of the thread to include [SOLVED] or something.
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To the grouchy olde phartes I am an admitted noob who made a mistake. That is why I am trying to slowly reconstruct what happened and why on this TEST system. I am posting this for other noobs not to follow in my foolish footsteps and "encrypt and backup later"
This post is coming from the miner computer. AVG had nothing in the virus vault, which I find strange as the notice was an AVG notice.
MSSE has two removed yesterday:
1) Trojan:JS/Redirector.GQ
2) Rogue:Win32/Winwebsec <------ AHA! This is the one mentioned in the AVG warning
file:C:\Users\DAVe\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\FB9FPCHH\pack[1].exe
I remember the reference to pack[1]
still no wallet.dat file and I don't feel like restoring these viri in the chance that the wallet file is in their stuff
Now on to finding a free undelete prog.
We thank you for your efforts. Neither of those should have the power to delete your wallet, although, it could be a new winwebsec variant (but I kind of doubt that, if your antivirus detected it, it shouldn't have had the chance to be run). I thought you said you had one you couldn't remove? Now this is really funny. The hdd light is blinking away just like when it was mioning and the pool seems to still be working on my part but guiminer is not listed in Applications or Processes.
bitcoin.exe is in process but will not come up on screen
This sounds like a bitcoin related trojan, one custom designed that wouldn't show up on the AV program. Is the bitcoin process using a lot of CPU? Kill the bitcoin process and see if it restarts itself. |
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If you dropped $4 worth of singles, would you have posted an ad on Craigslist about it? Just curious.
Hey now, it is important to find the source of these issues. Better it something small than something like the allinvain situation (I still think someone he knew took it). If he were one of the first 5 people to complain about losing BTC, or read any of the dozen or so security posts on how to avoid these issues since, maybe... As far as allinvain, I'm on the fence as to whether or not that really happened... not sure one way or the other. As far as who took it if it did happen, well, to me, it's a sort of leaving your house unlocked with 500,000$ worth of shit and no insurance, coupled with all of your eggs in one basket. You don't get to 25,000 BTC without ACCIDENTALLY learning SOMETHING about how to protect your shit. Yeah I know, there have been a lot of these threads. But they've all gone nowhere. I always hope I'll be able to nail down some detail because I am curious how this happens. I know if it were my computer, I would decompile every last executable until I find something that opens my wallet. This would get solved. But it isn't my computer, and it isn't going to be, so I try and solve the mystery for others. This doesn't sound like the other cases. The coins weren't transferred, and the wallet.dat is missing. This hasn't happened before. It doesn't seem like a trojan to me. It could be a newly found bug. We should investigate. |
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Yeah,,, so you guys go figure that out. I'm going to make a sandwich.
If this is an argument for why bitcoins aren't useful, it is silly. I mean, "I need USD for X", "I need paypal for X", and "I need credit cards for X" are all only answerable with X = to pay for things at places that accept them. It is the same with bitcoin. I need bitcoin to pay for things at places that accept bitcoin. |
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If you dropped $4 worth of singles, would you have posted an ad on Craigslist about it? Just curious.
Hey now, it is important to find the source of these issues. Better it something small than something like the allinvain situation (I still think someone he knew took it). |
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chodpaba if you can't get wealthy somehow with your knowledge something is wrong with the world and efficient information markets theory
Indeed. When bitcoins take over the world, chodpaba will be elected supreme ruler. |
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Thanks for the info, this truly helps.
NP, that's what I'm here for.  |
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That second address, 16QVvNfQ5RdvNY65ZWhBJAJ5Vva2KTesdh, has the money. It hasn't been moved. http://blockexplorer.com/address/16QVvNfQ5RdvNY65ZWhBJAJ5Vva2KTesdhKeep looking in the places I told you for your wallet.dat, the money should still be in your control if you find it. If this were a hacker, I feel he would have moved the money. It looks to me like your wallet just got misplaced. |
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