Big players making farms.  Sure.  Everyone can see that.  Specialized silicon that would lead to 1 or 2 large players controlling bitcoin.  No.

The intent was a decentralized peer-to-peer system.  Failing to adapt the core to that end put bitcoin on a path of greater and greater consolidation that will eventually make it vulnerable to a number things and non-viable.  It will be replaced by a version 2.0 that is peer-to-peer decentralized and probably has other fundamental innovations.

In one word competition. If it's so profitable what's stopping 100 new asian manufacturer coming online tomorrow at the fraction of the cost and driving hashrate through the roof squeezing those profits? What about Intel entering the market? It's always a risk/reward game you won't see crazy profits for too long, but when you do and first to the game you reinvest to try as grab as big of the pie early on, not hodle because you get way too much money from other business.

So they're not dumping now, and even less likely to dump when market goes up. Perpetual hodlers?? Great business plan with no exit strategy, but even if that's the case and 1% ASIC manufacturers horde up all new coins there's the risk of the other 99% revolting and hard forking you out of the game.

When you do and first to the game you reinvest to try as grab as big of the pie early on, not hodle because you get way too much money from other business

Great business plan with no exit strategy, but even if that's the case and 1% ASIC manufacturers horde up all new coins there's the risk of the other 99% revolting and hard forking you out of the game.

Sales != profit.

And again you're whole argument seems to be that they're so profitable they can do whatever they want. Even if that the case in one instance, clearly that's not sustainable on a long term scale

The blockchain can be duplicated as many times and for as many different applications as need be.  Clonecoin.  This particular instance of he technology--the Bitcoin blockchain--is no more elegant than a clone, so not particularly valuable beyond its current sunk capital (miners, etc.) & brand recognition.

If I said automotive technology is valuable to mankind, would you assume I meant Chevy?

I've wondered the same thing. That combo is so rare that one can only conclude that the system of incentives is working.

Bottom line is money has to come from somewhere to cover costs and generate fiat profit. And your argument that they'd rather indefinitely raise capital from VCs to cover their costs rather than sell their own inventory is conceptually flawed. Simple as that.

The company was an overnight success and achieved over $10M in sales during its first month and is on schedule to do $100M in this first year.

Since KnC started in June last year, it has sold bitcoin mining computers worth $75 million.

Again the fact that this one time event was so against the norm that it made the news should hint on how the normal course of business goes. Would BitFury selling their inventory to fund new farm made the news??? Think that be considered the normal course of business

Garza voiced the least concern regarding the price, saying that ultimately, the value of bitcoin is underpinned not so much by the consumers and merchants who use and accept digital currency but by the miners who facilitate the whole network.

“Miners believe in the currency the most,” he said.

Terpin polled the crowd by asking how many sell a certain percentage of their bitcoins for fiat currencies like the dollar. One only miner raised their hand when Terpin asked if they sold 100% of their bitcoin for dollars, and about one-third of the crowd indicated that they don’t sell any of their generated bitcoins.

With a theoretical ROI of over a year which is far from certain. If the price tanks even further I'd even say that most of these farms gonna be out of business a year from now.

Not really a counter, just this: It's possible that nobody who is starting mining now breaks even, even with cheap or stolen electricity. (If you'll assume a constant btc price, free electricity and >2% periodic difficulty increase for instance no consumer miner makes money ever)
In that sense Bitcoin mining is a gamble in it's own and so larger mining farms aren't necessarily more risk-aware.

Yeah i'm yet to hear a valid counter point to this. Although i don't see them as evil, just part of the ecosystem/capitalism. Hope the halving and a risk of a hard fork if they get out of control would keep them in check.

I've already tried to make this same point multiple times in this thread, but it just seems to make the naysayers more stubborn. These mega-mining farms are working to devour their competition while raking in the dough. They're not delusional hodlers who are betting on BTC going to the moon in 10 years or whatever. There's profits to be taken right now, and these people are ready to milk this cash cow dry.

I believe he means that mining has become a job of a few entities (mining farms). Not exactly Satoshi's idea about decentralized peer-to-peer systems.

There are surely better coins. but not accepted by community.
So there is very low chances other crypto coin will survive.

Even LTC people loosing interest.

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

Its only a matter of time before bitcoin is replaced by something that is decentralized and peer-to-peer.  Greed and lack of competent leadership are the root causes for this version 1.0 failure.

Therefore, for any of you out there thinking that bitcoin is dead in the water, it might be.  The currency is not the important factor.  The important factor is the cryptographically secure blockchain protocol, as this gives the protocol the ability to record and transfer value without trusted third parties such as banks.  That technology, given to the world by Satoshi Nakamoto, may just transform everything including banking.

Yeah I didnt take the time to respond out of the respect for the developers of Monero, but this is a pretty flimsy answer.

 Unless other people are doing this at the same time, when you move your coins back to the main chain, you will get the same coins back that you started with.

-- this assumes a very low volume on the sidechain. It also assumes that they will keep the block processing length short enough for something like this to occur. This is not smart and therefore will not happen, especially immediately after release. They can short the block times down once enough volume has been achieved.

I also think it is possible the market may simply reject the notion of adopting the Bitcoin currency for everything.

-- The entire history of network effects says otherwise. This is totally baseless logic.

We may well find that the reason for altcoins is not the features!

-- This is equivalent to saying there is no reason to use Monero in the first place. Everyone there was there because they believed in a pure anonymous coin and the market it served. However now with that possibility achieved via sidechains, there remains no reason to be in Monero any longer (imo).

I guess that after a point has been reached that no one can profit from mining, no matter how high the price has gone or how much he's able to invest mining is going to be something equivalent of running a node. Only done by hobbyists and supporters that are looking to help the network.

I was talking about country_A, more of an exposition than a dialog, really. Would you like to have a talk?  What's on ur mind?

"The Luleå river produces twice as much electricity as the Hoover Dam does, so 50 per cent is exported from our region. There is a surplus of energy, and we can supply more data centres in this area easily," Engman said.

The facility is fed directly by the 78 MW Boden hydropower station, located less than 500m away.

So, you got nothing other than "your understanding"?  Don't even joke like that.