No I've not invested in Ether at all actually. I don't like the current business model but I might invest at a later stage depending.

I have looked at airdrops before and it's pretty unanimous so far that it just crushes the price and doesn't create user adoption. So I thought the Ethereum airdrop planned here was fine, just futile. Considering the proportion of miners involved in Bitcoin and the number of POW fanboys, trying to bootstrap an ethereum clone based on DPOS onto Bitcoin seemed even more implausible. I think it would just be free advertising for the real Ethereum. Just my opinion, you're entitled to yours.

What do you invest in?

I suppose this is your analysis: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=225659.0

Interesting to say the least.

YC

The reason we invited these folks initially was due to prior collaboration via Digishield and some respective similarities in technology. Frankly, anyone is invited and willing to participate. We figured it was more of a warm connection.

In either case, you may want to educate yourself on Digibyte before making generalizations.

Good luck!

YC

there is major flaws with pow. It's like cars... We have cars that are majorly adopted but they are run on petrol which is a major flaw in the concept of cars due the inefficiency of the engines and fuel source for the engine. Everyone knows electric cars are more efficient and solve the major flaw previously mentioned how ever they are only a fraction of the total automotive industry and not very popular regardless of being superior technology because the infrastructure isn't in place to allow mass adoption.

Not only that but people  won't actually try the technology because they are complacent with what they already use because in their eyes it is "good enough" and will not realise the deficiencies in what they currently use until the later more advanced and efficient technology becomes further adopted at which point they are part of the mainstream adoption and missed the "early adopter" status of that technology.

There will always be people who deny that the more efficient and advanced technology is better and fight against it due to vested interest which is what we see today with those who have a vested interest in bitcoin and those who have a public persona in the btc space.

The same concept can be applied very well to 1st and second gen crypto..

Just because bitcoin is fully functional and gaining huge adoption, it doesn't mean it's the superior technology.. Eventually  infrastructure will be built for the superior tech and people will start to see the it is superior and it will gain adoption...

The question is... At what point will people see this and move from old inefficient tech to the New more efficient and advanced tech? And where in this adoption curve do you fit in?

Yes, it is a flaw when compared to something like Bitshare's delegated proof of stake, which has fixed the "nothing at stake" issue with other PoS coins.. among other things. Seeing as though DPoS uses a fraction of the energy to protect the BitsharesX block chain just as securely, this is a vast improvement in and of itself. Furthermore, using dPoS you can increase block speeds to 10 to 30 seconds without seeing the problems that you would see using PoW (stales, forks, etcetra.) http://bitshares.org/delegated-proof-of-stake/

You actually can get discounts on electricity if you use a lot of it from certain companies, but there are other ways they can gain advantage.

Obviously someone setting up a large farm such as this has pretty deep pockets. Someone with deep pockets can order many more mining rigs than joe blow, which reduces his percentage of the network, which reduces joe blow's profits. This could be done (as we are seeing) to an extent that joe blow will never break even (in BTC... that's all we care about). Do you think joe blow will continue buying mining rigs if he can't break even? They can push him out of the market. The fact that most mining manufacturers offer bulk pricing only exemplifies this.

Another way they could gain an advantage is by investing money in manufacturing their own ASIC mining chips, PCBs, and assembly lines. In that scenario they would be paying a fraction of the price for a mining rig that runs at the same speed as joe blow (even more so than bulk discounts). Which allows them to purchase more mining rigs, further reducing the cost of the mining rigs, and therefore further reduce joe blow's portion of the network.

That is true, but if they can achieve a certain percentage of the network they will easily operate at a profit. Especially when they are getting the mining rigs much cheaper than average consumers via bulk discounts or manufacturing their own. If it wasn't wildly profitable, why would large manufacturers like KNC, Avalon, Bitfury be making these massive farms in the first place? I know how much of a headache a large farm is to setup and run.. I find it hard to believe they would do it if it wasn't highly profitable. Due to economies of scale, it is very profitable.

Because of the reasons I've stated above. Sure, the little guys have access to the most recent hardware, but they are paying much more for that same hardware than the large farms and manufacturers are paying. They are at a disadvantage from the get go. To make things worse, a lot of the little guys are closing up shop and moving on. I mean.. if you bought mining hardware and you lost a lot of Bitcoins doing so (IE. did not break even), would you keep buying mining hardware? It is still profitable for large farms and manufacturers, but not so much for the little guys. In my ASIC investments, NONE of them have broken even, and I know I'm not alone. I will never buy a Bitcoin ASIC again in my life.

Yes, I would consider both of those processes wasteful of natural resources, and potentially the downfall of humanity living on planet earth at some unknown point of time in the future. If gasoline engines weren't such a bad thing for the environment and wasteful of natural resources, then why is there so much effort being made to move beyond gasoline with the use of alternative fuels? Do you not understand how many natural resources are wasted during the process of generating electricity, how the environment is negatively impacted while doing so, and why using less electricity is beneficial to that problem?


There haven't really been any good solutions to PoW until very recently. There have been different variants of PoS that all suffer from various flaws. Only until recently have most of those flaws been fixed. A change like this (from Bitcoin to something else) will take time. The use of gasoline is actually a great analogy, I am glad you brought it up.

There are issues with the use of Gasoline just like there are issues with Bitcoin, both are not perfect for a few similar reasons (harmful to the environment and waste of natural resources.) Yet, Gasoline and Bitcoin will be around for a long time because of the infrastructure that has been built by both of them. In gasoline's case there are billions of vehicles, power tools, planes, etcetra that use it... to switch to an alternative we would need to rebuild these or design and build new ones. In Bitcoin's case the exchanges, ATMs, payment processors, etcetra are already setup to work with Bitcoin... to work with another crypto currency would require reprogramming just about every core service involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Costs are another thing holding gasoline and Bitcoin alternatives.. it is expensive to develop alternative technologies.

The advancement in technology is still being improved upon, but better technological alternatives certainly already exist for both gasoline and Bitcoin. It will take time, how long is anyone's guess, but I am certain that both will be uprooted as the king of fuel (gasoline) and the king of crypto currencies (Bitcoin) at some point in the future. Gasoline is definitely not the only example, all technologies come and go as better technologies replace the less adequate technologies. The transitions from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray took a lot of time. Along with the transition from Records to Tapes to CDs to MP3s to FLACs took a lot of time. I could go on and on with these examples..

Notice the more technological advancements happen at a quicker pace.. I don't see why this couldn't be applicable to Bitcoin as well. It is after all much cheaper to reprogram something than to rebuild all the vehicles, power tools, etcetra in the world. Furthermore, gasoline has many other factors why it is probably the best option for the foreseeable future, but Bitcoin has less so.


I just assumed by your reply that you could think through the above reasoning yourself and understand it, yet still chose to call me out for being wrong because you own a lot of Bitcoins and want to protect your nest egg. Many people (individuals, companies, and corporations) are heavily invested in the current system (gasoline and Bitcoin), and profit from it. They are hesitant to allow change and will spend any amount of time, effort, and money that it takes to thwart the opposition because it is how they sustain their lifestyles and provide for their families. I apologize if my assumption was incorrect. If my reasoning is wrong, then please explain how I am wrong. Sometimes I do a horrible job of conveying exactly what I am trying to say, even though it makes perfect sense in my head.

look at the escalating hashrate.  certainly someone does.

orders of mining equipment are still in high demand.  hashrate is still escalating.  when can we expect this participation to die off, please?

Yeah, that was the jist of my jab as well. Thanks for explaining it though. I'm sure at least one person who comes across that post wouldn't understand.

Playing with cryptocurrencies but doesn't seem to understand basic fiat markets.

and that's a pretty negative attitude.

i think that Bitcoin has much to offer, to even gubmints.   i think they will see this.  once they understand this is a widespread grassroots movement that can't be stuffed back into the bag, they will embrace it.  yes, there may be a fight for a while but alot of fiat money problems can be solved by Bitcoin and everyone now knows we have a problem.

sound money will make the world a better place.

Pos and Pow both have many cons. A new system would do good.

no.  that's mighty talk from you there.

first off, gubmints don't have unlimited resources for something like this.  sure, they print money to save banks; but not all banks and not with unlimited funds.  this is an entirely different animal w/o a sure outcome for them.

a gubmint's mere entry into the asic market would set off not only alarms throughout the Bitcoin space but also jack the price of all asic components to the moon to the point where it would be prohibitively expensive for them to produce enough equipment to carry out such an attack, let alone get off the mark trying to do so.  and we would find out about it ahead of time.  wait times are a couple months at most high capacity chip makers.  any sudden delay in delivery would call for investigation.  it would be impossible for a gubmint to make such a huge asic order w/o ppl finding out and w/o chip makers jacking their prices to the moon.  the gubmint would be competing with the likes of Intel and IBM for chip runs.

then, there would be the political fallout, especially if they fail.  try pissing off a few billionaires, like Branson or Ka-Shing, whose investment you'd be messing around with. you and/or a gubmint would end up in court in a nasty legal battle for damages.  class action suits would be carried out by now wealthy early adopters.

then, there are the technical out-maneuvers that could be introduced into the protocol after finding out about such a plan and a brief pause to implement them.  a change could be made to SHA 516 as an example.

and so what of a 51% attack that could be shutdown relatively immediately?  there would be a temporary disruption of the network but then we would adapt and the gubmint would have wasted billions for nothing.

no, i think we are in a Pure Strategy Nash Equilibrium.

that's funny.  i don't see any pool even close to 51% currently.  ghash is at 29%.  it appears the community has worked it out and w/o nary an attack.  who's spreading FUD?:

It does not matter what Pos system is used for a Pos coin, they all are vulnerable to a social 51% attack.


In the case of nxt no attack is needed as its game set match from the start. Those Lithuanian guys who created nxt always had full control.