Read this claims 98% of gear never hits a block.

[philipma1957]

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/57452/98-of-bitcoin-mining-machines-will-never-produce-a-block-says-pwc-QUICK TAKE

Alex de Vries, a blockchain specialist at PwC and founder of Digiconomist, has said that 98% of bitcoin mining machines will fail to produce a block during their average lifetime of 1.5 years
de Vries told The Block: “One could classify regular proof-of-work as proof-of-useless-work.”
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Alex de Vries, a blockchain specialist at "Big Four" consultancy firm PwC and founder of crypto analytics site Digiconomist, has said that 98% of bitcoin mining machines will fail to produce a block of transactions during their average lifetime of 1.5 years.

Around 4 million machines are currently active and nearly 75,000 blocks are produced every 1.5 years – meaning less than 2% machines are able to produce a block to verify bitcoin transactions, de Vries tweeted Monday. The remaining 98% of machines never produce any blocks, he contended.

"The lifetime of course varies, but if you look historically, you do see bitcoin mining devices follow Koomey's law (doubling of computational power every 1.5 years)," de Vries told The Block. "If you look at Bitmain IPO data you see they sold well over 4 million of Antminer S9 family devices over the past years (see Carbon Footprint of Bitcoin report, published last year), so that's a very plausible number."

Even if you take four years as an average lifetime of bitcoin mining machines, the number is not any better at around 200,000 blocks on 4 million devices, de Vries told The Block.

When asked about mining pools – which essentially serve to amass hash power, and distribute block rewards among those who contribute to the pool – de Vris was equally dismissive.

"Yes they bundle and distribute the work, but that doesn’t change that at the end of the line the 'winning' number is only found once every 10 minutes by a single one of those devices," he told The Block. "Pooling is just a specific strategy to perform the random number generation; doesn't alter the substance."

Energy consumption by bitcoin mining machines is also a cause of concern, according to de Vries. The carbon footprint of a single transaction is equal to spending 52,043 hours watching YouTube, he told The Telegraph U.K. in a report published Sunday.

"It's a serious problem in terms of economic sustainability," de Vries The Block, adding: "One could classify regular proof-of-work as proof-of-useless-work."

Is a proof-of-stake system a solution? Not necessarily, he said.

"There's little doubt that such a system would reduce bitcoin's energy need by around 99.9% (and e-waste would be even more negligible). I don't necessarily see this as the ultimate solution, but a step in getting the right mindset with regard to creating something truly sustainable," de Vries concluded.

note my bolded line  it says 200,000 blocks were made  with about 4,000,000  machines  and that is not any better then his 2% number.


last I looked 200,000/4,000,000   is 5%     5% is better then 2%

It would mean 5 blocks   vs 2 blocks..   or 63 coins vs 25 coins.

If you want to argue  that  those s9's are not all that miner they were close to 80% of the network

so  4 blocks not 5 blocks

Still last I looked 4 blocks are 50 coins  vs 2 blocks are 25 coins.

Article is propaganda Since it is off by a factor of 2 at best.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

The author of the article is just stating the obvious. Of course the vast majority of machines never hit a block, one might as well state that in any given year 98% of people buying a Lottery ticket every day never win a significant prize. It's how the systems work: If too many win (find blocks) the system goes bankrupt so yes, the odds are stacked against players/miners. Duh!

In my case, since Feb 2014 I've owned a total of 108 miners. Most are of course now offline & replaced by faster gear as the years went by leaving me now running just 26 much faster miners. Using all that gear, to-date I've hit a total of 13 blocks while using pools - 3 at BFL's old EMC pool and the remaining 10 all on KanoPool.

Obviously most of my miners never hit a block before being replaced. BUT -- I have a 'Lucky" R4 (still running) that has hit 2 blocks both last year, 1 out of my 3x M10's hit one and 3x Avalon 841's each found 1. On Kano the remaining 4 blocks were found by various flavors of Ants from S3-S9's. All in all I think I am well ahead in terms of # of miners vs blocks found.

[DarkDays]

Looks like this exact same concept was covered by Decrypt from a slightly different angle.

https://decrypt.co/21142/the-big-secret-at-the-heart-of-bitcoin-mining

This de Vries guy is basically saying that because so few people (miners) successfully discover blocks that they're basically just burning electricity and wasting their time.

However, since the vast majority of miners are congregated together through mining pools, it really doesn't matter how low the individual block discovery rate is, since rewards are distributed across the pool anyway.

Overall, it appears de Vries is just trying to stir up FUD for no good reason.

[KonstantinosM]

He's a professional FUDster it seems.

I hate the argument that bitcoin is bad for the environment. I've refuted it many times but this isn't the topic here.


His argument here is ridiculous. It's kind of like saying that 99% of a net is useless because only a few grams of the net catch all the fish.

edit: typo

[pooya87]

unfortunately nowadays any newbie with very little understanding of how bitcoin works is being branded with titles such as a blockchain specialist, a blockchain expert,... and then their statements is being spread by the media as expert opinion about bitcoin!
eventually there is so much misinformation that regular users don't know how bitcoin works so people like this dude have a much easier time spreading their FUD about bitcoin.

[Wind_FURY]

OP, we should accept that there's waste in POW. There's waste in anything that's demanded in the production of "something", especially energy-based cryptocurrencies. BUT, the benefits that POW could give could lead to more benefits. I believe we are just starting to scratch the surface.