As mining gets harder and smaller miners drop out, is it bad news?

[merkin51]

I've started to see more and more btc mining equipment start popping up in "for sale" forums, which suggests that individual / small miners are starting to drop out more and more. Am I right in thinking this? If this continues, I guess it'll mean that eventually could just be a few big companies with huge mining farms that will be running the show. Isn't this a bad thing? Excuse my ignorance if I'm way off the mark, but the overall health and balance of network seems to be key to keeping bitcoin stable, I don't think this scenario sounds very healthy?

[Elwar]

I tried to mine on my laptop back in 2010. I tried a few different times, each time getting errors that I could not figure out how to get it to work and not much guidance on how to get it to work on my system.

Last week I got my first USB ASIC. I plugged it in and after watching a YouTube video on how to get it going I was up and running soon afterwards, now I am a bitcoin miner 3 years later.

I still believe that the fact that I had to download the driver and install a miner is too much and it will eventually be plug and play (insert USB, choose pool or just give a payment address).

These things are about $150 on ebay. Eventually they will be sold in Best Buy and Walmart.

[DannyHamilton]

I've started to see more and more btc mining equipment start popping up in "for sale" forums, which suggests that individual / small miners are starting to drop out more and more. Am I right in thinking this? If this continues, I guess it'll mean that eventually could just be a few big companies with huge mining farms that will be running the show. Isn't this a bad thing? Excuse my ignorance if I'm way off the mark, but the overall health and balance of network seems to be key to keeping bitcoin stable, I don't think this scenario sounds very healthy?

Economy of scale.

Long term, I expect mining to migrate to locations with access to cheap power, and cheap cooling.

Eventually I expect mining will become a large scale endeavor (something along the scale of the electric grid or phone service).

There *should* be enough competition between the various "mining corporations" to keep the network secure, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.