What the most important things to secure the network of bitcoin?

[Agestorzrxx]

What the most important things to secure the network of bitcoin?
The hashrate? NO.
I think it's the money we spent to secure the network. And i believe 21 company doing a nonsense thing.

[Kakmakr]

Why do you say that? People spending Bitcoin, does not secure the network. The more people or devices doing the mining, secure the network. If we end up with only 1 or 2 big mining farms doing all the mining, we would end up with more problems. I think it's a good thing, and even better, if they can make it profitable for the owner of the device.

[NeuroticFish]

While spending money will reward miners, miners will indeed stay and secure the network.

But just think that halving is not that far away, the transactions fees are not that big to cover the difference and bitcoin price on the exchanges is much smaller than the miners would like.
If too many miners will shut down the operations, the network may have hard times from the security point of view (Just imagine the scenario when 50-60% of the hashrate will come from 2 mining facilities in China. What if they join up for a huge double spend?)

And here 21 Inc comes and may have a good chance to fill the gap.


Also, 21 Inc is not Red Cross. No. They do it for profit. Their devices will mine in your home, you'll pay for the power costs and will get back some pennies (which may just cover the power cost, or may not even cover it after the halving).

[goregrind]

Mining has to become unprofitable for big business so they can die off and let mining return to the users.

[NeuroticFish]

Mining has to become unprofitable for big business so they can die off and let mining return to the users.

This is a nice and utopic view, but I think that this is not possible with current terms (algo not changing).
Let's say that the businesses shut down and the home miner will continue mining (for fun, for believing in Bitcoin etc.)

What stops one of the big miners in, let's say, 3 months after shutdown to fire up all the miners and do a 51% attack?
Even thinking on that is scary. It would be the end of bitcoin reign, really.

[randy8777]

Mining has to become unprofitable for big business so they can die off and let mining return to the users.

if mining indeed goes back to users/home miners then bitcoin will lose its security and it will become a botnet paradise for hackers.

[DarkHyudrA]

Mining has to become unprofitable for big business so they can die off and let mining return to the users.

This is a nice and utopic view, but I think that this is not possible with current terms (algo not changing).
Let's say that the businesses shut down and the home miner will continue mining (for fun, for believing in Bitcoin etc.)

What stops one of the big miners in, let's say, 3 months after shutdown to fire up all the miners and do a 51% attack?
Even thinking on that is scary. It would be the end of bitcoin reign, really.

If all the miners will be "home miners", the someone with a few ASICs can turn on and profit.
Then another guy with a few ASICs left on dust will see that the hashrate increased and that there's a chance to profit, and turn his rig on. And another guy, and another guy, and there goes on.

No network will die, no utopic "everyone mining" will be true(not everyone want a computer destroyed trying to get BTC), things will only need another "balance". Also remember that most miners sell their coins to pay their rigs, so less coins means less miners selling amount that leads to a small rise in the price.

[MicroGuy]

What the most important things to secure the network of bitcoin?
The hashrate? NO.
I think it's the money we spent to secure the network. And i believe 21 company doing a nonsense thing.

The #1 thing that can be done to secure bitcoin is to create a network-wide voting system for core updates.

Not simply saying, "if you don't like the changes, you don't have to update." That is not a practical solution.

[Fat Ronaldo]

What the most important things to secure the network of bitcoin?

I think the most important thing is awareness and people just actually using bitcoin. It's always going to be a niche thing unless the general public get involved but sadly they have no real need or desire to.

[Jeremycoin]

Why do you say that? People spending Bitcoin, does not secure the network. The more people or devices doing the mining, secure the network. If we end up with only 1 or 2 big mining farms doing all the mining, we would end up with more problems. I think it's a good thing, and even better, if they can make it profitable for the owner of the device.

(CMIIW)
But if someone wanna send their Bitcoin, it needs confirmation from the miners (namely with mining the Bitoin). So, People spending Bitcoin and People mining Bitcoin is still related to secure the Bitcoin network.

[inBitweTrust]

The #1 thing that can be done to secure bitcoin is to create a network-wide voting system for core updates.

Not simply saying, "if you don't like the changes, you don't have to update." That is not a practical solution.

What you are suggesting is advocating for the tyranny of the majority which betrays the way bitcoin was designed and most open source projects work.

You have the option of voting in 4 ways with bitcoin - Become a developer and contribute or pay for development, host a full node, forking the code by staying under non compatible version/creating one yourself or mining bitcoin. All four options have certain privileges with risks and costs.

What you appear to be insinuating is that all non-contributing users (which can be manipulated and simulated) without much of a stake can make demands upon those that are contributing. This is an immoral proposition and one that has large security risks.

[virtualx]

Mining has to become unprofitable for big business so they can die off and let mining return to the users.

if mining indeed goes back to users/home miners then bitcoin will lose its security and it will become a botnet paradise for hackers.

Correct. The bitcoin network needs the mining process to secure the network and lowering difficulty would not make the network more secure. If you want an entry level mining network simply go for an alt.

[LiteCoinGuy]

What the most important things to secure the network of bitcoin?
The hashrate? NO.
I think it's the money we spent to secure the network. And i believe 21 company doing a nonsense thing.

yeah! this "21 company" is a bunch of idiots! 110 mio in funding, Intel, Cisco, Qualcomm and some of the most influential persons in silicon valley... - IDIOTS! they have no plan! it will never work!

[LiteCoinGuy]

or in better words:

"Take the humans and boring mining profits out of the conversation. Stop focusing on that stuff for a second.

Instead, start thinking about the networks of the future. Think about all of the autonomous cars, delivery drones, charging stations, modes of public transportation, parking meters, turnstiles, WiFi hotspot routers, vending machines, pay-per-view online content, secure digital locks, industrial machines, etc etc.

Think about all of the autonomous entities that will exist and work with little or no human interaction.

THOSE are the future of micro payments and automated secure authentication. THOSE are the reason we need to put truly secure chips and the keys to a few Satoshis on every intelligent device on the planet -- secure chips that will essentially act as a billion little virtual machines taking advantage of, participating in, and contributing to, the World Wide Ledger.

Each of those will be the key components in the networks of the future, so those are exactly what 21 (and friends) plan to create.

Actual human users will likely continue to use entirely separate wallets for every day spending money; so, focusing on people, mobile phones, and "mining profits" completely misses the point.

This is all about the networks of the future, and the devices that will become the most active components of those networks, not the networks/users of yesterday and today."

[thebenjamincode]

i think bitcoin network is already secure
what is not secure is the btc exchange we put our coins in

[thew3apon]

decentralization of miners on the networks,if the mining becomes centralized that can damage the network this can happen through cloud mining operations.

[Agestorzrxx]

decentralization of miners on the networks,if the mining becomes centralized that can damage the network this can happen through cloud mining operations.

No matter the develop of the asic miner chip, it's for sure that the mining will going to centralized. you can find every field will going to monopolization,. Decentralization mining is impossible.

[Agestorzrxx]

The 21 company want to embrace the miner chip to every device, which means they should create very cheap and energy saving asic chip.
And as everyone know, we can use CPU mining bitcoin, but one do it now as it is nonprofit, why?
The hashrate is too high and one CPU only can provide very few hashrate compare the whole network hashrate.
When the cheap and energy saving asic chip was created, the same picture show again.
Because the chip is very cheap, the mine company always can buy more enough chip to make the device chip hashrate too few compare the whole network. And it make it is nonprofit and out of date.
That why i believe is the money not the hashrate to secure the network.

[NattyLiteCoin]

I think 1 Billion devices executing 100 billion computations per second can offer some security. You know, on top of the 354 Million Billion computations per second that are already taking place.

All they'd have to do is point the computations to a different cause though, then bitcoin may be fucked.

[Amph]

I think 1 Billion devices executing 100 billion computations per second can offer some security. You know, on top of the 354 Million Billion computations per second that are already taking place.

All they'd have to do is point the computations to a different cause though, then bitcoin may be fucked.

the network that they are creating with this 21 thing, should be bigger than the current network, assuming everyone will run it because 3B house runn ing 3 device of those even with a mere 10 gigahash per device would be 30giga per house, so about 90b giga, which are 90 exabyte, the current network is nowhere near that