Miners should Start a Union

[Sakarias-Corporation]

We demand higher price. We no sell coins !

seriously its worth thinking of haha imagine if the TOP 5 mining farms (or maybe 10-30?) would demand to sell coins for 10-20% higher then todays value.

[muhrohmat]

well i cant take to seriose but union its a good idea im free to say what we need its work into that porject for like a sindicate  that cares for miners porfit

[p3yot33at3r]

A Union......

You gonna go on strike? 

[Xialla]

ah, so if there will be union of bakers, tomorrow will cost one baguette twice more? please wake up...

[Sakarias-Corporation]

ah, so if there will be union of bakers, tomorrow will cost one baguette twice more? please wake up...

if every baker would unite and sell baguette for 2 Euro instead of 1. then yes it would.

[chalkboard17]

This makes no sense at all I am sorry. It's so flawed I don't even know where to begin at.
What could work, but extremely unlikely, would be if two pools control over 60% of the hashrate and agree on refusing transactions with low fee. Then they would be working together to only mine transactions with high fee per kb. This could backfire into rendering bitcoin useless and their mined btc rendered to 0$ but most likely they would stop and realize the mistake before that happens.

[johnyj]

This has been discussed many times, large miners forming an OPEC-like organization, control the coin supply and set the market price

However, bitcoin is not like petroleum, it can not be consumed, thus the market supply mostly come from existing holders. Even if miners control majority of the daily new coin generation, that's still a small amount comparing with the daily coin cash out from previous owners. And after the next reward halving, their influence will be even less

[MCHouston]

In the USA this is known as price fixing and violating Anti-Trust.  So that would be a no from me.

[achow101]

If they refused to mine because they want the price to increase, then the network hash rate would go down. This would cause a difficulty drop and other miners and pools would just pick up the slack once the difficulty drops. Or, the network will be just as safe and secure without them after the difficulty drops and those miners are ignored.

[Amph]

they could do it easily, because they have already roi'd, and adding new equipments wil roi in a second, so they don't have that problem of returning their investment, also they pay a very cheap electricty, they could agree to set their sell order on a +1% every day at the very least

[Bicknellski]

Your union sounds like a federal reserve system not a union.

Chomsky on Federal Reserve

We already have significant amounts of hashing power in a few hands and any 'union' would act in their own selfish interests and if they could adjust the price of BTC they would.

They 'un'-fortunately do not have the resources just to HOLD back bitcoin as they have significant investment in the equipment and space in which they operate.

If they could manipulate the price they would, ala Mt. GOX, without having to form a 'union' there are greater powers at work who moderate the price of bitcoin.

Careful what you wish for there is already a club for those who have the majority of the bitcoins... http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/06/02/bitbeat-grand-plans-for-bitcoin-from-necker-island/

Code:

One half of BitBeat spent last week moderating discussions at the inaugural 
Blockchain Summit on Richard Branson’s Caribbean island, Necker Island.

It was perhaps inevitable that an exclusive event in a tropical idyll, where 
businessmen hobnob in the presence of one of the world’s richest men, would 
elicit allegations of elitism from some of quarters of the bitcoin community 
(as well as the occasional conspiracy theory.) But as the summit progressed, 
it became clear that the attendees had grander and, arguably, more altruistic 
aspirations than their critics imagined.

The group, which the summit web site described as comprising 
“the greatest minds in digital innovation,” explored multiple projects 
that would use the blockchain – the core ledger technology underlying 
bitcoin – to change the lives of billions of people. Whether these succeed 
remains to be seen, but the scope of the goals discussed was striking.

The same people who control fiat are discussing things with the people who have majority control over bitcoins on the planet. You tell me if that is a good thing. Front and center at the table is Bitfury... so much for your union.

[iglasses]

Decentralized supporters unite!!

ohh wai....

[makcik]

Bitcoins have been popular for mining. And also mining has been proved as the best method of getting bitcoins for yourself. Bitcoins mining is done in almost every country. So, we can easily estimate that there are millions of miners all over the world.
There's a proverb that there is strength in unity. And, that can do wonders if done in mining.
According to me, miners should start a union for mining. In which they will work together. This will increase profits as there will be involvement of many people. As it will be a union, it will be recognized under one team and it will be more famous too. Overall its a good idea. But, it depends upon the way people work and their mutual understanding.
Anyways, I'm in favour for it.

[Betwrong]

Decentralized supporters unite!!

ohh wai....

Haha, yeah! Trying to centralize something which is decentralized by it's nature is an interesting concept... But will it work? No, of course it won't.

[Dalkore]

That may of worked when miners owned more of the Bitcoins.   Now that is not the case and the miners are not determining the price.  Miners for the most part need to sell their coins immediately to cover their expenses.   What they have left they are saving but that is not enough restriction of supply to affect the price in any major way.  What will happen is that if the difficulty goes too high or the price too low, you will see the network adjust to a level that at least allows break-even for a majority of the network.   

[Tmdz]

The ones who need the union the most are small time miners eg the ones who pay midlevel rates electric or own 100 pieces of hardware or less.  The big time miners have the super cheap electricity and they keep adding big hash not giving a shit how it makes difficulty rise.  So that union would have to be able to do something against the big guys or secure contracts to lockin new efficient asic hardware to be released to us first then after some time released to the big players.  The other way would be to hack their network, get inside and start shutting machines down or reconfigure them to mine for us.  Until they agree to give in to our demands and reduce their hash rate or at least stay steady.

So the question is...who's gonna start hacking the mega farms?

[tiggytomb]

Yeah this doesn't make too much sense really, for example if the large miners part of a union decided to not mine then the smaller miners would have struck gold and will be hitting blocks which is good for them but in reality I can't see this working.  Nice thinking though.

[notlist3d]

Yeah this doesn't make too much sense really, for example if the large miners part of a union decided to not mine then the smaller miners would have struck gold and will be hitting blocks which is good for them but in reality I can't see this working.  Nice thinking though.

It won't happen as we really need to keep a miner running, if you shutdown as a strike would do you really would lose money.  And there is not like a boss everyone would go to... its a open market so cant really do a bargning with all the BTC buyers of the world they spend what they see BTC worth.

And actually btc has went up from 230 for a long time to around a hundred above that.   So that is quite a good sign to see.  I agree we all always want more, but a union would do us no good as it would just be a few people most likely and would not effect overall BTC price.

[Dalkore]

This is a knee-jerk reaction at best.  If you are serious then you would pool a bunch of miners resources and get enough funds to have a little clout to get hardware when it comes out.   You would also need to partner or build a efficient hosting location to do the people's business.  I warned of this before ASIC were even out.  

Bitcoin is secured by human greed so in that scenario, people don't seem to care about network centralization for all intensive purposes.  In the end you will likely have 10-15 large players that make up the bulk of the mining.  This will be because they made smart hosting choices, got their hands on efficient hardware and waited all the other miners out.  The only way smaller miners get a seat at that table is making something that scales as well.   If anyone is serious about this and has access to funding, PM and we can have an offline discussion.

P.S. Don't try and hack large farms, those are federal crimes and you don't look good in orange.

-Dalkore

[knightkon]

I have to entertain this and ask how you would want to work this.  Cryptocurrencys have not made a large enough dent into the market to get a country to consider it a currency.  In the USA, BTC and other cryptocurrencies are considered property and that is all, they will not recognize it as a currency.  With that being said, why would you want to unionize something that is working its way to the top to be known?  I just do not see the beneficent at this time.