Mining difficulty increase is the real problem

[RealBitcoin]

I see here all wise guys debating the block size increase causing centralization, and then other groups of people deny that. Its a waste of time debate from the point of view of centralization.

Because all of you fail to see that the mining difficulty increase is the thing that is causing centralization.

The bigger the difficulty, the more capital it requires to mine it, the more centralized it becomes, as only big miners can afford equipment and stay competitive in low electricity countries.

The mining difficulty doesnt affect bitcoin inflation, so there is absolutely no point in having it increase, other than deliberately creating a centralized system, which is foolish


The mining difficulty should have never increased, if we would wanted a real decentralized currency. Because now its a debate of a dog catching its tail.

I cannot believe I`m the only one seeing this, and everybody else is bamboozled with the block increase debate...

Bitcoin will become a miner oligarchy, I`m fine with that, but i think this is not satoshi's true vision of bitcoin.


I`m not a technical expert, but i`m sure it's doable, many other altcoins have non-increasing mining difficulty.

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[pawel7777]

The mining difficulty doesnt affect bitcoin inflation, so there is absolutely no point in having it increase, other than deliberately creating a centralized system, which is foolish

Static difficulty would affect inflation/issuance model.

ELI5: Imagine you're the only miner with 1 ghs/ and you're getting 25 BTC per block, then I come in with my 1 gh/s and I'm also getting 25 BTC/block (since difficulty didn't increase) and then thousands of others join in. How would you keep 21mil cap with no difficulty adjustment?

You want fixed cap/supply - you need adjustable difficulty
You want low difficulty forever - you have unlimited supply

And yes, Satoshi was aware of that.

[RealBitcoin]

The mining difficulty doesnt affect bitcoin inflation, so there is absolutely no point in having it increase, other than deliberately creating a centralized system, which is foolish

You want fixed cap/supply - you need adjustable difficulty
You want low difficulty forever - you have unlimited supply

And yes, Satoshi was aware of that.

There should be some other way to resolve that dilemma. Again i`m no technical expert, but I find it hard to believe that nobody in the world can come up with such solution.

Yet there are coins like Bytecoin that solve this issue.

[shorena]

-snip-
Yet there are coins like Bytecoin that solve this issue.

Nope -> https://coinplorer.com/Charts/Difficulty/BTE

There are clearly difficulty increases. They just have no growth in hashpower recently which keeps the difficulty steady.

[RealBitcoin]

-snip-
Yet there are coins like Bytecoin that solve this issue.

Nope -> https://coinplorer.com/Charts/Difficulty/BTE

There are clearly difficulty increases. They just have no growth in hashpower recently which keeps the difficulty steady.

Ok then something like that.

It doesnt have to be static, it can have some freefloat.


What I`m saying is that it doesnt have an uptrend in difficulty like bitcoin has.

http://www.coindesk.com/data/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-time/

Bitcoin has a linear uptrend by design, that has already eliminated small Joe with average PC.

[pawel7777]

...

Ok then something like that.

It doesnt have to be static, it can have some freefloat.

Are you serious? It's flat/free-floating because mining power is flat. If more people started to mine this alt, the difficulty would go up.

You're basically asking to solve the problem of 'eat cake and have cake'.

Again, Flat difficulty or Limited supply. Pick one. You can't have both.

[Amph]

uh no as long as it appear that the new farms added are not on the same place, and are not controlled by the same entity, this is not centralization

also the mining difficulty help to secure bitcoin network, without a strong diff, the network would be vulnerable to certain attacks, that are well known

[Qusocia]

In the future, more efficient ways to mine could be possible if developers put their minds to it.

[TastyChillySauce00]

just in my opinion, if the mining difficulty wasn't increased, bitcoin price will go down and becoming very cheap,the increasing of mining difficulty is the solution to keep the bitcoin price,just some miners didn't agree because it makes their revenue smaller than before

[Digit-0]

uh no as long as it appear that the new farm added are not on the same place, and are not controlled by the same entity, this is not centralization

also the mining difficulty help to secure bitcoin network, without a strong diff, the network would be vulnerable to certain attacks, that are well known

Exactly, is like to say that there is lot of points where bitcoin is centralized, i mean big farms, so in the end there is no centralization.

Well maybe if there is only one big farm around the world and all the rest are just small mining farm, then yes, i would agree with the OP, but right now we should not talk about centralized only because difficulty is increasing and there is some big farms.

[Qusocia]

I would personally love to see a way to mine while walking, riding a bike, etc.

[pawel7777]

People tend not to understand the mechanism behind bitcoin mining. The whole process of mining is a heavy undertaking and requires very powerful machines.

Not quite true. Bitcoin network doesn't require powerful miners to exist. Such miners emerged as a result of free market mechanism aka competing for block rewards.

I would personally love to see a way to mine while walking, riding a bike, etc.

There actually is (was?) an app that allowed you to earn BTC while working out:

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/03/15/new-app-lets-earn-bitcoin-breaking-sweats/

[franky1]

actually the difficulty increase is good..

1. it stops a single person just buying out the hashrate.. as the cost increases. (solo mining/farms are on the decrease)
2. at some point when the electricity usage exceeds a whole town.. the electricity companies will cut off the mining farms, due to causing blackouts in town
3. its easier to have 5mining farms linked to a pool then one farm having electricity issues
4. if 5000 people mined 0.02% of a mining farms hash.. they would in total receive the equivelent of the farm.

thus 5000 people only need 0.02% of the total equipment cost of a farm and total electricity, each..

and this is why pools were invented. because bitcoin difficulty got too big for solo mining..
and the more the difficulty rises. the less solo miners there will be (less farms)

[rebuilder]

Again, Flat difficulty or Limited supply. Pick one. You can't have both.

Sure you can. The 21M BTC cap exists regardless of hashpower. Without an adjusting difficulty, all those coins would simply get mined much faster. After the last block subsidy was mined, the miners would need to make do with fees alone.

I imagine what would happen, assuming BTC can be valuable without difficulty adjustments, is that all the BTC would be minted rapidly, with blocks found perhaps every few seconds, and then most miners would rapidly shut down since the BTC user base never had time to grow enough for fees to pay the miners costs.

[franky1]

gold analogy:
i think the OP is just butt-hurt that he missed the golden days of pickaxe mining' and is now saying gold mining is flawed because he cannot afford a sluice machine an excavator..


my last post explained why his thoughts are flawed,.. solo mining is becoming near on impossible. and it will start to be more like co-ops and groups.. rather than farms.. as there is a limit to how many machines and how much electric can get to a single location

[Soros Shorts]

The real problem is that cheap electricity is generally available only in god forsaken places where no civilized humans live.

As long as 1000W miners are available to consumers people should be able to mine at home as long as they have cheap enough electricity.

[ranochigo]

Bitcoin mining is already centralised with the pools. Most big miners save more with mining on a pool, they don't have to think about webhosting and security issues. Mining is still viable for those without electrical fee or at least have low electrical fees.

If you're not going to let difficulty increase, blocks would be as fast as one second, everyone would be able to mine and Bitcoin would not be as precious as it would be. Of course, the faster the block, the less security it would have compared to an average 10 minute block.

[P-Funk]

There's good reason for increasing mining difficulty. If difficulty never increased, the 21 million bitcoins would have already been mined years ago. Difficulty keeps the block target averaged to about 10 minutes per block. Keep reading about bitcoin.

[franky1]

The real problem is that cheap electricity is generally available only in god forsaken places where no civilized humans live.

As long as 1000W miners are available to consumers people should be able to mine at home as long as they have cheap enough electricity.

cheap electric is not for people in 'no-mans land'

infact china is the most populated country in the world,
and all them places where a neighbour lives 100 miles away AKA australia.. the electric is higher. because of the cost of installing all them electric cabling.. 100 miles worth for just one person is not cheap.

secondly electric companies wont pump industrial amounts of electric down cabling designed for single users..

thus in both cases, disproves that living in no-mans land is cheap

EG
cambodia 2x expensive than china
new zaland 3x expensive than china
uk 3x expensive than china

[KokiFurihata]

the idea is that mining will become profitable if the bitcoin price goes up. Unfortunately I dont think the price matches the difficulty but I think that will change very soon.