Your opinions needed. How sustainable is BTC mining longterm?

[tokeweed]

I'm writing a paper on bitcoin mining (and cloud hashing services), and I'm wondering what your opinions are on its sustainability longterm considering different factors like increasing electricity costs (it has been going up in fiat value), price volatility (especially at times of low prices), competition (miners out doing other miners hashing power) and the halving of miners' reward

Do you think it will be sustainable for decades to come?

[tarsua]

No, unless you can get cheap (and i mean dirt cheap) electricity and the price goes up after the next halving, also, the larger the operation, the higher the chance of breaking a profit

[Slark]

It is not option for normal people, that is for sure. There are too many issues that piled up since early days of bitcoin when you can mine with your graphics card and actually earn something.
First of all, you need ASICs not, a lot of them, one or two miners are not enough unless you are doing this purely for fun and to test the waters.
Secondly if your electricity cost is expensive, don't waste your time, great part of the Europe beside countries like Iceland (I guess it is not EU) or maybe Ukraine are out, due to high energy pricing.

tl;dr unless you want to start professional mining farm, mining bitcoin is not good anymore for normal users

[kwukduck]

It's not. Not at all. And one of the many reasons why the bitcoin economy is guaranteed to collapse, essentially making it a ponzi scheme.

[tokeweed]

It is not option for normal people, that is for sure. There are too many issues that piled up since early days of bitcoin when you can mine with your graphics card and actually earn something.
First of all, you need ASICs not, a lot of them, one or two miners are not enough unless you are doing this purely for fun and to test the waters.
Secondly if your electricity cost is expensive, don't waste your time, great part of the Europe beside countries like Iceland (I guess it is not EU) or maybe Ukraine are out, due to high energy pricing.

tl;dr unless you want to start professional mining farm, mining bitcoin is not good anymore for normal users

I'm not asking for an opinion on what's going on right now, but what your opinion is on BTC mining sustainability decades long going to the future.  What do you think is in store for it?

[tokeweed]

It's not. Not at all. And one of the many reasons why the bitcoin economy is guaranteed to collapse, essentially making it a ponzi scheme.

?

[kwukduck]

It's not. Not at all. And one of the many reasons why the bitcoin economy is guaranteed to collapse, essentially making it a ponzi scheme.

?

Eventually the miners have to be paid by fees only, forcing the transaction fee to skyrocket. Mining competition is really tight so there are only a hand full of big mining farms.. they will eventually eliminate the weaker ones leaving one or two parties. Meaning bitcoin is no longer decentralized and very vulnerable to manipulation,  lowering its value. Making international wire transfer with your bank 100 times cheaper than using bitcoin.

[LMGTFY]

It's not. Not at all. And one of the many reasons why the bitcoin economy is guaranteed to collapse, essentially making it a ponzi scheme.

?

Eventually the miners have to be paid by fees only, forcing the transaction fee to skyrocket. Mining competition is really tight so there are only a hand full of big mining farms.. they will eventually eliminate the weaker ones leaving one or two parties. Meaning bitcoin is no longer decentralized and very vulnerable to manipulation,  lowering its value. Making international wire transfer with your bank 100 times cheaper than using bitcoin.

Could you explain when and why the transaction fee will "skyrocket"? Will it skyrocket when the block reward drops to 0, or will it (and this is my suspicion) increase roughly in proportion to the reduction of the block reward for each block reward reduction up to and including the final block reward reduction?

[MR1]

I'm writing a paper on bitcoin mining (and cloud hashing services), and I'm wondering what your opinions are on its sustainability longterm considering different factors like increasing electricity costs (it has been going up in fiat value), price volatility (especially at times of low prices), competition (miners out doing other miners hashing power) and the halving of miners' reward

Do you think it will be sustainable for decades to come?

BTC is the first experiment of crypto currencies. I`m sure a coin (or maybe several coins) will pop up that will:

1) Need far less mining power;

2) Offer super fast transactions;

3) Address bloating issue and finally

4) Offer real anonymity. 

More time will pass, better people will see the deficiencies of BTC`s features.

In the long run BTC is not a winner even in the mining field.

[Pab]

Good question,i think in many places will  be  more alternative electicity  recources.Technology will help btc miners
but difficouly will remain

[avw1982]

Good question,i think in many places will  be  more alternative electicity  recources.Technology will help btc miners
but difficouly will remain

Its available I know Even One of close friend He is using Solar Miner. He bought that to reduce the electricity consumption But Still He sustaining very hard in that. If you do mining Best We have do in a big project else We will get that much success. This what I saw in my life.

[albert73]

In the long term I think quantum computers will crack the elliptic curve cryptography that bitcoin's based on. If good enough quantum computers are invented then bitcoin's basic code will need changing round to something quantum computers can't crack. That change of code base will render all mining hardware obsolete, and a new generation of hardware will need inventing to replace it.

Such a situation could permanently break both bitcoin and its miners if new mining hardware is not invented quickly enough.

[LMGTFY]

In the long term I think quantum computers will crack the elliptic curve cryptography that bitcoin's based on. If good enough quantum computers are invented then bitcoin's basic code will need changing round to something quantum computers can't crack. That change of code base will render all mining hardware obsolete, and a new generation of hardware will need inventing to replace it.

Such a situation could permanently break both bitcoin and its miners if new mining hardware is not invented quickly enough.

If/when quantum computers become a threat to Bitcoin, the same threat will apply across the financial sector. I doubt that that threat would stand for long: even if Bitcoin devs don't invent a solution, others will and it'll soon be implemented in Bitcoin.

Edit: the FAQ on the wiki discusses QC, its risks, and how they're mitigated.

[White sugar]

Considering that the difficult self-adjusts pretty quickly, surely will be, but maybe not without some short time adaptations that may hurt some people

[TERA]

Since mid 2013, mining has always been a bad investment for all sorts of reasons, but if you build just one gpu miner to mine altcoins, it can be fun and a good way to learn about crypto.

[Ibian]

The mining system is self-adjusting. It will always be profitable for someone.

[Ibian]

In the long term I think quantum computers will crack the elliptic curve cryptography that bitcoin's based on. If good enough quantum computers are invented then bitcoin's basic code will need changing round to something quantum computers can't crack. That change of code base will render all mining hardware obsolete, and a new generation of hardware will need inventing to replace it.

Such a situation could permanently break both bitcoin and its miners if new mining hardware is not invented quickly enough.

Please show me your fantasy magic box that can crack the universe.

[Hugroll]

I'm writing a paper on bitcoin mining (and cloud hashing services), and I'm wondering what your opinions are on its sustainability longterm considering different factors like increasing electricity costs (it has been going up in fiat value), price volatility (especially at times of low prices), competition (miners out doing other miners hashing power) and the halving of miners' reward

Do you think it will be sustainable for decades to come?

i think itll last because once the block reward is insignificant, the fees for transactions will be enough to keep mining profitable for the miners.

[r0ach]

It's not. Not at all. And one of the many reasons why the bitcoin economy is guaranteed to collapse, essentially making it a ponzi scheme.

^Kwukduck is an account that was bought by JIDF Zionists to claim that the price is going to 0 every day.  Look at his post history.

[kwukduck]

The mining system is self-adjusting. It will always be profitable for someone.

Hitting the nail on its head. Someone, most likely a single big party in total control of bitcoin.