Analysis and list of top big blocks shills (XT #REKT ignorers)

[Quantus]

I am presently running the last generation of equipment, mostly S5's and SP31's.

So you're currently not scaling up? How much can the difficulty rise (in %) before you're mining at a loss (power/misc costs only, not talking about 'ROI' on gear)?

The difficulty would need to double before I would have to start down clocking my miners at the present price. I want to scale up, though it is a strategic choice however, everything considered deciding to skip a generation of miners does not mean I have stopped scaling up. It does not always make sense to buy every new miner on the market. Much of the challenge of being a profitable miner is knowing when to buy equipment and when not to buy equipment. For a long time Antminer did not have any competition for their latest miner, this is why I suspect they are charging much more then it actually costs for them to make the unit, I was hoping that the increased price would bring about more competition in asic manufacturing and therefore bring about more favorable products. Saving my Bitcoins to buy into the next generation, still thinking it is a smart move, if price skyrockets then it was the wrong move but that can always be the case in retrospect, everything considered I think that I am doing the right thing. My mining operation is thriving and I expect it to continue to thrive, as long as Bitcoin does as well.

Would you say your reinvesting less often?
I need to start a new poll "are you reinvesting less often and to a lesser extent?"

[siameze]

I am presently running the last generation of equipment, mostly S5's and SP31's.

So you're currently not scaling up? How much can the difficulty rise (in %) before you're mining at a loss (power/misc costs only, not talking about 'ROI' on gear)?

The difficulty would need to double before I would have to start down clocking my miners at the present price. I want to scale up, though it is a strategic choice however, everything considered deciding to skip a generation of miners does not mean I have stopped scaling up. It does not always make sense to buy every new miner on the market. Much of the challenge of being a profitable miner is knowing when to buy equipment and when not to buy equipment. For a long time Antminer did not have any competition for their latest miner, this is why I suspect they are charging much more then it actually costs for them to make the unit, I was hoping that the increased price would bring about more competition in asic manufacturing and therefore bring about more favorable products. Saving my Bitcoins to buy into the next generation, still thinking it is a smart move, if price skyrockets then it was the wrong move but that can always be the case in retrospect, everything considered I think that I am doing the right thing. My mining operation is thriving and I expect it to continue to thrive, as long as Bitcoin does as well.

Would you say your reinvesting less often?

Maybe Mom raised the data center fees down in the basement.

[VeritasSapere]

I am presently running the last generation of equipment, mostly S5's and SP31's.

So you're currently not scaling up? How much can the difficulty rise (in %) before you're mining at a loss (power/misc costs only, not talking about 'ROI' on gear)?

The difficulty would need to double before I would have to start down clocking my miners at the present price. I want to scale up, though it is a strategic choice however, everything considered deciding to skip a generation of miners does not mean I have stopped scaling up. It does not always make sense to buy every new miner on the market. Much of the challenge of being a profitable miner is knowing when to buy equipment and when not to buy equipment. For a long time Antminer did not have any competition for their latest miner, this is why I suspect they are charging much more then it actually costs for them to make the unit, I was hoping that the increased price would bring about more competition in asic manufacturing and therefore bring about more favorable products. Saving my Bitcoins to buy into the next generation, still thinking it is a smart move, if price skyrockets then it was the wrong move but that can always be the case in retrospect, everything considered I think that I am doing the right thing. My mining operation is thriving and I expect it to continue to thrive, as long as Bitcoin does as well.

Would you say your reinvesting less often?
I need to start a new poll "are you reinvesting less often and to a lesser extent?"

I am not reinvesting less often. I have put the majority of my personal wealth into cryptocurrency related activities, including mining and investment. So when I make more money I will invest more, I am still very bullish on Bitcoin.

[Quantus]

I am presently running the last generation of equipment, mostly S5's and SP31's.

So you're currently not scaling up? How much can the difficulty rise (in %) before you're mining at a loss (power/misc costs only, not talking about 'ROI' on gear)?

The difficulty would need to double before I would have to start down clocking my miners at the present price. I want to scale up, though it is a strategic choice however, everything considered deciding to skip a generation of miners does not mean I have stopped scaling up. It does not always make sense to buy every new miner on the market. Much of the challenge of being a profitable miner is knowing when to buy equipment and when not to buy equipment. For a long time Antminer did not have any competition for their latest miner, this is why I suspect they are charging much more then it actually costs for them to make the unit, I was hoping that the increased price would bring about more competition in asic manufacturing and therefore bring about more favorable products. Saving my Bitcoins to buy into the next generation, still thinking it is a smart move, if price skyrockets then it was the wrong move but that can always be the case in retrospect, everything considered I think that I am doing the right thing. My mining operation is thriving and I expect it to continue to thrive, as long as Bitcoin does as well.

Would you say your reinvesting less often?
I need to start a new poll "are you reinvesting less often and to a lesser extent?"

I am not reinvesting less often. I have put the majority of my personal wealth into cryptocurrency related activities, including mining and investment. So when I make more money I will invest more, I am still very bullish on Bitcoin.

It sounds like your more of an investor then a user. More like your using it as a Long term wealth storage system

[bargainbin]

VeritasSapere, so you figure what, about four months before shutdown, if no new gear? Not following mining hardware, what sort of efficiency improvement do you get by downclocking (as in per hash)?

[johnyj]

Mining nodes are all already in data centres. We are already far past this point, so I would not consider that to be a good reason not to increase the blocksize. Miners can not "raise the fee" they simply just choose what transactions to include and not to include, collectively this creates a free market for fees. With an arbitrarily small block size limit it has more in common with a centrally planned economy.

This is back to Peter Todd's famous question: If it is already centralized then why make it worse

The relay network that miners are using right now are a perfect example of now we are relying on private company to provide the bitcoin network necessary service. Following this route, in future all the mining nodes will operate on a private company's network, so that a couple of phone call can shut them down right away

Small block size does not preventing you from inventing fee-free transaction services off-chain. In fact, limited at 1MB or limited at 8MB is the same effect
because bitcoin is never going to scale indefinitely. So, if you sooner or later have to limit the block size, then why not do it now when bitcoin core software is still relatively light weight. It is the direction that matters, not parameters

[VeritasSapere]

I am presently running the last generation of equipment, mostly S5's and SP31's.

So you're currently not scaling up? How much can the difficulty rise (in %) before you're mining at a loss (power/misc costs only, not talking about 'ROI' on gear)?

The difficulty would need to double before I would have to start down clocking my miners at the present price. I want to scale up, though it is a strategic choice however, everything considered deciding to skip a generation of miners does not mean I have stopped scaling up. It does not always make sense to buy every new miner on the market. Much of the challenge of being a profitable miner is knowing when to buy equipment and when not to buy equipment. For a long time Antminer did not have any competition for their latest miner, this is why I suspect they are charging much more then it actually costs for them to make the unit, I was hoping that the increased price would bring about more competition in asic manufacturing and therefore bring about more favorable products. Saving my Bitcoins to buy into the next generation, still thinking it is a smart move, if price skyrockets then it was the wrong move but that can always be the case in retrospect, everything considered I think that I am doing the right thing. My mining operation is thriving and I expect it to continue to thrive, as long as Bitcoin does as well.

Would you say your reinvesting less often?
I need to start a new poll "are you reinvesting less often and to a lesser extent?"

I am not reinvesting less often. I have put the majority of my personal wealth into cryptocurrency related activities, including mining and investment. So when I make more money I will invest more, I am still very bullish on Bitcoin.

It sounds like your more of an investor then a user.

I am both, I also use Bitcoin as a currency almost everyday.

[VeritasSapere]

Mining nodes are all already in data centres. We are already far past this point, so I would not consider that to be a good reason not to increase the blocksize. Miners can not "raise the fee" they simply just choose what transactions to include and not to include, collectively this creates a free market for fees. With an arbitrarily small block size limit it has more in common with a centrally planned economy.

This is back to Peter Todd's famous question: If it is already centralized then why make it worse

The relay network that miners are using right now are a perfect example of now we are relying on private company to provide the bitcoin network necessary service. Following this route, in future all the mining nodes will operate on a private company's network, so that a couple of phone call can shut them down right away

Small block size does not preventing you from inventing fee-free transaction services off-chain. In fact, limited at 1MB or limited at 8MB is the same effect
because bitcoin is never going to scale indefinitely. So, if you sooner or later have to limit the block size, then why not do it now when bitcoin core software is still relatively light weight. It is the direction that matters, not parameters

This is the engineers nirvana fallacy, just because Bitcoin does not scale efficiently it does not mean we should not scale Bitcoin at all. I think this is wrong and even small increases to the blocksize will bring massive practical benefits to both people and the protocol as a whole.

Even if one megabyte is the practical limit of the network today, which I do not think is the case, in the future this limit should still be increased in order to reflect the true technological capabilities of the time.

I can agree with the principle that we should not increase the blocksize limit more then our technology will allow, even if one megabyte currently represent this limit which I find hard to believe that this is the case. It does stand that this limit should be increased in the future if we want to see Bitcoin bring about as much utility and benefit as possible. This whole one megabyte forever idea really does not make any sense, I also doubt that Satoshi somehow magically choose this number which would reflect this technological limit now and for all time. Satoshi was actually quite clear on this subject, he thought that the blocksize should be increased when the need to do so arose.

The protocol block size limit was added as a temporary anti-spam measure, not a technocratic market-manipulation measure.

[Quantus]

Mining nodes are all already in data centres. We are already far past this point, so I would not consider that to be a good reason not to increase the blocksize. Miners can not "raise the fee" they simply just choose what transactions to include and not to include, collectively this creates a free market for fees. With an arbitrarily small block size limit it has more in common with a centrally planned economy.

This is back to Peter Todd's famous question: If it is already centralized then why make it worse

The relay network that miners are using right now are a perfect example of now we are relying on private company to provide the bitcoin network necessary service. Following this route, in future all the mining nodes will operate on a private company's network, so that a couple of phone call can shut them down right away

Small block size does not preventing you from inventing fee-free transaction services off-chain. In fact, limited at 1MB or limited at 8MB is the same effect
because bitcoin is never going to scale indefinitely. So, if you sooner or later have to limit the block size, then why not do it now when bitcoin core software is still relatively light weight. It is the direction that matters, not parameters

This is the engineers nirvana fallacy, just because Bitcoin does not scale efficiently it does not mean we should not scale Bitcoin at all. I think this is wrong and even small increases to the blocksize will bring massive practical benefits to both people and the protocol as a whole.

Even if one megabyte is the practical limit of the network today, which I do not think is the case, in the future this limit should still be increased in order to reflect the true technological capabilities of the time.

I can agree with the principle that we should not increase the blocksize limit more then our technology will allow, even if one megabyte currently represent this limit which I find hard to believe that this is the case. It does stand that this limit should be increased in the future if we want to see Bitcoin bring about as much utility and benefit as possible. This whole one megabyte forever idea really does not make any sense, I also doubt that Satoshi somehow magically choose this number which would reflect this technological limit now and for all time. Satoshi was actually quite clear on this subject, he thought that the blocksize should be increased when the need to do so arose.

The protocol block size limit was added as a temporary anti-spam measure, not a technocratic market-manipulation measure.

'1MB FOREVER' is just a slogan we don't really want to lock to max block size forever. Satoshi is human just like the rest of us. We have had over 9 years now to think and discuss these issues at great length. We go around and around looking for new insights. Are we not better prepared then Satoshi was over 10 years ago to predict the outcome of the Bitcoin network in its current configuration and level of demand/usage?

[VeritasSapere]

VeritasSapere, so you figure what, about four months before shutdown, if no new gear? Not following mining hardware, what sort of efficiency improvement do you get by downclocking (as in per hash)?

I can get my miners to become more efficient by about fifty percent by down clocking my units. I am really hoping we do see more hardware publicly available in the near future, my prediction is that we will. There are real threats to mining centralization by the way. These are more related to centralization of manufacturing and economies of scale. The recent increase in price I am hoping will improve this situation. Mining centralization has nothing to do with the blocksize however. I can tell you now that increasing the blocksize will have zero effect on my mining operation, since I am mining with a pool, and solo mining is only really feasible if you are running a huge industrial operation like Bitfury or KNC.

[VeritasSapere]

Mining nodes are all already in data centres. We are already far past this point, so I would not consider that to be a good reason not to increase the blocksize. Miners can not "raise the fee" they simply just choose what transactions to include and not to include, collectively this creates a free market for fees. With an arbitrarily small block size limit it has more in common with a centrally planned economy.

This is back to Peter Todd's famous question: If it is already centralized then why make it worse

The relay network that miners are using right now are a perfect example of now we are relying on private company to provide the bitcoin network necessary service. Following this route, in future all the mining nodes will operate on a private company's network, so that a couple of phone call can shut them down right away

Small block size does not preventing you from inventing fee-free transaction services off-chain. In fact, limited at 1MB or limited at 8MB is the same effect
because bitcoin is never going to scale indefinitely. So, if you sooner or later have to limit the block size, then why not do it now when bitcoin core software is still relatively light weight. It is the direction that matters, not parameters

This is the engineers nirvana fallacy, just because Bitcoin does not scale efficiently it does not mean we should not scale Bitcoin at all. I think this is wrong and even small increases to the blocksize will bring massive practical benefits to both people and the protocol as a whole.

Even if one megabyte is the practical limit of the network today, which I do not think is the case, in the future this limit should still be increased in order to reflect the true technological capabilities of the time.

I can agree with the principle that we should not increase the blocksize limit more then our technology will allow, even if one megabyte currently represent this limit which I find hard to believe that this is the case. It does stand that this limit should be increased in the future if we want to see Bitcoin bring about as much utility and benefit as possible. This whole one megabyte forever idea really does not make any sense, I also doubt that Satoshi somehow magically choose this number which would reflect this technological limit now and for all time. Satoshi was actually quite clear on this subject, he thought that the blocksize should be increased when the need to do so arose.

The protocol block size limit was added as a temporary anti-spam measure, not a technocratic market-manipulation measure.

1MB is just a slogan we don't really want to lock to max block size forever. Satoshi is human just like the rest of us. We have had over 9 years now to think and discuss these issues at great length. We go around and around on looking for insight. Are not better prepared then Satoshi was over 10 years ago to predict the outcome of the Bitcoin network?

I think that his underlying vision still holds true. Glad to hear you are not in the one megabyte forever camp, such a position is indeed a bit nuts in my opinion.

[bargainbin]

I can get my miners to become more efficient by about fifty percent by down clocking my units.

TOGTFO. Gear you're running/links to credible writeups.

[Quantus]

I can get my miners to become more efficient by about fifty percent by down clocking my units.

TOGTFO. Gear you're running/links to credible writeups.

He means watt/gh not more gh overall.

[bargainbin]

I can get my miners to become more efficient by about fifty percent by down clocking my units.

TOGTFO. Gear you're running/links to credible writeups.

He means watt/gh not more gh overall.

I understand. As I said, haven't been keeping up on gear, but can't see underclocking improving efficiency by 50%.
Sure, you can drop consumption by 50% by stopping the clock, but you're getting 0 gh/sec, so dubious gains.

[VeritasSapere]

I can get my miners to become more efficient by about fifty percent by down clocking my units.

TOGTFO. Gear you're running/links to credible writeups.

He means watt/gh not more gh overall.

Indeed I am referring to watt/gh. Doing this I do lose about 2/3 of my hashpower, so I would be adjust this on the fly as needed attempting to stay above break even point. I suspect I will only need to do this at the time of the halving. If I bought some S7's now I suspect they would still be profitable after the halving without any underclock. Obviously the next generation will be even more capable of dealing with the halving.

Interesting side note, is that I actually use the heat generated by my miners to completely warm my home during the winter, so during the winter months at least I can also justify running unprofitable miners for much longer because of the savings I gain in heating.

[bargainbin]

^^So links to credible writeups with charts & pictures and stuff?

[VeritasSapere]

^^So links to credible writeups with charts & pictures and stuff?

You can look up the stats for the S5 and the SP31 yourself, its not like this information is not public. Here is an example of someone down clocking an S5 though, gaining close to a fifty percent increase in efficiency while cutting the effective hashrate in half.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1151460.0

[franky1]

ok heres some idea's to satisfy all camps

block hard limit increased to 2mb (allowing for more than 2mb potential for SW lite wallet)

the relay data is by default set to send signatures. even with SW miners. but anyone can if they are SW upgraded, can handshake with their peer to not request signatures as a non-default option. allowing old clients to still have some purpose, (no immediate castrations) while fanboys betatest new implementations live. and review if the masses should upgrade afterwards

miners drop the tx fee back down to 0.00001(under 1 cent),... if not then "liquid" sidechain needs to do transactions for atleast 10cents (higher than bitcoins 0.0001).. liquid users will pay the 10cent premium for near instant transfers.. as people are stupidly happy to pay atleast 4.5cent for the hope of a 10minute wait.
thus bringing bitcoin back to being the cheapest option for transfer.
(we dont want liquid being the cheapest and fastest. as thats a game killer for bitcoin)

those wanting to be full archival nodes can buy a 2tb hard drive for $100 and be ok for 20 years at 2mb block. or 5 years if block sizes doubles and doubles again rapidly

if you can watch netflix in HD then bandwidth is not a problem for you

then let it be the client side can have variants of how to handle transactions, rather than the main protocol endlessly needing  tweaking to suit every idea imaginable

[VeritasSapere]

I would agree to a bump to two megabyte absolutely. I suspect what a lot of people still need to wrap their heads around is that such an increase needs to necessarily happen outside of Core. I would think it would be great if Core implemented this I just do not believe that they will. This is where having multiple alternative implementations becomes very important for the governance mechanism of Bitcoin to work effectively.

[bargainbin]

^^So links to credible writeups with charts & pictures and stuff?

You can look up the stats for the S5 and the SP31 yourself, its not like this information is not public. Here is an example of someone down clocking an S5 though, gaining close to a fifty percent increase in efficiency while cutting the effective hashrate in half.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1151460.0

Impressive & credible (no sarcasm), just read the first few pages.
Though closer to 30 than to 50