Mining in 20 years time

[deisik]

I didn't realize this before, but indeed, it makes sense. So we're stuck with small blocks because miners are short sighted focussing on todays income only.
Mining hardware becomes obsolete very fast, caused by an increase in difficulty. This is an extra reason for miners not to think ahead much.
I used to think Satoshi covered all major parts of Bitcoin, but this may be something he didn't anticipate.

Satoshi is not a god while humans are known to make mistakes including failure to account for something important. I think Satoshi's main omission was that he didn't provide a solution to the problem of having a final say despite the opinion of the majority. Most open-source projects have somebody called BDFL ("benevolent dictator for life") who retains the final say in possible disputes over the future of the project. Satoshi himself could be such a figure but he seems to have lost aspirations for Bitcoin (provided he is still alive in the first place)...

Democracy if applied for real doesn't work, but meritocracy is not without its drawbacks either

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[Umotand]

I didn't realize this before, but indeed, it makes sense. So we're stuck with small blocks because miners are short sighted focussing on todays income only.
Mining hardware becomes obsolete very fast, caused by an increase in difficulty. This is an extra reason for miners not to think ahead much.
I used to think Satoshi covered all major parts of Bitcoin, but this may be something he didn't anticipate.

Satoshi is not a god while humans are known to make mistakes including failure to account for something important. I think Satoshi's main omission was that he didn't provide a solution to the problem of having a final say despite the opinion of the majority. Most open-source projects have somebody called BDFL ("benevolent dictator for life") who retains the final say in possible disputes over the future of the project. Satoshi himself could be such a figure but he seems to have lost aspirations for Bitcoin (provided he is still alive in the first place)...

Democracy if applied for real doesn't work, but meritocracy is not without its drawbacks either

I think the biggest misktake he made was to set a hard limit of the block size. He should set a adaptive limit.

[deisik]

I didn't realize this before, but indeed, it makes sense. So we're stuck with small blocks because miners are short sighted focussing on todays income only.
Mining hardware becomes obsolete very fast, caused by an increase in difficulty. This is an extra reason for miners not to think ahead much.
I used to think Satoshi covered all major parts of Bitcoin, but this may be something he didn't anticipate.

Satoshi is not a god while humans are known to make mistakes including failure to account for something important. I think Satoshi's main omission was that he didn't provide a solution to the problem of having a final say despite the opinion of the majority. Most open-source projects have somebody called BDFL ("benevolent dictator for life") who retains the final say in possible disputes over the future of the project. Satoshi himself could be such a figure but he seems to have lost aspirations for Bitcoin (provided he is still alive in the first place)...

Democracy if applied for real doesn't work, but meritocracy is not without its drawbacks either

I think the biggest misktake he made was to set a hard limit of the block size. He should set a adaptive limit.

"640K ought to be enough for anyone". But how can it be his biggest mistake? This limit would still be set in the code and changed through the code. Otherwise, it would wreak havoc on the Blockchain if, for example, it was a floating value depending, say, on the number of transactions. In the very least, there would be an overhead in determining the actual size of the block if its size were to change arbitrarily...

Most likely an adaptive limit would complicate a lot of other things

[Shiroslullaby]

I think one of the reasons Satoshi wanted to remain anonymous, was to NOT be the BDFL.
For him, Bitcoin was more of an experiment, a creation to make and let loose, and let the world decide what would happen.
If it fails, it fails. If it creates other coins, other forks, blockchains, new ideas, that is the most important thing.
If Satoshi was in control of everything, and had the final say, would we be here having these discussions?

[deisik]

I think one of the reasons Satoshi wanted to remain anonymous, was to NOT be the BDFL.
For him, Bitcoin was more of an experiment, a creation to make and let loose, and let the world decide what would happen.
If it fails, it fails. If it creates other coins, other forks, blockchains, new ideas, that is the most important thing.
If Satoshi was in control of everything, and had the final say, would we be here having these discussions?

It's a difference which makes the difference

Having the final say and being in control of everything are two completely different things. The first letter in the acronym stands for benevolent. Being benevolent means here that the "dictator" has to remain open to valid criticism at all times, otherwise risking forking of the project in case strong disagreements arise between him and the rest of the gang. As I have said earlier, democracy doesn't work in anything important if played for real

[AdolfinWolf]

I think one of the reasons Satoshi wanted to remain anonymous, was to NOT be the BDFL.
For him, Bitcoin was more of an experiment, a creation to make and let loose, and let the world decide what would happen.
If it fails, it fails. If it creates other coins, other forks, blockchains, new ideas, that is the most important thing.
If Satoshi was in control of everything, and had the final say, would we be here having these discussions?

It's a difference which makes the difference

Having the final say and being in control of everything are two completely different things. The first letter in the acronym stands for benevolent. Being benevolent means here that the "dictator" has to remain open to valid criticism at all times, otherwise risking forking of the project in case strong disagreements arise between him and the rest of the gang. As I have said earlier, democracy doesn't work in anything important if played for real

To be honest, i think one of the reasons he wants to be anonymous is because he is one of the richest people on earth right now. Imagine all the coins he can possible have etc, and he didnt paid a cent of taxes over all that money, he is able to completely control some markets with the bitcoin, do you know how gladly governments wanna know who he is?

[deisik]

I think one of the reasons Satoshi wanted to remain anonymous, was to NOT be the BDFL.
For him, Bitcoin was more of an experiment, a creation to make and let loose, and let the world decide what would happen.
If it fails, it fails. If it creates other coins, other forks, blockchains, new ideas, that is the most important thing.
If Satoshi was in control of everything, and had the final say, would we be here having these discussions?

It's a difference which makes the difference

Having the final say and being in control of everything are two completely different things. The first letter in the acronym stands for benevolent. Being benevolent means here that the "dictator" has to remain open to valid criticism at all times, otherwise risking forking of the project in case strong disagreements arise between him and the rest of the gang. As I have said earlier, democracy doesn't work in anything important if played for real

To be honest, i think one of the reasons he wants to be anonymous is because he is one of the richest people on earth right now. Imagine all the coins he can possible have etc, and he didnt paid a cent of taxes over all that money, he is able to completely control some markets with the bitcoin, do you know how gladly governments wanna know who he is?

1M bitcoins is only around 600 million dollars. He is not even a dollar billionaire, by any yardstick (let alone being one of the richest people in the world). If he decided to cash out that would instantaneously crash the price. So his seeming wealth is ephemeral, for some part at least. On the other hand, what taxes should he pay?

How should they be calculated?

[Lumada]

I think one of the reasons Satoshi wanted to remain anonymous, was to NOT be the BDFL.
For him, Bitcoin was more of an experiment, a creation to make and let loose, and let the world decide what would happen.
If it fails, it fails. If it creates other coins, other forks, blockchains, new ideas, that is the most important thing.
If Satoshi was in control of everything, and had the final say, would we be here having these discussions?

It's a difference which makes the difference

Having the final say and being in control of everything are two completely different things. The first letter in the acronym stands for benevolent. Being benevolent means here that the "dictator" has to remain open to valid criticism at all times, otherwise risking forking of the project in case strong disagreements arise between him and the rest of the gang. As I have said earlier, democracy doesn't work in anything important if played for real

To be honest, i think one of the reasons he wants to be anonymous is because he is one of the richest people on earth right now. Imagine all the coins he can possible have etc, and he didnt paid a cent of taxes over all that money, he is able to completely control some markets with the bitcoin, do you know how gladly governments wanna know who he is?

1M bitcoins is only around 600 million dollars. He is not even a dollar billionaire, by any yardstick (let alone being one of the richest people in the world). If he decided to cash out that would instantaneously crash the price. So his seeming wealth is ephemeral, for some part at least. On the other hand, what taxes should he pay?

How should they be calculated?

If you look beyond the next 10 years, the bitcoin price could be $100,000 each, that make him much richer.

[deisik]

1M bitcoins is only around 600 million dollars. He is not even a dollar billionaire, by any yardstick (let alone being one of the richest people in the world). If he decided to cash out that would instantaneously crash the price. So his seeming wealth is ephemeral, for some part at least. On the other hand, what taxes should he pay?

How should they be calculated?

If you look beyond the next 10 years, the bitcoin price could be $100,000 each, that make him much richer.

Wealth is only measured in money, but money itself can be considered as wealth only as long as real wealth can be bought with it. And not some abstract wealth (houses, yachts, girls, boys, whatever), but the wealth that you can make use of. If you had 1 trillion dollars in cash, what could you actually buy with it? You could try to buy Apple shares, for example, but would people who have a controlling stake in this company agree to sell it? When you come to think of it, you inevitably come to a conclusion that being money-rich is not the same as just being rich...

I mean, in the proper sense of the word, i.e. possessing wealth that you are able to swallow and digest, so to speak

[gkv9]

There were people who said that even if miners stop mining, Satoshi left Bitcoin with a setup in which it will still run the network without mining extra coins, thus confirming the transactions and fulfilling the requirements of the protocol... I hope we won't see a downfall in this, or this might be an end of Bitcoins???

[Yadstiker]

There were people who said that even if miners stop mining, Satoshi left Bitcoin with a setup in which it will still run the network without mining extra coins, thus confirming the transactions and fulfilling the requirements of the protocol... I hope we won't see a downfall in this, or this might be an end of Bitcoins???

I never heard about that. The mining is the only way to secure the network. It might be PoW or PoS.

[20kevin20]

In 20 years, a 1TH/s rig will be absolutely nothing. If Bitcoin will make it until then, the price will be at an insane amount and mining will be only for the rich. We will also be rich then, because of the huge price. I can't really predict much though, because you never know what the future is going to be for us.

[marcuslong]

99.21875% will be mined in 20 years time. If electricity isn't very cheap by then and/or if bitcoin isn't worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's hard to imagine anybody wanting to mine then. How will transactions then be verified?

Let us see if bitcoin still alive in that year for me even the cheapest electricity can mine bitcoin we are always depending on the hard we are using if we are using much more powerful hard mining then we can mine more bitcoin in a day in that year and we know that every year there are upgrading.

[FeranD]

99.21875% will be mined in 20 years time. If electricity isn't very cheap by then and/or if bitcoin isn't worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's hard to imagine anybody wanting to mine then. How will transactions then be verified?

I think there is always a solution. Does bitcoin community has developers with ability to change code and submit new feautres? If yes, that's a number one resolution. Otherwise i heard switching to POS(Proof-of-Stake) system will give node runners a reward for approving transactions.

[deisik]

99.21875% will be mined in 20 years time. If electricity isn't very cheap by then and/or if bitcoin isn't worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's hard to imagine anybody wanting to mine then. How will transactions then be verified?

I think there is always a solution. Does bitcoin community has developers with ability to change code and submit new feautres? If yes, that's a number one resolution. Otherwise i heard switching to POS(Proof-of-Stake) system will give node runners a reward for approving transactions.

The solution has been there right from the start, and there is no need to change anything in the code just because the cap of 21M coins will be hit one day. Mining will not stop due to no more coins to be mined. Miners will profit from transaction fees, and they are already profiting from them right now (up to a few percentages of mining reward)...

In short, this problem is essentially nonexistent

[termion]

Bitcoin 1.0 may die 2017-2018... Bitcoin 2.0 go in September 2016 - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1616884.0   http://www.bitcointwo.xyz  ... Maybe in 2020 will be Bitcoin 3.0 ...

[jaysabi]

99.21875% will be mined in 20 years time. If electricity isn't very cheap by then and/or if bitcoin isn't worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's hard to imagine anybody wanting to mine then. How will transactions then be verified?

I think there is always a solution. Does bitcoin community has developers with ability to change code and submit new feautres? If yes, that's a number one resolution. Otherwise i heard switching to POS(Proof-of-Stake) system will give node runners a reward for approving transactions.

The solution has been there right from the start, and there is no need to change anything in the code just because the cap of 21M coins will be hit one day. Mining will not stop due to no more coins to be mined. Miners will profit from transaction fees, and they are already profiting from them right now (up to a few percentages of mining reward)...

In short, this problem is essentially nonexistent

I still see a potential problem in that in order for miners to be kept interested, mining fees will have to rise significantly to offset the loss of new coin generation rewards they currently earn, and at the point where fees are significant enough to keep the network properly decentralized, will using bitcoin in any capacity be cost-competitive? Micro-transactions are something that bitcoin has a huge advantage over the traditional banking system, but it seems to me micro-transactions will become impossible in the future with the rise in mining fees that will accompany the loss of new coin generation rewards.

[Umotand]

99.21875% will be mined in 20 years time. If electricity isn't very cheap by then and/or if bitcoin isn't worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's hard to imagine anybody wanting to mine then. How will transactions then be verified?

I think there is always a solution. Does bitcoin community has developers with ability to change code and submit new feautres? If yes, that's a number one resolution. Otherwise i heard switching to POS(Proof-of-Stake) system will give node runners a reward for approving transactions.

The solution has been there right from the start, and there is no need to change anything in the code just because the cap of 21M coins will be hit one day. Mining will not stop due to no more coins to be mined. Miners will profit from transaction fees, and they are already profiting from them right now (up to a few percentages of mining reward)...

In short, this problem is essentially nonexistent

I still see a potential problem in that in order for miners to be kept interested, mining fees will have to rise significantly to offset the loss of new coin generation rewards they currently earn, and at the point where fees are significant enough to keep the network properly decentralized, will using bitcoin in any capacity be cost-competitive? Micro-transactions are something that bitcoin has a huge advantage over the traditional banking system, but it seems to me micro-transactions will become impossible in the future with the rise in mining fees that will accompany the loss of new coin generation rewards.

The mining transaction fee has to increase, but the price of the bitcoin should also increase to attract more miners.

[leowonderful]

99.21875% will be mined in 20 years time. If electricity isn't very cheap by then and/or if bitcoin isn't worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's hard to imagine anybody wanting to mine then. How will transactions then be verified?

I think there is always a solution. Does bitcoin community has developers with ability to change code and submit new feautres? If yes, that's a number one resolution. Otherwise i heard switching to POS(Proof-of-Stake) system will give node runners a reward for approving transactions.

The solution has been there right from the start, and there is no need to change anything in the code just because the cap of 21M coins will be hit one day. Mining will not stop due to no more coins to be mined. Miners will profit from transaction fees, and they are already profiting from them right now (up to a few percentages of mining reward)...

In short, this problem is essentially nonexistent

I still see a potential problem in that in order for miners to be kept interested, mining fees will have to rise significantly to offset the loss of new coin generation rewards they currently earn, and at the point where fees are significant enough to keep the network properly decentralized, will using bitcoin in any capacity be cost-competitive? Micro-transactions are something that bitcoin has a huge advantage over the traditional banking system, but it seems to me micro-transactions will become impossible in the future with the rise in mining fees that will accompany the loss of new coin generation rewards.

The mining transaction fee has to increase, but the price of the bitcoin should also increase to attract more miners.

It's inevitable that fees will increase; if we increase the blocksize right now, fees will indeed lower, but this will have a negative effect in the future when blocks are pretty much all mined. The price of bitcoin is uncontrollable, and although it's highly likely that will increase, it's not guaranteed. Most of us won't even be alive by the time blocks are all mined in terms of block reward without transaction fees; it's not a huge issue to us at the moment.

[deisik]

The mining transaction fee has to increase, but the price of the bitcoin should also increase to attract more miners.

It's inevitable that fees will increase; if we increase the blocksize right now, fees will indeed lower, but this will have a negative effect in the future when blocks are pretty much all mined. The price of bitcoin is uncontrollable, and although it's highly likely that will increase, it's not guaranteed. Most of us won't even be alive by the time blocks are all mined in terms of block reward without transaction fees; it's not a huge issue to us at the moment.

As I've been told, the transaction fees are market determined, i.e. by the "buyer". In this case, the buyer would be Bitcoin senders and not the miners. Right now, miners could simply drop the transactions if the latter didn't have enough fees (or no fees at all) and mine just for the sake of getting the reward. This is what seemed to have happened in July, 2015, when literally thousands of transactions got stuck unconfirmed (some ironically called it "testing Bitcoin limits")...

But when there is no more reward to mine for, would the miners reject transactions as easily?