Swedish ASIC miner company kncminer.com

[Meizirkki]

How about seanrarey takes his offtopic to it's own thread?

[timmmers]

How about seanrarey takes his offtopic to it's own thread?

+1
I dislike being told what to think and what to do with my own money. Let's keep it KNC and disagree about something relevent.

[xyzzy099]

The pool provides you with a block header to work on.  You double-hash the block header iteratively while incrementing the nonce, and return any results that are of higher difficulty than the pool difficulty to the pool.  If one of those results happens to also be higher difficulty than the network difficulty, you have solved the block for the pool.  The pool does not do any of the calculations associated with solving a block, so I don't see how you think the pool "solved" the block.

Yeah, but guess who got the 25 BTC + fees?

That is not relevant to the question of who "solved" the block.

[seanrarey]

A bunch of naive, idealistic blather

The first thing you fail to understand is that this is a business, not a charity.  Get that through your head and the rest of it will make sense.

If you want to buy a miner for me, I will happily point it at any pool of your choosing.   As long as I'm spending MY money on equipment, then I'll point MY equipment on whatever fucking pool I see fit.  If smaller pools want to attract more miners, they should get their asses in gear and improve the pools to make them more attractive for use.  Things like extended stats, DDoS protection, and consistently working payouts (I'm looking at you, Eligius).

If you are so concerned about decentralization, I sure hope you are solo mining.  If you can't walk the walk, then stop trying to talk the talk.

... a comment on this post.  I am not sure a post could have been more skillfully crafted to drive home my point.

This next comment is not meant to be inflammatory, although I understand if you take is so.  It is meant for you to take into account, as a data point while making and employing your business plan.

Centralization is the enemy of this experiment.  "Business men" that mine for profit without regard for the network are not a friend to the experiment if their efforts result in too much centralization (usually a goal of a for-profit company).

Those of us that see this as a threat (such as ASICminer & a couple of other Chinese companies) to the eco system, are working hard to drive up the diff with de-centralized hashing in an effort to make your business less-viable.  The hope is that this will cause fewer people to sink huge sums of money into centralized operations such as yours if the returns are simply not there.

I hope it works.  I am doing my part.

[augustocroppo]

That is not relevant to the question of who "solved" the block.

Why the question is not relevant if who receives the reward is who supposedly "solves" the block?

Perhaps you are confusing what "solving" means in the metaphorical concept of "mining"?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block

Because there is a reward of brand new Bitcoins for solving each block, every block also contains a record of which Bitcoin address is entitled to receive the reward. This record is known as a generation transaction, or a coinbase transaction, and is always the first transaction appearing in every block.

[CYPER]

That is not relevant to the question of who "solved" the block.

Why the question is not relevant if who receives the reward is who supposedly "solves" the block?

Perhaps you are confusing what "solving" means in the metaphorical concept of "mining"?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block

Because there is a reward of brand new Bitcoins for solving each block, every block also contains a record of which Bitcoin address is entitled to receive the reward. This record is known as a generation transaction, or a coinbase transaction, and is always the first transaction appearing in every block.

You must be fun at parties 

[augustocroppo]

Centralization is the enemy of this experiment.  "Business men" that mine for profit without regard for the network are not a friend to the experiment if their efforts result in too much centralization (usually a goal of a for-profit company).

Centralization of what?

 

[xyzzy099]

That is not relevant to the question of who "solved" the block.

Why the question is not relevant if who receives the reward is who supposedly "solves" the block?

Perhaps you are confusing what "solving" means in the metaphorical concept of "mining"?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block

Because there is a reward of brand new Bitcoins for solving each block, every block also contains a record of which Bitcoin address is entitled to receive the reward. This record is known as a generation transaction, or a coinbase transaction, and is always the first transaction appearing in every block.

Why don't you just admit you were wrong, and stop this nonsense?  It is clear that who gets the reward for a block, and who "solves" it are two different questions.  In pool mining, a group of people agree to share block rewards regardless of which individual miner solved the block.  That agreement obviously has no bearing on who actually solved a given block.

[augustocroppo]

You must be fun at parties 

Completely!

 

I am excitingly waiting for the next one to gossip and laugh about companies which fails to deliver a hardware with a functional firmware to their customers. The best part of the joke is when I disclose the monetary cost to obtain such hardware. People literally ROFL!

You know, in Brazil people say that "who laughs last, laughs better".

[seanrarey]

Centralization is the enemy of this experiment.  "Business men" that mine for profit without regard for the network are not a friend to the experiment if their efforts result in too much centralization (usually a goal of a for-profit company).

Centralization of what?

 

The reason this is not off-topic, is because this forum is about mining.

If you are mining, especially with powerful units, you should understand:

1.  The decentralized nature, design and intent of the BTC network.

2.  The cause and effect of a 51% attack.

3.  The responsibility of miners and pools in maintaining balance.

Don't take my word for it, do your own research.

The argument was made that the large pools have checks put in place to mitigate such a disaster.  Simply making that statement is an acknowledgement that they have the _ability_ to tip the scale (hence the countermeasure).  Why would you or I ever want to give one person or entity that much power and control over _our_ Bitcoin network?  Has anyone here ever heard of a countermeasure failing (BP Oil in the Gulf)?

There are so many viable pools to choose from, and if you are a business it is more profitable to build your own pool (fees go to you).  If you pack heavy hash power, which most in this forum do, it makes so much more sense to  be a part of the solution rather then a part of the problem.

The irony is that in the end the pay is the same.

[Biomech]

A bunch of naive, idealistic blather

The first thing you fail to understand is that this is a business, not a charity.  Get that through your head and the rest of it will make sense.

If you want to buy a miner for me, I will happily point it at any pool of your choosing.   As long as I'm spending MY money on equipment, then I'll point MY equipment on whatever fucking pool I see fit.  If smaller pools want to attract more miners, they should get their asses in gear and improve the pools to make them more attractive for use.  Things like extended stats, DDoS protection, and consistently working payouts (I'm looking at you, Eligius).

If you are so concerned about decentralization, I sure hope you are solo mining.  If you can't walk the walk, then stop trying to talk the talk.

the real problem to his point is not that there are a small group of elite that control and abuse power, but that there is an endless line of similarly wired people waiting to replace them if given the chance

America's forefathers were an outlier, not the norm.   It didn't even last 200 years.   1776 till when JFK was shot.  No turning back now.

More like 1774 to 1791. The US constitution has all the seeds of tyranny built into it, with some superficial nods to individualism and liberty. The articles of Confederation were vastly superior precisely BECAUSE they ceded very little power to the central organization.

That being said, I think I have technical grounds to take exception with SeanRaney's post. I understand the anger.

However, the large pools are still decentralized in a real sense, as they are completely dependent on miners actually going there. While I would personally rather mine in a smaller pool for many of the reasons stated, or even solo mine if I had sufficient hash power, this doesn't change the nature of the beast. If a pool operator misbehaves badly, it's a three second fix. And then the huge pool becomes no pool. Pools do not set the regulations or the limits of bitcoin, they merely aggregate the results of multiple miners. Much like "the internet" is an aggregate of every computing device connected to it. If one unit fails, many are able to take it's place.

Where I see a bigger weakness is that it is currently difficult to find detailed information about setting up and operating a pool. This in itself is not egregious, but it is frustrating. In the age of ASIC chips, I would think that "out of the box" poolservers would be a good thing, as local clubs and even some of the larger purchasers could easily set up their own pools and diversify the network very far. This in itself would quickly alleviate the perception of pools centralizing the network.

On to the more philosophical points of his post, I believe very strongly that people DO NOT need to be ruled, but DO desire it to a greater or lesser extent. I am an anarchist. I am an individualist. I actually do quite well in the absence of humans, so I perhaps have a different perspective than most.

What I have seen, over and over again, is people who ought to know better clamoring for some rule because of what somebody else did that offended/frightened/titillated them. That the same rule can and will be used against them doesn't seem to occur to them. Especially given the widespread worship of democracy, this is a great argument AGAINST rulers. Rulers care not for the wellbeing of the ruled, except to the extent that said ruled are useful or useable by the rulers. They want you cowering in fear or waving a bloody flag. Resist that primitive urge to give in to the loud voice, and your life improves immeasurably. The collective good is served best by ignoring it and concentrating on your own success. That this is chaotic and full of squabbling is meaningless. Most things worth doing are going to be difficult. Liberty is not cheap nor easy, but it is rewarding.
I do not see the greed of short sighted miners as a problem, except to the miners themselves. Unprincipled greed and poor understanding of economic realities means that most of the really greedy and unthinking miners will drop by the wayside when marginal profits are on par with reality, whereas those with longer vision will ride out the hills and valleys and strengthen the network BECAUSE OF their profit seeking. While individuals will both fail and succeed, the paradigm itself will only fail if mining becomes the sole focus of the bitcoin world. If instead, it is promoted and actively used as currency, then the miners will win, the people who use bitcoin will win, and the experiment will succeed.

I too think that a lot of miners focus too much on short term positive ROI, thinking (or at least posting) things like the miners will never pay for themselves unless they breakeven in the next two weeks or two months or whatever. I think that two YEARS would be a better way to figure it, as that's pretty realistic for the level of investment we're looking at. It would also allow your plan to be more flexible, folding near term income into more hashpower and more efficient miners as they become available. This is not a zero sum game, never was, never will be. At some point, if the experiment is to succeed in the long term, then the transactional side (of which miners are a vital component) will vastly outstrip the generation of coins via solving blocks. And frankly, when it happens (if it happens) it will happen very quickly. The world's reserve currencies are openly failing. The central bankers are putting truckloads of band-aids on a sucking chest wound and hoping the patient won't bleed to death before they can come up with a new scam. It's not working, and they know it. They just don't know how to break the cycle of madness (doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results). Bitcoin, due to it's inherent properties, is one such solution. But if it's to succeed, it cannot change fundamentally, and that means that those who mine NEED to learn long term planning. That most will not doesn't hurt the experiment, but it can very definitely hurt the individual miners.

[Biomech]

A bunch of naive, idealistic blather

The first thing you fail to understand is that this is a business, not a charity.  Get that through your head and the rest of it will make sense.

If you want to buy a miner for me, I will happily point it at any pool of your choosing.   As long as I'm spending MY money on equipment, then I'll point MY equipment on whatever fucking pool I see fit.  If smaller pools want to attract more miners, they should get their asses in gear and improve the pools to make them more attractive for use.  Things like extended stats, DDoS protection, and consistently working payouts (I'm looking at you, Eligius).

If you are so concerned about decentralization, I sure hope you are solo mining.  If you can't walk the walk, then stop trying to talk the talk.

Yes sir, I solo mine.  I also have helped build a considerable number of pools.  I absolutely "walk the walk" Mr. business man.  I also mine with an assortment of just about every ASIC ever produced since the GPU/FGPA farms were killed off; to include a growing number of KnC pieces.

I have no problem making money, or forming a business around it.  But carelessly killing the cow you are milking is a poor business model.

Since my last reply kind of came off as an attack, I will balance it by saying that I agree one hundred percent with this post.

[augustocroppo]

Why don't you just admit you were wrong, and stop this nonsense?  It is clear that who gets the reward for a block, and who "solves" it are two different questions.  In pool mining, a group of people agree to share block rewards regardless of which individual miner solved the block.  That agreement obviously has no bearing on who actually solved a given block.

If you think "that who gets the reward for a block, and who "solves" it are two different questions", then I am certain you do not comprehend that even in pool "mining" there must be an entity to receive the reward, what is not the pool participant. The reward needs to be transmitted (first transaction) to the entity which "solves" the block. You are failing to understand that the receiver (thus the "solver") it is not the pool participant.

[xyzzy099]

A bunch of naive, idealistic blather

The first thing you fail to understand is that this is a business, not a charity.  Get that through your head and the rest of it will make sense.

If you want to buy a miner for me, I will happily point it at any pool of your choosing.   As long as I'm spending MY money on equipment, then I'll point MY equipment on whatever fucking pool I see fit.  If smaller pools want to attract more miners, they should get their asses in gear and improve the pools to make them more attractive for use.  Things like extended stats, DDoS protection, and consistently working payouts (I'm looking at you, Eligius).

If you are so concerned about decentralization, I sure hope you are solo mining.  If you can't walk the walk, then stop trying to talk the talk.

... a comment on this post.  I am not sure a post could have been more skillfully crafted to drive home my point.

This next comment is not meant to be inflammatory, although I understand if you take is so.  It is meant for you to take into account, as a data point while making and employing your business plan.

Centralization is the enemy of this experiment.  "Business men" that mine for profit without regard for the network are not a friend to the experiment if their efforts result in too much centralization (usually a goal of a for-profit company).

Those of us that see this as a threat (such as ASICminer & a couple of other Chinese companies) to the eco system, are working hard to drive up the diff with de-centralized hashing in an effort to make your business less-viable.  The hope is that this will cause fewer people to sink huge sums of money into centralized operations such as yours if the returns are simply not there.

I hope it works.  I am doing my part.

If bitcoin mining requires that it be done by good men with good intentions, it will be dead before you have time to be disappointed.

If you really are a bitcoin enthusiast, you'd better hope bitcoin is more hardy than that.  It is the nature of humans to act in their self interest.  No matter how your philosophy chooses to view this inclination, it will not change it.

[Phoenix1969]

A bunch of naive, idealistic blather

The first thing you fail to understand is that this is a business, not a charity.  Get that through your head and the rest of it will make sense.

If you want to buy a miner for me, I will happily point it at any pool of your choosing.   As long as I'm spending MY money on equipment, then I'll point MY equipment on whatever fucking pool I see fit.  If smaller pools want to attract more miners, they should get their asses in gear and improve the pools to make them more attractive for use.  Things like extended stats, DDoS protection, and consistently working payouts (I'm looking at you, Eligius).

If you are so concerned about decentralization, I sure hope you are solo mining.  If you can't walk the walk, then stop trying to talk the talk.

Yes sir, I solo mine.  I also have helped build a considerable number of pools.  I absolutely "walk the walk" Mr. business man.  I also mine with an assortment of just about every ASIC ever produced since the GPU/FGPA farms were killed off; to include a growing number of KnC pieces.

I have no problem making money, or forming a business around it.  But carelessly killing the cow you are milking is a poor business model.

Very interesting..  May I ask what your total hashpower is, and how often do you find a block?
I never even considered solo mining... How does one try?

[xyzzy099]

Why don't you just admit you were wrong, and stop this nonsense?  It is clear that who gets the reward for a block, and who "solves" it are two different questions.  In pool mining, a group of people agree to share block rewards regardless of which individual miner solved the block.  That agreement obviously has no bearing on who actually solved a given block.

If you think "that who gets the reward for a block, and who "solves" it are two different questions", then I am certain you do not comprehend that even in pool "mining" there must be an entity to receive the reward, what is not the pool participant. The reward needs to be transmitted (first transaction) to the entity which "solves" the block. You are failing to understand that the receiver (thus the "solver") it is not the pool participant.

Ok, you are just typing nonsense in lieu of admitting that your narrow semantic point was just plain wrong.

Please feel free to continue to be wrong without my continuing to point it out.

[markm]

p2pool is a distributed pool and extremely easy to set up, you don't even need to set up a database.

Plus it even allows the pool owner to merged mine. (That is, run your own copy of p2pool and you get all the coins you choose to merge as well as your share of the bitcoins.)

So basically no matter whether you are a large miner or a small miner you can very simply run p2pool for yourself and thus get the variable-amelioration of a pool while still using a decentralised solution instead of a centralising pool.

-MarkM-

[texaslabrat]

A bunch of naive, idealistic blather

The first thing you fail to understand is that this is a business, not a charity.  Get that through your head and the rest of it will make sense.

If you want to buy a miner for me, I will happily point it at any pool of your choosing.   As long as I'm spending MY money on equipment, then I'll point MY equipment on whatever fucking pool I see fit.  If smaller pools want to attract more miners, they should get their asses in gear and improve the pools to make them more attractive for use.  Things like extended stats, DDoS protection, and consistently working payouts (I'm looking at you, Eligius).

If you are so concerned about decentralization, I sure hope you are solo mining.  If you can't walk the walk, then stop trying to talk the talk.

... a comment on this post.  I am not sure a post could have been more skillfully crafted to drive home my point.

This next comment is not meant to be inflammatory, although I understand if you take is so.  It is meant for you to take into account, as a data point while making and employing your business plan.

Centralization is the enemy of this experiment.  "Business men" that mine for profit without regard for the network are not a friend to the experiment if their efforts result in too much centralization (usually a goal of a for-profit company).

Those of us that see this as a threat (such as ASICminer & a couple of other Chinese companies) to the eco system, are working hard to drive up the diff with de-centralized hashing in an effort to make your business less-viable.  The hope is that this will cause fewer people to sink huge sums of money into centralized operations such as yours if the returns are simply not there.

I hope it works.  I am doing my part.

If the project cannot stand on its own two feet without special care and feeding, it will die and deservedly so.  So as to loop this to an on-topic tangent...taking KnC miners into consideration the fact that anyone with a large enough capital base can purchase such a device (or multiples of devices) means that no longer is bitcoin given the luxury of being coddled by nurturing hobbyists who will do anything (including sacrificing their own profit margin) in order to make sure the network survives.  Bitcoin is now in the limelight of the world, and the Big Boys are entering the game wearing their Big Boy Pants and playing by Big Boy Rules.  ASIC companies such as KnC will fill whatever demand is out there in order to line their pockets (and rightfully so if you believe in free enterprise).  People buying these machines will implement them in such a way as to maximize their returns on investment (classical definition).  Those who stand in the way of that will get squished.  Those who work towards filling niches that are complimentary to that will be rewarded (ie alternative pools that people actually want to use, developing a less cumbersome way to use p2pool-type technologies that appeal to the masses, etc).  That's the reality, and trying to pontificate from some "moral high ground" about some kind of socialistic operational theory is less than helpful.  That type of input, if actually a majority-held one in the community, would only hasten bitcoin's demise as the people putting in the capital that is making bitcoin relevant would stop doing so and the whole house of cards would collapse.  Bitcoin only has value because people THINK it has value.  If you tell people it only has value as long as they are willing to lose money (either directly or through less-than-optimal operations that decrease potential profits versus other investments) through participating in it...how long until it stops having value?

So again..want to help?  Work on those things that are symbiotic with the large-scale capitalism that bitcoin is meant to help foster beyond the bounds of government oversight and regulation.  Telling people they shouldn't be trying to maximize their investment in it is the same as telling people that they shouldn't invest, period...which is not helpful.  

Now that KnC has a proven ASIC design, I expect them to begin flooding the market in 2014 with as many as they can churn out in order to cash in before the big difficulty crunch where average power costs equal expected fiat-converted returns and extending that run with a transition to a more power-efficient gen2 product.  Ditto bitfury and their distribution outlets.  That's the trajectory of the market...the only thing an individual can do is choose on which side of the bullet he wants to stand.  The best thing for the overall market is to encourage more (and bigger) investment that will drive the price of BTC upwards to extend the useful life of the individually-owned miner, as well as encourage more mainstream adoption of the currency as a storage of value.

And as for "centralized operations such as mine"...in the bitcoin mining realm I'm just another guy with miners at home trying to get them to pay for themselves and maybe a little extra to the greatest extent that I can manage. The "big business" portion is in the markets which should be outside your moral concern.  I've already left a lot of potential gains on the table by mining in the first place instead of just using those funds to buy more bitcoin directly and you want me (and others) to sacrifice even MORE for some "code of ethics" or whatever.  LOL.

The notion that I should somehow sacrifice "for the greater good" when it's clear that any concession that I might make would just be pocketed as profit by somebody else is ludicrous. But hey, if that's your bag...go for it.  The rest of us thank you for your contribution.  And make sure and buy as many KnC rigs as you possibly can to keep them out of the hands of those evil profit-mongers like me.  I'm sure KnC might even send you a Christmas card if you buy enough

[demonmaestro]

So do you guys think we will get some kind of compensation for them being late?

[CYPER]

So do you guys think we will get some kind of compensation for them being late?

I doubt it, unless we as a group somehow enforce it.