Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[bones261]

Likewise, almost all human fags are bisexual, and many men become gay only after failing with women. Being gay permits the occasional “experimental” bang with a girlfriend. Hence the K male’s aversion to fags and fag hags.

Science...

I'm not sure if this is a subtle jab at me or not - forgive me, I have been imbibing this afternoon - but I'm not here to debate the genetics of homosexuality.

For the purposes of r/K selection discussion, let's - Please - not bring my personality into this.

It was a quote from the article. I thought it was obvious I was critical. I'm sorry if I offended you.

It's a shame that the person who wrote this article had to sprinkle this article with a heavy dose of his bias. I could see that there seemed to be some actual facts there. It soon became absolutely unpalatable. Reminds me of the time when I was a child and wanted to sprinkle some minced garlic in my ramen. Unfortunately, the top of the minced garlic fell off. I tried to eat the concoction, and ended up developing an offensive aroma about me that didn't go away for a week.

[jojo69]

I'm liking the new avatar BMB, you buy that with our pants?

[jbreher]

*Unless a change in POW helps to equalize mining power by making costs harder to scale.

...Your apparent belief that a change in PoW will make any difference in centralization is unpersuasive. No matter the technology, mining power will coalesce to those that possess the financial resources, the BizOps acumen, and most importantly the persistence and pain tolerance needed for entrepreneurship on a grand scale.

I don't believe this is true. If somehow PoW can be tied to a smartphone for "one phone one vote", those who have financial resources can screw themselves against the brute force of several billion smartphone users.

Just No. Those that have the resources will run hundreds of android emulator VMs on each of hundreds of servers, and we'll be right back with the same centralization problem we have today.

We won't, if we switch to to a RAM and RAM-access intensive PoW algo. Let them try to emulate terabytes of RAM in a time efficient way. No eh? Just as I thought.

Those with the resources and wherewithal will not need to _emulate_ terabytes of memory. They will simply _buy_ them. And expend the effort and deploy the ingenuity required to build up large datacenters of 'em.

The broke and the lazy (i.e., the vast majority) will once again succumb to centralization of mining by large organizations.

[jbreher]

BCH is a non-starter,

Au contraire, my good friend - BCH is off to a smashing start.

Cheers!

edit: Support from Luke-jr!? Will wonders never cease? Of course, it is merely _qualified_ support - as in his claim that Bitcoin Cash is superior to Litecoin. A proposition with which I can heartily agree.

[jbreher]

Spoken like a true r.

You buy this stuff, Bob? Should I look into it? What _does_ the scientific community have to say about it? I haven't done much reading lately.

Just finished Stefan's second installment. He seems to be coming at it from some bias, and some assertions are unsupported (maybe he has footnotes in the text below? I'll go back and check later), but seems mostly balanced. This is my first exposure to this area of thought. So far, I am quite intrigued.

[FractalUniverse]

Volumes are getting low on many markets, probably the early sign of large move ahead in next few days

[d_eddie]

Those with the resources and wherewithal will not need to _emulate_ terabytes of memory. They will simply _buy_ them. And expend the effort and deploy the ingenuity required to build up large datacenters of 'em.

Not as easy as buying miners or emulating phones. Not as economical. Not as scalable. Of course, if they have resources and want to use them, they're free to.

However, cheap electricity, newest generation chips, and other factors that are now unbalancing the game won't be that relevant anymore, and there will be much fairer competition. That's the point - not avoiding concentration, but letting concentration happen with similar ease almost everywhere. So Average David can spend 1000$, and his 1000$ are worth almost exactly as much as Goliath's 1000$.

Today, specialized and generic hardware have performances orders of magnitude away. With this equalizing move, the difference would drop to well under a SINGLE factor of 10 - probably a lot less. Any American could put up a mining rig knowing that electricity costs are not the bottleneck anymore. That would be a significant change.

[jbreher]

However, cheap electricity, newest generation chips, and other factors that are now unbalancing the game won't be that relevant anymore, and there will be much fairer competition.

What -- exactly -- do you find _unfair_ about the current situation? Some had the foresight, drive, business acumen, and such to actually get into the business of making ASICs. Others used similar resources to build datacenters full of miners. These avenues are still open today for anyone suitably talented and driven. It is perfectly fair.

That's the point - not avoiding concentration, but letting concentration happen with similar ease almost everywhere. So Average David can spend 1000$, and his 1000$ are worth almost exactly as much as Goliath's 1000$.

David has some advantages that Goliath does not. For instance, applying the 'waste' heat to a real need. This is something that can be done at small scale, and cannot (or at least currently is not) done at scale.

Any American could put up a mining rig knowing that electricity costs are not the bottleneck anymore.

Nonsense. Electrical costs will always be a dominant factor in Bitcoin mining. Whether in flip flops in an ASIC or words in a memory column, each bit flip requires some number of Joules of energy.

I canna change the laws of physics, captain!

[d_eddie]

However, cheap electricity, newest generation chips, and other factors that are now unbalancing the game won't be that relevant anymore, and there will be much fairer competition.

What -- exactly -- do you find _unfair_ about the current situation?

Difference in costs and in the cost/return ratio.

That's the point - not avoiding concentration, but letting concentration happen with similar ease almost everywhere. So Average David can spend 1000$, and his 1000$ are worth almost exactly as much as Goliath's 1000$.

David has some advantages that Goliath does not. For instance, applying the 'waste' heat to a real need. This is something that can be done at small scale, and cannot (or at least currently is not) done at scale.

Peanuts. Besides, newer hardware squashes old to the point that old rigs aren't economical. Obsolescence should be realigned, too.

Any American could put up a mining rig knowing that electricity costs are not the bottleneck anymore.

Nonsense. Electrical costs will always be a dominant factor in Bitcoin mining. Whether in flip flops in an ASIC or words in a memory column, each bit flip requires some number of Joules of energy.

Of course, but flipping "the same bits" as quickly as possible (computing power, not memory bound) is one thing. Flipping "a much larger number of different bits" as quickly as possible - but less quickly because RAM won't allow max speed (memory bound computation) is rather less energy-intensive. Physics.

I canna change the laws of physics, captain!

Right, I can't. Even if I could, I would be wary. I'm just an ordinary guy.

[bitcrypto10101]

(nonsense)

Ignored.
But it's interesting how Vertcoin is pumping lately. It must be a coincidence. It can't be related to the ASICs politics b/s in BTC.

Interesting

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

I'm liking the new avatar BMB, you buy that with our pants?

Yup. God bless America

[conspirosphere.tk]

What -- exactly -- do you find _unfair_ about the current situation? Some had the foresight, drive, business acumen, and such to actually get into the business of making ASICs. Others used similar resources to build datacenters full of miners. These avenues are still open today for anyone suitably talented and driven. It is perfectly fair.

Who cares about fairness? The problem is that with ASICs it's too easy to quasi-monopolize the mining scene, and what is worse is that either some major players in the scene are not economically rational or they are pawns of some bigger hands behind the scene, which is why they're apparently just doing their best to destroy BTC not actually caring about the future success of their shitcoin -which is impossible because if they manage to kill btc any reason to trust a clone will die with it.

Even if the battle will go on undecided the risk of 51% attacks will likely increase. So it's a crappy situation with no end in sight which I would solve with a change in PoW so to leave the ASIC farmers and their owners alone with their chinacoins.

[Last of the V8s]

[Rosewater Foundation]

Spoken like a true r.

You buy this stuff, Bob? Should I look into it? What _does_ the scientific community have to say about it? I haven't done much reading lately.

Social Darwinism is vogue again, it's not as complicated as it seems.

[LewisPirenne]

I think Luke Jr. is just pointing out that it is more "heroic" to try something new even if you knew that you are doomed to fail, rather than just imitate when you know that you will probably succeed.  So Luke Jr. is probably just projecting the "opposite" of himself onto those big blockers and identify with the act of defending their ideal even when doomed.  

As for the ASIC vs whatever ASIC-resistant algo, I think the point is trying to prevent economy of scale, not effort and ingenuity.  That is, someone who spent $1 billion on mining vs one million guys spending $1,000 each on mining.   With current BTC algo, the 1 billion guy will gain enormous edge and econ scale over 1 million dudes.  With other ASIC-resistant algo, there is nothing to prevent someone spending 1 billion or the effort and ingenuity to gain an edge, but at least that edge is not exponentially greater than the masses.  

So the new algo is not ASIC-resistant, rather "Economy-of-Scale Resistant".  Someone can still datacenter it and even built their own power plant next to it (yes, there are people in the world that actually do this for other electricity-intensive industry), but they are bound by the law of physics and thus can not have exponential gain from scaling. Because after all, wealth distribution do follows power law and there is little that one can do short of forced wealth redistribution.

[jojo69]

Social Darwinism is vogue again, it's not as complicated as it seems.

It's so much more comfortable when you dehumanize the ones that "have to" die.  On a deep level we all know it, the deluge of zombie flics is our collective subconscious welling up.  If you can "other" some segment of the population it helps with the rationalization.

[yefi]

Au contraire, my good friend - BCH is off to a smashing start.

By "smashing start" do you mean worse than ETC?

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Au contraire, my good friend - BCH is off to a smashing start.

By "smashing start" do you mean worse than ETC?

Or totally centralized by cartel Bitmain? I, too, would like a reasonable definition of "smashing" in this context.

[jbreher]

However, cheap electricity, newest generation chips, and other factors that are now unbalancing the game won't be that relevant anymore, and there will be much fairer competition.

What -- exactly -- do you find _unfair_ about the current situation?

Difference in costs and in the cost/return ratio.

I don't necessarily disagree that there may be differences in cost/return ratio. But if you consider that _unfair_, then your definition of 'unfair' is considerably different than that I've grown up with.

Peanuts. Besides, newer hardware squashes old to the point that old rigs aren't economical. Obsolescence should be realigned, too.

Any American could put up a mining rig knowing that electricity costs are not the bottleneck anymore.

Nonsense. Electrical costs will always be a dominant factor in Bitcoin mining. Whether in flip flops in an ASIC or words in a memory column, each bit flip requires some number of Joules of energy.

Of course, but flipping "the same bits" as quickly as possible (computing power, not memory bound) is one thing. Flipping "a much larger number of different bits" as quickly as possible - but less quickly because RAM won't allow max speed (memory bound computation) is rather less energy-intensive.

Irrelevant. Crypto mining will still be energy bound.

Let me try this another way. What force is it that you believe will prevent the determined and well-funded from creating massive datacenters full of memory-optimized miners?

[jbreher]

Au contraire, my good friend - BCH is off to a smashing start.

By "smashing start" do you mean worse than ETC?

$415 a pop right now. $7B market cap. AND up 12.5% on the day. In what way is that worse than ETC?

Or totally centralized by cartel Bitmain? I, too, would like a reasonable definition of "smashing" in this context.

In what way is BCH centralized by Bitmain, that BTC is not?