Do miners really think destroying Bitcoin will make them rich?

[Kakmakr]

If you look at the way things are going now, you might realize that miners have lost the plot. They are sabotaging the whole Bitcoin experiment, because they want to make more profit and if they cannot do this, they will attack the minority chain to achieve their goal.

Satoshi had hoped that this will never happen, but it is happening now. Miners are willing to kill the cow to feed them now, even if the cow is providing milk on a daily basis.

What is Bitcoin without people using it?
What is Bitcoin without trust? < If people stop trusting that miners will act in good faith to keep the cow alive >
What is Bitcoin without security? < 51% attacks provide no security >
What is Bitcoin with no value?

Some of these miners should realize that the "milking" of Bitcoin users will stop, once they have killed the cow. We should act in the best interest of this technology and reduce the hold they have over us.

~ Pay less fees < Just be patient > They are getting $350 000 daily in higher tx fees according to Trace Mayer.
~ Fire up the old miners and host nodes to have a say
~ Ask developers to change the code to keep them honest or to remove the hold they have over the Bitcoin users.

Let's change our mindset and show these miners who makes up Bitcoin. ^grrrrrrr^

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[dinofelis]

If you look at the way things are going now, you might realize that miners have lost the plot. They are sabotaging the whole Bitcoin experiment, because they want to make more profit and if they cannot do this, they will attack the minority chain to achieve their goal.

You should have had a look what happened with the ETH/ETC split.  You don't know what "miners want".  You just hear some vocal people say a lot of things, but are they the official "representative" of the miner cartel ?  People were also claiming that miners were going to attack the minority chain ETC.  It didn't happen.  Miners want to make profit, period.  They don't waste their precious hash power on war games that profit THEIR PEERS.

The only thing that is happening, is that miners are essentially quite happy with the current form of bitcoin, it brings them guaranteed fees in the future, and don't want this to be MODIFIED seriously.  Core has decided to force a modification upon them which would take the essence of the fees to another layer.  THIS is what miners don't want.  So they will side with anybody who helps them stop these modifications.  They want immutability, because it suits them.  Immutability was what bitcoin was designed for.  Bitcoin is what it is, and will not change if that change is against the interests of a part of the community.  That was the whole idea.  Only (technical) changes that don't matter for people's situation can eventually be implemented. 

Bitcoin's immutability mechanism is at full steam, and is protecting the protocol from any changes.  It is all that is happening.  Nothing more.  Bitcoin is what it is, and will remain what it is.

Note that deep down, miners wouldn't mind bigger blocks right now, as their income is still mainly block reward.  They are thinking after the next halving.  Sooner or later (bitcoin's fundamental design) fees will have to replace block reward.  That can only happen if transactions are scarce.  So transactions HAVE TO BE SCARCE FOR BITCOIN TO FUNCTION in the long run.
That was in the system since the beginning, but as long as there were big block rewards, people weren't thinking of that.  The last block halving has signalled the beginning of the end of that period when transactions were cheap.  Now, they have to become expensive to pay for PoW.

[Kakmakr]

If you look at the way things are going now, you might realize that miners have lost the plot. They are sabotaging the whole Bitcoin experiment, because they want to make more profit and if they cannot do this, they will attack the minority chain to achieve their goal.

You should have had a look what happened with the ETH/ETC split.  You don't know what "miners want".  You just hear some vocal people say a lot of things, but are they the official "representative" of the miner cartel ?  People were also claiming that miners were going to attack the minority chain ETC.  It didn't happen.  Miners want to make profit, period.  They don't waste their precious hash power on war games that profit THEIR PEERS.

The only thing that is happening, is that miners are essentially quite happy with the current form of bitcoin, it brings them guaranteed fees in the future, and don't want this to be MODIFIED seriously.  Core has decided to force a modification upon them which would take the essence of the fees to another layer.  THIS is what miners don't want.  So they will side with anybody who helps them stop these modifications.  They want immutability, because it suits them.  Immutability was what bitcoin was designed for.  Bitcoin is what it is, and will not change if that change is against the interests of a part of the community.  That was the whole idea.  Only (technical) changes that don't matter for people's situation can eventually be implemented. 

Bitcoin's immutability mechanism is at full steam, and is protecting the protocol from any changes.  It is all that is happening.  Nothing more.  Bitcoin is what it is, and will remain what it is.

Note that deep down, miners wouldn't mind bigger blocks right now, as their income is still mainly block reward.  They are thinking after the next halving.  Sooner or later (bitcoin's fundamental design) fees will have to replace block reward.  That can only happen if transactions are scarce.  So transactions HAVE TO BE SCARCE FOR BITCOIN TO FUNCTION in the long run.
That was in the system since the beginning, but as long as there were big block rewards, people weren't thinking of that.  The last block halving has signalled the beginning of the end of that period when transactions were cheap.  Now, they have to become expensive to pay for PoW.

I disagree strongly. SegWit comes with a Block size increase and it is conveniently ignored. They are getting greedy and there are no other logical reason why they would block SegWit. The LN takes some of these fees to a second layer, that are accessible to everyone.

Some tx's still need to be done on the 1st layer, so it does not take away ALL the fees from that layer.

These miners have seen a opportunity to drag this whole process out and might even be behind these spam attacks to inflate the fees, so that they can make bigger profits. < unfortunately these people can hide behind pseudo-anonymity, so we might never know who they are>

Do not underestimate the power that normal users have, over the outcome of this whole experiment. 

[ralle14]

Do you have any other suggestions? Paying less fees would just be a hassle for me because I fear that my tx will get rejected and if it does I just waited time by following your advice. I don't think they will fully kill the cow maybe up to half only because some support what they believe is good for bitcoin(for me I don't support any sides). It's hard to influence/convince miners unless all bitcoin users are miners themselves.

What is Bitcoin without people using it?

That would mean no transaction volume going around but it's unlikely to happen.

[dinofelis]

If you look at the way things are going now, you might realize that miners have lost the plot. They are sabotaging the whole Bitcoin experiment, because they want to make more profit and if they cannot do this, they will attack the minority chain to achieve their goal.

You should have had a look what happened with the ETH/ETC split.  You don't know what "miners want".  You just hear some vocal people say a lot of things, but are they the official "representative" of the miner cartel ?  People were also claiming that miners were going to attack the minority chain ETC.  It didn't happen.  Miners want to make profit, period.  They don't waste their precious hash power on war games that profit THEIR PEERS.

The only thing that is happening, is that miners are essentially quite happy with the current form of bitcoin, it brings them guaranteed fees in the future, and don't want this to be MODIFIED seriously.  Core has decided to force a modification upon them which would take the essence of the fees to another layer.  THIS is what miners don't want.  So they will side with anybody who helps them stop these modifications.  They want immutability, because it suits them.  Immutability was what bitcoin was designed for.  Bitcoin is what it is, and will not change if that change is against the interests of a part of the community.  That was the whole idea.  Only (technical) changes that don't matter for people's situation can eventually be implemented.  

Bitcoin's immutability mechanism is at full steam, and is protecting the protocol from any changes.  It is all that is happening.  Nothing more.  Bitcoin is what it is, and will remain what it is.

Note that deep down, miners wouldn't mind bigger blocks right now, as their income is still mainly block reward.  They are thinking after the next halving.  Sooner or later (bitcoin's fundamental design) fees will have to replace block reward.  That can only happen if transactions are scarce.  So transactions HAVE TO BE SCARCE FOR BITCOIN TO FUNCTION in the long run.
That was in the system since the beginning, but as long as there were big block rewards, people weren't thinking of that.  The last block halving has signalled the beginning of the end of that period when transactions were cheap.  Now, they have to become expensive to pay for PoW.

I disagree strongly. SegWit comes with a Block size increase and it is conveniently ignored.

Because *they don't want a block size increase*, and *certainly* not a second layer.  A finite block size increase, they could cope with even if they don't like it.  

They are getting greedy and there are no other logical reason why they would block SegWit. The LN takes some of these fees to a second layer, that are accessible to everyone.

Bitcoin's basic idea is that everyone is greedy, and hence stops everyone else from changing rules that go against one's greed.  That is "immutability".  Stopping others from making you less greedy.  The fundamental principle of decentralization: non-colluding greedy people, that won't allow any changes that bring more to another one --> only possible consensus is status quo --> immutability.

Some tx's still need to be done on the 1st layer, so it does not take away ALL the fees from that layer.

The fee market is only interesting if it is under pressure, if there is scarcity of transactions, and people have to fight amongst one another to get their transaction through.

Otherwise, you would be at fee levels like before the 1 MB limit hit: much, much less than the block reward.  The total of fees must rise to about 6 BTC per block before the next halving, and to 9 BTC per block before the following halving, in order to keep miner income constant and secure PoW.  

Today:

https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees

total transaction fees per day: about 200 BTC.  During a day, there are about 144 blocks so the fee reward is 1.4 BTC per bloc *because the market is under pressure*.   Without pressure, that was about 50 BTC per day, so only about 0.3 BTC fee per bloc.

At that fee level, blocks should become 20 times bigger in order to become 6 BTC at the next halving ; probably not realistic.  However, with the market under pressure, the SAME 1 MB brings in 4 times more, and there is extra potential.

In other words, fees are much more interesting if transactions are scarce and fees per transaction are high, than if we have super large blocks with loads of transactions with low fee.  The more people fight for the few transactions that can go on a small block, the more miners are assured to keep their income at the next halving.

It even secures against market crashing: if they can pump up the fees in BTC because of scarcity, they care less about lower market $$ value of bitcoin.  If the fee amount doubles in the market, they can have up to a halving of the bitcoin price and market cap in $$. 
There's more to be pressured out of the fee market, than hope for doubling or tripling of bitcoin's price soon.

This is why miners LOVE 1 MB blocks and no second layer. 

[AngryDwarf]

I disagree strongly. SegWit comes with a Block size increase and it is conveniently ignored. They are getting greedy and there are no other logical reason why they would block SegWit. The LN takes some of these fees to a second layer, that are accessible to everyone.

Some tx's still need to be done on the 1st layer, so it does not take away ALL the fees from that layer.

These miners have seen a opportunity to drag this whole process out and might even be behind these spam attacks to inflate the fees, so that they can make bigger profits. < unfortunately these people can hide behind pseudo-anonymity, so we might never know who they are>

Do not underestimate the power that normal users have, over the outcome of this whole experiment. 

Segwit it not a block size increase, and so it being conveniently misunderstood. It introduces a new segwit block. It requires users to move to segwit keys to be of any benefit. People don't have funds on segwit keys yet. Real world effective increase in capacity is not known.
Show me how a real lightning network works in the real world. What if everybody doesn't trust each other and forces the frequent settling of open channels. Yep, we don't know how effective LN really will be in real world use.

Software developers are not adequately dealing with live network requirements in a timely fashion. And you can't blame miners if the developers proposed solution (which only provides pie in the sky future capacity increases) requires miners to hand over their wallets or they will be mugged.

Miners will sit back and take the fees while the deadlock period allows. If they are holding out for a faster approach to a live system with real world live demand/capacity issues, with a better future roadmap which doesn't take the incentive element of the white paper away, then who can blame them.

[Carlton Banks]

it is happening now

But that's not what's happening now.


The miners are threatening these things, not doing them. Let's just see where their big-talk leads, besides, we already have effective ways to defend against these attacks anyway.


I'm increasingly less concerned, more and more people are showing interest in both Flag Day acitvation for Segwit and/or PoW change to Cuckoo Cycle or suchlike ASIC resistant hashing algos. The revolting miners are going into the space heater business, and that's their prerogative.

[AngryDwarf]

Threats on both sides are apparent. Many sheep following their flock.

[aso118]

Note that deep down, miners wouldn't mind bigger blocks right now, as their income is still mainly block reward.  They are thinking after the next halving.  Sooner or later (bitcoin's fundamental design) fees will have to replace block reward.  That can only happen if transactions are scarce.  So transactions HAVE TO BE SCARCE FOR BITCOIN TO FUNCTION in the long run.
That was in the system since the beginning, but as long as there were big block rewards, people weren't thinking of that.  The last block halving has signalled the beginning of the end of that period when transactions were cheap.  Now, they have to become expensive to pay for PoW.

Transactions have to be scarce (at a high cost) or become numerous (at a low cost). 
Right now, Bitcoin's price may shoot up if the block size issue is resolved. Then the miners will be more than well compensated (through the block reward) for lower transaction fees.

[Winner]

It really depends on what type of mining attack they try to do. Right now the mining is pretty basic, there isn't that much to worry about because Bitcoin works and the miners are pretty much getting paid for their work.

Once Bitcoin Mining is available with Quantum Computers and they people with big money start mining blocks for real then the miners will have to step their game up and that means there would be much less promotion for Bitcoin going on from the miners.
At least the transaction confirmations should be fast then.

[zero1ten]

Not until the price of bitcoins drop down below $500 that miners will realize how the whole bitcoin ecosystem works for everybody and not just for a certain sector. For all what's happening lately, it seems the one thing that will eventually kill bitcoin, is the same thing that's destroying every society since modern civilization, GREED.

[jonald_fyookball]

If you look at the way things are going now, you might realize that miners have lost the plot.  

I get where you're coming from... But there's multiple aspects of this whole thing.

I have my bias like anyone else but i'll just tell you what I think miners are thinking:

For one thing, a seeming majority of users wanted bigger blocks a long time ago
(and core never provided it so far).  The miners do think they are doing what the market
wants.

Not everyone thinks segwit (or the core roadmap in general) is the way to go.
Even if some people like it in theory, for them it falls into the 'day late and
a dollar short' category.  And it may not even activate... and Greg Maxwell
is saying that is just fine and dandy.

A lot of miners and users are upset with core.  We see their actions as
stonewalling, or creating a problem on purpose so they can come in with
their solution.  On the extreme end of the conspiracy theories,
some even believe that Blockstream is intentionally trying to destroy Bitcoin
because the banker-tied investors want that. 

We can't let one small of group of developers stop us from scaling Bitcoin
in a timely manner.  There is economic pressure because Bitcoin is already
losing market share to altcoins and can have its network effect eroded.
Congestion has already hurt Bitcoin's utility.  Many feel that we cannot
wait any longer to get some relief in the way of scaling and that its
long overdue.

Some miners want bigger blocks but don't think EC is a great idea, others
do think it its a good idea.

BU is buggy but many just want EC from a variety of implementations.

Anyway i'm not saying i'm right because who cares who is wrong/right,
but just giving you the other side of the fence perspective.

Miners are not trying to destroy Bitcoin, they are trying to scale it.
My opinion.

[Sithara007]

I am disappointed with the miners for some time now. They are always aiming for the short term gains. Why they are not realizing that if they sacrifice something now, they will get a 100x returns later?

[dinofelis]

Transactions have to be scarce (at a high cost) or become numerous (at a low cost). 

Yes, but the "numerous transactions" wouldn't go in the miners' pockets if LN activates.  So they would have a small fraction of the "numerous" transactions at low cost.   You clearly see from the fee revenue of miners, that scarcity is more efficient in rising income, than high volume.  You may think that in the long run, this kills bitcoin.  I'm not sure, because a reserve currency is exactly having these properties.  So this niche is what is open for bitcoin: reserve currency, with very few transactions, at very high amounts, between big institutional players using it to settle their unregulated affairs.
These big settlers don't mind paying large fees, because compared to their business, it is still a small cost.  
Bitcoin is not made for the masses ; like gold is not made for the masses.
The masses just served to get bitcoin up and running but at a certain point, the masses will become a nuisance.

[dinofelis]

I am disappointed with the miners for some time now. They are always aiming for the short term gains. Why they are not realizing that if they sacrifice something now, they will get a 100x returns later?

Miner's interest runs as long as the life time of their gear.  They can go and mine just any other alt coin with more profit, but they first have to render profitable the gear they have invested in.  Once that investment has had a sufficient ROI, they don't care switching. Miners are not investors in crypto, they are investors in mining gear.  That gear has a finite life time.  After that life time, they don't care about what that gear was mining.

[Carlton Banks]

For one thing, a seeming majority of users wanted bigger blocks a long time ago

No they haven't.


Users were given the opportunity to support the XT and Classic blocksize forks. And users didn't want that, both were rejected by users.

Creating an echo chamber of sock puppets is not a real majority, jonald

Miners are not trying to destroy Bitcoin, they are trying to scale it.
My opinion.

Your opinion is wrong, and so is that of the bigger blocks miners.


If transaction rate increases 1:1 with blocksize increases, that's not scaling by definition. You cannot refute this, because it's an unimpeachable fact

[ekoice]

If you look at the way things are going now, you might realize that miners have lost the plot. They are sabotaging the whole Bitcoin experiment, because they want to make more profit and if they cannot do this, they will attack the minority chain to achieve their goal.

You should have had a look what happened with the ETH/ETC split.  You don't know what "miners want".  You just hear some vocal people say a lot of things, but are they the official "representative" of the miner cartel ?  People were also claiming that miners were going to attack the minority chain ETC.  It didn't happen.  Miners want to make profit, period.  They don't waste their precious hash power on war games that profit THEIR PEERS.

The only thing that is happening, is that miners are essentially quite happy with the current form of bitcoin, it brings them guaranteed fees in the future, and don't want this to be MODIFIED seriously.  Core has decided to force a modification upon them which would take the essence of the fees to another layer.  THIS is what miners don't want.  So they will side with anybody who helps them stop these modifications.  They want immutability, because it suits them.  Immutability was what bitcoin was designed for.  Bitcoin is what it is, and will not change if that change is against the interests of a part of the community.  That was the whole idea.  Only (technical) changes that don't matter for people's situation can eventually be implemented. 

Bitcoin's immutability mechanism is at full steam, and is protecting the protocol from any changes.  It is all that is happening.  Nothing more.  Bitcoin is what it is, and will remain what it is.

Note that deep down, miners wouldn't mind bigger blocks right now, as their income is still mainly block reward.  They are thinking after the next halving.  Sooner or later (bitcoin's fundamental design) fees will have to replace block reward.  That can only happen if transactions are scarce.  So transactions HAVE TO BE SCARCE FOR BITCOIN TO FUNCTION in the long run.
That was in the system since the beginning, but as long as there were big block rewards, people weren't thinking of that.  The last block halving has signalled the beginning of the end of that period when transactions were cheap.  Now, they have to become expensive to pay for PoW.

I disagree strongly. SegWit comes with a Block size increase and it is conveniently ignored. They are getting greedy and there are no other logical reason why they would block SegWit. The LN takes some of these fees to a second layer, that are accessible to everyone.

Some tx's still need to be done on the 1st layer, so it does not take away ALL the fees from that layer.

These miners have seen a opportunity to drag this whole process out and might even be behind these spam attacks to inflate the fees, so that they can make bigger profits. < unfortunately these people can hide behind pseudo-anonymity, so we might never know who they are>

Do not underestimate the power that normal users have, over the outcome of this whole experiment. 

Seems the miners are keen only in their more profits and not worried about bitcoin progress.They should realize nothing could ever become Bitcoin and if users lose their trust in bitcoin,it will be the end of bitcoin.I dont know then where the miners would go and find such a big cryptocoin for mining.Selfishness of miners will make their end in a loss.

[DarkElf]

Not all minerals are bad some of them e.g. BitFury quite adequate

[dinofelis]

Seems the miners are keen only in their more profits and not worried about bitcoin progress.They should realize nothing could ever become Bitcoin and if users lose their trust in bitcoin,it will be the end of bitcoin.I dont know then where the miners would go and find such a big cryptocoin for mining.Selfishness of miners will make their end in a loss.

The whole idea of crypto is to have a collection of greedy bastards that cannot find a way to agree over how to change something.  So one shouldn't throw the stone on the miners: bitcoin's strength comes from their merciless greed that has pushed up the difficulty (and hence the cryptographic security of bitcoin) to mindboggling heights.  Without their cut throat greed, bitcoin wouldn't exist as it does now.  So don't complain that they are greedy: that's what they are supposed to be !

However, you are right that a miner doesn't care about the currency he mines beyond the horizon of his investment in its particular mining gear.  There are 700 different altcoins to mine too, but they require different investments.  So for a miner, bitcoin should remain valuable the time he needs to make his gear profitable.  Say, 1-2 years.  (what's the average life time of competitive bitcoin mining gear ?)

[deisik]

~ Pay less fees < Just be patient > They are getting $350 000 daily in higher tx fees according to Trace Mayer.
~ Fire up the old miners and host nodes to have a say
~ Ask developers to change the code to keep them honest or to remove the hold they have over the Bitcoin users.

Let's change our mindset and show these miners who makes up Bitcoin. ^grrrrrrr^

I think we don't need to do anything special

It is natural selection of sorts, so let the nature clear the path and not get in its way. There are over 30 thousand full Bitcoin nodes running out there at any given moment, therefore if top miners leave (which is an unlikely event, anyway), their place will be immediately taken. Most transactions today are still made in-house, and even if there is a time lag between major miners leaving and difficulty readjusting (it should take approximately 2 weeks), it won't paralyze or kill Bitcoin. It will be a healing event, a catharsis of sorts, that Bitcoin should come through