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.  

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.

We are not losing market share to Alt coins because of a possible hardfork, that is just the smoke screen for clever people to push stupid people to sell their Bitcoins and then to buy Alt coins the clever people have invested in prior to the hype. No matter what Alt coin you invest in now, miners will have a huge influence in the "politics" involved.

Asic manufacturers also have a huge hold over miners and what side they have to be on in this debate. Some miners wanted to give SegWit a chance on other Alt coins, to see what would happen and they were "influenced" by some of the bigger Asic manufacturers not to allow that. < Why? >

 

[stripykitteh]

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

Since when are we using Bitcoin mining equipment to mine precious metals and other stones?
Minerals are cool -try to stay on topic because most of the people here isn't really interested in a worst case scenario of a 51% Mineral mining attack lol

Bitcoin is nice to have on the side so if a Bitcoin mining attack were to happen then the people holding the coins would still have their coins. I don't understand why there is a big fuss about it when the wallet files could be transferred manually offline.

[deisik]

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

Miners, miners, miners (in Steve Ballmer's voice)!

Miners here, miners there, miners everywhere. The basic problem with miners is that they have too much power over Bitcoin, which they shouldn't have had in the first place. After all, Bitcoin is supposed to be decentralized or what? I know what you are going to say, namely, that without miners Bitcoin could not exist. But it is not the overall utility of miners that matters here, it is their marginal utility which is important. There is plenty of air around, and you don't basically care if someone breathes in more air than you. The matter is essentially the same with miners, their marginal utility should necessarily be made very low (if we want Bitcoin to stay or revert to being properly decentralized). And that would be possible only through heavy decentralization of mining, the process which would be diametrically opposite to what we have by now

[Amph]

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

isn't that true with any method you want to implement for scaling? otherwise how do you "scale" by your definition

i mean it's clear that the number of transaction will eventually catch the limit, that the point, to have more room..

well maybe a solution is to have always the block size needed +"1", so you don't have ever the 1:1 ratio

[jonald_fyookball]

^ shocker, carlton disagrees with my opinion.   

We are not losing market share to Alt coins because of a possible hardfork, that is just the smoke screen for clever people to push stupid people to sell their Bitcoins and then to buy Alt coins the clever people have invested in prior to the hype. No matter what Alt coin you invest in now, miners will have a huge influence in the "politics" involved.

I'm not saying this.  I'm saying we are losing market share because there's not enough bandwidth and the fees are too high.  When we had network congestion (spam attack or not) it really freaked a lot of people out who were actually using Bitcoin to transfer money.  I was one of those people -- one of my employees was pretty upset he had to wait 2 days while his transaction got stuck in the mempool.  People started using dash and ethereum.  I'm close to 100% sure that none of this is good for Bitcoin.  And if those problems come up again (its only a matter of time unless we have some scaling solution), I'm certaintly not going to be using Bitcoin to pay people if it becomes more expensive than Paypal.  Why should I?

Asic manufacturers also have a huge hold over miners and what side they have to be on in this debate. Some miners wanted to give SegWit a chance on other Alt coins, to see what would happen and they were "influenced" by some of the bigger Asic manufacturers not to allow that. < Why? >

ASIC manufactures can influence what is going on with altcoins?   I don't know much about that.  Sounds a little far fetched/doesnt make sense.

[deisik]

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

isn't that true with any method you want to implement for scaling? otherwise how do you "scale" by your definition

It is certainly not true

With off-chain transactions you can scale up transactions indefinitely (basically, up to a point where the transaction processing capacity is limited only by the sheer network bandwidth of the processing node). Even with strictly on-chain transactions, you can make them more efficient overall by packing more transactions in the block of the same size. I think there are a number of ways of scaling up with ratios higher than 1 to 1 (e.g. you could use some packing algorithm for big transactions or something to that tune)

[naughty1]

It is accurate to call what the miners do is to destroy the bitcoin. They are too greedy, so they come up with the idea of BU, because of that greed they are making the bitcoin die off. At present, the value of bitcoin is severely depreciated. While alt coins are growing and going up to an incredible level, most altcoins go up, but the bitcoin goes against it, it is dying, and the killer Dead bitcoin is the main miners. They are bad guys who just satisfy their greed and do not think about anyone.

[jonald_fyookball]

It is accurate to call what the miners Blockstream do is to destroy the bitcoin. They are too greedy, so they come up with the idea of BU Blockstream , because of that greed they are making the bitcoin die off. At present, the value of bitcoin is severely depreciated. While alt coins are growing and going up to an incredible level, most altcoins go up, but the bitcoin goes against it, it is dying, and the killer Dead bitcoin is the main miners Blockstream. They are bad guys who just satisfy their greed and do not think about anyone.

FTFY.

[positivezero]

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?

Yes your actually right. But i dont think so if miners really think about that. As you said they are aiming in short term gains? i dont really understand why they would do some things that can destroy bitcoin.  Yes many of the miners wanted to become rich even in my part, i also dream to become rich through bitcoin, but in good ways, ways that will help bitcoin also to improve since one of the reasons why bitcoin became famous in the market is that there are many users trusted and used it.

[Carlton Banks]

isn't that true with any method you want to implement for scaling? otherwise how do you "scale" by your definition

i mea it's clear that the number of transaction will eventually catch the limit, that the point, to have more room..

well maybe a solution is to have always the block size needed +"1", so you don't have ever the 1:1 ratio

You scale On-Chain by increasing the rate of transactions, but keeping the amount of resources (i.e. blocksize) the same. It's not my definition, it's called mathematics.


Simple examples:

Schnorr signatures

~30% smaller than the ECDSA sig scheme Bitcoin uses now. That means ~ 30% extra space in the same blocksize.

Transaction encoding

Improve transaction encoding so it's more space efficient than the current system. gmaxwell talks about the details (with links to full detals) here:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1700405.msg17053119#msg17053119

[K128kevin2]

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

Can the moderators not check to see if all of these accounts are managed by the same person?

[jrlichtman]

We halve the rewards every four years. Why not automatically double (or some other multiplier) the block size at the same time? That way things scale up gradually.

I'm sure there are other possible compromise positions as well. Honestly, the two sides just need to sit down with an experienced conflict resolution expert, and come up with a deal.

[dinofelis]

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

Miners, miners, miners (in Steve Ballmer's voice)!

Miners here, miners there, miners everywhere. The basic problem with miners is that they have too much power over Bitcoin, which they shouldn't have had in the first place.

Proof of work consensus system.

After all, Bitcoin is supposed to be decentralized or what? I know what you are going to say, namely, that without miners Bitcoin could not exist.

Of course it could exist, but it was not designed that way.  Call it a design error, call it "on purpose", I don't know.  But if the consensus is Proof of Work, those delivering Proof of Work decide about consensus, and hence about everything.  Except the market of course.  That's the users.

[BigBoom3599]

We halve the rewards every four years. Why not automatically double (or some other multiplier) the block size at the same time? That way things scale up gradually.

I'm sure there are other possible compromise positions as well. Honestly, the two sides just need to sit down with an experienced conflict resolution expert, and come up with a deal.

They did that a long time ago, both sides (core and miners) then came up with the Honk Kong agreement. Basically it was something along the lines of, miners will use core if they release their scaling method before a certain date (can't remember when it was off the top of my head). Core then broke the agreement by not releasing it in time...

[cellard]

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^

Miners (and by miners, I mean the usual chinese mafia) are bribed by institutions and states that have more money than the entire bitcoin marketcap combined. This is what explains the odd behavior with miners, because im under the assumption that they are intelligent enough to know going against 80% of the nodes and supporting inferior software + killing the network effect and price in the process, is not by any means a good idea.

Think about it, how else would TPTB attack bitcoin, if it wasn't by bribing miners?
What we are seeing is an obvious incentivized attack, so they don't care about the outcome of bitcoin.
It is yet to be seen if the community reacts and rejects it and the bitcoin network effect survives, and I hope and trust it does.

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 was designed with payment channels (lightning network) in mind, so satoshi saw LN coming. LN is supported by the likes of Nick Szabo (aka satoshi nakamoto). LN would in the long term deliver more gains to miners. Miners supporting shitty software and killing the network effect via HF aren't using their brains or are getting bribed.

[jonald_fyookball]

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

Can the moderators not check to see if all of these accounts are managed by the same person?

this amuses me.    What account do you think might be also managed by me? 

[deisik]

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?

Yes your actually right. But i dont think so if miners really think about that. As you said they are aiming in short term gains? i dont really understand why they would do some things that can destroy bitcoin.  Yes many of the miners wanted to become rich even in my part, i also dream to become rich through bitcoin, but in good ways, ways that will help bitcoin also to improve since one of the reasons why bitcoin became famous in the market is that there are many users trusted and used it

There may be no place for miners in the future

Not miners as such, of course, but mining monopoly as what we have today. So miners are trying to squeeze maximum profits today even if that would severely hurt Bitcoin tomorrow. If there is no future for them, why should they care about Bitcoin fate at all? Their days are numbered, anyway (with or without Bitcoin). It can be said with certainty that instant, off-chain transactions are the thing of the future. And in this future, miners will be purely utilitarian, and they won't be able to indirectly set transaction fees like they do today

[Kprawn]

You know when James D'Angelo's said this, people laughed this off as if he was crazy.... now people should realize that he was actually right. 

https://buyabitcoin.com.au/blog/james-dangelo-bitcoin-mining-centralizing-worst-possible-places-china/

I quote a little bit of this article here : " Di Angelo explained that they Chinese government will forcefully take over the operations in China and

launch a 51% attack on the entire network."   <----- Strange how this is becoming a reality.... right?

[Carlton Banks]

You know when James D'Angelo's said this, people laughed this off as if he was crazy.... now people should realize that he was actually right.  

https://buyabitcoin.com.au/blog/james-dangelo-bitcoin-mining-centralizing-worst-possible-places-china/

I quote a little bit of this article here : " Di Angelo explained that they Chinese government will forcefully take over the operations in China and

launch a 51% attack on the entire network."   <----- Strange how this is becoming a reality.... right?

Maybe even this guy couldn't have predicted the 51% attack would include such an elaborate social engineering component too.

The People's Republic of China are so desperate to protect their turf, they're willing to employ some seriously complex plausible deniability, not to mention an army of English speaking trolls. Anyone would think that the PRC aren't working alone here.... but that would be craaaazzzzzzzy talk, right? Surely the Chinese, American and/or the European establishment wouldn't be working together to kill Bitcoin, right? Right?

[jonald_fyookball]

You know when James D'Angelo's said this, people laughed this off as if he was crazy.... now people should realize that he was actually right. 

https://buyabitcoin.com.au/blog/james-dangelo-bitcoin-mining-centralizing-worst-possible-places-china/

I quote a little bit of this article here : " Di Angelo explained that they Chinese government will forcefully take over the operations in China and

launch a 51% attack on the entire network."   <----- Strange how this is becoming a reality.... right?

couldn't we just HF away from a malicious monopoly?