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atariguy
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June 24, 2013, 04:18:49 AM |
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But that's actually another problem with Bitcoin - the typical consumer is going to get scared off by the irreversibility. That is a theory which so far the evidence does not support, given that BitPay continues to see healthy growth in their transaction volume. Ah, but BitPay users don't represent the typical consumer.  |
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Make sure you back up your wallet regularly! Unlike a bank account, nobody can help you if you lose access to your BTC.
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justusranvier
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Activity: 1400
Merit: 1009
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June 24, 2013, 04:33:24 AM |
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I'll provisionally accept that as a plausible hypotheses until we have enough data to say one way or the other.
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tkbx
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June 27, 2013, 06:21:53 PM |
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Massive pool goes down, more people start mining because they're more likely to get the block.
Just like any other economy, don't screw with it and things will balance themselves out.
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Rassah
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June 27, 2013, 08:57:45 PM |
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Massive pool goes down, more people start mining because they're more likely to get the block.
Just like any other economy, don't screw with it and things will balance themselves out.
If a massive pool went down, all the miners that were on it will just switch to the other pools, so the number of miners or the block payouts will not change. But otherwise yeah, agreed. |
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hamiltino
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July 02, 2013, 06:07:17 AM |
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People who don't think that bitcoin mining is not becoming more centrazilzed must be on something. The fact is since ASIC's can only be produced by companies then you will have most of the mining centralized, and a few of the scraps will be sold to the PUBLIC. Think about other countries like CHINA, Taiwan..etc major silicon valley players, they will further centralize the mining network.
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stacking coin
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firefop
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July 06, 2013, 03:55:23 PM |
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IMO this largely a non-problem.
But if it were actually a problem - the solution would be an increase in block generation target time + block reward reduction... preferably automatically done by the protocol after some long time gap between blocks.
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hashman
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Merit: 1008
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July 08, 2013, 07:39:16 AM |
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What would you rather have.. botnets of consumer zombie devices that control and threaten the network or hardware farms that control and threaten the network?
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rograz
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July 08, 2013, 08:04:05 AM |
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I've heard all of these arguments before somewhere, oh ye it was back when CPU mining was being killed by the "evil" gpu miners who were only in it for the profit.
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chiropteran
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July 08, 2013, 02:08:01 PM |
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The whole resilience of the network is being brought into question here - If these guys go offline for what ever reason with the difficulty where it is now everything is going to grind to a halt. A couple of business should NOT have this impact on the network.
What are your thoughts on this?
If VISA decides to shut everything down, doesn't the same happen to the credit card network? Why isn't this a huge problem? VISA is making money hand over fist, and shutting down for no reason is irrational and would cause them to lose money. Well, ASICMINER is in the same position. It would be completely irrational for them to stop mining and throw money away. My thoughts are that it is not a problem, in fact it is a benefit of bitcoin. If VISA goes down, VISA cards stop working. If ASICMINER stops mining, transactions take a little longer to process, but they do still get processed eventually. This is a vast improvement. |
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juca
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July 08, 2013, 02:32:26 PM |
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for me the OP is a troll, nuf said
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rovchris (OP)
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July 08, 2013, 07:10:41 PM |
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for me the OP is a troll, nuf said
What a constructive remark - The key element of the post was "what are your thoughts on this". |
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rovchris (OP)
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July 08, 2013, 07:16:03 PM |
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The whole resilience of the network is being brought into question here - If these guys go offline for what ever reason with the difficulty where it is now everything is going to grind to a halt. A couple of business should NOT have this impact on the network.
What are your thoughts on this?
If VISA decides to shut everything down, doesn't the same happen to the credit card network? Why isn't this a huge problem? VISA is making money hand over fist, and shutting down for no reason is irrational and would cause them to lose money. Well, ASICMINER is in the same position. It would be completely irrational for them to stop mining and throw money away. My thoughts are that it is not a problem, in fact it is a benefit of bitcoin. If VISA goes down, VISA cards stop working. If ASICMINER stops mining, transactions take a little longer to process, but they do still get processed eventually. This is a vast improvement. I hear you man - but VISA have redundancy - multiple data centres - disaster recovery etc etc. Look at this chart - http://www.asicminercharts.com/ these guys can not even maintain consistent throughput - there processing fluctuates by 50% which is massive. The other issue is - if governments legislate against Bitcoin which is looking increasingly likely and mining has been centralised by a few companies - how easy is it for them to shut down a few companies as opposed to hundreds of thousands of miners? Look at the Bit Torrent network - this has survived because there is no centralisation and there are no big companies that have a large stake holding of the network throughput - any company that did try like Napster was blown out of the water in no time at all. If bit torrent had been more centralised it would have been history a long time ago. |
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Rassah
Legendary
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Activity: 1680
Merit: 1035
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July 08, 2013, 08:10:43 PM |
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If ASICMiner gets to the point of having 50% of the total hashing power, and are then shut down by the government, the only thing that will happen is that for <2 weeks transactions will take 20 minutes to confirm instead of 10. Not that big of a deal, really.
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rovchris (OP)
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July 08, 2013, 08:49:45 PM |
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If ASICMiner gets to the point of having 50% of the total hashing power, and are then shut down by the government, the only thing that will happen is that for <2 weeks transactions will take 20 minutes to confirm instead of 10. Not that big of a deal, really.
What would happen in the event of the major mining pools being shut down as well? If governments go for Bitcoins which as I said is increasingly likely for example the State of California issuing a cease and desist order against the foundation and numerous other operations - admittedly it was quite clumsy on their part as they obviously do not understand the technology - but it will not be long before they get their heads around it. When then they launch their assault it will not just be one operation they go for. The point I am making is centralisation is going to be the downfall of bitcoins because it is easy to shut down a few big operations as opposed to hundreds of thousands of individual miners. I find it hard to understand why people can not see this happening - each difficulty rise the smaller mining pools are loosing significant hashing power as people point their rigs at the large pools (btcguild etc etc.). A couple more increases and they will be dead - just further centralising the network. Look at BTCMine.com that use to have a hash rate of around 300ghs now it is around 100 -120ghs - 15 days to solve a block. People will just not wait that long for a payout. If there are no large mining pools people will just stop mining as they will not wait 6 months to solve a block solo. I am all for Bitcoins and have spent significant sums of money but I am concerned that it is going to be futile if things carry on the way they are. Imagine for one moment if you were in government and a significant part of the money supply is moving out of your control - what are you going to do - sit around and just let it happen? If you then had to stop the proliferation of Bitcoins you would target the big players and shut them down and we are making it all the easier for them. |
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LoWang
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July 08, 2013, 10:03:07 PM |
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I read the whole thread and I must say I am a bit worried that so few people could really address rovchris's points (like this one for example )  I may have expected some experts or bitcoin developers to comment here, but maybe they are too busy to read forums and develop at the same time... Some of you did not even bother to read the first post (like Rassah). That alone makes my trust in bitcoin go down  Also where are the p2pool fans? Can somebody just quickly summarize to me why p2pool did not take over normal pools thus solving this problem? My guess is that it is simply because of smaller profits for miners. Am I right? I tried using p2pool to mine LTC and it was almost unusable because of the transaction fees nullifying the profits. Not sure how it works with BTC though... |
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LoWang
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July 08, 2013, 10:48:59 PM |
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They can all go solo any time they please and we're not short of ASIC manufacturers. It would be a conspiracy theorists wet dream for all that lot to get shut down at once.
Either I am missing something or I was totally right with my previous post  You are not mining any cryptocurrency are you? |
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rovchris (OP)
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July 08, 2013, 11:02:13 PM |
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They can all go solo any time they please and we're not short of ASIC manufacturers. It would be a conspiracy theorists wet dream for all that lot to get shut down at once.
The same way it was a conspiracy theory for a large number of banks to collapse at the same time in 2008 and governments forcing tax payers to bail them out? Ask anyone in 2007 if that could have happened and they would have given the same response as what you just posted. You do not understand how mining works - when everyone has ASIC's the difficulty will rise accordingly and therefore make no difference to the centralisation. When the difficulty is 500 million how are you going to mine solo with an ASIC? |
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FreeMoney
Legendary
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Activity: 1246
Merit: 1014
Strength in numbers
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July 08, 2013, 11:03:23 PM |
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Lol, how many miners were there when diff was 1? 1000?
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Play Bitcoin Poker at sealswithclubs.eu. We're active and open to everyone. |
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rovchris (OP)
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July 08, 2013, 11:04:23 PM |
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Lol, how many miners were there when diff was 1? 1000?
I am not even sure what that means - what point are you trying to make? |
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rovchris (OP)
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July 08, 2013, 11:07:07 PM |
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I read the whole thread and I must say I am a bit worried that so few people could really address rovchris's points (like this one for example ) I may have expected some experts or bitcoin developers to comment here, but maybe they are too busy to read forums and develop at the same time... Some of you did not even bother to read the first post (like Rassah). That alone makes my trust in bitcoin go down Also where are the p2pool fans? Can somebody just quickly summarize to me why p2pool did not take over normal pools thus solving this problem? My guess is that it is simply because of smaller profits for miners. Am I right? I tried using p2pool to mine LTC and it was almost unusable because of the transaction fees nullifying the profits. Not sure how it works with BTC though... It is hard work trying to have any sensible discussion - you are either called a troll or no one actually provides anything concrete and just repeats arguments that have no basis. No one has provided any satisfactory answer to why the network is not going to be more centralised and how that is not a greater threat to the stability of Bitcoins than having a massively distributed network. |
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