Is mining the number 1 problem of Bitcoin right now?

[chek2fire]

The question is very simple. Is the mining the number problem for Bitcoin right now and this that Bitcoin developers need to solve it asap?
Bitcoin mining failed to decentralised over the years and right now a single miner, Jihan Wu, control 50-60% of Bitcoin hashrate.
That give him the power to play games with the network like what happen with bcash hashrate flipping or with the previous segwit, scaling block drama.

Is there any solution so bitcoin mining to return to individual users or to give them a motive to start mining again?
Can this be done with a simple change of pow or it need more complex solutions like merge mining?

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[yassinebenouhoud]

I'm not sure whether this is a digital issue or not, but as far as I know the digging price for each bitcoin is increasing.

[penig]

Mining and by extension fees are a big problem.  The solutions are simple (see all the hundreds of coins not using SHA256), just the community consists of people that either don't want to accept there is a problem or that the alternatives are against Bitcoin original design.  This is ironic as it give those that dominate Bitcoin a powerful position as noted, which is definitely against the intent of Bitcoin.

[bob123]

Bitcoin mining failed to decentralised over the years and right now a single miner, Jihan Wu, control 50-60% of Bitcoin hashrate.

Can you give us a source where you read about Jihan Wu (AntPool) to control more than 50% of the hashrate?
Currently AntPool is mining 17,4% of all BTC blocks [1]. Thats far away from 50%+.

That give him the power to play games with the network like what happen with bcash hashrate flipping or with the previous segwit, scaling block drama.

I don't see any problems with hashrate flipping over. Why exactly do you rate it as "playing games with the network"?
I also don't get why/how the "scaling block drama" is linked to AntPool ? Could you explain what exactly you regard as a problem?

Source:
[1] https://blockchain.info/de/pools

[pitham1]

The question is very simple. Is the mining the number problem for Bitcoin right now and this that Bitcoin developers need to solve it asap?
Bitcoin mining failed to decentralised over the years and right now a single miner, Jihan Wu, control 50-60% of Bitcoin hashrate.
That give him the power to play games with the network like what happen with bcash hashrate flipping or with the previous segwit, scaling block drama.

Is there any solution so bitcoin mining to return to individual users or to give them a motive to start mining again?
Can this be done with a simple change of pow or it need more complex solutions like merge mining?

Mining is not the problem. Full blocks and high transaction fees are the problem. It is inevitable that in a free market, large players emerge who take advantage of economies of scale.

[bitbunnny]

I would say yes, mining and miners are the problem for Bitcoin. To much power and speculation potential is placed in the hands of few people or group of people and that can cause big problems with time and make Bitcoin weak. It's not something that couldn't be solved but some will and consensus within the community is needed.

[olushakes]

The question is very simple. Is the mining the number problem for Bitcoin right now and this that Bitcoin developers need to solve it asap?
Bitcoin mining failed to decentralised over the years and right now a single miner, Jihan Wu, control 50-60% of Bitcoin hashrate.
That give him the power to play games with the network like what happen with bcash hashrate flipping or with the previous segwit, scaling block drama.

Is there any solution so bitcoin mining to return to individual users or to give them a motive to start mining again?
Can this be done with a simple change of pow or it need more complex solutions like merge mining?

This is something that all other promoters of forks are really exploiting as a reason for their action. Today, BTG boast of 1CPU1VOTE which makes mining a decentralised one rather than what is happening to btc in which mining as an individual is almost impossible. Solution is sight is not something we should hope for because if that had been, it would have been established and implemented even before the birth of BCH.

[Rozita]

Problem in mining is what I've always been worried about. But I don't think it's normal now. It's really strange. Because this happened as soon as the fork was cancelled.

[Youghoor]

Yes of course, all the miners are migrating to the other network (bitcoin cash) and this is making all this mess with the unconfirmed transactions.
Without miners, there are no transactions, and if it happens, then there we can not move money, i mean, send/receive payments.. And all this means that bitcoin can not exist, because we could not cashout our money anymore, this is the main reason of why bitcoin has been so inestable on the last few days.
But all this thing is recovering right now, so there is no thing to be afraid about.

[thr3]

If you think mining at the current rate is a problem, wait till you see quantum computers hitting the market.

Mining has always been an issue in bitcoin. The miners have always dominated the bitcoin market and decision-making process simply because the underlying technology of bitcoin itself relies on the miners.

[Iranus]

right now a single miner, Jihan Wu, control 50-60% of Bitcoin hashrate.

This is almost certainly false.  BITMAIN control Antpool and BTC.com, giving them about 30% of hashrate, plus whatever miners they control directly.

That give him the power to play games with the network like what happen with bcash hashrate flipping

That would happen with smaller miners as well.  They're likely to switch and mine whichever coin is most profitable at the time.
Notably, BITMAIN do not fully control the hashrate that is being directed at their pools.  If they were considered to be part of a 51% attack (for which they would have to bond with other pools controlling significant amounts of hashrate), people would just switch to a different pool.  Confirmed transactions would still be safe regardless.

[Clement Kaliyar]

I would say yes, mining and miners are the problem for Bitcoin. To much power and speculation potential is placed in the hands of few people or group of people and that can cause big problems with time and make Bitcoin weak. It's not something that couldn't be solved but some will and consensus within the community is needed.

It is true that more power is placed into the hands of a few individuals and so is the reasons we are seeing these sort of manipulation and there is nothing we can do and the funny part is everyone is talking about decentralized bitcoin but mining is centralized,the major issue is that the block size limit is one major factor,something has to be done in order to sort these issues

[MakeMoneyBtc]

Probably yes, because the number of unconfirmed transactions is higher every day. Without miners to confirm transactions bitcoin is useless. Also the fact that there are less miners for bitcoin right now increases the fees wich is bad.
This happens because a lot of miners are moving to new coins wich offfer better advantages and the price increases faster so they can earn more. It is ok that they price of BCH started to fall in last days and it will continue like that, so probably miners will return to bitcoin

[bitart]

Mining is not the nr.1 problem. Problem is that the mass adoption is still far away. As long as most of the people are not aware of bitcoin or under educated about that, there will be easy to manipulate bitcoin with fake news, price manipulations, etc... If bitcoin would be widespread already, price would be less volatile and bitcoin itself would be less vulnerable to forks and so on. Bitcoin needs to build trust in itself among average people, but it's not easy to trust something you don't know at all.

[McWorse]

In average 300,000 transactions per day
=
109,5000,000 transactions per year

Electricity consumption:
24,000,000,000,000 watt-hour per year.
=
219kWh per transaction

Beside:

Electricity consumption Playstation 4 in average 0.11 kWh
Electricity consumption TV in average 0.06 kWh

With the power you need for only ONE BTC transaction, you can play 1,288 hours with your Playstation
=
53 days nonstop.


A bit crazy, isn't it ...?
No.
It's mining.


Logical overthought:
This cannot go well ...

So yes: Mining is the biggest problem of BTC.

[Puff Pastry Hangman]

The problem is governance, miners have a lot of control with Bitcoin, the stakes are getting higher and the number of people who effectively control the miners smaller. There are conflicting interests here (devs, miners, users) and bitcoin has no mechanism to resolve disputes.

There are other coins that try to build governance into the system, Decred and Dash have novel approaches to handling forks and they both retain some of the block rewards to fund development through a DAO.

[osasshem]

In a place or market system where only one man has a control of over 50%of a total supply, then there is a serious issue, cause such a person can turn things around for his self profit. Mining is a major problem to bitcoin.

[chek2fire]

Bitmain controls over 50% of bitocin hashrate becasuse bitmain is not only Antpool but is Btc.com  and especially the chinese mining pool farms that is the biggest investor to them. And i talk about Viabtc and BTC.TOP.
All of them have right now 52% of the bitcoin mining hashrate.
The next big question is what can change so bitcoin mining to return to users? Is this possible this or crypto mining in general is based in broken game theory?

[shield132]

The question is very simple. Is the mining the number problem for Bitcoin right now and this that Bitcoin developers need to solve it asap?
Bitcoin mining failed to decentralised over the years and right now a single miner, Jihan Wu, control 50-60% of Bitcoin hashrate.
That give him the power to play games with the network like what happen with bcash hashrate flipping or with the previous segwit, scaling block drama.

Is there any solution so bitcoin mining to return to individual users or to give them a motive to start mining again?
Can this be done with a simple change of pow or it need more complex solutions like merge mining?

No man, no one controls more than 50%, that happened once and was solved immediately and believe it won't happen, bitcoin miners won't do this because it's against all bitcoin users. They are making some problems, for example high transaction fees and network spamming, some of them offers transaction confirm for 0.01 bitcoin and bitmain's accelerator will make you poor. Bitcoin needs some edit, it was great 2 years ago but now it lost some greatness and acquire new ones, for example very high price.

[saedasda]

I think yes because some of them have a control when to mine or not. Huge transaction is the second if both miners and huge transaction will merge it will have a big fees