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Author Topic: Some random thoughts  (Read 726 times)
vnvizow (OP)
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February 15, 2014, 12:41:51 PM
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Wondering these day if Bitcoin will stay decentralized forever...hear me out

The mining difficulty is rising day by day, I used to be a miner back when mining was as easy as 90mh/s and have quit half a year ago.These day you need to be way beyond the gigahash range to earn anything at all.

Most of the blocks nowadays are mined by pools, and people are simply splitting 25BTC into hundreds of thousands of tiny bits among themselves.
And we have to include the fact that the price is falling and not looking that well these days.

SO......what if the general public quits mining because it's not profitable and they can't keep up anymore?

There are a lot of mining companies around these days...what I'm saying is that Bitcoin might share the same fate as gold, diamond, etc. where there are buttloads(~240gallons Tongue ) of the thing out there waiting to be mined but large companies take control of the distribution so that they can make more profit out of it...

Some country's governments are also interested in Bitcoins such as the US and China...there are rumors about the Chinese government interested to putting their latest and the world's fastest supercomputer into Bitcoin mining. Who knows how powerful these computers are at mining Bitcoins? What if this turns into another race between countries just like the arms race and the space race? Where they compete who can mine the fastest and take control over the Bitcoin supply?

These are just some random thoughts I have sometimes......
guybrushthreepwood
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February 15, 2014, 07:25:22 PM
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Hasn't the general public already quit mining because it's not profitable? And I'm sure the Chinese government mining with super computers are just that, a rumour.
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February 15, 2014, 07:36:16 PM
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Your ideas are interesting I thing
DannyHamilton
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February 16, 2014, 01:04:51 AM
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Wondering these day if Bitcoin will stay decentralized forever...hear me out

The mining difficulty is rising day by day, I used to be a miner back when mining was as easy as 90mh/s and have quit half a year ago.These day you need to be way beyond the gigahash range to earn anything at all.

Most of the blocks nowadays are mined by pools, and people are simply splitting 25BTC into hundreds of thousands of tiny bits among themselves.
And we have to include the fact that the price is falling and not looking that well these days.

SO......what if the general public quits mining because it's not profitable and they can't keep up anymore?

When people quit mining, then the difficulty drops (or doesn't go up as fast), and it becomes more profitable for the people who continue to mine.  I expect that eventually there will be some VERY LARGE mining companies located where power and cooling are both extremely cheap to acquire.  This does not change the fact that bitcoin is decentralized.  There is still nobody in charge of bitcoin, it is still open source, transactions are still peer-to-peer, there is still a cap on the total number of bitcoins that will ever exist.  Personally, I would prefer that no single "mining company" control more than 10% of the hash power of the entire network, but bitcoin would probably still operate quite well with just 3 mining companies, with no single company controlling more than 49% of the total hashing power.

There are a lot of mining companies around these days...what I'm saying is that Bitcoin might share the same fate as gold, diamond, etc. where there are buttloads(~240gallons Tongue ) of the thing out there waiting to be mined but large companies take control of the distribution so that they can make more profit out of it...

There will never be more than 20,999,999.9769 bitcoins in existence.  At the moment that I'm writing this, a total of a bit less than 12,402,050 bitcoins have already been mined and already exist.  This means that 59.06% of ALL bitcoins that will ever exist have already been mined.  Less than 41% remain for these "large companies" to "take control of the distribution".  Every 10 minutes that number becomes even smaller.  Meanwhile, people who already have bitcoins, can always exchange them with others that want them for anything of value.

Some country's governments are also interested in Bitcoins such as the US and China...there are rumors about the Chinese government interested to putting their latest and the world's fastest supercomputer into Bitcoin mining.

That would certainly be a waste of money.  Supercomputers are not very good at mining.  There are far more profitable things they could do with that.

Who knows how powerful these computers are at mining Bitcoins? What if this turns into another race between countries just like the arms race and the space race?

If they create incredibly good and efficient ASIC? That would be WONDERFUL. Bitcoin would become super secure, making the possibility of an attack on the blockchain impossible. The cost per hash to the world (and the environment) of that security would be drastically reduced.  Seems like a good idea to me.

vnvizow (OP)
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February 16, 2014, 05:20:00 AM
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Hasn't the general public already quit mining because it's not profitable? And I'm sure the Chinese government mining with super computers are just that, a rumour.
not quite, as I said they still exist in large pools
vnvizow (OP)
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February 16, 2014, 05:29:55 AM
 #6

Wondering these day if Bitcoin will stay decentralized forever...hear me out

The mining difficulty is rising day by day, I used to be a miner back when mining was as easy as 90mh/s and have quit half a year ago.These day you need to be way beyond the gigahash range to earn anything at all.

Most of the blocks nowadays are mined by pools, and people are simply splitting 25BTC into hundreds of thousands of tiny bits among themselves.
And we have to include the fact that the price is falling and not looking that well these days.

SO......what if the general public quits mining because it's not profitable and they can't keep up anymore?

When people quit mining, then the difficulty drops (or doesn't go up as fast), and it becomes more profitable for the people who continue to mine.  I expect that eventually there will be some VERY LARGE mining companies located where power and cooling are both extremely cheap to acquire.  This does not change the fact that bitcoin is decentralized.  There is still nobody in charge of bitcoin, it is still open source, transactions are still peer-to-peer, there is still a cap on the total number of bitcoins that will ever exist.  Personally, I would prefer that no single "mining company" control more than 10% of the hash power of the entire network, but bitcoin would probably still operate quite well with just 3 mining companies, with no single company controlling more than 49% of the total hashing power.

There are a lot of mining companies around these days...what I'm saying is that Bitcoin might share the same fate as gold, diamond, etc. where there are buttloads(~240gallons Tongue ) of the thing out there waiting to be mined but large companies take control of the distribution so that they can make more profit out of it...

There will never be more than 20,999,999.9769 bitcoins in existence.  At the moment that I'm writing this, a total of a bit less than 12,402,050 bitcoins have already been mined and already exist.  This means that 59.06% of ALL bitcoins that will ever exist have already been mined.  Less than 41% remain for these "large companies" to "take control of the distribution".  Every 10 minutes that number becomes even smaller.  Meanwhile, people who already have bitcoins, can always exchange them with others that want them for anything of value.

Some country's governments are also interested in Bitcoins such as the US and China...there are rumors about the Chinese government interested to putting their latest and the world's fastest supercomputer into Bitcoin mining.

That would certainly be a waste of money.  Supercomputers are not very good at mining.  There are far more profitable things they could do with that.

Who knows how powerful these computers are at mining Bitcoins? What if this turns into another race between countries just like the arms race and the space race?

If they create incredibly good and efficient ASIC? That would be WONDERFUL. Bitcoin would become super secure, making the possibility of an attack on the blockchain impossible. The cost per hash to the world (and the environment) of that security would be drastically reduced.  Seems like a good idea to me.


I've given your comment some thoughts, agreed on the fact that the companies can't really 'take control' over the distribution. But, I still believe the supercomputers can be powerful at mining, their cpu's run at petaflops per second for god's sake, the current fastest computer TianHe-2 runs at ~33 pflops per second...roughly 40 quadrillion calculations per second...let that sink in for a moment and think if they where used to mine Bitcoins how fast can it be?
DannyHamilton
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February 16, 2014, 05:51:21 AM
 #7

I've given your comment some thoughts, agreed on the fact that the companies can't really 'take control' over the distribution. But, I still believe the supercomputers can be powerful at mining, their cpu's run at petaflops per second for god's sake, the current fastest computer TianHe-2 runs at ~33 pflops per second...roughly 40 quadrillion calculations per second...let that sink in for a moment and think if they where used to mine Bitcoins how fast can it be?

FLOPs means FLoating-point Operations Per second.  SHA256 (the mining calculation) is not a Floating-point Operation.

That's why REALLY fast CPU's (approaching 100 GFLOPs) are HORRIBLE at mining, and simple GPU units that can't do FLOPs at all but are loaded up with shaders are so much faster.  ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Chips) are designed specifically to do Bitcoin mining (and nothing else) as fast as possible.  These are so fast (and more importantly so efficient) that they make both GPUs and CPUs practically useless for mining.


 
phibay
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February 16, 2014, 07:17:48 AM
 #8

Wondering these day if Bitcoin will stay decentralized forever...hear me out

The mining difficulty is rising day by day, I used to be a miner back when mining was as easy as 90mh/s and have quit half a year ago.These day you need to be way beyond the gigahash range to earn anything at all.

Most of the blocks nowadays are mined by pools, and people are simply splitting 25BTC into hundreds of thousands of tiny bits among themselves.
And we have to include the fact that the price is falling and not looking that well these days.

SO......what if the general public quits mining because it's not profitable and they can't keep up anymore?

There are a lot of mining companies around these days...what I'm saying is that Bitcoin might share the same fate as gold, diamond, etc. where there are buttloads(~240gallons Tongue ) of the thing out there waiting to be mined but large companies take control of the distribution so that they can make more profit out of it...

Some country's governments are also interested in Bitcoins such as the US and China...there are rumors about the Chinese government interested to putting their latest and the world's fastest supercomputer into Bitcoin mining. Who knows how powerful these computers are at mining Bitcoins? What if this turns into another race between countries just like the arms race and the space race? Where they compete who can mine the fastest and take control over the Bitcoin supply?

These are just some random thoughts I have sometimes......


You thoughts too much ... the governments wont mine bitcoin ...
xinzark
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February 16, 2014, 07:22:27 AM
 #9

Wondering these day if Bitcoin will stay decentralized forever...hear me out

The mining difficulty is rising day by day, I used to be a miner back when mining was as easy as 90mh/s and have quit half a year ago.These day you need to be way beyond the gigahash range to earn anything at all.

Most of the blocks nowadays are mined by pools, and people are simply splitting 25BTC into hundreds of thousands of tiny bits among themselves.
And we have to include the fact that the price is falling and not looking that well these days.

SO......what if the general public quits mining because it's not profitable and they can't keep up anymore?

There are a lot of mining companies around these days...what I'm saying is that Bitcoin might share the same fate as gold, diamond, etc. where there are buttloads(~240gallons Tongue ) of the thing out there waiting to be mined but large companies take control of the distribution so that they can make more profit out of it...

Some country's governments are also interested in Bitcoins such as the US and China...there are rumors about the Chinese government interested to putting their latest and the world's fastest supercomputer into Bitcoin mining. Who knows how powerful these computers are at mining Bitcoins? What if this turns into another race between countries just like the arms race and the space race? Where they compete who can mine the fastest and take control over the Bitcoin supply?

These are just some random thoughts I have sometimes......


You thoughts too much ... the governments wont mine bitcoin ...



I agree with that , they don mind buy they buy sell trade it will get them even more income .
julestheminer
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February 16, 2014, 02:02:30 PM
 #10

I've thought about this too, but I don't think it's a big issue. Pools can always split and change size as new people enter and leave. We're already seeing this arms race as the BTC difficulty retargets have been around ~+20% the past few times. Eventually though, it'll reach an equilibruim where there's simply no profit in manufacturing new ASICs and new players can just amass existing hardware to compete. It's possible we'll watch another monopoly unfold once that happens, but it's much too early to tell.
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