How will the end of Moore's law in 2020 affect Bitcoin?

[S4VV4S]

So wait, if Moore's law ends in 2020 then will the Bitcoin mining difficulty stop increasing? So right now you could buy a 1TH/s miner for something like 7 BTC, make 1 BTC in the first month, and never break even because the difficulty would continue increasing. But a 5-7 nm miner bought in the beginning of 2020 will last you indefinitely?

I'm confused.

No, they only cost a little over 3BTC

https://bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020140429083756017VwGm90Xx06B5

[1715181968]

1715181968

[1715181968]

1715181968

[LiteCoinGuy]

dont worry, 2020 will not be the end.

[S4VV4S]

dont worry, 2020 will not be the end.

But the Mayans said 2012 so we are overdue....
It has to be 2020.....

 

[zimmah]

The increase of mining difficulty is largely affected by two things

1) Increasing number of miners
2) Advancing technology (most importantly the amount of J/GH)

The rate of which technology advances in mining is pretty predictable, as we quickly follow the computer technology (recent miners are at about 28/24nm right now and we're quickly advancing to 14nm to keep up with computer chips. By next year ASIC chips will probably be as small as computer chips, thus the technology in ASICs will slow down compared to how fast they currently advance in technology.

This will make it more profitable to mine with the 14nm chips, as it will take a while before there will be more efficient chips. Theoretically that would mean 14nm miners would be guaranteed to be profitable, however there are a few catches to this.

First of all, because many people will expect the 14nm miners to be profitable, many more miners will buy that hardware. As well as we can expect bitcoin to be more popular in the first place, and by extension more people will be interested in mining them. More miners mean more difficulty and thus the 14nm miners may not be as profitable anymore just because there are too many miners using them.

Second there's the fact that electricity is much more expensive in Europe ($0.30~$0.45 per kWh) than it is in Asia and America ($0.08~$0.15 per kWh). Therefore we can assume large 14nm mining farms will be build in Canada, Russia or China which will be able to stay profitable while miners in other countries will not be able to be profitable because of overly expensive electricity.

Maybe I should start a kickstarter campaign to fund a private mining farm with 14nm chips in canada with chips to be designed privately. Investors being stakeholders of the mining farm ofc. This would be pretty interesting.

[Beliathon]

mining is maybe what allows the 2020 ~ or whatever moores law to be overcome, eg mining tech drives processor dev. Not intel etc

It will be the invention of a true general artificial intelligence that will one day render Moore's theory irrelevant. That or nanotechnology chips.

[cr1776]

The end of Moore's law has been predicted since the early 1980s, just like 300 baud was the max modem speed.

Perhaps the "experts" are right this time, but I wouldn't count on it.

[btcrich]

What about storage and bandwidth?  At the moment, using the core Bitcoin client is not viable for many people due to space requirements as well as the amount of time required to sync.  Will technologies in both storage and bandwidth outpace the current growth rate of the blockchain?

[Mister S]

What about storage and bandwidth?  At the moment, using the core Bitcoin client is not viable for many people due to space requirements as well as the amount of time required to sync.  Will technologies in both storage and bandwidth outpace the current growth rate of the blockchain?

I'm running a core node, 21gb isn't a lot of data to hold right now. With current SSD and hybrid SSD drives, storage isn't even a concern, and probably will be likely to improve in both reliability and longevity.

Bandwidth? Yeah, no, a full node doesn't even begin to bump up to my limit even now. It would take 16x larger of a transaction size maximum to brush against the throughput limitations of a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem.

Since I'm running my node on a dedicated 512gb SSD, maybe my kids will need to upgrade it after I'm gone.

As an aside, how do you find the Bitcoin Core client 'not viable for many people'?

[Willisius]

The end of Moore's law has been predicted since the early 1980s, just like 300 baud was the max modem speed.

Perhaps the "experts" are right this time, but I wouldn't count on it.

The problem is quantum mechanical one, and not an estimate (Though the specific year 2020 is an estimate). When transistors get too small (specifically, when the channel gets too small), electron tunneling will take place and electrons can cross the channel (turning the transistor on) without needing the gate, which usually facilitates this.


I actually posted a thread on this back in March.

[Beliathon]

The end of Moore's law has been predicted since the early 1980s, just like 300 baud was the max modem speed.

Perhaps the "experts" are right this time, but I wouldn't count on it.

The problem is quantum mechanical one, and not an estimate (Though the specific year 2020 is an estimate). When transistors AS WE KNOW THEM get too small, electron tunneling will take place and electrons can cross the channel (turning the transistor on) without needing the gate, which usually facilitates this.

Fixed that for you.

Computer chips were once vacuum tubes. Do you think these people could have imagined the modern microchip?



I doubt it. The past always seems incomprehensible to the people of the future, I see no reason why THAT rule would not apply in 2020.

[btcrich]

What about storage and bandwidth?  At the moment, using the core Bitcoin client is not viable for many people due to space requirements as well as the amount of time required to sync.  Will technologies in both storage and bandwidth outpace the current growth rate of the blockchain?

I'm running a core node, 21gb isn't a lot of data to hold right now. With current SSD and hybrid SSD drives, storage isn't even a concern, and probably will be likely to improve in both reliability and longevity.

Bandwidth? Yeah, no, a full node doesn't even begin to bump up to my limit even now. It would take 16x larger of a transaction size maximum to brush against the throughput limitations of a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem.

Since I'm running my node on a dedicated 512gb SSD, maybe my kids will need to upgrade it after I'm gone.

As an aside, how do you find the Bitcoin Core client 'not viable for many people'?

I think if you're a user that only needs to make a few payments per month, you're not going to be running the core client every day.  Syncing only whenever you need to make a payment can take a long time.  That can be a problem for some users I'd think.

The current average block size is roughly 0.22MB.  A year ago the average was around 0.12MB.  The average block size is growing at an exponential rate.  However, even extrapolating the growth rate linearly, we get to 500GB by the year 2025 and would hit the 1MB block size limit by the year 2022.  

So if you do actually live past 2025, you might need to dish out for some extra storage.  However, I think by the year 2025 500GB of storage will be pennies.  

[Jubettarr]

I'm not very well educated on this subject, but I know it would be possible to crack private keys if you just had enough computing power (like, a lot). Is it possible to estimate a time frame for this using Moore's law?

[zimmah]

I'm not very well educated on this subject, but I know it would be possible to crack private keys if you just had enough computing power (like, a lot). Is it possible to estimate a time frame for this using Moore's law?

Millions of years, that including moores law.

Banks will be hacked before a single bitcoin wallet will be compromised. (Not counting careless persons who get their private key stolen).

Regarding the full nodes, bitcoin was designed not to trust anyone, running a full node yourself is the best way to do this as otherwise you need to trust a 3rd party node. I'm sure the bitcoin developers understand this and will do everything they can to keep the bitcoin core viable for everyone. Everyone who wants to run a node can (and should) do it.

I'm currently not running a dedicated node yet, but I will at some point. However my gaming computer is a node when it is on (it's off during the night).

[rext]

well done zimmah

[jonald_fyookball]

I'm not very well educated on this subject, but I know it would be possible to crack private keys if you just had enough computing power (like, a lot). Is it possible to estimate a time frame for this using Moore's law?

Millions of years, that including moores law.

Banks will be hacked before a single bitcoin wallet will be compromised. (Not counting careless persons who get their private key stolen).

Regarding the full nodes, bitcoin was designed not to trust anyone, running a full node yourself is the best way to do this as otherwise you need to trust a 3rd party node. I'm sure the bitcoin developers understand this and will do everything they can to keep the bitcoin core viable for everyone. Everyone who wants to run a node can (and should) do it.

I'm currently not running a dedicated node yet, but I will at some point. However my gaming computer is a node when it is on (it's off during the night).

You don't need to run a full node to fully benefit from the trustless nature of bitcoin.  It's just that doing so supports the network.

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

I'm not very well educated on this subject, but I know it would be possible to crack private keys if you just had enough computing power (like, a lot). Is it possible to estimate a time frame for this using Moore's law?

Millions of years, that including moores law.

Banks will be hacked before a single bitcoin wallet will be compromised. (Not counting careless persons who get their private key stolen).

Regarding the full nodes, bitcoin was designed not to trust anyone, running a full node yourself is the best way to do this as otherwise you need to trust a 3rd party node. I'm sure the bitcoin developers understand this and will do everything they can to keep the bitcoin core viable for everyone. Everyone who wants to run a node can (and should) do it.

I'm currently not running a dedicated node yet, but I will at some point. However my gaming computer is a node when it is on (it's off during the night).

QT connects to multiple nodes and will only connect to nodes that are "trusted" by the network, eg not ones that relay invalid TX or other TX that should not be relayed.

[13536475762]

yes. new materials. progress is not only pimp up what is already there, but also inventing new ways. It will never stop, but yes can slow down. But what mostly slow down some progress in past was money. It it is in their interest and they are strong enough they can do it.