Idle mining capacity a risk?

[leopard2]

While it is irrelevant to BTC functionality if large portions of miners are shut down, I can see one risk. The amount of idle SHA256 capacity is increasing compared to the working one. Difficulty drops too.

If at one point there is 10x more idle miners sitting around than active miners, a 51% attack becomes more likely. Bad guys (public or private) could pick up alot of cheap idle mining capacity and break the blockchain.

Opinions?

[pawel7777]

While it is irrelevant to BTC functionality if large portions of miners are shut down, I can see one risk. The amount of idle SHA256 capacity is increasing compared to the working one. Difficulty drops too.

If at one point there is 10x more idle miners sitting around than active miners, a 51% attack becomes more likely. Bad guys (public or private) could pick up alot of cheap idle mining capacity and break the blockchain.

Opinions?

It surely is a risk. But as you wrote, the hashpower of idle miners would have to be multiple times greater than active ones to become a real threat.

You don't even need a 'bad guys' buying the idle power (it wouldn't make sense financially for them to do it), there'd be a greater threat from large ex-mining farms that still hold unused miners.

But I don't see such scenario likely to happen. First of all, the mining hardware that would be switched off in the first place, would be the old-generation ones, so less efficient and less powerful. Second of all, it would make more sense for the mining farm, that ceased operations, to try to sell unused miners (even at low cost) to others (hobby miners, or other farms with lower electricity and data-centre costs etc).

[fenican]

More likely:

1. ASICS hardware, like any technology, will become progressively more power efficient and less expensive.

2. Mining will thrive using new power efficient hardware.

3. A 51% attack using old hardware will rapidly become impossible since newer hardware will be 10x faster, 10x more power efficient, etc...

[ensurance982]

It's a self-regulating mechanism, though. If 90% of the miners decide to turn off their gear, the difficulty will go down 90%, thus it will be much more profitable for the people who keep their gear turned on. Even now mining farms are still mining at a profit, imagine their margins when the difficulty goes down 90%!

[runpaint]

Miners aren't turning off their gear.  They're renting it, and still mining altcoins while it's not rented.

Have you seen how a site like miningrigrentals works?  They leave their rigs hashing their own coins, and the rigs are automatically switched over to the renter's pool when the rental begins, ensuring a profit at a set rate for the miner.  Or, the miner can leave the rig idle until it's rented, so he doesn't spend any electricity that isn't paid for by a renter.

Older rigs will get kicked down the line to lower-difficulty coins.

[mlferro]

It's a self-regulating mechanism, though. If 90% of the miners decide to turn off their gear, the difficulty will go down 90%, thus it will be much more profitable for the people who keep their gear turned on. Even now mining farms are still mining at a profit, imagine their margins when the difficulty goes down 90%!

this really is good for those who have saved some equipment that is not currently by mining.

[Flashman]

A thing that's forgotten also is that any hashpower that's idle is probably far more inefficient than what is running, so while a 51% is only regarded as marginally profitable anyway, in a strong market, an attack with the less efficient hardware would probably not be worth it.

[itsAj]

There is no real need for a 51% attack, why would you gain a 51% hashing power to destroy the network instead of profiting from it? The 51% attack is highly theorized as a Bitcoin "killer" but in reality the investment cost is too high and to create an attack is very complicated .

[OgNasty]

Faster more efficient miners will be manufactured and coming online for the foreseeable future.  Spare capacity won't be as big as you think.

[amaclin]

Bad guys (public or private) could pick up alot of cheap idle mining capacity and break the blockchain.
Opinions?

It will happen sooner or later. No other way exists.
And this is one of reasons for currently falling price.

PS. Not "bad guys" as for my opinion. This is buisness. Nothing more. They are able to rewrite blockchain. They will do it. There is no "law" to punish them for such action.

[deine mudder]

While it is irrelevant to BTC functionality if large portions of miners are shut down, I can see one risk. The amount of idle SHA256 capacity is increasing compared to the working one. Difficulty drops too.

If at one point there is 10x more idle miners sitting around than active miners, a 51% attack becomes more likely. Bad guys (public or private) could pick up alot of cheap idle mining capacity and break the blockchain.

Opinions?

No worries. Idle mining capacity goes to altcoins.

[amaclin]

No worries. Idle mining capacity goes to altcoins.

you've made my day 

[crazy_rabbit]

While it is irrelevant to BTC functionality if large portions of miners are shut down, I can see one risk. The amount of idle SHA256 capacity is increasing compared to the working one. Difficulty drops too.

If at one point there is 10x more idle miners sitting around than active miners, a 51% attack becomes more likely. Bad guys (public or private) could pick up alot of cheap idle mining capacity and break the blockchain.

Opinions?

wut??

There will never be more then 51% of the network just 'idle'. That doesn't make sense. Mining is a hairs breath profitability type of enterprise. The second there is a hairs worth of profit to be made that capacity is back online. The idea that someone could buy up more then 51% of the network, using older technology no less, doesn't really make sense.

[Grinder]

There is no real need for a 51% attack, why would you gain a 51% hashing power to destroy the network instead of profiting from it? The 51% attack is highly theorized as a Bitcoin "killer" but in reality the investment cost is too high and to create an attack is very complicated .

There are lots of ways to profit from crashing the Bitcoin price. Start an exchange, sell more bitcoins than you have. Sell bitcoins with a delivery date in the future. Start a bitcoin ETF, sell all the coins as shares. Short a bitcoin ETF started by someone else. Short bitcoins.