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> anybody can be a miner That is false, nowadays. > Let's not forget that anybody can be a miner! Even if you repeat a lie a thousand times, it's not going t

by knocte 9y ago

> anybody can be a miner That is false, nowadays. > Let's not forget that anybody can be a miner! Even if you repeat a lie a thousand times, it's not going to become true :) Bitcoin's mining algorithm is so simple that mining industry has specialized too much, and now the best technology for it is ASICs. You cannot mine (or rather, it's nowhere near profitable) if you don't have access to this kind of hardware. And of course, claiming that anybody can have access to this hardware is very very debatable. The best indicator of how this is not accessible by everybody is how centralized this industry is nowadays (just look at the correlation between ASIC manufacturers and owners of mining pools).

sktrdie 9y ago
Why is it false? I didn't say "mining is profitable". I just said anybody can do it, and that's the key. Just like anybody can seed torrents without any incentive, or just like Tor nodes exist without any incentive.
- knocte 9y ago
  Expanded a bit my answer. IMVHO, ASIC hardware provides such a huge efficiency boost that even if everybody in this planet ran a mining raspberry pi, the ASIC manufacturers would maybe still own more than 51% of the hashrate.
  - flashdance 9y ago
    Not maybe, definitely. A first-gen pi can mine at 200KH/s [1], and a 3rd gen pi is roughly 10x faster in cpu tests [2]. At 2 MH/s per pi, times 7 billion people, you get a paltry 14 petahashes/s. That's a hair over 0.2% of the network... You'd need three trillion raspberry pis to get half the network. Good luck with that! [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Non-specialized_hardware_comparison https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Non-specialized_hardware_comparis... [2] http://lifehacker.com/how-the-raspberry-pi-3-benchmarks-against-older-models-1762417275 http://lifehacker.com/how-the-raspberry-pi-3-benchmarks-agai...
    - knocte 9y ago
      Thanks so much for that analysis! My mind was not that irrational then when making that guess :)
- upvotinglurker 9y ago
  I think they mean it is true in the same sense that "anyone can be president of the US" is true, e.g. true in theory, but in practice, it requires significant wealth which most do not have. I would have worded it differently than calling it a "lie" though (since it technically isn't).
  - knocte 9y ago
    But since "everyone being a miner" doesn't solve anything (even if everybody decides to donate their electricity without getting profits), since the ASIC manufacturers would still control the majority of the network, then any argument based on that analysis is moot already. (Yeah sorry I should not have said "lie" but just "infeasible" and "useless".)
lawn 9y ago
> And of course, claiming that anybody can have access to this hardware is very very debatable. The best indicator of how this is not accessible by everybody is how centralized this industry is nowadays (just look at the correlation between ASIC manufacturers and owners of mining pools). Even if you repeat a lie a thousand times, it's not going to become true :) https://coin.dance/blocks https://coin.dance/blocks Where is the centralization? Also, the issue isn't as much ASICs as it is the free electricity in China.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- knocte 9y ago
  > Where is the centralization? If there was no centralization, people would still be profitable doing solo mining. Most of the pools these days are pools because they own huge mining datacenters already (not because they have a lot of miner-users).
  - lawn 9y ago
    That's not how we should see decentralization, "lacking a central point of control" is a better definition. What you're arguing for is the mining to be distributed. https://medium.com/@johnblocke/decentralization-fetishism-is-hindering-bitcoins-progress-11cfa5c7964d https://medium.com/@johnblocke/decentralization-fetishism-is...
    - knocte 9y ago
      Centralization is not a bool variable: true|false. There are degrees to it. Of course I'm not claiming that bitcoin mining is centralized (100%), but it's definitely not very decentralized.
      - lawn 9y ago
        Of course, as argued in the linked article. But I don't agree that it's very centralized as it is now, which is the context I responded to: > The best indicator of how this is not accessible by everybody is how centralized this industry is nowadays

by knocte 9y ago

sktrdie 9y ago

Why is it false? I didn't say "mining is profitable". I just said anybody can do it, and that's the key. Just like anybody can seed torrents without any incentive, or just like Tor nodes exist without any incentive.

knocte 9y ago
Expanded a bit my answer. IMVHO, ASIC hardware provides such a huge efficiency boost that even if everybody in this planet ran a mining raspberry pi, the ASIC manufacturers would maybe still own more than 51% of the hashrate.
- flashdance 9y ago
  Not maybe, definitely. A first-gen pi can mine at 200KH/s [1], and a 3rd gen pi is roughly 10x faster in cpu tests [2]. At 2 MH/s per pi, times 7 billion people, you get a paltry 14 petahashes/s. That's a hair over 0.2% of the network... You'd need three trillion raspberry pis to get half the network. Good luck with that! [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Non-specialized_hardware_comparison https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Non-specialized_hardware_comparis... [2] http://lifehacker.com/how-the-raspberry-pi-3-benchmarks-against-older-models-1762417275 http://lifehacker.com/how-the-raspberry-pi-3-benchmarks-agai...
  - knocte 9y ago
    Thanks so much for that analysis! My mind was not that irrational then when making that guess :)
upvotinglurker 9y ago
I think they mean it is true in the same sense that "anyone can be president of the US" is true, e.g. true in theory, but in practice, it requires significant wealth which most do not have. I would have worded it differently than calling it a "lie" though (since it technically isn't).
- knocte 9y ago
  But since "everyone being a miner" doesn't solve anything (even if everybody decides to donate their electricity without getting profits), since the ASIC manufacturers would still control the majority of the network, then any argument based on that analysis is moot already. (Yeah sorry I should not have said "lie" but just "infeasible" and "useless".)

lawn 9y ago

> And of course, claiming that anybody can have access to this hardware is very very debatable. The best indicator of how this is not accessible by everybody is how centralized this industry is nowadays (just look at the correlation between ASIC manufacturers and owners of mining pools). Even if you repeat a lie a thousand times, it's not going to become true :) https://coin.dance/blocks https://coin.dance/blocks Where is the centralization? Also, the issue isn't as much ASICs as it is the free electricity in China.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
knocte 9y ago
> Where is the centralization? If there was no centralization, people would still be profitable doing solo mining. Most of the pools these days are pools because they own huge mining datacenters already (not because they have a lot of miner-users).
- lawn 9y ago
  That's not how we should see decentralization, "lacking a central point of control" is a better definition. What you're arguing for is the mining to be distributed. https://medium.com/@johnblocke/decentralization-fetishism-is-hindering-bitcoins-progress-11cfa5c7964d https://medium.com/@johnblocke/decentralization-fetishism-is...
  - knocte 9y ago
    Centralization is not a bool variable: true|false. There are degrees to it. Of course I'm not claiming that bitcoin mining is centralized (100%), but it's definitely not very decentralized.
    - lawn 9y ago
      Of course, as argued in the linked article. But I don't agree that it's very centralized as it is now, which is the context I responded to: > The best indicator of how this is not accessible by everybody is how centralized this industry is nowadays