12 ms·

Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

79 points by sanefive 7y ago

Traster 7y ago
I think it's time that the government started to consider stepping in a providing support to these out of work ASICs.
- jackinloadup 7y ago
  Finally, we start talking about the real issue. \s
- SilasX 7y ago
  Nah, they didn’t lobby enough or enmesh themselves in mutually-assured destruction points in the economy, therefore they can be left to wither on the vine like normal people.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  In the interest of hijacking this into a productive discussion: Does anyone know if it's possible to use BTC ASICs for anything else? It's just a lot of sha256 hardware, right? Can we use it for arbitrary checksumming?
  - RL_Quine 7y ago
    Absolutely not. They’re application specific as the name implies. They can not do anything else.
timcc50 7y ago
They should never be there anyway, Bitcoin is a waste of time.
- iamaelephant 7y ago
  I don't care about the time, but I'm utterly horrified at the waste of resources.
- HenryBemis 7y ago
  It's not waste of time. I think if helped progress in the hardware. It educated people on blockchain. Now there may be rigs our there for sale, which can be reused for more important things, scientific research, etc.
- dang 7y ago
  Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
Melting_Harps 7y ago
If this is true, which I welcome because Chinese miner centralization has been a massive worry for us since about 2012, that still has yielded they highest hash rate (the computing power dedicated to mining Bitcoin) in the History of BTC: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-hashrate.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-hashrate.html Its easy to skew this if you don't understand the underlying tech, but Bitcoin continues to work despite a supposed exodus of miners (best example being the last fork with BCash), what secures the network are the nodes, not miners. They're just participants who are rewarded for appropriating the network with hashing power. As for the price dip, well I welcome anyone to buy $100 of BTC and hold onto a $100 and see which is more valuable now that the Federal Reserve has dropped Interest rates to 0%, and is issuing a $700 Billion QE program: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/15/federal-reserve-cuts-rates-to-zero-and-launches-massive-700-billion-quantitative-easing-program.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/15/federal-reserve-cuts-rates-t... > They should never be there anyway, Bitcoin is a waste of time. Personally, this couldn't have come at a worst time for me as I stepped down from my day job to undergo my SpaceX interview(s), I've turned down some gig/jobs in the last month too, but I'm glad that I have BTC as a cushion with some cash on hand.
- lawn 7y ago
  > BCash If anyone wonders what this is, it's a demeaning name for the Bitcoin Cash fork, used to discredit it. https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/why-some-people-call-bitcoin-cash-bcash-this-will-be-shocking-to-new-readers-956558da12fb https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/why-some-people-call-bit...
- iamaelephant 7y ago
  Bitcoin is fundamentally not a cash alternative. Which means definitionally the alternative to holding onto $100 BTC is NOT holding onto $100 cash. In fact cash is intentionally inflationary and BTC is intentionally deflationary (over long enough time scales) so yeah, you'd win your silly bet if there's no major crash. Doesn't mean you'll come out ahead of other strategies.
  - Melting_Harps 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
exabrial 7y ago
Thank goodness. This waste of electricity and natural resources needs to go away.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  it was always funny that people with a prepper mentality touted bitcoin as some sort of rock stable currency in times of crisis when government money was going to be worthless despite the fact that it basically takes an electricity source the size of the country to keep the whole thing running. What are you going to do in the post apocalypse, get a team of people with an abacus to calculate hash functions?
  - behringer 7y ago
    I would expect bitcoin to work properly with as few as 3 people... And any computer can calculate hashes.
    - zepto 7y ago
      3 people with electricity, networks, and computers.
      - behringer 7y ago
        You don't think 3 people could figure out electricity and computers and networks whether local or even satellite links? That would be one hell of an apocalypse.
        blaser-waffle 7y ago
        I don't think my entire IT department could figure it out in a disaster scenario
        zepto 7y ago
        After the power is out, and without internet access or delivery services? As happened in parts of California last year? How are you imagining they would do it?
aeturnum 7y ago
Curious about the network's capacity to respond to a downward trend in hash power (which doesn't seem inevitable, but possible). Does the difficulty factor of new blocks get dropped in response to losing hash power? Is the fee / mining reward balance predictable? Does the network become non-functional for xfers below a certain value at some point?
- Nursie 7y ago
  Yes, the difficulty rebalances periodically (every two weeks, roughly?), it would take a catastrophic decrease in hashing power to affect that by too much. The mining reward stays the same, though it drops by half every few years (one such drop is approaching in May). The network actually becomes non-functional for low transfers the other way - when there's too much interest, and too many transactions, the fees to get a transaction through start to rocket. At the peak of the 2017 hype the y hit around $50-70, IIRC.
  - foepys 7y ago
    It balances after 2016 blocks, not 2 weeks. This is a crucial difference because when the hash rate drops dramatically, those 2016 blocks might take 4 or even more weeks to create.
    - Nursie 7y ago
      Yes, it could. There is a hypothetical "stuck network" situation, but that really is dependent on a lot of network power disappearing. Before that you'd end up with a lot of idle hash power and ex-miners wondering what they could achieve in the way of an attack with it...
Animats 7y ago
Bitcoin is volatile. No surprise there.
naskwo 7y ago
Given the run on toilet paper, a better black swan hedge seems to be Shitcoin!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
atleta 7y ago
Last week a FB friend discusses with his connections the winning investment strategy wrt the virus. They agreed that BTC (besides gold) is a safe heaven. It was @ $8k back then (now it's $5k).
pontifier 7y ago
In my opinion, for-profit bitcoin mining is detrimental to the ecosystem. Prices should fall to unprofitable levels,so network hash power is more distributed among smaller groups.
- jraedisch 7y ago
  The already existing mining hardware would make attacks easier and more probable, especially considering actors able and willing to operate at a loss.

79 points by sanefive 7y ago

Traster 7y ago

I think it's time that the government started to consider stepping in a providing support to these out of work ASICs.

jackinloadup 7y ago
Finally, we start talking about the real issue. \s
SilasX 7y ago
Nah, they didn’t lobby enough or enmesh themselves in mutually-assured destruction points in the economy, therefore they can be left to wither on the vine like normal people.
yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
In the interest of hijacking this into a productive discussion: Does anyone know if it's possible to use BTC ASICs for anything else? It's just a lot of sha256 hardware, right? Can we use it for arbitrary checksumming?
- RL_Quine 7y ago
  Absolutely not. They’re application specific as the name implies. They can not do anything else.

timcc50 7y ago

They should never be there anyway, Bitcoin is a waste of time.

iamaelephant 7y ago
I don't care about the time, but I'm utterly horrified at the waste of resources.
HenryBemis 7y ago
It's not waste of time. I think if helped progress in the hardware. It educated people on blockchain. Now there may be rigs our there for sale, which can be reused for more important things, scientific research, etc.
dang 7y ago
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

Melting_Harps 7y ago

If this is true, which I welcome because Chinese miner centralization has been a massive worry for us since about 2012, that still has yielded they highest hash rate (the computing power dedicated to mining Bitcoin) in the History of BTC: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-hashrate.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-hashrate.html Its easy to skew this if you don't understand the underlying tech, but Bitcoin continues to work despite a supposed exodus of miners (best example being the last fork with BCash), what secures the network are the nodes, not miners. They're just participants who are rewarded for appropriating the network with hashing power. As for the price dip, well I welcome anyone to buy $100 of BTC and hold onto a $100 and see which is more valuable now that the Federal Reserve has dropped Interest rates to 0%, and is issuing a $700 Billion QE program: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/15/federal-reserve-cuts-rates-to-zero-and-launches-massive-700-billion-quantitative-easing-program.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/15/federal-reserve-cuts-rates-t... > They should never be there anyway, Bitcoin is a waste of time. Personally, this couldn't have come at a worst time for me as I stepped down from my day job to undergo my SpaceX interview(s), I've turned down some gig/jobs in the last month too, but I'm glad that I have BTC as a cushion with some cash on hand.

lawn 7y ago
> BCash If anyone wonders what this is, it's a demeaning name for the Bitcoin Cash fork, used to discredit it. https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/why-some-people-call-bitcoin-cash-bcash-this-will-be-shocking-to-new-readers-956558da12fb https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/why-some-people-call-bit...
iamaelephant 7y ago
Bitcoin is fundamentally not a cash alternative. Which means definitionally the alternative to holding onto $100 BTC is NOT holding onto $100 cash. In fact cash is intentionally inflationary and BTC is intentionally deflationary (over long enough time scales) so yeah, you'd win your silly bet if there's no major crash. Doesn't mean you'll come out ahead of other strategies.
- Melting_Harps 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

exabrial 7y ago

Thank goodness. This waste of electricity and natural resources needs to go away.

Barrin92 7y ago
it was always funny that people with a prepper mentality touted bitcoin as some sort of rock stable currency in times of crisis when government money was going to be worthless despite the fact that it basically takes an electricity source the size of the country to keep the whole thing running. What are you going to do in the post apocalypse, get a team of people with an abacus to calculate hash functions?
- behringer 7y ago
  I would expect bitcoin to work properly with as few as 3 people... And any computer can calculate hashes.
  - zepto 7y ago
    3 people with electricity, networks, and computers.
    - behringer 7y ago
      You don't think 3 people could figure out electricity and computers and networks whether local or even satellite links? That would be one hell of an apocalypse.
      - blaser-waffle 7y ago
        I don't think my entire IT department could figure it out in a disaster scenario
      - zepto 7y ago
        After the power is out, and without internet access or delivery services? As happened in parts of California last year? How are you imagining they would do it?

aeturnum 7y ago

Curious about the network's capacity to respond to a downward trend in hash power (which doesn't seem inevitable, but possible). Does the difficulty factor of new blocks get dropped in response to losing hash power? Is the fee / mining reward balance predictable? Does the network become non-functional for xfers below a certain value at some point?

Nursie 7y ago
Yes, the difficulty rebalances periodically (every two weeks, roughly?), it would take a catastrophic decrease in hashing power to affect that by too much. The mining reward stays the same, though it drops by half every few years (one such drop is approaching in May). The network actually becomes non-functional for low transfers the other way - when there's too much interest, and too many transactions, the fees to get a transaction through start to rocket. At the peak of the 2017 hype the y hit around $50-70, IIRC.
- foepys 7y ago
  It balances after 2016 blocks, not 2 weeks. This is a crucial difference because when the hash rate drops dramatically, those 2016 blocks might take 4 or even more weeks to create.
  - Nursie 7y ago
    Yes, it could. There is a hypothetical "stuck network" situation, but that really is dependent on a lot of network power disappearing. Before that you'd end up with a lot of idle hash power and ex-miners wondering what they could achieve in the way of an attack with it...

Animats 7y ago

Bitcoin is volatile. No surprise there.

naskwo 7y ago

Given the run on toilet paper, a better black swan hedge seems to be Shitcoin!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

atleta 7y ago

Last week a FB friend discusses with his connections the winning investment strategy wrt the virus. They agreed that BTC (besides gold) is a safe heaven. It was @ $8k back then (now it's $5k).

pontifier 7y ago

In my opinion, for-profit bitcoin mining is detrimental to the ecosystem. Prices should fall to unprofitable levels,so network hash power is more distributed among smaller groups.

jraedisch 7y ago
The already existing mining hardware would make attacks easier and more probable, especially considering actors able and willing to operate at a loss.