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Mining: if we're to believe in free markets, fees will adjust to the amount of available CPU resources. I hope that it won't be profitable enough for people to

by fab13n 13y ago

Mining: if we're to believe in free markets, fees will adjust to the amount of available CPU resources. I hope that it won't be profitable enough for people to dedicate farms to mining, but that companies with a lot of CPU power will rentabilise their spare CPU cycles by doing a bit of mining with it. This would be reassuring, as it would keep mining decentralized, which is important to maintain trust in bitcoins.

Kiro 13y ago
> I hope that it won't be profitable enough for people to dedicate farms to mining Maybe I misunderstand you but isn't that already happening?
nwh 13y ago
Mining with a CPU is long since irrelevant, even GPUs are completely useless as far as mining is concerned. The network uses ASIC hardware now, basically chips designed only to mine Bitcoin quickly and efficiently. Attempting to mine on a CPU is completely futile and does absolutely nothing for the network.
- nisa 13y ago
  It's not really useless. There is Primecoin that is searching for prime chains as proof of work. At the moment there is no (public?) GPU miner. The involved computations are also difficult to port to the GPU.
  - nwh 13y ago
    Primecoin? It's not solving a "problem" as it claims, there's nothing that can be solved with chains of primes. They're interesting but that's about the end of it. The vastly smaller network means it's a lot more susceptible to attacks.
    - nisa 13y ago
      It's not different from SHA-256 or scrypt in that regard. However there appears to be some interest in these primechains from the scientific community. I never claimed it is solving important "problems" but I like the CPU only property. The Bitcoin GPU/ASIC race favored a few wealthy individuals. 40% of all BTC is in the hands of a few people. I don't see this happen with Primecoin at the moment. GHash.io looks more like a problem for Bitcoin as e.g. botnets for Primecoin. I'm more interested in better and faster miners for Primecoin as this is a pretty interesting problem to solve. Getting rich with either of these coins is pretty much impossible if you are not already wealthy and able to invest a good amount of money and energy - especially in the BTC ecosystem.
DanBC 13y ago
There are companies that buy ASICs and create farms with specialised cooling systems, in parts of the world with cheap electricity, just to mine Bitcoin. Here's one example. http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/12/2/5165428/bitcoin-mine-in-hong-kong-uses-jelly-to-keep-cool http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/12/2/5165428/bitcoin-mine-in... This requires serious investment and is out of the reach of most people.
jnbiche 13y ago
Effective CPU mining of Bitcoin ended in 2010. Effective GPU mining ended last year. Now only highly-specialized ASIC hardware can mine Bitcoins effectively, and even then profits are questionable at current hardware prices. Finally, the earliest farm mining of Bitcoins that I'm aware of started back in early 2011, and probably earlier (when did ArtForz start?).

by fab13n 13y ago

Kiro 13y ago

> I hope that it won't be profitable enough for people to dedicate farms to mining Maybe I misunderstand you but isn't that already happening?

nwh 13y ago

Mining with a CPU is long since irrelevant, even GPUs are completely useless as far as mining is concerned. The network uses ASIC hardware now, basically chips designed only to mine Bitcoin quickly and efficiently. Attempting to mine on a CPU is completely futile and does absolutely nothing for the network.

nisa 13y ago
It's not really useless. There is Primecoin that is searching for prime chains as proof of work. At the moment there is no (public?) GPU miner. The involved computations are also difficult to port to the GPU.
- nwh 13y ago
  Primecoin? It's not solving a "problem" as it claims, there's nothing that can be solved with chains of primes. They're interesting but that's about the end of it. The vastly smaller network means it's a lot more susceptible to attacks.
  - nisa 13y ago
    It's not different from SHA-256 or scrypt in that regard. However there appears to be some interest in these primechains from the scientific community. I never claimed it is solving important "problems" but I like the CPU only property. The Bitcoin GPU/ASIC race favored a few wealthy individuals. 40% of all BTC is in the hands of a few people. I don't see this happen with Primecoin at the moment. GHash.io looks more like a problem for Bitcoin as e.g. botnets for Primecoin. I'm more interested in better and faster miners for Primecoin as this is a pretty interesting problem to solve. Getting rich with either of these coins is pretty much impossible if you are not already wealthy and able to invest a good amount of money and energy - especially in the BTC ecosystem.

DanBC 13y ago

There are companies that buy ASICs and create farms with specialised cooling systems, in parts of the world with cheap electricity, just to mine Bitcoin. Here's one example. http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/12/2/5165428/bitcoin-mine-in-hong-kong-uses-jelly-to-keep-cool http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/12/2/5165428/bitcoin-mine-in... This requires serious investment and is out of the reach of most people.

jnbiche 13y ago

Effective CPU mining of Bitcoin ended in 2010. Effective GPU mining ended last year. Now only highly-specialized ASIC hardware can mine Bitcoins effectively, and even then profits are questionable at current hardware prices. Finally, the earliest farm mining of Bitcoins that I'm aware of started back in early 2011, and probably earlier (when did ArtForz start?).