Bitcoin - we have a problem. - page 8.

atariguy

full member

Activity: 364

Merit: 100

Quote from: 247saver on June 19, 2013, 01:59:20 PM

Everyone who can should run a USB ASIC miner (or more) that would help a little with decentralising. It's a shame they're priced a bit high though.

Just because it's an ASIC doesn't mean it's more efficient than a GPU. Those will have to be a lot cheaper before they really make any difference.

rovchris

full member

Activity: 238

Merit: 100

The USB Miners would not help man - You would more than likely point it a mining pool as you could never solo mine with it. At this difficulty it might take 10 years or never to solve a block and that is if the difficulty does not increase.

g83

sr. member

Activity: 448

Merit: 250

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Available Now!

There are several asic manufactors entering the market like knc , bitfury, avalon b3 ... no need to worry imo

247saver

member

Activity: 77

Merit: 10

Everyone who can should run a USB ASIC miner (or more) that would help a little with decentralising. It's a shame they're priced a bit high though.

salvani

member

Activity: 67

Merit: 12

Use Litecoin.

There is no ASICs at all, furthermore transaction is four time faster in ordinary state.

rovchris

full member

Activity: 238

Merit: 100

The thing is this - regardless of the technology once everyone has ASICS we will still be in the same boat. The difficulty will have just increased accordingly but that would not change market share and if ASICMiner are still 1/4 of the network - the problem still exists.

If you check the Network hashrate you will see there has been an unprecedented drop and that is due to ASICMiner loosing only 1/2 their capacity for whatever reason.

If 50BTC goes down as well then what we would be looking at months between an adjustment.

I can not see a solution to stop centralisation as difficulty keeps increasing.

This is a very serious issue - once it is centralised to that degree it is a single point of failure.

botsofbitcoin

member

Activity: 62

Merit: 10

I see. Like when a nuclear power station goes offline rather than a couple of wind turbines.

How long does it take to adjust then?

rovchris

full member

Activity: 238

Merit: 100

Quote from: botsofbitcoin on June 19, 2013, 12:08:58 PM

I'm no expert but I thought that if there are fewer mining rigs the difficulty rate automatically adjusts downwards?

Only after a period of time - quite a large period of time at that. Transaction processing is the issue here - Bitcoins can not be used if you can not process the transaction. If that is the case people will loose confidence and then it is a death spiral.

If you were trying to pay for something and ASICMiner decides they have to power down for what ever reason it almost doubles the transaction processing time. You can not have that much control in the hands of a few people - otherwise we are back to Central Banks.

botsofbitcoin

member

Activity: 62

Merit: 10

I'm no expert but I thought that if there are fewer mining rigs the difficulty rate automatically adjusts downwards?

rovchris

full member

Activity: 238

Merit: 100

The ethos behind bitcoin is fantastic but their is a fatal flaw that is being highlighted at the moment and that is the difficulty. It only leads to one logical conclusion the centralisation of mining and transaction processing as that will be the only way you will be able to generate any coins.

ASICMiner has some problem at the moment and because they are so large it has impacted the entire network. If another big mining pool goes down we may be looking at 40 mins between blocks maybe even longer - transactions are not processed if no blocks are solved.

The whole resilience of the network is being brought into question here - If these guys go offline for what ever reason with the difficulty where it is now everything is going to grind to a halt. A couple of business should NOT have this impact on the network.

What are your thoughts on this?

Topic: Bitcoin - we have a problem. - page 8. (Read 14598 times)