Topic: Dell : Possible plans to enter mining sector - page 2. (Read 2459 times)

Thats what im saying for a long time now. Ever since ASICs hit the mining field, bitcoin core idea is broken.
Now mining has evolved to pure industry mining, with little or no place for average Joe to mine something other than worthless alts.

I envision Dell would have both cloud mining and mining hardware for sale.  The could have their cloud pool process transactions and run supernodes and you could get an XPS ASIC 

I'm sure some businesses would trust them a payment processor even for receiving BTC and converting to fiat.

I think you're talking about Dell selling mining equipment right?  You're not talking about Dell actually mining itself?  I could see bigger players getting into the mining equipment game. The actual mining game, I think should only be done by individuals - if businesses started doing it you just know it is only a matter of time until some entity like Microsoft gets 51 percent. 

Yes but Dell has
-long term contracts with foundries and the clout to get mass runs of something like a new 20nm design
-cheap Texas power
- a household name.  Imagine how easy it would be for Dell to sell a million cheap miners on eBay just from the Dell name. Throw in some stupid Ashton Kutcher ad and it's a done deal (would help decentralization though).

That's completely irrelevant. Bitcoin mining is completely different from data center operation. In Bitcoin mining, there's very little data traffic, either within the data center or to the outside world. All those key-testers have nothing to communicate except when they're being loaded or when they get a hit. Real data center operation is dominated by network issues.

Also, in Bitcoin mining, the hardware is profitable for maybe 6 months.

It's the future of BTC mining, wether you want it or not. Entry level is getting higher and higher every day, it's harder and harder to get ASIC's for avarage joe and break even on top of that. In not so distant future, only large entities will mine BTC with profit....that's one place where BTC's idea of decentralization failed horribly.

http://www.coindesk.com/dell-bitcoin-aligns-brand-innovation/

And I quote : "Possibilities ahead
 
While Walsh gave the impression that Dell is primarily focused on bitcoin as a payments play, the company may be uniquely positioned to exploit other potential market opportunities in the space.
 
For example, Dell has a professional Data Center Solutions team currently working on cloud computing and optimizing hyperscale data centers, tools that could no doubt position Dell to enter or serve the now booming industrial bitcoin mining space.
 
Still, while Dell could have an evident competitive advantage in the space, Walsh suggested the idea is not currently on the company’s radar, saying:
 

“We’re familiar with [bitcoin mining]. It’s not something we’re looking at at this time, but we are familiar with it.”
 
Notably, Dell recently decided to shelve plans to build additional data centers in Europe, choosing instead to focus on data center management."

What are your views on big companies entering the mining section of crypto currencies? If they decide to create data centres targeted at mining, this would increase competition, in a field dominated by one or two companies currently.

If they decide to develop mining hardware and give support to existing data centres, it would have it's own advantages and disadvantages.

Do we need huge companies to enter this section? {Would this increase the possibilities of centralization and also the 51% attack?}

Share your views and opinions on this here, please.