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Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 539. (Read 2032289 times)

legendary
Activity: 1193
Merit: 1003
9.9.2012: I predict that single digits... <- FAIL
January 19, 2015, 10:07:22 PM
The transaction rate limits are fixable.  The real problem is the inevitable centralization of mining.  It seems that no one knows how to fix that.  Bitcoin with centralized mining does not make any sense.

Why is it inevitable? A lot of people use electricity for heating. Create a bitcoin mining heater which is easy to use and the problem is solved.

Well...it might get us through the winter I suppose...



When you have summer, it's winter on the other side of the world.
legendary
Activity: 4760
Merit: 1283
January 19, 2015, 10:05:08 PM
The transaction rate limits are fixable.  The real problem is the inevitable centralization of mining.  It seems that no one knows how to fix that.  Bitcoin with centralized mining does not make any sense.

Why is it inevitable? A lot of people use electricity for heating. Create a bitcoin mining heater which is easy to use and the problem is solved.

Well...it might get us through the winter I suppose...

legendary
Activity: 4760
Merit: 1283
January 19, 2015, 10:03:31 PM
On the topic of blocksize, is anyone else noticing the back up of transactions that is occurring due to the combination of a slowing hash rate (so more frequent long blocks -- right now only 2 blocks one block in the past hour) and these blocks filling up? My fee-paying transaction didn't make it into the last block (which was 976 kB) after waiting 20 minutes, and I'm now waiting an hour or so -- still no confirm.


According to some experts from the mining forum the ETA for the total blockchain collapse is in <14d. Sad

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=681655.204802

When a moderator says something like this and provides a link, it's best to run like hell and don't look back!

---

Someone posted a breakdown of the different type of trolls here a while ago and used as an example of the most primitive type 'fonzie (in his earlier career)' IIRC.  I've not run across you much for whatever reason, but I would agree that if you had been in the primitive group you've upped your game.  Keep up the good work Smiley

legendary
Activity: 1193
Merit: 1003
9.9.2012: I predict that single digits... <- FAIL
January 19, 2015, 10:00:43 PM
The transaction rate limits are fixable.  The real problem is the inevitable centralization of mining.  It seems that no one knows how to fix that.  Bitcoin with centralized mining does not make any sense.

Why is it inevitable? A lot of people use electricity for heating. Create a bitcoin mining heater which is easy to use and the problem is solved.
member
Activity: 72
Merit: 10
January 19, 2015, 09:42:09 PM
The transaction rate limits are fixable.  The real problem is the inevitable centralization of mining.  It seems that no one knows how to fix that.  Bitcoin with centralized mining does not make any sense.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
January 19, 2015, 09:35:00 PM

Broken link

BTW, last two blocks are now:

54 minutes   
1 hour 34 minutes
hero member
Activity: 504
Merit: 500
Moderator
January 19, 2015, 09:33:31 PM
On the topic of blocksize, is anyone else noticing the back up of transactions that is occurring due to the combination of a slowing hash rate (so more frequent long blocks -- right now only 2 blocks one block in the past hour) and these blocks filling up? My fee-paying transaction didn't make it into the last block (which was 976 kB) after waiting 20 minutes, and I'm now waiting an hour or so -- still no confirm.


According to some experts from the mining forum the ETA for the total blockchain collapse is in <14d. Sad


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=681655.204802
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
January 19, 2015, 09:10:36 PM
On the topic of blocksize, is anyone else noticing the back up of transactions that is occurring due to the combination of a slowing hash rate (so more frequent long blocks -- right now only 2 blocks one block in the past hour) and these blocks filling up? My fee-paying transaction didn't make it into the last block (which was 976 kB) after waiting 20 minutes, and I'm now waiting an hour or so -- still no confirm.

legendary
Activity: 1372
Merit: 1000
January 19, 2015, 08:35:06 PM
Yes, I know that you do not see anything wrong with that picture.  The top 6 companies have 60% of the hashrate.  What could possibly go wrong?  As long as there is sand around...

Yes, but you would be saying the same thing if it were 10 with 60% or 20 with 60%.  These are pools, miners can re-direct their rigs anytime.  They are not going to conspire to destroy BTC, what would be the point.

they might do it out of ignorance
legendary
Activity: 1372
Merit: 1000
January 19, 2015, 08:34:05 PM
oooooooh.  i am SO scared:


Yes, I know that you do not see anything wrong with that picture.  The top 6 companies have 60% of the hashrate.  What could possibly go wrong?  As long as there is sand around...

you know that attack vector is real, but it doesn't work like you think it does, (as illustrated by your earlier though experiment) there is a full force assault underway at the moment happening in the open, BlockStream are openly trying to insert the infamous (SPVP) change into the protocol, only the miners need adopt it, and there is a big carrot for them as the new income it would generate is advertised as coming from new services offered by new sidechains, and it is packaged as no downside risk other than a miniscule amount of CPU power and a a few hours of time.

It remains to be seen if it succeeds, both sides seem to be confidant, and it looks like the market has priced in the odds already.  

Time will tell if its a viable attack vector. as far as i can see it's now (over the next 2 years) or never as entropy has a way of closing such windows. it's time to wait and see  Wink
legendary
Activity: 3920
Merit: 2349
Eadem mutata resurgo
January 19, 2015, 08:24:10 PM
Quote
The only thing better than unknown miners is the P2Pool. The P2Pool has scaling problems, and maybe there needs to be many of them. This is an important development to further improve the mining situation.

Decentralised (actually highly distributed) pool mining hasn't eventuated yet because there hasn't been a market need for them ... and that, my friends, is the only hard FACT that you need to know about all the FUD surrounding the "mining centralisation" beat-up by the less-than-knowledgeable.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
January 19, 2015, 08:19:27 PM
Very concerned about the long-term viability of this experiment.

Don't be concerned. Even if the "unknown" increases and reached 100%, it is extremely healthy, and was the normal state of affairs before mining pools were invented! Unknown miners are unknown to each other and can't collude. Yes, you can have a big secretive miner, like 18xf3MQ, but several exist today anyway.

You don't know and can't know that they are unknown to each other only that they are unknown to the person constructing the chart. For all we know "unknown" might be a single miner, or 90% of it might be a single miner. In fact that isn't extraordinarily unlikely given that most truly independent miners use known pools.

legendary
Activity: 1372
Merit: 1000
January 19, 2015, 08:10:37 PM
The real problem is the inevitable centralization of mining.
Year after year, the number of active mining pools go up.

Year after year, concern trolls talk about the "inevitable centralization" of mining.

And year after year the bitcoin faithful bury their head in the sand, "if we don't worry about it, it is not a problem".

I have wondered if several decades from now, governments might not end up securing the blockchain by goverment-funded mining in order to protect the economy, property records etc. from evil 51% attacks by other nations or terrorist groups.  I might be dreaming of unicorns and rainbows though....

sure  Smiley it'll be a little messy if when they are attacking each others sidechains.
legendary
Activity: 1372
Merit: 1000
January 19, 2015, 08:08:00 PM
Bitcoin can't be money with a capped transaction rate.
Gold only maintains purchasing power due to being subsidized by central banks - there's no such thing as intrinsic value for a currency.
If those transaction rate limits are hit and the situation isn't fixed, then Bitcoin will disappear.

The transaction rate limits are fixable.  The real problem is the inevitable centralization of mining.  It seems that no one knows how to fix that.  Bitcoin with centralized mining does not make any sense.

centralized mining is a problem when the incentives encourage a single mining monopoly, as long as there is competition its not centralized.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
January 19, 2015, 08:04:41 PM



with Bitcoin, you merely have to check the signature, which takes a millisecond.

Ask, oh, say everyone who's been robbed of their BTC, how great that is.  If I'm remembering correctly there may be a few people in this category.

FWIW, this is another pretty decent reason for considering Bitcoin as an important reserve more than a trivial exchange item.

That was exactly the context you quoted. Germany could move reserve bitcoin around in minutes or hours at virtually no cost instead of the huge effort involved with moving tons of gold.
legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1006
100 satoshis -> ISO code
January 19, 2015, 08:01:18 PM
Very concerned about the long-term viability of this experiment.

Don't be concerned. Even if the "unknown" increases and reached 100%, it is extremely healthy, and was the normal state of affairs before mining pools were invented! Unknown miners are unknown to each other and can't collude. Yes, you can have a big secretive miner, like 18xf3MQ, but several exist today anyway.

It only would take for a fraction of those "unknown" miners to collude with the three leading pools (assuming they are indeed separate entities) in order to attack the blockchain.

Who is Discus Fish going to call in the "unknown" group to collude with? Are they going to start ringing every single number in the Chinese Phone Directory? You can't criticize the concentration of mining power into a few pools while also lumping in the unknown miners. That is illogical.

The only thing better than unknown miners is the P2Pool. P2Pool has scaling problems, and maybe there needs to be many of them. This is an important development to further improve the mining situation.
hero member
Activity: 910
Merit: 1003
January 19, 2015, 07:57:56 PM
Yes, I know that you do not see anything wrong with that picture.  The top 6 companies have 60% of the hashrate.  What could possibly go wrong?  As long as there is sand around...

Yes, but you would be saying the same thing if it were 10 with 60% or 20 with 60%.  These are pools, miners can re-direct their rigs anytime.

There is no magic number.  The fewer companies you have in the right half that chart, the higher is the risk that they will collude to act as one entity, each giving up their immediate gain (reward for getting the next block appended to orthodox chain) for a greater long-term gain (such as a larger reward per block). Why would their affiliated miners defect?  If the change will mean more money even for miners who are not in the cartel, why would they resist the change?

Not long ago there was just one pool, GHash.io, with more than 50% power.  Bitcoiners were scared, but considered the probem solved when it shrank to less than 50%.  No one asked where those miners who left the pool went.  No one asks who are the owners of all those pools.  How many of those big miners are in the Bitcoin Foundation, paying Gavin's salary?

Quote
They are not going to conspire to destroy BTC, what would be the point.

In the real world, cartels and monopolies do not form to destroy their markets, but to extract more money from their customers than they could if the markets were free.  And there are plenty of things that a majority coalition of miners could do in that direction.
legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1116
January 19, 2015, 07:57:53 PM
The incentives section in bitcoin.pdf refers to miners using CPU power. It does not address the inevitable current and future mining centralization.  

Not in the paper, but Satoshi did talk about mining centralization when he was around. It isn't unexpected entirely, though some aspects of it may be.

I remember some quotes here to the effect that we should try to make a gentlemen's agreement to stall the arms race for as long as possible. He knew what was coming
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
January 19, 2015, 07:48:41 PM
The incentives section in bitcoin.pdf refers to miners using CPU power. It does not address the inevitable current and future mining centralization. 

Not in the paper, but Satoshi did talk about mining centralization when he was around. It isn't unexpected entirely, though some aspects of it may be.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
January 19, 2015, 07:47:11 PM
Yes, I know that you do not see anything wrong with that picture.  The top 6 companies have 60% of the hashrate.  What could possibly go wrong?  As long as there is sand around...

Yes, but you would be saying the same thing if it were 10 with 60% or 20 with 60%.  These are pools, miners can re-direct their rigs anytime.  They are not going to conspire to destroy BTC, what would be the point.

To be fair it isn't really known how much of the hash rate is concentrated with a few large farm owners. The pool charts JorgeStolfi (or cypherdoc) likes to show don't indicate that at all. A single farm owner can split his hash across pools and a pool can represent hash from a number of miners. Both are unknown and unknowable. It is fundamentally a more dangerous situation than the first round of 51% pool scares when it was pretty clear that each pool had a huge number of independent miners.

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