Topic: MIner Question - page 2. (Read 1781 times)

There is a third way that makes possible small fees and small blocks, all secured by huge hashrate.

Sharding strategy held together by atomic swaps

Hopefully after halvings rational BCH/BSV users and miners will move that way and current BTC will become BLN.

Less blocks will increase awards because the cost to get transactions included in blocks will go up and blocks that are found will have more included transactions.

That may not speak to Jihan Wu's price predictions. Bitmain might just be performing poorly and are tightening their belt.


For a few weeks, until difficulty adjusts.

You think if block time increases, miners everywhere will just immediately give up and abandon their operations?

If bitcoin fails, your zeitcoin isn't going to do much better. Also, I've seen miners mine when the price was below $1000. Just a few short years ago, it was below $500.

It is highly unlikely the price will go that low in the long term. Perhaps a glitch maybe, but it's not going to stay below $1k for any significant amount of time. Support can be seen at around $7.

Rogercoin's and Craigcoin's halving would make miners move somewhere they could mine profitably. Somewhere where they can collect higher fees.

Maybe the great exodus has started? Bitcoin's hashing power is ATH.


Their concern is LN would "steal fees" from the miners. Why are the trolls very concerned on Bitcoin's fees? They should be concerned on their big blocks' fees. Or are they big blocks? They have small blocks! Hahaha.

Then every miner there is outside of china would be making a fortune in fees.

 you are picking a strength showing you don't understand pow 's weakness.

The weakness has zero to do with high fees.

The weakness is block reward to tx fee  to price of coin ratio

ie if a block reward  is 50 coins  to .5 btc in tx rewards  price of coin is not too important.

but when you get to 3.125 coins to 1btc tx reward  the system has issues.

My opinion is 7-10 year 1/2 ing times would have been better then 4-5 year 1/2ing.

we are in for a rough ride on pow in 2028-2029.


1/2 ings are scheduled events not ifs.
and the 50 coin to 0.1- 0.5 tx ratio
dropped to 25 coin to .05- .07 tx ratio
dropped to 12.5 coin to 0.07 - 0.09 tax ratio
drops to 6.25 to ? tx id

i see problems below
drops to 3.125 to ? tx id
drops to 1.5625 to ? tx id

 long term btc price growth could save the day for miners down the road.

5nm mining gear is 20% better maybe 30%
3nm mining gear is 20% better maybe 30%

some bigger companies will build large solar arrays that last 20-30 years.

but it all points to an issue  of BTC down the road. will it continue to support mining.

The reward drop is a phenomena for the BCash and Craig Wright' indulgence coin too. That does not take the matter in favor of them. The fees that will love to LN does not limit the settlement fees for On-chain transactions.

In a scenario where LN is the norm for micropayments, higher value on-chain transactions will still serve as fee source for miners.


That is the sanest advice for people who are new to seeing cryptocurrency as an investment opportunity.

I have no idea as to the accuracy of the 65% number khaos77 cited. The Chinese government knows a lot of information on their citizens and others within their country, it is known to put spyware on some tourists phones, and may have spyware on large portions of its citizens phones, or otherwise surveil its citizens.

I don't think the Chinese government could shut down, or commander 100% of the ASIC farms located within the country, but it could probably control nearly all of them. If the Chinese government was involved in some attack on bitcoin/crypto, I believe it would take control over miners, not shut them down. Shutting down miners would not be very effective for reasons you cited below, but controlling miners could harm confidence in bitcoin if many blocks are orphaned, and/or many transactions with confirmations become unconfirmed.


There are currently some miners turned off because required operating costs (such as electricity) make them unprofitable to operate based on electric costs, estimated mining revenue, and the price of bitcoin. Some of these miners will be turned back on before the difficulty adjusts.

If the number of blocks per x time decreases, that means, the supply of block space also decreases, and all else being equal, when the supply of something goes down, its price goes up. This means the price per transaction will go up, which means the estimated mining revenue goes up (from transaction fees). The increased additional estimated mining revenue may cause some miners that were previously turned off to be turned back on.

thanks for providing some numbers for perspective. indeed, the "plummeting hash rate" situation probably wouldn't be so dire at all. people often FUD about the necessity of an emergency difficulty adjustment, but just like the 51% attack situation outlined earlier ITT, in all likelihood the network could just wait it out.

Bitcoin has existed for more than 11 years and has gone through 2 halvings already.

Is there risk that something that hasn't yet happened in past could happen in the future?  Sure.

However, I am left wondering why these things that you state could happen, haven't happened?  And if there hasn't yet been the proper incentives for these things to happen, then why do you feel that you can say with ANY confidence that the necessary incentives will ever exist in the future.

There are a million things that could happen in the future.  Many of them have nothing at all to do with Bitcoin.  The U.S. dollar could lose its dominance in the world.  Nuclear war could break out. Global climate change could wipe out humanity. A new Ice Age could wipe out humanity. We could colonize other planets. I could die an early death. We could run out of fossil fuels. A new source of cheap and clean energy could be discovered. Machines could become self-aware.

I'm not going to waste a lot of time thinking through all the repercussions and ramifications of all the "what ifs" of the world,

And I'm not going to waste a lot of time thinking through all the repercussions and ramifications of all the "what ifs" of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has risks.  Bitcoin has potential.  From everything I've seen and heard over the past 8 years since I discovered Bitcoin, I beleive the potential VASTLY outweighs the risks.

If you have 0 bitcoin and it lives up to its potential, you've suffered a disaster (because you've missed out on an amazing opportunity).
If you have your entire life savings in bitcoin and it falls to its risks, then you've suffered a disaster (because you no longer have the resources to take advantage of other opportunities).

It seems obvious to me, that the right answer is to manage your risk based on your personal risk tolerance.  Own enough bitcoin that you'll reap worthwhile benefits if bitcoin lives up to its potential, but not so much that you'll suffer significantly if it falls to its risks.

As I said, if Bitcoin were to come completely crashing down, I wouldn't be devastated.  I have enough savings outside of bitcoin that I'll be okay and I'll buy up as much cheap bitcoin as I can afford.  However, if bitcoin lives up to its potential, I also have enough bitcoin that my life will be significantly better than it is today.

if the network drops 65% transactions dont freeze they slow by a factor of 3.

so block time turns into 30 minute not 10 minute .  the worst case is it is done on day 1 of a diff jump.

so a 14 day wait is 42 days.  it is not a big deal.  it would be a good thing as it would show the network is a tough thing to kill.

also i estimate more then 20eh of gear is shut off that can be turned on.

which means the drop would be from 100 eh to 35 eh add back  20 eh and we are at 55eh.

which worst case means diff wait of 13 or 14 days will stretch to only 25 - 30 days.

Are you sure about that?  What proof do you have that 65% of the hash power is actually running on ASICs in China AND is running in farms that the Chinese government can identify, find, and shut off power?


Nonsense.  Even if we accept your assumption that China could identify and shut power off to 65% of the global hash power, that would simply increase the average confirmation time from 10 minutes per confirmation to 28.5 minutes per confirmation.  28 minute confirmations aren't going to "freeze the network" or result in "no transactions . . . possible for months".  That's just silly.

Furthermore, it's going to take less than 40 days until the normal difficulty adjustment gets things sped back up to an average of 1 confirmation every 10 minutes.

I think most people are going to be able to tolerate half hour confirmations for less than a month, especially since:

• The MAJORITY of confirmations will still take LESS THAN 28 minutes.
• Many transactions occur off-chain anyhow (through services such as Coinbase and/or through lightning network).
• People already tolerate long confirmation times during periods of high activity when low fee transactions are delayed.
• It will be clear that speed will return to normal again soon
• Professional mining organizations will learn to spread their risk around the globe more

First of all, I thought we were talking about shutting off power, not double spending.

Secondly, those attackers will need to:

• Gain more from the double spend than they would have from simply mining the block.
• Avoid getting caught by law enforcement for fraud/theft.
• Find a way to keep their double spending scam going after users learn to be MUCH more careful about avoiding scammers
• Risk angry victims finding and destroying their mining operations

And I'll be able to pick up thousands (or millions) of bitcoins for pennies!  That way, I'll be quite wealthy when the system recovers after a decade or so.

See, I KNOW for a FACT that bitcoin will NEVER drop below an exchange rate of 100 BTC per $0.01.  I KNOW this because, at that price I will buy every bitcoin I can find.  This creates a permanent floor at that exchange rate, and creates a scarcity such that if ANYONE else wants ANY bitcoins at all, they'll have to pay AT LEAST that much.  I'm pretty confident that there are others with more resources that are willing to do the same at a higher exchange rate.  Therefore, there will be competition for the scarce bitcoins, and the price WILL eventually rise again.

That's exactly why I don't believe that someone/group/government who controls hundreds of millions in mining gear would be irrational. Their incentives would simply align with the success of the network.


I don't know, honestly. It's something to ponder about, but I'm confident the community will come together, and mine altruistically. It aligns with our incentives, or else Bitcoin dies.

with an attack of this scale, the attackers might believe they are doing permanent damage. actually, that's the only way the attack makes sense: out-of-band incentives for miners, provided by attackers who are more interested in crushing bitcoin than profiting from it.

it seems like a long shot to me, but it's an interesting hypothetical to ponder. let's say they censor the chain so nobody could transact for a month---how would that affect user confidence and adoption? meanwhile, the proposed solution (a POW algo change) would destroy the mining infrastructure. billions of dollars in value in mining gear would be destroyed. after that, don't you think would-be miners would be very skeptical of risking capital on a new operation? not to mention that existing miners would be bankrupted. how secure (proof of work wise) do you think this new "bitcoin" will be?

Would you then say that whoever controls the large mining farms would start acting irrationally/collude to risk money/resources to attack the network, to do temporary damage?

that might cause hash rate to plummet and block times to become significantly longer. impatient people might start clamoring for an emergency difficulty adjustment, but a POW change? that wouldn't make sense.

even if the chinese government seized farms, miners, pools, chip fabrication factories, etc and performed sustained 51%/censorship attacks.....the electricity, overhead, and production costs would be real. they couldn't just sustain the attack indefinitely. so ideally there would still be no POW change---we could just let the attackers burn themselves out. i just hope that bitcoiners are patient enough to do that.

If mining farms don't have power or internet, then they won't be mining, leaving the rest of the world to continue the mining. Difficulty will go down a bit when that happens, but we'll just continue like normal.

I think the bigger Chinese crypto companies (exchanges, asic manufacturers) have offices in other countries for the purpose of avoiding government control.

But from his point of view, I was asking him if he believes that it would be rational to start clamoring for a POW-change.


The Chinese government could order to cut all electricity to all mining farms in their country immediately. Should we start clamoring for a POW-change?