Topic: No Mining = End of Bitcoin? (Read 5715 times)

This thread keeps going on and on.  But I think we can all agree no matter what there would be some holdouts running miners for fun, to keep network up.  So there will never be no miners.... so it never "ends" bitcoin.

I personally don't see bitcoin going to worth nothing, I think it will continue to grow.  So likely hashrate will grow more .. and more.  If you look at amount of gear mining right now we are pretty secure from going to no mining.

No mining will be the end of Bitcoin for sure... but i dont think mining bitcoin will be end, like impossible to end. But perhaps there will be a competitor for bitcoin then maybe, just maybe bitcoin can 'end'.

But like many other say, there always be ppl who willing to do something not for sake of profit, but for fun...so yeah... long live BTC.

This is in "theory" if the main mining pool like hashnest or bigger pools stopped what they were doing..

But since thats not the case, the best scenario to come out of the hard code # reached is the fees that can be produced.

In a home mining level, you`d still would be better off just sell stuff for bitcoin.

Pods would be great for certain aspects, but cost chances are will be higher compared to a full size miner.   I personally am a fan of the S7 (and what looks like carried to S9).   Getting the most hash I can out of the miner.  But I realize I am lucky for sound/power not to be a problem.

Don't get me wrong I would buy a few pods like I did with compacs and lotto mine chances are.   But I don't think it is still a way's till a product comes  (if any) though that.

This. AFAIK, less miners = lower difficulty = more profit. In short, difficulty is adjusted according to the network hashrate, which means that Bitcoin (and virtually any other cryptocurrency) will always be profitable (by pool mining and/or solo mining). An equilibrium point.

Makes you think.  If miner's stop mining, as the amount of miners drop off, so would the difficulty. Allowing fewer miners to complete for the same amount of transactions. Difficulty is part of the algorithm, it's artificial.

Follow this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1487358.20

If this happens, and it's a big IF right now, it has my interest.

- zed

Honestly it's so far away no one can give a good speculation.   The hopes is that the fees make it where miners still profit.  But we don't even know what value and difficulty will be at the having coming up.  So going that far in future... just all guesses.

I'm sure some will try to speculate, but I just don't think it can be done accurately that far.

Bitcoin difficulty is now almost 2 billion and rising daily.  Because of this, miners are continually being forced to invest in bigger, more powerful chips to have any hope of claiming a block and the reward that goes along with it.

Currently miners are rewarded 25 BTC for each block they successfully add to the blockchain.  In July this reward will be cut in half, so rather than being paid approx. $12,500USD for each block, miners will be paid approx. $6,000.

In addition to this reward, miners also get all of the transaction fees for each transaction that forms part of their block.  The higher the transaction fees offered by the transferee, the bigger the profit for the miner.  So, as we have seen daily, when forming a block, miners look to include transactions for which users have paid a higher transaction fee.

With bitcoin halving fast approaching, miners are already starting to project huge declines in profits.  Some have already declared bankruptcy and others will follow. 
See here:  https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-miner-kncminer-declares-bankruptcy/

With fewer miners, the funnel through which all BTC transactions must flow, gets smaller and smaller.  There have already been numerous cases of delayed or lost transactions as miners seek to profit by selecting only the highest rates of returns (processing only those transactions that come with a high transaction fee).  It would be reasonable to expect that as miners leave the BTC scene, transaction times will decrease further for all but those who are willing to pay ever increasing transaction fees.

Eventually we will reach a point where the only reward coming to miners will be through transaction fees and though many suggest this won't be for many years, the fact is that the implications of what's to come can already be seen and felt.

We will reach a point where there are very few miners operating and their sole opportunity for profit will come through transaction fees.  As Bitcoin becomes more centralized in the hands of a few miners and almost all transactions flowing through mining farms in China, the prospect of a Bitcoin mining monopoly looms larger and larger.

So what do you think is likely to happen to transaction fees at that point?





 

But there are people who will never stop mining...  so this will not happen.  Even worst case bitcoin failed and most left it there would be some who run a machine for fun.  So you still would have miners.

I don't think there is any realistic thing that will happen where no miners is a realistic option.   So future where no blocks are solved is just not going to happen.

Transactions would stop if there were no miners.

The S3 you can underclock and make it pretty quiet, but it's quiet dated at this point.  The S5 I kinda think of as hot and loud.   But going to either from a single compac is a pretty big jump.

But he also mentions 500 watt with latest generation, so S7-LN might be closest thing to what hes wanting.  But we don't know a ton about it yet.

The next step from USB mining would be either an Antminer S3 but a Antminer S5 is not very expensive either. Do note that you will not ROI but it's nice to play with a bigger Asic.

That's where I am now. Bitcoin mining is a hobby so I can learn more about blockchain. I like the idea of sidehack's Compac stick miners, and have one happily mining away at ~18 GH/s and earning between 750 and 1500 satoshis per day. In today's mining environment it will not ROI, but maybe it will sometime down the road. I'd also be interested in a 500 watt home miner built with the latest generation of ASICs if one gets built, preferably by someone here.

Cheers,

- zed

Yes, there is no bitcoin without mining because it is a "Proof of work" chain.

However, as long as there are inefficiencies in the market, I doubt mining will stop because people do need bitcoin so there is money to be made. This may be hard to grasp by many here because many here are hobbyist or speculators. I am with Phil, as a hobbyist, I will continue to mine regardless of price. Speculators looking to get rich quick will turn off their miners. Large mines such as Bitfury most likely will not, they plan for all sorts of scenarios.

As block rewards decrease, the fee market will increase to compensate miners. Yes that will make it more expensive to use bitcoin but keep in mind that Lightning network and other "off-chain" solutions will emerge to meet demand for smaller transactions. Bitcoin has utility that serves needs in the market that are otherwise not met so as long as there is this demand, bitcoin and mining will exist. A lot of fear mongering goes on about bitcoin failing but mind you it is code that will adapt to survive. Ultimately the market will determine the direction of bitcoin. A store of value and settlement layer do seem likely imo.

Also mining is not wasteful of energy. Mines such as Bitfury are becoming "zero carbon". As technology advances and carbon regulations become more stringent, mining will adapt. Now, if bitcoin was a creature of the state I would highly doubt its resilience but being it is open source it should survive in some form as there is utility.

I am not claiming to be an expert, just my opinion

I mined profitably last summer it was not as tough as this summer on margins with profit.  So I think your point about mining last summer is a little off.  I do agree if costs equal value or less chances are fewer mine.  Which will be interesting at having.

Also I think your point about Satoshi manipulating is not even in realm of being realistic.   I think you are looking at pretty far fetched ideas.

Yeah. That's one of the  dead ends with bitcoin. Remember the last summer while the price was 200$? Ask this to yourself, would you mine bitcoin if the price was 200$ and going around 200$ for more than a year? The answer is probably no. But somehow, price didn't stay at 200$ and jumped to 400$+ in  such a small timeframe. I don't know why, maybe people thought they were cheap and bought it or maybe satoshi bought his own coins to manipulate the price. As a result mining today is profitable for whose with cheap or free electricy, and because of that miners still exist. If mining stops, no more bitcoin.

One would hope that the owner of all that hashing power is sensible and does not want to bring down Bitcoin, but then again maybe that's the intent...

Cheers,

- zed

No, I don't think so. This is the whole idea of risk/reward. Take a big risk, get a big reward. Take a small risk, get a small reward. Think about IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. Each one of those companies took big risks. Each one of those companies was trying out new things that didn't have a proven track record, and they figured out how to make the ideas work and have been rewarded handsomely. The world is also littered with countless failures. People who had ideas that seemed great at the time, but never really caught on for whatever reason.

In the early days Bitcoin was essentially worthless so all the early adopters were taking a big risk that maybe Bitcoin would become widely adopted and rise in value. Fast forward to today, and one Bitcoin is trading for approximately €440, approximately $490, approximately ¥54,600, or approximately £335, and with sufficient volume and on a sufficient number of exchanges around the world that using Bitcoin to transfer value between two entities is relatively easy.

Today falls into the small risk/small reward zone. If you are getting into Bitcoin now, you already know that Bitcoin is valued, so where is the risk? The biggest known risk is getting scammed by someone you don't know, just like using any "regular" currency. Anyone with access to sufficient compute resources and the internet can set up a wallet, fund it, and start using Bitcoin.

Those early adopters took a flying leap off a cliff on the possibility that this new thing called Bitcoin might gain traction in the future. They didn't really know, but hey, they were willing to try. As Bitcoin evolved to have significant value, the adopters figured out better and better ways to hash the blockchain to collect the reward. The reward worked brilliantly. The reward drove development of new miners, software, and global scale-out. Now, with the reduction in the reward payout, we are at a stage where electricity cost is king, and that is driving the development of even more efficient hardware.

If you'd like another analogy, think about gold mining. It's always been labor intensive, but there was a  time where anyone strong enough to wield a pick and shovel and willing to take a risk, could stake a claim and mine for the precious metal. Fast forward to today and look at how the majority of gold is produced. Big huge companies with tremendous amounts of capital deploying tremendously expensive equipment to extract tiny amounts of the precious metal from the ground.

That's sort of where we are today with Bitcoin. The big mining companies/ASIC producers have the capital to deploy the hash rate to gather the lions share of the rewards, but there are still "subsistence miners" and "hobby miners" around the world performing the "hard labor" to find gold flakes or Bitcoin blocks. Why? Because there is still value in doing that. Can they compete with the big guys? No, but they do it anyway for one reason or another.

Bitcoin is no Ponzi scam. Bitcoin is a store of value, like gold is a store of value. Yes, gold has other uses beyond a store of value, but one could also argue that Bitcoin does, too.

Cheers,

- zed

asics have an issue  look at this chart

the owner of those asics added 1000ph   in under 2 hours to the network.

this makes asics not good because too many are in the hands of ?  bitmaintech most likely

gpus would not be as controlled by one company as asics are.

1200 ph  to 2200 ph to 1300 ph   see below:





a clear demo of too much hash power in one set of hands.