Topic: No Mining = End of Bitcoin? - page 2. (Read 5740 times)

For individual graphics cards, they might not be reliable. But for the graphics cards as whole, they are reliable enough to secure the network.

To be fair, I don't see a problem with ASICs for three reasons.

1. Network security can be greatly increased by them.
2. An ASIC can be more stable than leaving a GPU on. I can attest to this; always find myself having to tend to my GPU farms although the code may not be refined as much.
3. Power consumption for the same security is lower.

However, there is the disadvantage where ASIC manufacturers are ahead of the game when it comes to mining at a lower difficulty. But what is the problem? They put the effort, time and dedication to making the product, they will therefore get the best returns, although I disagree whole heartedly with this whole pre-order to cover the ASIC cost then shaft the customers by mining with them themselves.


And for someone who mentioned the transactions being free, when all coins have been minted, and even before then, someone has to cover the miner's cost of securing the network and moving transactions along. The idea is TX fees slowly replace the block reward. Giving miners an incentive to keep mining, and to cover their costs.

ETH coins have an interesting take on attacking bitcoin's weaknesses.
Never let asics mine the coins.
Keep the coin in gpu.
There are multiple uses for a gpu besides mining. 
There are no uses for an ASIC mining Bitcoin.

Why ASIC builders were greedy and design to favor low power cost self mining..

If they built them as space heaters millions of units so that  anyone that needed a space heater would have one. So now They are  in a bind.
 I can see a nice crash coming.
Meanwhile ETH is smoking.
Why a gpu has multiple uses.


Both Amd and Nvidia have a financial incentive to buying ETH as a form of advertisement.

So does Intel.

Many gamers buy a bigger card and mine while they sleep.

Did the OP post a speculative question about mining in a subforum entitled "mining speculation"? What next, an offer to sell something in the "goods for sale" forum? Insanity.

To the OP's question:

The simple answer is yes. If "mining" ceased then the entire public ledger idea that bitcoin is built upon falls apart. No mining or insufficient mining would be equally problematic because there wouldn't be any network upon which transactions could take place and be verified.

Transaction fees should have been the primary source of revenue for all miners from day one, with coin rewards being an occasional bonus. As it is now the future of bitcoin is on thin ice at best, because the incentive to mine is declining exponentially while the rate of bitcoin rewards remains fixed.

There are some pretty big holes in the entire bitcoin idea, specifically the block chain itself. The idea of difficulty adjusting to ensure that the rate of new blocks being discovered pans out over a specified period of time is a self-defeating concept. It creates inefficiency and wastes electricity and/or computational resources for no benefit, with the sole intention of throttling the rate of new coins being discovered.

Whether all 21M bitcoins were discovered now or some time in the future is irrelevant, it's basically set up like a ponzi scam, where the "miners" who got in when bitcoin started were able to walk away with 2-5 coins a day and today most don't even get 1 per month.

The cost of mining at a rate quick enough to generate any meaningful bitcoins will evaporate. The tech level of developing super-efficient asic processors will require a lot of capital, and therefore will be something only a wealthy entity can undertake. You'll end up with one or two companies/groups that provide all of the hash power for the entire block chain...in fact it's mostly there now. That is an unfavorable dynamic that makes bitcoin very vulnerable to multi-spending and other types of manipulation if the "consensus" is simply one entity.

Transaction fees depend on transaction volume, and the daily total transaction volume of the bitcoin network doesn't really offer a whole lot when it would need to be divided up among hundreds of thousands of miners.

I think people will always mine, because think about it logically if people shut down their miners then the people that are left will mine at a lower difficulty which would make them more money, thus they would keep mining.  Their will always be people mining.

I mine for a living right now and am expanding in prep for halving. I'm also prepared to relocate to where there's cheap power -- most people would for a good job, so why not? I think lots of miners have not planned far in advance and will (at least temporarily) shut down. This should moderate the increase in diff, even as the big players ramp up. Even with talk of Bitfury mining with their own efficient chips, etc., we haven't seen a double-digit % increase in difficulty since Feb.

And I agree with philipma1957 -- Part of this is believing in BTC and speculating on the value over the next few years. I want more BTC now, even if I have to run some miners at a loss.
Besides,  I like getting paid every day 

To answer the OP's purely speculative question: yes, if all mining were to cease, BTC would be dead in the water.  You could create as many transactions as you wanted, but since nobody was mining them, they would never be included in blocks and hence, never confirmed.


No, one of the big selling points is that you can send BTC anywhere in the world very quickly, with very little cost to you.

Real world example.  I just sent nearly 10BTC to someone in another country in three separate transactions.  It cost me a grand total of $0.14 to do so.  Good luck doing that with Western Union, PayPal, or any other money transfer service.

Miner or no miner easy or difficult, nothing matters really in bitcoin world as long as there are gold and services are provided for bitcoin in return.
As more and more dollars/euros/gold/metals/anything that can be exchanged worldwide and has value worldwide are exchanged for bitcoin
There will always be bitcoin.
And for profit, I can't see any reason not to profit from mining. EVER.

I am mining as long as there is a block chain so the thread is pretty much a waste of time.

As no mining won't happen.

Many will mine if diff drops down to 1 vs current number of 178 soon to be 190.

the hope would be coins bounce back.  I can't see no mining being the end of bitcoin as people will mine no matter what as long as someone is running blockchain servers to point to.

I can waste 100 a month in power for zero return for as long as I want.  on the hope of bounce back.  many can do this.

But the goal would not to have transaction fees so high they stop people from using the network.   It's hard to speculate so far in future, but considering people can set how much transaction fee is on many wallets.... I don't see this to high happening.

On mining just to hard to speculate that far in advance.

If transaction fees are to high people will stop using bitcoins.

If earnings are to low people will not mine.

When all the 21M coins have been mined. Miners will make their money from transaction fees, so they still need those mining machines anyhow.

There will always be a group of so called die hards whom will always mine. But most of the miners or mining for commercial gain. If the market will not correct it will come to an end. Simply because there will be too less miners to confirm all these transactions.

There will always be miners so this is kinda a moot thread.  Many would run a miner for fun to keep network alive, i don't think it will ever have 0 miners.   I just don't see it.

On new chips only thing is mega mines get those same chips and pay pennies per KWH, so they are still ahead of hobby miner.  We really cannot catch up without having a HUGE investment.  In a lot of cases like bitfury you mentioned I bet it goes to many big mega farms before (and if we even get chance) to buy it.

I think there is a risk of bitcoin infrastructure deteriorating when mining becomes unprofitable. The solution would be new much better cheap chips with low energy cost that can earn transaction fees. Something like this: http://bitfury.com/products#16nm-asic

I will mine bitcoin as long as there is  a block chain. ( there are many people that will do this)


 So the question was pointless.  I am surprised the mods have not closed the thread.

Mining would never stop there will be people who would run machines even if financial loss and chalk it up as a hobby.   So there will always be some there.  And I think the mega mining centers pay pennies per KWH so little they are going to be hard not to profit... so don't see mega mines stopping.

This is kinda a scare topic of something that will never happen.  And with BTC on a upswing on value... this really does not make sense as of now.

I think if mining stopped, bitcoin would still be going, just no more would be generated.

That is right. There will always mining if the bitcoin transaction happens. The fee should support the network.

The one thing OP is missing is that difficulty will adjust to the hash rate the network currently has.  So like every industry if there are lots of competitors willing to invest to make very small profit they will continue in that direction.  Also Just like most industry's we have given away the manufacturing to the Chinese due to the simple fact they can produce huge volume at very low prices.  No one can really compete with that