Topic: Tarnished image - page 3. (Read 5369 times)

Check out alternate cryptocurrencies section for alternatives, almost too many coins there, id only bother with thise still actve a month after release

If it's not self-evident, the difference between "zero-sum" and "Tend[ing] toward zero" is the difference between making nothing and making something.  To make this clearer, repeated an infinite number of times, the first gets you (zero times infinity) equals zero, the second gives you ... you guessed it, no need to write it out -- infinity.


Either you misunderstood me or vice-versa.  I'm not exaggerating, i quite literally mean "no miners."  If mining is not profitable, and we discount fetishists who enjoy spending huge sums of money on specialized silicon in hopes of eventually breaking even, we can assume there'll be no miners.  Don't you agree?  
If there are no gold miners, goody for gold.  If there are no Bitcoin miners?  No Bitcoin.  That's all.  Nothing hyperbolic.


Wait.  You're saying that an exodus of Bitcoin user base to Lightcoin, accompanied by dumps & hard forks, is just the market's way of saying "hey, perhaps some change might be nice"?  You're suggesting that what comes out of the wash -- a totally different coin relying on scrypt -- is *still Bitcoin* (or, rather, *two distinctly different Bitcoins*)?  And if that fails too, and people go back to paper money, would that too be called "Bitcoin"?
Arguing in the alternative, the forking panic caused by forking will abso-forking-lutely fork the value of Bitcoin.  The streets will be littered with paper wallets, and street sweepers will praise their patron saint, Mr. Clean, for virtual currencies not printed on paper.  TL;DR:  Won't be smooth or pretty.


If you're arguing that Bitcoin's not 100% reliable as investment, you're arguing with the wrong guy.  I'm not even sure if it's a *sound* long-term investment, though that's another topic.  I'm simply saying that it's unreasonable to assume that selling will always remain an option.  With no security flaws in sight, unloading just a few grand on Gox will send the price plummeting.  Now imagine the panic a fundamental security flaw would cause.  A real clusterfork.
Finally, i'm just not buying the "many brick & mortar Bitcoin merchants hedging Bitcoin with fiat."  My first gripe is with the word "many."  If there aren't many B&M Bitcoin merchants, there couldn't be many that hedge their bets.  

Digging a bit deeper, these Bitcoin merchants you've mentioned are no more Bitcoin merchants than the carnival hucksters are "ticket merchants."  Yeah, a carny huckster accepts tickets for rides & plushy toys, but in the end of the day, he exchanges those tickets for $$$.  When he services the rides & pays for gas & electricity, he pays in $$$.  Just like your B&M Bitcoin merchant accepts Bitcoin, but when it's time to stock up & pay the bills ... that's right, $$$.  Something like that.  

Care to elaborate?
This post elaborates the concept pretty well. Based on what I've read here for the last couple years it looks like a consensus that mining profits tend towards zero and that's a good thing.

"No miners" is hyperbolic. Would a single firm would be able to organize itself efficiently enough to eliminate even anonymous illegal foreign competitors? I can understand if you don't already have an exact projection, but what order of magnitude are you seriously suggesting this will reach? 10, 100, 1000 firms?

Sure it does! ASIC-related security problems would be a clear reason to dump Bitcoin and buy Litecoin, and you'd see the two prices change relative to one another. Right now LTC/USD closely follows BTC/USD, but that's because ASICs aren't really a problem yet and they're both equally influenced by FinCEN and Cyprus. You'd also see a lot of Bitcoin users pushing for a hash algorithm switch, and the chain would fork - before block X we use the unfairly exploited old SHA256, and afterwards we use scrypt. Mining cartels would obviously support the old chain, but be unable to 51% attack the new one. If you were asleep when it forked you'd own coins in both chains, and then vote with your wallet as to which security model is better.

Are you suggesting people shouldn't diversify because accepting the truth that BTC isn't a 100% reliable investment is frightening? Use today's best coin as your means of exchange, and tomorrow's possible coins as your store of wealth. Many brick and mortar merchants already hedge their bitcoins in local fiat currency, so they'd be largely unaffected until they switched to whichever new cryptocurrency their customers want.

To be honest I don't take offense to someone who has an opinion on things and delivers it this way. I also don't want to create the image of me being angry or fustrated or like acting like a 6 YO. I was only trying to say I see a trend of the way bitcoin was moving. I see this spurt of technology as a necessity but where I see a problem is the amount of technology as the disruptive type.

I find if they came out in a slower pace and gave people time to digest it it would have been even better for manufactures and bitcoin. Instead of coming out with Ths units made them the same and gpu's without the power consumptions of a gpu. Making small increments of power and slowly drawing more people in to the bitcoin community. This would strengthen the base.

What they are doing here is more harm than good.

I see in the future the miners that are jumping in now will need to get a second generation asic before the 1st gens have paid off. the jumps are just too quick and will be to often.

heh If I was a conspiracy guy I would almost think it was intentional to weaken bitcoin. Then again it could just be greed and lack of regulation of bitcoin and just plain human nature.

I really am not much for conspiracies.

Here take a look at some of the history






We have no restrictions on price and no restrictions on power consumptions and this next ride up will be 3x higher and 3x faster. So I believe you will need to invest 3x more hardware to stay relevant (notice I did not say profitable)

This will only mean less decentralization and counter to what bitcoin is (ideology or not)

What do you expect? Free money for everyone? You need to step up your game, if you want an edge. Why should you be previleged in contrast to any other miner? If you want to earn, you why have to stand out. Even with an increse of 24 % there will by ways. Why do you dislike chip sell and groupbuys? It's the cost efficient and best technology you (and almost any other miner) can buy right now, so your "share" should be "fair".

Higher difficulty will decrese miners? So will the difficulty afterwards, which makes that argument invalid.

Anyway, I feel your frustration and if you don't want to invest in something risky as mining, you could invest in mining companies like ASICMiner for example. They have a great history and honor transparency, without much effort you should be able to see, that they actually pay most of the mined coins to their shareholders.

Many may say we all should still consider ourselfs as the lucky ones, who saw the oppertunity Bitcoin early enough, even if it's already 2013.

Say this would be true. How will this destroy anything?

This is very true!

Exactly!

mooc I get it, so listen and dont take offence to this. youve been around long enough to think you understand enough of bitcoin but you dont. you think youve done enough research but you havnt. your at the point of disillusion and frustration but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Learn more and research more, Dont get down in the dumps due to your current level of understanding, as you learn more that will change. Do yourself a favor and dont get too focused on the ideas you have now where you have to defend them to the death because i can almost guarantee everyone here has been wrong about allot of stuff relating to bitcoin at some point in time. This rise in the hash rate has been expected from the start and its still got another 700-800TH/s to go before it will even have a chance of leveling out. ultimately prices of asics, competition and efficiency will weigh in on this. but for now we have a unknown number of random people pre ordering asics for an unknown profit margin in the future. people are guessing they will be able to make a profit or are planning on waiting for prices to go up more to sell those bitcoins. its all about research ans risk assessment. Personally i chose not to ride that crazy train, too much risk for me.

I hope you stick around and find something else to focus on. there is allot to bitcoin, certainly allot more then just mining.

If that were the case, all trade via bitcoin would cease. There has to be some level of trust for any trade at all.

That's simply false.


Gold value doesn't depend on existence of miners for its value.  No miners -> gold value goes up.  No miners -> Bitcoin value crashes.


That's false in many ways.  The most obvious being that the market can't "define" anything.  The only way for a market to signal dissatisfaction is through lowered interest (lowered demand -> lowered value).  That's simply not eloquent enough -- a huge dump on MtGox crashing Bitcoin prices doesn't scream "decentralize!"


A frightening argument, that.  Along the lines of "when the boat starts sinking, just buy a different boat."  (Protip:  The best time to sell your Titanic is *before* it hits an iceberg.)

Bitcoin is designed to make mining a zero sum game. Saving/exchanging is more profitable when you use a currency with a lower miner surplus.

How far are you extrapolating? If BTC ends up anything like gold, IMHO there would be plenty of miners:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining#Business
http://www.24hgold.com/english/listcompanies.aspx?fundamental=true&commodity=PL

Basically I think we don't need to be as decentralized as possible, just decentralized "enough" as defined by the consumer market for cryptocurrencies. There are plenty of other coins that are ASIC-resistant if and when this becomes an issue. If you think there's a systemic risk in BTC's security model that is less pronounced in other coins, you might want to convert a portion of your savings.

Reminds me of a movie: Oliver said "Please sir can I have  bit more ?" ...


Tarnished Image - Bitcoin Promotion:
* Anonymous: Fail, at best it's pseudo, but with current generation of exchanges even that's gone. (at least for masses)
* Decentralized: Fail, with pools the power ends up in hands of few ...
* Micro Transactions: Fail, with anti dust changes micro transaction will be unprofitable.
* Everyone can participate (vote): Fail, you need to buy specialized hardware to have a chance.

With every chance we had to improve some of these key benefits the exact opposite happened as a result key benefits are being removed one by one. Whats next ? I don't know ...

Reminds me of Occupy Wallstreet Sentiment.

Is this the start of Occupy Bittalk??

Eh, more like he's saying that it's so difficult to mine that it's all controlled by a few people.  I think diamonds are a better analogy.

This is sort of like gold has lost all its value and nobody can buy or sell it any more because it is difficult to mine?

You see! Someone else gets this. I believe after a few years under our belts we get the picture. Also as I was saying before when a bit of time passes and enough people see that mining is not profitable the very few will be left and the rest move on and leave the few with the most.

Which will later be seen as of no worth.

Exactly, just like central banks or even political parties both want us to believe wealth will trickle down (we should know better by now) ...

Don't like a pool go mine on other pool ... That is like telling a us citizen to go vote for 3the party ... and like they experienced in Belgium, if that third party ever gets a big vote count the others will just ban together to keep them out ... Decentralized my ass, Just like current democratic political/economical system, It was a nice concept but it failed. (or is failing/ slipping away)

Like the central banks of today right? Is it not that the reason why bitcoin was created to combat that very thing? So why are we mining a decentralized currency?

Yes I understand that but do you understand that with difficulty jumping at 24% every 2 week the time from profit to break even will be shorter. Its not like GPU's took over a year to realize you need equipment. Every time a new technology shows up the diff shoots faster and high than before. It will come a time that the money you make will be needed to purchase new equipment and after all has been said and done you end up playing a zero sum game. This will also get to a point where instead of many miners it will be fewer miners and so on.