Topic: [XMR] Monero Speculation - page 1692. (Read 3313576 times)

True, but to win any battles you have to recognize them as battles worth fighting. I see a lot of people (not only here but also in other threads, reddit, etc.) assuming and accepting that Monero is just going to follow right in Bitcoin's footsteps.

Unless your objective is primarily price increases, I don't see the purpose of doing that, and many reasons fight against it. Plus it becomes questionable whether Monero can successfully achieve Bitcoin's price increases without some very strong differentiators, so this may be entirely pointless, not just pointless in terms of social and technological goals.

chennan, it is very unclear whether a system that becomes centralized can maintain integrity even on things like the number of coins, and certainly in terms of Monero's core goal of privacy. Those in control of centralized mining and transaction processing has a lot to say over what forks get introduced, and absolutely centralized control could at least block all private transactions, forcing people to identify themselves and potentially agree to other conditions, or be banned from the system.

phishead, in addition to calling into doubt the integrity of the system, and stopping privacy, centralized miners can certainly enforce blacklists, whitelists, etc. Centralization isn't just a question of mining either. Coinbase is probably the largest Bitcoin company and for the most part their customers never have direct access to Bitcoin. They are a bank and can do whatever they want or whatever the government tells them to do. KYC, spying, banning unpopular or controversial types of business, locking accounts, seizing coins, even fractional reserve, the list is endless.

You are welcome. I endorse you to use the search engine of your choice to get the awnsers needed. Do some reading and you will understand the matter 

Yeah, but that will not happen with CK. Since the OP of the game thread, it has always contained the clear warning to not try to mess with our things if you are not a participant of the game.

I have been here before. I insulated a certain company with 4 layers of premeditated legal arguments against a court outcome. It happened nevertheless. It was important because it gave me the experience of a monkey court - trial in disregard of jurisdiction, laws and procedures.

I decided that it's enough. Diplomatic immunity in outside world is the concept for people who behave good towards everyone and can support themselves. In CK, Sovereignty is the concept. I like this much better than be a serf in outside world and no presence in CK, which unfortunately is what most people are suffering.

Ok, thanks... I'll look it all up later today when I hit my lunch break at work.  Is monero still at the point of having a lot of individual little miners?  How many miners are there/nodes?  How many BIG players are in bitcoin?

It´s all about distribution of the network.
The more are actively confirming transactions, the safer the network is. If you have to trust 5 BIG players, the network gets a bit unsafe, but awnsers to these specific problems can be found by typing centralization cryptocurrency into a search enginge of your choice  

So I'm confused... if there is a mining centralization with monero and bitcoin, what problems could that possibly bring?  As what Chennan brought up last page, if there is a finite amount of coins and there are still active big time miners confirming transactions, why does it really matter? 

+1 Agreed

That´s the point towards i am travelling.
The fact that this specific coin with it´s specific protocol makes it desirable for me, is the fact that it is not well distributed yet on one hand, and it probably will gain some value hence to adoption and distribution on the other hand.

The wider the adoption marches on, the closer we probably will get to centralization again.
I think this could be countered with an ASIC proof protocol, as it seems to be today, and a fast time adjustment as it is today. GPU mining is present, and i believe we could make it more profitable for fullnodes rather than GPU mining farms.
I am not a mathematician, but i believe it would be feasible to modify the code to check if we are running a full node or mining in a pool and adapt the difficulty, maybe sqaure it, for that reason.
I know this is racialistic towards GPU mining farms, but an idea to think about, since that would lower the risk of centralization  

Then you would have one argument more to Monero as all other coins, pool resistance 

From a philosophical point of view I mined bitcoin for the same reason as you.

But of course there was monetary incentive (at least that's what I saw aside from the decentralized nature of bitcoin at the time).

One could argue that if you hold bitcoin you essentially are participating in the system. Just like holding monero. So it depends on your approach.

I'm over the mining scene as it was too much work to keep rigs cool, make sure they are up 24/7, and have the space to do it in (not to mention the worry about possible fire etc).

So from many stand points I stopped mining.

Another way I am trying to contribute (hopefully) is understanding the source code for Monero so that perhaps I will be able to help others under stand it fully. In fact this is "FUN" to me. I'm finding it very enlightening to look at the source and dig into it to hopefully understand how it all works together.

So in essence there is many facets of having "fun" in crypto. It all depends on your approach.

As Risto eluded earlier to the "fun" comment. He appear to not be a miner but a user of bitcoin and eventually found it not to be "fun", the same reason I'm losing interest in it with all of the hoorah hoorah drama of the block size etc going on, and the apparent stagnation in bitcoin development (IMO).

Fun can = coding, mining, trading, transacting, marketing, teaching others...and the list can go on i'm sure.

Idk, I think it's refreshing that this group of "monerians" are making a valiant effort to try though.  Plus, even though it may end up being "centralized", it won't (including bitcoin) ever be as bad as the private banks which prints more money it doesn't have.  There's a finite number, which therefore makes it better IMO.

Ah I see. I also think same. I would be scared of centralization and regulation of monero. I would like to see monero, somewhere behind bitcoin. I usually use the email analogy. Tutanota or Protonmail dont need to overtake gmail and outlook to be successful and usable. They have a very specific purpose and target very specific users base. And they are doing well (I hope) by doing this. I wish  same for monero.

I just want my Lambo.

But in all seriousness, technology will always be an arms race against governments and organizations trying to regulate and profit from it. We may win some battles, but I doubt there will ever be a time where we can sit back and live happily ever after with a perfectly incorruptible form of money.

That's exactly why I asked that question. Do you think that Monero being centralized, regulated, etc. actually has a useful purpose? Because I pretty much don't.

The point is that monero maybe "fun" to use and support now, like bitcoin was at the beginning. If it grows into being as popular as bitcoin now, than we will probably see threads here about how monero is not "fun" any more, as its getting centralized, regulated, etc. Just like with bitcoin now.

That being the case (people want centralization, Bitcoin is going there, Monero is no different), I'm not sure there is a point to any of this. Is this all just about hoping for The Big Pump so we can cash out to fiat and buy Lambos or are we actually trying to accomplish something here?

Well, that`s why i kindly asked Risto for his two cents on this matter.
I have some spare hardware, mainly a self configured router running a Linux Distro, which is running 24/7 so i can run a full node on this AMD Octacore anyway. Mainly for beeing a full node, secondary to mine, although i already found 3 blocks with it since february 2015 

I think that corporations as well as general public is just scared of 'regular' miners, mining on their old laptops or in milk crates in a basement. Show something like this: https://i.imgur.com/mhGU4SV.png and tell average person that this and similar  setups are used for securing and confirming your transactions. Then show him this: http://egmr.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/portfolio1.jpg . So from the average person's point of view centralization is good. Banks are centralized, just like any other other finical intuition. People are used to centralization, and bitcoin is going there very quickly.

Monero is no different. If it grows, big farmers will join in, and regular single-cpu or gpu miners will stop. I already gave up on mining it. Too difficult on my pc.

Not easy problem solved. Electricity costs and maximum hash rate never level playing field for all user.

Thank´s, i thought that out by myself   (just kidding  )
Yeah, it´s insane how "home miners" are at a disadvantage opposed to the big players with technology that´s superior by factor 4.
I went through S1, S3, S5 and nowdays it is not affordable in middle europe if you have to pay regular power fees, although i had my fun with it  

The centralisation of BTC is huge, i hope Monero will stay out of that fairway, although the GPU mining farms used in the beginning of BTC will most likely be used on Monero when it hits the critical mass of adoption...
@RISTO: I think you already have been doing your considerations on this topic, maybe you could be so kind to share your assumptions with us  

I really like Monero, i hope it will get adopted in a healthy scale to use it in every day life  

You're missing the point a bit, I think. When I was mining back then it wasn't so much about getting the coins, so there wasn't an arms race or carrot aspect to it, really. Buying coins was certainly an option, though it was probably a bit more hassle than mining at the time. The motivation was more about the fun of being an essential part of the system itself, and getting more and more people involved, to promote Bitcoin and keep it all decentralized. That was why I always solo mined, even when it got to the point of taking months to get a block. I was more interested in the fun of being a direct part of the system that seemed to have so much potential than I was in consistent income.

I'm not sure that cryptocurrencies can ever truly succeed without keeping the fun in it. It just becomes a corporate machine that is narrowly focused on its profit margin at the expense of broad participation and inconvenient social objectives, as Bitcoin largely has. But in doing so that destroys its reason to exist at all. Centralized systems likely have higher profit margins.

That probably was a smart move on your part.

I gave up on the mining rat race in 2011 and never looked back.

Mining is an arms race and I refuse to race for the tiny carrot reward at the end of the race.

Rather just buy whatever it is you are considering mining.