Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Relative hashpower of BTC and BCH in percentage of total

fork.lol

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 41 posts

Re: Relative hashpower of BTC and BCH in percentage of total

#21

Post by guardiangod »

makomk wrote: post #16
sbenitoj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's incorrect - in general the miners are opposed to SegWit, but they accepted a compromise of agreeing to SegWit if they could increase the block size to 2 MB (from 1 MB currently). SegWit will be activated within 24 hours, but Bitcoin Core (the main developers of current Bitcoin code) have already said they are not going to support an increase to 2 MB blocks. They also claim they never agreed to it in the first…

The Bitcoin Core developers were never part of the agreement to hard-fork and increase the block size - they've said it was a terrible idea all along at least on the time scale proposed. I don't think they even knew about it until it was publicly announced. Also, SegWit increases the block size to 2-ishMB by itself (it's complicated, because older nodes need to think blocks are still under 1MB, which is done by strip…

I don't think 'symmetrical' means what you think it means. Just because A makes B 'less urgent' or 'more efficient' doesn't mean we have to choose between A or B. Why not both? Bitcoin Core's dev did not give a good technical reason for not adopting 2MB beyond crowding out smaller miners blah blah blah. I mean, come on. Have they seen the last 1000 blocks list these days?

Re: Relative hashpower of BTC and BCH in percentage of total

#22

Post by tylersmith »

sctb wrote: post #12
sbenitoj wrote: post #6

The headline is incorrect, the graph shows the RELATIVE hashrate of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. The absolute hashrate of the Bitcoin network is still increasing [0]. All this chart demonstrates is that the hashrate of Bitcoin Cash is increasing faster than the hashrate of Bitcoin. This also means that NEW hashing power is coming online, not that hashing power is necessarily switching from Bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash (even…

We've updated the headline from “Bitcoin's hashpower dropped 20% as miners migrate to Bitcoin Cash”.

"Bitcoin mining profitability dropped 20% as miners migrate to Bitcoin Cash"

Re: Relative hashpower of BTC and BCH in percentage of total

#23

Post by JumpCrisscross »

grabcocque wrote: post #2

I was under the impression, it was miners that by and large were in favour if segwit and everything that goes along with it. Part of point of Cash was to try to reduce the influence of miners on the currency. So my guess is it's just bet-hedging for now.

I'll caveat my statements by acknowledging I'm an outsider to all of this. That said, it was my understanding that BTC's decisions regarding segwit were driven by the proprietary interests of Blockstream. Is this correct?

Re: Relative hashpower of BTC and BCH in percentage of total

#24

Post by [deleted] »

sbenitoj wrote: post #11
grabcocque wrote: post #2

I was under the impression, it was miners that by and large were in favour if segwit and everything that goes along with it. Part of point of Cash was to try to reduce the influence of miners on the currency. So my guess is it's just bet-hedging for now.

That's incorrect - in general the miners are opposed to SegWit, but they accepted a compromise of agreeing to SegWit if they could increase the block size to 2 MB (from 1 MB currently). SegWit will be activated within 24 hours, but Bitcoin Core (the main developers of current Bitcoin code) have already said they are not going to support an increase to 2 MB blocks. They also claim they never agreed to it in the first…

[deleted]

Re: Relative hashpower of BTC and BCH in percentage of total

#25

Post by kanzure »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #23
grabcocque wrote: post #2

I was under the impression, it was miners that by and large were in favour if segwit and everything that goes along with it. Part of point of Cash was to try to reduce the influence of miners on the currency. So my guess is it's just bet-hedging for now.

I'll caveat my statements by acknowledging I'm an outsider to all of this. That said, it was my understanding that BTC's decisions regarding segwit were driven by the proprietary interests of Blockstream. Is this correct?

Blockstream employees are involved in bitcoin development but so are other employees of other companies. Just a bunch of FUD if you ask me.

https://blockstream.com/2017/07/31/segwit-myths-debunked.htm...

https://twitter.com/morcosa/status/831618208289398785

https://twitter.com/morcosa/status/875695603455586305

Re: Relative hashpower of BTC and BCH in percentage of total

#26

Post by sbenitoj »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #23
grabcocque wrote: post #2

I was under the impression, it was miners that by and large were in favour if segwit and everything that goes along with it. Part of point of Cash was to try to reduce the influence of miners on the currency. So my guess is it's just bet-hedging for now.

I'll caveat my statements by acknowledging I'm an outsider to all of this. That said, it was my understanding that BTC's decisions regarding segwit were driven by the proprietary interests of Blockstream. Is this correct?

Not sure what you mean by "BTC's decisions" -- it's a decentralized network that has A LOT of different stakehodlers -- some more important than others, some louder than others.

All humans are driven by self-interest, as far as I understand Blockstream employees are humans.

Edit: After re-reading my response, I wasn't trying to be a jerk to you, poking fun at Blockstream.

Re: Relative hashpower of BTC and BCH in percentage of total

#27

Post by sbenitoj »

cesarb wrote: post #15
sbenitoj wrote: post #6

The headline is incorrect, the graph shows the RELATIVE hashrate of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. The absolute hashrate of the Bitcoin network is still increasing [0]. All this chart demonstrates is that the hashrate of Bitcoin Cash is increasing faster than the hashrate of Bitcoin. This also means that NEW hashing power is coming online, not that hashing power is necessarily switching from Bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash (even…

> even if it's currently more profitable to mine Bitcoin Cash than Bitcoin It seems that is the case if you consider only the block reward, but not if you also consider the transaction fees: http://fork.lol/reward/blocks The BTC chain has more transactions per block than the BCH chain, and the per-transaction fee is also higher.

Transaction fees, even when they're really expensive like they currently are on the Bitcoin chain, are still minimal in comparison to the block reward of 12.5 Bitcoins (or about $51,250 at current prices) per block found.

Here's a link to a recent full block found on the Bitcoin chain, total transaction fees were 0.43 BTC (or about $1,750).

Recent Full Block on Bitcoin Chain - https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000000112ebb0462fe5...

Re: Relative hashpower of BTC and BCH in percentage of total

#28

Post by j_s »

My ignorant TL;DR: BCH may temporarily more profitable in part because hardware goes a lot further against the reduced difficulty. As more miners are attracted to BCH, the difficulty should theoretically balance in correlation with the "in-practice"/exchangeable value of BCH.

Clicking on the 'difficulty' tab seems to confirm this:

http://fork.lol/pow/difficulty

--

I barely remember some mention of (at least the potential for) miners cooperating to reduce the difficulty for BCH after the fork. If I'm understanding this right (unlikely!), the relative hashpower is a pretty bad metric for comparison unless difficulty is also factored in?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14901033

--

I personally use the open source NiceHash client to earn what currently works out to $.06/day with a single older desktop GPU (thanks "free" internet + electricity!) because I don't want to be bothered with micro-managing to point the infinitesimally small fraction of mining power I experiment with in the optimal direction.

Re: Relative hashpower of BTC and BCH in percentage of total

#29

Post by pmorici »

makomk wrote: post #16
sbenitoj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's incorrect - in general the miners are opposed to SegWit, but they accepted a compromise of agreeing to SegWit if they could increase the block size to 2 MB (from 1 MB currently). SegWit will be activated within 24 hours, but Bitcoin Core (the main developers of current Bitcoin code) have already said they are not going to support an increase to 2 MB blocks. They also claim they never agreed to it in the first…

The Bitcoin Core developers were never part of the agreement to hard-fork and increase the block size - they've said it was a terrible idea all along at least on the time scale proposed. I don't think they even knew about it until it was publicly announced. Also, SegWit increases the block size to 2-ishMB by itself (it's complicated, because older nodes need to think blocks are still under 1MB, which is done by strip…

There is a good explanation on reddit of the history of this. [0] The Core developers did agree to a block size increase though in what is commonly referred to as the Hong Kong Agreement. They didn't follow though on that agreement and made up some truly weaselly excuses for why.

More recently a large group of players in the space came together and agreed to what has come to be called the New York Agreement (NYA) This said that they would support Segwit and a 2MB hard fork for bigger blocks. Core and Blockstream who largely controls Core have ignored the NYA and worked against it. They are pretending like segwit has support w/o the 2MB block increase when it doesn't and they are going around doing some truly cringe worthy stuff to tray and scuttle the 2MB part of it.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6uw5kf/why_does_core_r...

Re: Relative hashpower of BTC and BCH in percentage of total

#30

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sbenitoj wrote: post #26
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll caveat my statements by acknowledging I'm an outsider to all of this. That said, it was my understanding that BTC's decisions regarding segwit were driven by the proprietary interests of Blockstream. Is this correct?

Not sure what you mean by "BTC's decisions" -- it's a decentralized network that has A LOT of different stakehodlers -- some more important than others, some louder than others. All humans are driven by self-interest, as far as I understand Blockstream employees are humans. Edit: After re-reading my response, I wasn't trying to be a jerk to you, poking fun at Blockstream.

No offense taken! To clarify on what I mean by "BTC's decisions," the tale I've heard is that a small group of people control a lot of the messaging around Bitcoin, e.g. the sub-reddit and a site and a Twitter account. These people also had an economic interest in Blockstream. So they used the fork to promote a solution that benefits Blockstream.
Post reply on HN