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Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

decrypt.co

41–50 of 83 posts

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#41

Thank goodness. This waste of electricity and natural resources needs to go away.

it was always funny that people with a prepper mentality touted bitcoin as some sort of rock stable currency in times of crisis when government money was going to be worthless despite the fact that it basically takes an electricity source the size of the country to keep the whole thing running. What are you going to do in the post apocalypse, get a team of people with an abacus to calculate hash functions?

You need to think more along the lines of Zimbabwe during massive inflation of local currency.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#42
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how economies of scale work in a price crunch. This will drive further consolidation of mining power since the largest players are the most efficient. It's the smaller indie miners that will be forced out. When margins are squeezed only the largest vertically integrated players survive.

> When margins are squeezed only the largest vertically integrated players survive. And yet, that's not what happened when it forked Bitmain (who may have had 70-80% of Bitcoin's hashing power at one point) was the one to take the hardest hit and essentially folded; its founder was exited and disgraced, and the company was pivoted to what seems to be primarily an AI business now [2] after that utter failure to 'prove…

> the company was pivoted to what seems to be primarily an AI business now

They're still the by far largest and most successful ASIC manufacturer.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#43
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is fundamentally not a cash alternative Funny, I built a fintech startup on helping the cannabis Industry from their supposed 'cash' problem(s): predominately having too much of it and not having banking, or having thier cash taken indefinitely by the bank/paypal upon closure of their account(s). While also doing B2B transactions where banks/CC companies failed to lend them services, despite having Local/St…

I tend to measure bitcoin by how its proponents sell it. It has failed at all of these things - Being a fast/cheap payments network Being a decentralised cash equivalent Being a store of value The shift hasn't already happened - large businesses that have accepted bitcoin in the past have almost all stepped back from it citing a variety of problems, but mainly boiling down to it not being worth the effort, and nobody…

> ...anyone that actually thinks BTC is the way of the future would be a fool to part with it.

Namely these mainly Silicon Valley based Billionaires: Jack Dorsey, Peter Theil, Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz, Tim Draper. Add Mark Cuban in there, too if you want, but he's not SV based.

Seriously, if you want to put your money where your mouth is I can essentially prove your 1st/2nd points right now. The 3rd will take longer as a store of value is relative to the period you bought, so by default needs time to accrue value.

I'm game if you are, here is my address if you want to make it happen:

3FeN7m31dksxmGhXTMRM9ggxbEcPnfUDHy

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#44

If this is true, which I welcome because Chinese miner centralization has been a massive worry for us since about 2012, that still has yielded they highest hash rate (the computing power dedicated to mining Bitcoin) in the History of BTC: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-hashrate.html Its easy to skew this if you don't understand the underlying tech, but Bitcoin continues to work despite a supposed exodus…

Regardless of Bitcoin pros and cons this event will increase centralization and by a lot. Whales will acquire cheap hardware of bankrupt smaller or more reckless competitors and after stabilization there will be fewer major players, with remaining ones being much bigger. I wouldn't even discount emerging of "benevolent 51%" entity which will be a monopolist "for the greater good".

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#45
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When margins are squeezed only the largest vertically integrated players survive. And yet, that's not what happened when it forked Bitmain (who may have had 70-80% of Bitcoin's hashing power at one point) was the one to take the hardest hit and essentially folded; its founder was exited and disgraced, and the company was pivoted to what seems to be primarily an AI business now [2] after that utter failure to 'prove…

> the company was pivoted to what seems to be primarily an AI business now They're still the by far largest and most successful ASIC manufacturer.

> They're still the by far largest and most successful ASIC manufacturer.

That doesn't disprove the comment I was refuting, we're not talking about ASIC production we're talking about hashrate on a given network. That just shows how young this Industry really is.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it was always funny that people with a prepper mentality touted bitcoin as some sort of rock stable currency in times of crisis when government money was going to be worthless despite the fact that it basically takes an electricity source the size of the country to keep the whole thing running. What are you going to do in the post apocalypse, get a team of people with an abacus to calculate hash functions?

I'm not really a big bitcoin guy (own a few hundred dollars worth), but this seems like a straw man. I really doubt that anyone is buying bitcoin for the collapse of industrial civilization. The more prepper-case for bitcoin comes from either very high inflation, financial instability, and/or severe capital controls. It's not implausible that these conditions coexist with the continued existence of industrial civiliz…

But a service like Paypal would likely work just as well but with the added benefit of being much more stable. That, combined with gold is really enough for most middle class people in Asia.

Once you start getting into the tens of thousands of USD, you can afford to obtain bank accounts outside of the country tied to a business. These are widely available and there's an entire cottage industry of lawyers who can provide everything you need.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#47
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect bitcoin to work properly with as few as 3 people... And any computer can calculate hashes.

3 people with electricity, networks, and computers.

You don't think 3 people could figure out electricity and computers and networks whether local or even satellite links? That would be one hell of an apocalypse.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really a big bitcoin guy (own a few hundred dollars worth), but this seems like a straw man. I really doubt that anyone is buying bitcoin for the collapse of industrial civilization. The more prepper-case for bitcoin comes from either very high inflation, financial instability, and/or severe capital controls. It's not implausible that these conditions coexist with the continued existence of industrial civiliz…

But a service like Paypal would likely work just as well but with the added benefit of being much more stable. That, combined with gold is really enough for most middle class people in Asia. Once you start getting into the tens of thousands of USD, you can afford to obtain bank accounts outside of the country tied to a business. These are widely available and there's an entire cottage industry of lawyers who can prov…

You don't see the value proposition of peer-to-peer digital cash, cool.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much, oil, electricity, and blood does it take to prop up the US dollar???

A lot, that is why it is backed by the Country with the largest economy in the World...mean while Bitcoin isn't backed by anything except false marketing, it certainly isn't a P2P electronic system of cash.

Have you actively avoided learning about peer-to-peer digital cash or do you somehow feel threatened by it?

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#50

If this is true, which I welcome because Chinese miner centralization has been a massive worry for us since about 2012, that still has yielded they highest hash rate (the computing power dedicated to mining Bitcoin) in the History of BTC: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-hashrate.html Its easy to skew this if you don't understand the underlying tech, but Bitcoin continues to work despite a supposed exodus…

> issuing a $700 Billion QE program:

That's nothing.

That's a rounding error compared to the compared to the 4.4 trillion dollars spent each year by the government.

The market cap of the S&P 500 is still well over $20 trillion. It fluctuates more than $700 billion in a single day.

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