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Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

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Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#411

Post by latchkey »

rndmind wrote: post #322
latchkey wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about trust, I'm talking about financial motivation. We don't need to trust miners for bitcoin to work and if we do trust them, what is the downside to someone who is just validating transactions? They built a better gold. People trust gold. They put the majority of it into vaults and trust the people who run those vaults. This is the best solution anyone has ever come up with to digitize gold. It doe…

Unless of course, ECSDA gets hacked... then the new "gold" immediately drops to zero value. And I say that as a bitcoin and eth proponent and long time holder. I'm just saying, we should be careful before we jump to conclusions this is still experimental technology ( even encryption itself is still young, and implementation is very prone to error )

Agreed, there is a trillion+ $ prize on that.

I'd also bet that bitcoind is probably the most deeply studied codebase on the planet.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#412

Post by cwkoss »

chmod775 wrote: post #216
abrkn wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPUs are not used for Bitcoin mining

On Ebay I can find around a dozen people just in my local area trying to sell their mining rigs with stuff like 5 x 3070 cards: https://i.imgur.com/nI8GYsG.png Graphics cards were definitely bought in stupid amounts for this purpose. Maybe not for Bitcoin anymore , since there is specialized hardware now, but it doesn't really matter which proof-of- watts-per-hour cryptocurrency we're talking about. They're all shit…

GPUs haven't been profitable for bitcoin mining for ~8 years.

Only people who are rationally mining bitcoin with GPUs are those who don't pay for their own power.

Hashes per watt efficiency has risen very fast.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#413

Post by qeternity »

EricDeb wrote: post #257
qeternity wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please elaborate. Which regulations do you think are missing?

How about regulations so they can't avoid taxes? For every dollar invested in the IRS, $3-6 could be gained. Please elaborate on why you think it's okay for rich people to avoid taxes.

> Please elaborate on why you think it's okay for rich people to avoid taxes.

Well, I absolutely don’t.

Nice try though.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#414

Post by tata71 »

gitfan86 wrote: post #384
tata71 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If every new person being born started using cryptocurrency and refused to use USD, since there is no new money, it collapses.

Exactly, currencies have no cashflow. They can go up and down relative to many other things, but essentially their only value is if other people are willing to trade for other things with them.

...the next generation trusted DOGE to the tune of 900%+ growth this year.

It feels foolish to be long USD at the moment.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#415

Post by postalrat »

jimmydorry wrote: post #45
jayd16 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way do users have control over miners or developers? If the assumption is that corruption can overcome a democratic state, I never understood why its so crazy to suggest it can overcome developers or a mining cartel.

Corrupt states have a monopoly on violence. There is no such similar force ensuring people have to use the crypto made available to them. The Bitcoin network operates by balancing the economic incentives of each party, and at any point, any party is free to walk away. __Developers:__ * Profit motive: Paid salaries / bounties / donations by users, business that build off the Blockchain, miners, and appreciation from t…

Three groups all seeking profits, but where do the profits come from? Tether?

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#416

Post by argentinian »

bart_spoon wrote: post #406
argentinian wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, the inflation here is the effect of the perpetual and gross mismanagement. What about your idea regarding inflation as a way to avoid concentrations of wealth? (the idea I quoted and I replied to). That one is unsustainable.

There is a distinction between inflation and hyperinflation. An analogy would be someone saying that a modest reduction in caloric intake is healthy for most people, and you responding that it isn't, anorexics die without enough calories. When inflation is present, but less than 3%, there isn't an incentive to hoard it, because simply sticking it in a bank account means it will be slightly less valuable a year from n…

see answer to brother comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29013635

mainly the referenced links

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#417

Post by thesz »

tinus_hn wrote: post #405
jstanley wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't adjust immediately though. If a large majority of miner suddenly disappears then the block mining rate does indeed drop until the next difficulty adjustment.

So if 50% of the mining power left the next block would take on average about 20 minutes. Where it routinely takes about that long, because that’s just the way statistics work. A non issue. Here’s a graph of the time blocks took over the last three years: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-confirmationtim... Look at the peaks and try to remember the issues that resulted in.

First, 20 minutes in average for power-distributed time-to-block would result in much, much higher peaks. In your chart I see 25 minutes for a block, then it will be 50 minutes.

Second, instead of two weeks to hash rate adjustment, it will take four weeks.

And if these staying with this slow bitcoin would decide to leave to more profitable currencies (not necessarily Bitcoin, there are other SHA256-based PoW schemes), that will push hash rate adjustment even further into future.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#418

Post by anonporridge »

superice wrote: post #197
anonporridge wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Inflation is a tax.

Inflation is a "tax" on owning money, an equalizing force if you will. Deflation is a "tax" imposed that benefits large holders of the currency on people who hold less or none of that currency. There is ofcourse also the moral argument for inflation: society pays you because you it values what you sold or did. That valuable service is not going to be worth as much 50 years into the future, so inflation is the cost im…

Inflation doesn't just negatively affect holders of the currency.

It also negatively affects earners of the currency.

When your salary is constantly getting devalued, employers effectively get to constantly cut your salary while saying with straight face that they haven't done anything.

Now, everyone on this forum is well educated and valuable enough to be able to regularly negotiate salary increases. It's poor and uneducated people who get most taken advantaged by it.

Just look at how minimum wage is a never ending fight.

Inflation gives employers and the holders of capital the high ground fighting to maintain the status quo of wages and forces the poor and desperate to take time out of their personal lives to fight for more pay.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#419

Post by tinus_hn »

thesz wrote: post #417
tinus_hn wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if 50% of the mining power left the next block would take on average about 20 minutes. Where it routinely takes about that long, because that’s just the way statistics work. A non issue. Here’s a graph of the time blocks took over the last three years: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-confirmationtim... Look at the peaks and try to remember the issues that resulted in.

First, 20 minutes in average for power-distributed time-to-block would result in much, much higher peaks. In your chart I see 25 minutes for a block, then it will be 50 minutes. Second, instead of two weeks to hash rate adjustment, it will take four weeks. And if these staying with this slow bitcoin would decide to leave to more profitable currencies (not necessarily Bitcoin, there are other SHA256-based PoW schemes)…

These 25 minute peaks were caused by a similar event, witness the also slow rates in the surrounding blocks. So that’s approximately how bad it would get in this ‘disastrous’ event.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/03/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-dr...

We survived.

Re: Bitcoin is largely controlled by a small group of investors and miners

#420

Post by gitfan86 »

tata71 wrote: post #414
gitfan86 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, currencies have no cashflow. They can go up and down relative to many other things, but essentially their only value is if other people are willing to trade for other things with them.

...the next generation trusted DOGE to the tune of 900%+ growth this year. It feels foolish to be long USD at the moment.

Why on earth would anyone be "long USD". The fed has had a policy of 1%+ inflation for decades. It is designed to go down in value over time.
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