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Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving

blockchain.info

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Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving

#101

Post by pserwylo »

finnw wrote: post #56
pixelcort wrote: post #21

Looks like the exchange rate didn't fluctuate too much during this time: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg5ztgSzbgBzm1g10zm... I wonder what will happen to the difficulty over the next couple days: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ Considering the exchange rate remained stable, I expect the difficulty to halve.

> I expect the difficulty to halve. Why would it? Those who have invested in dedicated mining hardware aren't going to switch it off just because the reward has halved. At least not until mining fails to pay for the electricity that goes into it (but I don't expect that will ever happen.)

This is what I don't understand about bitcoin. With my extremely small amount of knowledge about it, I thought the idea was to make it so that the rewards for mining were aligned closely with the price of electricity.

But is this the price of electricity in the USA? What about hiring people to do mining in countries with cheaper electricity?

What about if some miners had a solar panel on the roof? Although, as I write this, it occurs to me that at some point, it would be more economical to sell the solar generated electricity back to the grid, rather than use it for mining hardware...

Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving

#102

Post by lectrick »

graue wrote: post #60
bencoder wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard drive and network cost per gigabyte is always falling, and much faster than the blockchain is increasing, so it's not expected this will be a huge problem. But what you say is true that it will "centralise" more in a sense - but the barriers to entry will still be much smaller than any other financial institution so there will likely be many groups still involved with processing the block chain. If it's just the…

However, using Electrum entails putting significant trust in the third party that hosts the blockchain for you (and it's not clearly identified on the Electrum website who that is). See past discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4836269 If I were going to trust a third party to begin with, I'd just go with a hosted wallet like Coinbase. They seem more reputable to me than whoever's behind the Electrum proj…

What about blockchain.info?

Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving

#103

Post by lectrick »

motters wrote: post #25

Bitcoin is looking increasingly less practical. The size of the block chain is becoming massive. Recently I tried downloading the official client, and after 2.8GB of downloading with the progress bar only about half way through I gave up. If Bitcoin becomes more popular in future the block chain really isn't going to scale well, and that's going to result in a more centralized system in which there are fewer block ch…

1) They're working on that problem, and it's solvable without disrupting the security.

2) You can always use one of a number of online wallets who will host the blockchain for you.

Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving

#104

Post by lectrick »

debacle wrote: post #22

What might this do to the acceptance of bitcoin? In an article yesterday, someone mentioned in the comments that it was no longer financially viable to make money from mining, I would assume that this would make it doubly so. If that is the case, will there be required transaction fees for processing transactions, and how will that effect the price of BTC?

1) GPU mining is still profitable, if your power is cheap.

2) FPGA mining is still plenty profitable (I'm making, eh, 20BTC a day or so? And already paid for my hardware)

3) ASIC, coming soon, will change everything again, but keep it profitable

Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving

#105

Post by ryanlbrown »

kaiuhl wrote: post #98
duiker101 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is, that's why it's usually pissing everyone. A "Party" button might have done a better job.

May I suggest a bookmarklet I created called PARTYMODE? http://wenthiking.com/partymode

EPILEPSYMODE

Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving

#106

Post by graue »

alexmat wrote: post #97
graue wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, using Electrum entails putting significant trust in the third party that hosts the blockchain for you (and it's not clearly identified on the Electrum website who that is). See past discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4836269 If I were going to trust a third party to begin with, I'd just go with a hosted wallet like Coinbase. They seem more reputable to me than whoever's behind the Electrum proj…

* Transactions are signed locally: Your private keys are not shared with the server. You do not have to trust the server with your money. * Freedom and Privacy: The server does not store user accounts. You are not tied to a particular server, and the server does not need to know you. * No scripts: Electrum does not download any script. A compromised server cannot send you arbitrary code and steal your bitcoins. * No…

Elsewhere on that wiki:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Thin_Client_Security#Server-Trust...

“All thin clients listed below currently connect to a single server, and are vulnerable to an attack similar to a double-spend. The attack can be run by that single server - the server can just lie to them that they received a Bitcoin transaction, and they, assuming the server does not lie, perform some service, transfer funds or send goods without actually receiving any Bitcoin in exchange.”

Scenario: Bob hacks the server (or colludes with the people operating it). He buys 100 BTC of goods from you, you see the funds in your Electrum client and ship the goods. Surprise! the transaction was fake. You're out 100 BTC.

I'd have more faith in this system if the Electrum website disclosed, very clearly, that this kind of attack is possible and also spelled out exactly who is running the server and why I should trust them. Instead, they appear to be trying to sweep the whole issue under the rug. I therefore see little reason to trust Electrum.

Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving

#107

Post by DigitalSea »

MrMan wrote: post #55
freehunter wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read my new blog post and buy it as an ebook (DRM free!) titled "Seven Effective Secrets You Didn't Know About To Not Let Things Disrupt Your Zen Flow For Your Super Productive Day (And Five You'd Forgotten!)". It's even got a forward by someone who had read a Wikipedia article about Alan Kay! It's available on my website (shameless plug) at www.bltzrg-app.me

My start-up already pivoted into the personal productivity blog posting space, so you are out of luck.

You will be getting a letter from our lawyers shortly. Our stealth startup has been quietly developing a product for the personal productivity blog post space for the last 2 years. Some of the guys who invested in Facebook invested in us at a $999,999 valuation. We've yet to make a profit, but I'm sure we will one day! Did I mention it's also a responsive desktop/mobile hybrid app built using Meteor, Haskell and the Go programming language?

You are out of luck. Now if you'll excuse me I've got some Ruby on Rails code to write and a blog post hating on PHP and applauding Node.JS and NoSQL.

Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving

#108

Post by lucaspiller »

TomatoTomato wrote: post #76
IgorPartola wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get the $0.15/kWh figure from? I am curious, since this seems to make it sound like there is a stable formula for converting kWh's to BTC's. That will of course depend on the exchange rate, but I'd like to see the figures.

http://bitcoinx.com/profit/ Settings: Profitability decline = 1, Hardware Cost = 0, Time Frame (months) = .033333 (1 day), Electricity Cost = $0.15 Profit: -0.56 USD/day For this example (1200MH @ 750W) you need electricity to be My rig (2x7970) does about (1400MH @ 650W) and electricity @ $0.16 is my break even point (Profit: 0.01 USD/day)

Why do you put a hardware cost of 0? If you put the true cost, let's assume $1000, it'll take you 273 years to make your money back. I assume the value of the currency will increase, but still... am I missing something as it seems a pretty flawed way to make money.

Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving

#109

Post by drgolden »

pserwylo wrote: post #101
finnw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I expect the difficulty to halve. Why would it? Those who have invested in dedicated mining hardware aren't going to switch it off just because the reward has halved. At least not until mining fails to pay for the electricity that goes into it (but I don't expect that will ever happen.)

This is what I don't understand about bitcoin. With my extremely small amount of knowledge about it, I thought the idea was to make it so that the rewards for mining were aligned closely with the price of electricity. But is this the price of electricity in the USA? What about hiring people to do mining in countries with cheaper electricity? What about if some miners had a solar panel on the roof? Although, as I writ…

"arbitrage definition"

Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving

#110

Post by groby_b »

sequoia wrote: post #100
graue wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking more along the lines of, based on mrb's figures, buying 11 FPGA boards and letting them pay my rent. That's substantial enough profit that if I didn't file properly, I'd be worried about a knock on the door from the IRS.

> Eg. each one of my Cairnsmore1 FPGA boards makes about $43/month, after the halving. ... I paid $640 for each one. 11 boards... do you have $6500 laying around? And you'll invest it to make a (possible, read: Your Milage WILL Vary) return of ~$450/mo? Shoot for the moon, I guess...

What's so wrong with a ~7% return per month ?
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