Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not wrong that there's less pools, I think it's just somewhat due to a lot of miners not understanding how pools work. There's an unfortunate misconception that the size of the pool impacts your income, so they gravitate to the largest pool. Ghash.io is almost certainly evil (attacking sites by double spending in the past), but there's not much we can do about it unfortunately. Hopefully p2pool can eventually…
Can you provide a source for Ghash.io double spending? I've not heard about that before, and it seems unlikely.
Bitcoin mining the hard way: the algorithms, protocols, and bytes
11–20 of 23 posts
Re: Bitcoin mining the hard way: the algorithms, protocols, and bytes
#12Re: Bitcoin mining the hard way: the algorithms, protocols, and bytes
#13I have written a proxy pool server (https://github.com/dogestreet/proxypool) in Haskell if anybody wants to check it out. It's a Stratum to Stratum protocol proxy, it lets you create a mining pool that mines into another mining pool.
(Disclaimer, only P2Pool upstreams work for now, I'm trying to get it to work with stratum-mining).
Re: Bitcoin mining the hard way: the algorithms, protocols, and bytes
#14Ironically, the most cost efficient way of acquiring BTC today may well be to go out into the world and earn dollars (e.g. a job) and then use them to purchase BTC from an exchange.
People forget that this was intended all along. Mining exists to secure Bitcoin; Bitcoin does not exist to serve miners.
Back when people used gold coins very few of them were miners either.
Re: Bitcoin mining the hard way: the algorithms, protocols, and bytes
#15Previous Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7162153 (216 points, 22 days ago, 26 comments)
That's my previous article on generating transactions manually. The current article continues where that left off, discussing mining. I wanted the titles to show the articles are related, but I think I've caused confusion. If someone has a better title suggestion, please let me know. (Genuine request, not sarcasm.)
Interesting article as always. No problem with the title. I just made a mistake.
I like to have more articles with a technical discussion of the mining process. Most people just listen to the "lottery" part of mining and don't hear the chaining and transaction recording part. So they soon propose a new mining algorithm that is more "usefull" or doesn't require so much energy.
Re: Bitcoin mining the hard way: the algorithms, protocols, and bytes
#16Ironically, the most cost efficient way of acquiring BTC today may well be to go out into the world and earn dollars (e.g. a job) and then use them to purchase BTC from an exchange.
No, the most cost efficient is likely to go out into the world and earn BTC (e.g. a job). It's just that it's a bit difficult to find people who have BTC to pay you with at the moment.
Re: Bitcoin mining the hard way: the algorithms, protocols, and bytes
#17Ironically, the most cost efficient way of acquiring BTC today may well be to go out into the world and earn dollars (e.g. a job) and then use them to purchase BTC from an exchange.
No, the most cost efficient is likely to go out into the world and earn BTC (e.g. a job). It's just that it's a bit difficult to find people who have BTC to pay you with at the moment.
[deleted]
Re: Bitcoin mining the hard way: the algorithms, protocols, and bytes
#18one thing i've never been clear on: what happens after the last bitcoin is mined?
it seems like if there isn't a reward of BTC for mining the block (and you're just relying on transaction fees), then mining will become a lot less lucrative/interesting to folks. so do lots of people then drop of out of the mining game, and then difficulty decreases until mining is easy enough to be worth the transaction fees? do transaction fees go up?
Re: Bitcoin mining the hard way: the algorithms, protocols, and bytes
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the most cost efficient is likely to go out into the world and earn BTC (e.g. a job). It's just that it's a bit difficult to find people who have BTC to pay you with at the moment.
[deleted]
No, it is not, in most countries. As bitcoins are considered a good, it is generally considered barter. A contractor can accept whatever they want in return for their services, and there's specific taxation rules set out for it, at least in the UK.[0]
An employment arrangement, however, might require that a reasonable currency (either the legal tender of the country, or whatever the court decides is reasonable in countries which do not have a legal tender) is offered. Certain laws might allow the employee to opt in to being paid in Bitcoin anyway; BitPay supports this in the US via their Payroll API[1], and I have yet to hear of any legal challenges to it.
[0] http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/managing/special-situations/sampl... [1] https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payroll-api
Re: Bitcoin mining the hard way: the algorithms, protocols, and bytes
#20one thing i've never been clear on: what happens after the last bitcoin is mined? it seems like if there isn't a reward of BTC for mining the block (and you're just relying on transaction fees), then mining will become a lot less lucrative/interesting to folks. so do lots of people then drop of out of the mining game, and then difficulty decreases until mining is easy enough to be worth the transaction fees? do trans…
The reward just keeps halving, so it only approaches 0 (well, until we run out of digits of course). And by the time that happens, transaction fees will probably already be more valuable than the reward.