Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#51

Post by leetcrew » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #46

dcolkitt wrote: post #35

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…

a service like paypal would not have helped in a (dramatic) example like the hypothetical jew in nazi germany. the nazis would have given paypal a list of known jews and told them to freeze their accounts if they wanted to continue doing business in germany.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#52

Post by tromp » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

iamaelephant wrote: post #33

tromp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin's supply is disinflationary, with the yearly supply inflation rate going toward 0 (and reaching it in 2140). But so is a constant emission, the major difference being that the latter goes toward 0 a lot slower, e.g. taking 50 instead of 12 years to get below 2%. More importantly, it accrues wealth to late adopters as much as to early backers, combining a fairer distribution with reduced spending aversion.

This assumes that every bitcoin ever mined stays in circulation. We know this isn't true. We know that millions of dollars of bitcoin have gone missing, never to be recovered. And if Bitcoin is the real deal (it probably isn't) then we've only just started. If this thing hangs around for decades or even centuries we will see trillions more go missing.

Yes, taking lost bitcoin into account, the supply inflation rate is maybe 25% lower, and long before 2140, emission will be too low to compensate for ongoing coin loss.

In this model of inevitable coin loss, the alternative constant emission will eventually, perhaps in 50 to 100 years, reach a rough equilibrium where yearly emission roughly balances yearly coin loss. Like a softcap instead of a hardcap.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#53

Post by abduhl » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #51

mywittyname wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

a service like paypal would not have helped in a (dramatic) example like the hypothetical jew in nazi germany. the nazis would have given paypal a list of known jews and told them to freeze their accounts if they wanted to continue doing business in germany.

Oh come on man, you think that Germany directing a foreign country to freeze assets during the lead in to a war is a more likely way for a Jew in Nazi Germany to lose their hidden savings as compared to them trying to smuggle a USB wallet as they get stripped of all their belongings, clothes, and dignity and loaded on a train? Are they gonna hide it in their butthole and hope they don't have to take a dump until they get out of the concentration camp 7 years later and can finally get around to a computer so they can plug it in and access their bitcoins?

Get the fuck out of here.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#54

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

kylebenzle wrote: post #49

throwaway_Bees wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you think someone is mistaken, correct them. Personal attacks are neither polite nor likely to convince anyone.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#55

Post by tshaddox » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #53

leetcrew wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a service like paypal would not have helped in a (dramatic) example like the hypothetical jew in nazi germany. the nazis would have given paypal a list of known jews and told them to freeze their accounts if they wanted to continue doing business in germany.

Oh come on man, you think that Germany directing a foreign country to freeze assets during the lead in to a war is a more likely way for a Jew in Nazi Germany to lose their hidden savings as compared to them trying to smuggle a USB wallet as they get stripped of all their belongings, clothes, and dignity and loaded on a train? Are they gonna hide it in their butthole and hope they don't have to take a dump until they…

I mean, it's no secret that foreign banks absolutely did help Nazi Germany in many ways, including transacting assets seized from Jews in Germany. We also have no shortage of stories about large transaction companies like PayPal closing or freezing people's accounts due to unspecified (but apparently political) reasons.

I wouldn't say "GTFO" quite yet. Not without some more explanation for why you think it's so improbable.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#56

Post by foepys » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

kylebenzle wrote: post #48

mywittyname wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bitcoin needs a highly reliable network to work properly. Without block propagation, you cannot do anything with it.

Thinking that there would be a network when even the slightest disruption to civilization happens is simply naïve. The internet would probably be the first thing to go. Even before electric cars.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#57

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #2

I think it's time that the government started to consider stepping in a providing support to these out of work ASICs.

In the interest of hijacking this into a productive discussion: Does anyone know if it's possible to use BTC ASICs for anything else? It's just a lot of sha256 hardware, right? Can we use it for arbitrary checksumming?

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#58

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

kylebenzle wrote: post #49

throwaway_Bees wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Hum... I don't know if I'm reading your comment correctly, but Bitcoin is absolutely not a P2P protocol.

The entire community needs to confirm an operation before it's complete. This can be only named P2P if you remove all the meaning from the expression.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#59

Post by foepys » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #22

aeturnum wrote: post #14

Curious about the network's capacity to respond to a downward trend in hash power (which doesn't seem inevitable, but possible). Does the difficulty factor of new blocks get dropped in response to losing hash power? Is the fee / mining reward balance predictable? Does the network become non-functional for xfers below a certain value at some point?

Yes, the difficulty rebalances periodically (every two weeks, roughly?), it would take a catastrophic decrease in hashing power to affect that by too much. The mining reward stays the same, though it drops by half every few years (one such drop is approaching in May). The network actually becomes non-functional for low transfers the other way - when there's too much interest, and too many transactions, the fees to ge…

It balances after 2016 blocks, not 2 weeks. This is a crucial difference because when the hash rate drops dramatically, those 2016 blocks might take 4 or even more weeks to create.

Re: Bitcoin price crash forces miners off network

#60

Post by variaga » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 10:15 PM UTC

v64 wrote: post #20

behringer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is a point I see a lot of people miss about Bitcoin's power consumption. It doesn't have to use as much electricity as it does, as the difficulty is adjusted to mining capacity. The reason why so much electricity is being used on BTC is a result of an arms race between miners, not a necessity of the technical specification. Bitcoin would still operate correctly with less mining capacity. What is sacrificed is th…

For security, the cost of the hashing needs to be greater than the value of being able to subvert the bitcoin network with 51% attacks.

If the cost of the hashing power is less than the value, then the incentive is to just buy the hashing power and do the 51% attacks.

So to the extent that bitcoin has any value at all, it's going to either burn an amount of electricity greater than the value of a network compromise, or it's not going to be secure.