Oddbean new post about login | logout Thoughts on mining profitability and security? Leave the maximalist-shitcoiner emotion out of this. What is the proper lucid counter to this argument other than hoping for enough NgU? nostr:nevent1qqsxjyhegwe0k2plf89xnmympavt3nq4klzsgkfnpquvkp8k3y4g9ngpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43z7q3qtt4j2zeswksjh5z7zmy283qd4yd920afy9j28xg45wsxzhl9rpjqxpqqqqqqz34wxyn
2 words... Difficulty Adjustment
I expected more serious answers than this. Difficulty can spiral to near 0
How so?
Just stop mining, right? Block time goes up, diff goes down?
Difficulty going down makes the network easier to attack. Nothing is without consequences. We cannot go back to 2013 pre-asic difficulties and survive.
Yeah I wasn't thinking that all the way through. It might be okay if it wasn't possible to just fire up all that hash rate again.
Even if possible, no one would do it out of altruism. The most likely scenario would be someone doing it to attack
So back to the conclusion that mass pleb mining adoption is a good thing. 2kW per day per pleb will probably do the trick. Maybe 10 bucks a month at today's rates. By rough math, 50 plebs will out-hash an S21. That's about 4 ASIC chips per pleb. For every man, a Bitaxe Quad.
One interesting take is that the incentive can shift to mining at a loss if Bitcoin's utility is seen as worth the cost for the economic players using it. Where the cost of mining is seen as a fee in itself and the burden is taken by the players that are depending on the utility of the network. Unlikely but a take nonetheless.
That was the case in the very beginning. People mined out of love because they wanted to help, the coin was worthless. Going back to that wouldn't be what I consider a success, so saying difficulty adjustment fixes everything is disingenuous.
Agree
Mining is a race to the bottom. It will always be. Going bankrupt will be common. Somebody else will pick up the slack/tech and keep going. When each phone comes with an ASIC miner inside, there won't be space for mining companies.
long ago a company tried to do that and had deals with qualcomm, but for whatever reason it collapsed. the company was called 21. yes really 🌊 maybe someone will try again, but phones hate using power, it makes battery go ded.
phones had to slow charging down at night because they can't use all the energy provided to them :)
ya but its more about battery cycles and etc. the phone would need to switch off battery to direct power for heavy power use..
Which is possible while charging :)
mm, with a shutdown, toggle switch, startup. ive seen laptops that can do it. also all that heat is bad for battery too.
I am sure engineers can figure it out. I believe people interested in keeping money safe (which will be a small part of the users) will be happy to pay to mine as long as bitcoin survives.
Not the best example but Pi Coin was started on the idea of PoW and mining on phones. The concept is there. And consider scale, a mobile might only produce a small hash rate but enough cell phones/tablets etc and the hash rate of the network still maintains.
ASIC/cooling in a charging base, processing and connectivity in the phone. Charge and mine while you sleep. I'd buy it.
are you saying miners/mining facilities now are like computers were in the 60s? 🔥 https://image.nostr.build/68e5d3f87c0cb6c484c1ed66647b30d74ad16fe2f934ac811ee87fc3857e9d14.jpg
likely
Good answer. I believe that if this thing is supposed to work at all and prevail, current mining operations will be seen as very archaic and ludicrous.
Wow I didn't know mastodon users could see quoted notes, very impressive, kudos to the mostr bridge! That post is incomplete in the screenshot. Can you link to it?
