Speaking of bitcoin - why is chinese mining so threatening?

[MrMaxwell]

I saw several people on youtube saying how dangerous it is to the currency for the mining to be so dominated by a couple of the biggest pools but I don't understand how all of that works
They seemed to be saying, what if those big pools stopped mining suddenly, or took their blocks offline (they lost me on that one)

The best I could come up with is that they're trying to say that those pools would mine and hoard and then abruptly stop mining -- and they would do that in order to cause a price spike they could then sell into?
Is that what they mean?

Or is it more about not having enough people or machines to process transactions very suddenly? They lost me there, too, but that makes no sense . . I don't see how that'd benefit them. . they could get high transaction fees for awhile but, then what

Also, how did some fool lose 200K by entering the wrong transaction fee? Was it something like, I'm sending $30 to this idiot, oh fuck I just sent this idiot 30BC instead? Is that what happened?

Does anyone know what's going on with this shit? These youtube guys don't always make sense and I know there are some good minds on here . oddly enough .

[Brian8377]

Originally Posted by MrMaxwell

I saw several people on youtube saying how dangerous it is to the currency for the mining to be so dominated by a couple of the biggest pools but I don't understand how all of that works
They seemed to be saying, what if those big pools stopped mining suddenly, or took their blocks offline (they lost me on that one)

The best I could come up with is that they're trying to say that those pools would mine and hoard and then abruptly stop mining -- and they would do that in order to cause a price spike they could then sell into?
Is that what they mean?

Or is it more about not having enough people or machines to process transactions very suddenly? They lost me there, too, but that makes no sense . . I don't see how that'd benefit them. . they could get high transaction fees for awhile but, then what

Also, how did some fool lose 200K by entering the wrong transaction fee? Was it something like, I'm sending $30 to this idiot, oh fuck I just sent this idiot 30BC instead? Is that what happened?

Does anyone know what's going on with this shit? These youtube guys don't always make sense and I know there are some good minds on here . oddly enough .

If that could have been done why would they not have done it by now? They post a youtube video instead and talk about it? Sounds like some attention whores to me.
I mean really and there is a set amount that can be mined. The slack would be picked up and without real numbers it is hard to say they would even make anyone notice it.

[Bladewire]

The digital war is real.

Give cheap hard goods steal digital goods.

紙老虎

[MrMaxwell]

Originally Posted by Brian8377

If that could have been done why would they not have done it by now? They post a youtube video instead and talk about it? Sounds like some attention whores to me.
I mean really and there is a set amount that can be mined. The slack would be picked up and without real numbers it is hard to say they would even make anyone notice it.

Well, these pools are a HUGE percentage of the mining going on, apparently
Also they don't share transaction fees which I (think) is important in some way (but I don't understand)

[MrMaxwell]

This guy seems very intelligent, to me

This guy is one of the most intelligent people I have ever seen

[seXXXhub]

because if they can reach 51% of the network they can make fake payments known as double spends

[rowan]

Bitcoin was designed to be decentralised, with multiple nodes on the network reaching a fair consensus, but mining pools have recentralised it, with a relatively small number of mining farm nodes creating most of the blocks, effectively controlling the network.

With each node having so much power it may be possible to attack or seriously disrupt the network, which could make people panic and cause a fall in price.

If one of the supernodes drops out (either permanently by choice, or semi permanently say due to a natural disaster etc) then a big chunk of the consensus protection also disappears, since the remaining nodes have even more power between them.

I don't know specifics about the mistaken transaction but it could be that the person created a raw transaction themselves, and forgot to send themselves the change. Your wallet balance consists of zero or more previous complete transactions, which need to be combined and/or split in order to create a new transaction. Any funds above the previous transaction combination you send to someone as a new transaction are given as a fee to the miner of the block which incorporates that transaction. It would be like splitting a $100 into twenties, attaching a note to one that it is intended for person X, then dropping all five twenties into a mail box, but without further specific instructions to return four of them to you. You intended to send $20 and get back $80 change, but you actually sent $20 and forfeited the $80 (the post office gets that )

[MrMaxwell]

Aren't there a lot of power plants in America with excess production?
Or is that a thing of the past, these days?

If so - American power plants could work with idiots who want to mine and we could be a much larger piece of the whole thing, I would think . .

You can't really steal power very easily these days without being noticed. Even those guys who were capturing power from overhead lines through inductance got caught for some reason (I can't remember why)

I'm not sure but I think most towns and cities all have area meters now
FFS

[seXXXhub]

as far as i readed today, made a little research, the big fear is that chinese announced they have the 16nm chip ready.
if thats true, that means higher mining power, with lower power ... and that can make other companies go bankrupt ..

[rowan]

Originally Posted by seXXXhub

as far as i readed today, made a little research, the big fear is that chinese announced they have the 16nm chip ready.
if thats true, that means higher mining power, with lower power ... and that can make other companies go bankrupt ..

This. Electricity cost isn't the only factor here. Miners are competing for a limited resource, with a total of 3600 BTC (soon to be 1800 BTC) able to be mined globally each day.

It's an arms race. Your brand new bleeding edge miner will probably be obsoleted in a couple of months by something faster, which grabs more of those limited BTC, AND pushes up difficulty, which cuts into your potential earnings. It's possible in some cases that your brand new miner may not mine enough BTC to cover its original purchase price... even if you had 100% free electricity.

[MrMaxwell]

Originally Posted by rowan

This. Electricity cost isn't the only factor here. Miners are competing for a limited resource, with a total of 3600 BTC (soon to be 1800 BTC) able to be mined globally each day.

It's an arms race. Your brand new bleeding edge miner will probably be obsoleted in a couple of months by something faster, which grabs more of those limited BTC, AND pushes up difficulty, which cuts into your potential earnings. It's possible in some cases that your brand new miner may not mine enough BTC to cover its original purchase price... even if you had 100% free electricity.

It seems to me that must be what is dissuading the common every day idiot from mining
Hell, it worked on me, that's for sure
As an individual,
You have to have very cheap or free power, you have to hope for a stable price, you have to hope for a lot of things , etc
If it were more likely for some asshole to run at least at some kind of profit I bet the states would be a much bigger piece of the charts . individuals add up!

[seXXXhub]

well, KNC is out of the game, curious to see how that will go on the hash rate