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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 4:49 pm

DPete27 wrote:
What event(s) do people see that will bring crypto crashing to the ground and why?
Even if you're bullish, it's always good to keep sight of the potential pitfalls.

I think crypto will stick around, and eventually become a useful part of the financial system. Bitcoin's specific implementation seems to be fatally flawed though, as far as becoming an actual functioning currency is concerned.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 5:07 pm

mudcore wrote:
When the pool of "investors" or "holders" is no longer demanding it and there hasn't been a transition or "fix" to bring it into use as a day to day way to exchange value. Given I think we're a ways off, even with Lightning and the like looking interesting, on the latter I'd say there's going to be at least one period off prolonged cool off and the exchange prices drop to reflect it.

If I'm correctly understanding how Lightning works, I don't think it is going to save Bitcoin.

The internal Lightning channels over which transactions travel need to be "funded" (i.e. backed by Bitcoin), and the funding level in turn determines the amount and size of payments that channel can handle. So having good connectivity and capacity means tying up capital. This in turn will discourage users from having more than a small number of open channels at any given time, which will result in a poorly connected mesh (resulting in slow and/or intermittent transaction throughput), or devolve into a topology where a small number of well-funded (and therefore well-connected) hubs handle most transaction volume, which destroys one of the features that made Bitcoin attractive in the first place (its decentralized nature).

You can't just open and close the payment channels on the fly as needed, since this requires transactions against the public Bitcoin blockchain. The slowness and cost of dealing with the public blockchain is what you're trying to solve in the first place, so that's a complete non-starter.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 5:32 pm

freebird wrote:
Cryptonight (XMR) can be mined with CPU or GPU and is profitable... Ryzen is pretty good at it as is most AMD cards especially VEGAs.

With a Ryzen 5 1600 and an RX 460, I get about a euro and a half a day.

What's most surprising to me is that mining doesn't seem to make much of a difference in how much electricity the computer uses. It's always on anyway, so why not mine if it barely uses more power?
 
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 5:41 pm

I remember thinking the same thing when I ran a Folding@Home farm. It's not that noticeable in terms of energy cost or thermals for a single machine, but if you scale that up to half a dozen machines without some extra ventilation both will start to become rather uncomfortable. That was years ago before the rise of mobile and power consumption became such a priority, but I expect that just shifts the curve a bit without really changing the general shape of it.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 5:44 pm

Yan wrote:
freebird wrote:
Cryptonight (XMR) can be mined with CPU or GPU and is profitable... Ryzen is pretty good at it as is most AMD cards especially VEGAs.

With a Ryzen 5 1600 and an RX 460, I get about a euro and a half a day.

What's most surprising to me is that mining doesn't seem to make much of a difference in how much electricity the computer uses. It's always on anyway, so why not mine if it barely uses more power?

How are you measuring the power usage?
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 5:51 pm

just brew it! wrote:
How are you measuring the power usage?


With a "kill a Watt" thing (not that specific brand).
 
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:15 pm

just brew it! wrote:
I think crypto will stick around, and eventually become a useful part of the financial system. Bitcoin's specific implementation seems to be fatally flawed though, as far as becoming an actual functioning currency is concerned.


Too many people see value in it for it to be going anywhere. You guys heard about the Bitcoin futures market that started this week right?

Reuters wrote:
Chicago-based derivatives exchange Cboe Global Markets launched the futures late on Sunday, marking the first time investors could get exposure to the bitcoin market via a large, regulated exchange.

The one-month bitcoin contract <0#XBT:> opened at 6 p.m. local time (2300 GMT) on Sunday at $15,460. By late afternoon on Monday in New York, it was trading at $18,650, roughly 8 percent above bitcoin’s spot price of $16,900 on the Bitstamp exchange. Source
Last edited by Kougar on Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:15 pm

just brew it! wrote:
I think crypto will stick around, and eventually become a useful part of the financial system. Bitcoin's specific implementation seems to be fatally flawed though, as far as becoming an actual functioning currency is concerned.

The whole concept of the distributed ledger, where every market participant holds a definitive and unalterable copy of the entire system record (however that may be defined by the market), is just too technologically "sweet" to not become a part of the fintech landscape. Operationally, it eliminates a vast swath of back-office workers whose sole task today is to ensure that the single definitive record is properly maintained.

I hate to break it to the anarchist crypto-geeks, but The Man is going to take your little toy's core concept, turn it into a part of The System, not ask the crypto-geeks for opinions or permission, and disinvite you from the results. As for crypto-currencies, come back and talk to me when there's a legal (as in settled case law) & regulatory framework for adjudicating disputes between participants in a failed crypto-currency transaction. If you want market acceptance today, there must be a path to dispute resolution that involves gov't.

Kougar wrote:
Too many people see value in it for it to be going anywhere. You guys heard about the Bitcoin futures market that started this week right?
Reuters wrote:
Chicago-based derivatives exchange Cboe Global Markets launched the futures late on Sunday, marking the first time investors could get exposure to the bitcoin market via a large, regulated exchange.

The one-month bitcoin contract <0#XBT:> opened at 6 p.m. local time (2300 GMT) on Sunday at $15,460. By late afternoon on Monday in New York, it was trading at $18,650, roughly 8 percent above bitcoin’s spot price of $16,900 on the Bitstamp exchange. Source
Woe unto someone who ends up having to take delivery on that futures contract in a market that can't sufficiently process the underlying transactions that give rise to the derivative pseudo-asset (the futures contract). A futures market in an illiquid asset is a mug's game, and I don't want to be Clarence Beeks (or the Duke brothers for that matter).

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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:16 pm

Yan wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
How are you measuring the power usage?

With a "kill a Watt" thing (not that specific brand).

Very surprised you're not seeing a substantial increase in power usage when the miner is running.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:36 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Very surprised you're not seeing a substantial increase in power usage when the miner is running.

I just checked after coming home, and something was indeed screwy with my numbers. ;-)

Here's what I just measured:
Idle: 50 W
Mining with CPU: 88 W
Mining with GPU: 101 W
Mining with both: 139 W

So the difference between idle and mining with CPU and GPU is 90 W. Proportionally, that's a lot, but in absolute numbers, that seems fairly negligible, no?

Edit: If I calculated correctly, that's 2 kWh per day. At the average rate here, that's CAD 0.25 per day. (I think; it's included in my rent, so I don't usually have to figure these things out.) So I'm getting about CAD 2 net per day.

It absolutely is a bubble of course, but it's amusing while it lasts.
Last edited by Yan on Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:46 pm

Yan wrote:
So the difference between idle and mining with CPU and GPU is 90 W. Proportionally, that's a lot, but in absolute numbers, that seems fairly negligible, no?

My power rate = $0.1624/kWh
(90 Wh * 24 * 365)/1000 = 788.4 kWh
788.4 * $0.1624 = $128.04

All depends on whether or not you think that's "negligible".
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:52 pm

Yan wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Very surprised you're not seeing a substantial increase in power usage when the miner is running.

I just checked after coming home, and something was indeed screwy with my numbers. ;-)

Here's what I just measured:
Idle: 50 W
Mining with CPU: 88 W
Mining with GPU: 101 W
Mining with both: 139 W

So the difference between idle and mining with CPU and GPU is 90 W. Proportionally, that's a lot, but in absolute numbers, that seems fairly negligible, no?

Yeah, it's not too bad. But how much does your electricity cost per kilowatt-hour? At my electric rate (12 cents), an 89 watt difference translates to about 25 cents/day (more in the summer, since it is also making the AC work harder).

If your rates are substantially higher than mine that 1.5 euro/day "profit" may be a lot smaller than you think.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:53 pm

Captain Ned wrote:
My power rate = $0.1624/kWh
(90 Wh * 24 * 365)/1000 = 788.4 kWh
788.4 * $0.1624 = $128.04

My rate seems to be lower than yours, especially since you're using USD and I'm using CAD. Still, I do seem to be making a net profit (very small, of course).
 
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:55 pm

Yan wrote:
So the difference between idle and mining with CPU and GPU is 90 W. Proportionally, that's a lot, but in absolute numbers, that seems fairly negligible, no?

Assuming you are paying HydroOttawa residential rates, your average price of electricity over a 24-hour period is CD$0.09/kW-h. Do the same math as above and you're spending up to CD$0.0194/day to earn CD$2.27/day (assuming you're converting that €1.50/day to money you can spend on your electric bill, and not squirreling it away in hope of another Bitcoin bubble).
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 7:00 pm

Mining?

Open pit or U/G?
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 7:02 pm

anotherengineer wrote:
Mining?

Open pit or U/G?

I see you're really in Northern Ontario. ;-)
 
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 7:08 pm

Yan wrote:
anotherengineer wrote:
Mining?

Open pit or U/G?

I see you're really in Northern Ontario. ;-)

Sudbury has that effect on people.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 7:16 pm

https://newatlas.com/bitcoin-cryptocurr ... ion/52556/
Loz Blain, New Atlas wrote:
The electricity usage rate is hideous. According to Digiconomist, each transaction is now estimated to use a ridiculous 240 kWh, which is enough to fully charge a Tesla P100D 2.4 times for an estimated range of 1,373 km (853 mi) or enough to power the average American home for eight days.

That's each transaction. And at the current rate of around 350,000 transactions per day, that means the Bitcoin network is currently using a touch more power than Serbia, and is fast catching up to Denmark. And as it becomes more popular, it's going to gobble even more power.

Where's that power coming from? Predominantly coal, estimates Digiconomist, although it's hard to tell as commercial-quantity Bitcoin mining is a fairly secretive game. But if estimates are correct, each transaction is putting about 117 kg (258 lb) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and the Bitcoin network as a whole is responsible for almost 16,000 kilotons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, and growing.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 7:24 pm

ludi wrote:
Yan wrote:
So the difference between idle and mining with CPU and GPU is 90 W. Proportionally, that's a lot, but in absolute numbers, that seems fairly negligible, no?

Assuming you are paying HydroOttawa residential rates, your average price of electricity over a 24-hour period is CD$0.09/kW-h. Do the same math as above and you're spending up to CD$0.0194/day to earn CD$2.27/day (assuming you're converting that €1.50/day to money you can spend on your electric bill, and not squirreling it away in hope of another Bitcoin bubble).

I think you slipped a decimal place. Should be CD$0.194/day. That's still some fairly cheap electricity.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 7:47 pm

Funnily I made a post on fb the other day which parallels the recent turn in this thread, criticizing the wastefulness of bitcoin (energy consumption / pollution) and calling out the media for perpetuating buzzword bingo around blockchain and bitcoin. Naturally the response I got back was "keep spreading the FUD, you're just jelly you missed the boat", "blockchain is the future and it's going to be used across industries, you'll just have to get used to it"

That's besides the point for most crypto detractors, we are saying it's an inefficient system, and the media hype around blockchain is stupidly exaggerating the usefulness of the technology. In my opinion it's going to be a niche technology at best, its complicated and has a lot of overhead. It's not a universal replace everything technology like it's being hyped up to be.
e.g. check out this stupid article, typical of the unfounded blockchain hype we are seeing in the media
some govt tool says the Health Ministry is unlikely to put actual health records on "the chain" but it would be a brilliant way of linking records scattered in multiple places.


Why? Why would it be brilliant? Why decentralize something that is inherently centralized? Is it worth the overhead? What are the pros and cons? The media around blockchain and crypto is nothing more than unsubstantiated nonsense that really only serves to fuel the crypto gold rush / bubble. Which as JBI put it, is effectively just a vehicle for gambling.

It's an amazing technology, he says, that could eventually form a gateway for whole industries, enabling "vastly more efficient transactions" between different companies.


How will it be more efficient or be used as a gateway? What are the downsides or challenges? Why is it better than current forms of trade and finance? This is just unsubstantiated nonsense from people who barely understand the concept of the technology. And really the only reason it's making the news is because of the gold rush on bitcoin.

Like most people I am completely open to new technology if it is well reasoned and has a valid purpose, what I don't like and why I piped up is when the media perpetuates unfounded speculation that blockchain is the new disruptive technology and there will be a revolution. Which basically amounts to saying, it's a technology that theoretically might have potential, but we aren't sure yet where it will be beneficial, we aren't going to go into any detail or scrutiny around implications or drawbacks, but it will be amazing, trust us.

And the pretense that crypto isn't just gambling, because there is a small possibility a future blockchain-esque crypto currency may be feasible it somehow justifies the current crop of crypto that clearly aren't actually currency, and just a mechanism for speculation, that can be duplicated at any time, but trust us it does have inherent value.

Nobody's going to admit that's the reality around crypto though, because that's when the bubble bursts.
 
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 7:48 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
Where's that power coming from? Predominantly coal, estimates Digiconomist, although it's hard to tell as commercial-quantity Bitcoin mining is a fairly secretive game.

That's too general to be helpful. The power is coming from wherever power comes from in a specific place. In China, that's mostly coal (70%, according to Wikipedia). In France, that's mostly nuclear (72 %). In Canada, that's mostly hydroelectricity (60 %, and an astounding 97 % 95 % in Quebec).
 
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 7:53 pm

Yan wrote:
JustAnEngineer wrote:
Where's that power coming from? Predominantly coal, estimates Digiconomist, although it's hard to tell as commercial-quantity Bitcoin mining is a fairly secretive game.

That's too general to be helpful. The power is coming from wherever power comes from in a specific place. In China, that's mostly coal (70%, according to Wikipedia). In France, that's mostly nuclear (72 %). In Canada, that's mostly hydroelectricity (60 %, and an astounding 97 % 95 % in Quebec).

If it is true that most mining is occurring in China, then yeah it is probably mostly powered by coal. But I'm not sure we know that for certain.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 7:57 pm

blitzy wrote:
Funnily I made a post on fb the other day which parallels the recent turn in this thread, criticizing the wastefulness of bitcoin (energy consumption / pollution) and calling out the media for perpetuating buzzword bingo around blockchain and bitcoin. Naturally the response I got back was "keep spreading the FUD, you're just jelly you missed the boat", "blockchain is the future and it's going to be used across industries, you'll just have to get used to it"

That's besides the point for most crypto detractors, we are saying it's an inefficient system, and the media hype around blockchain is stupidly exaggerating the usefulness of the technology. In my opinion it's going to be a niche technology at best, its complicated and has a lot of overhead. It's not a universal replace everything technology like it's being hyped up to be.

You're making the mistake of conflating blockchain with Bitcoin. Bitcoin happens to use blockchain (and was the first high-profile use of it), but the inefficiencies and ridiculous energy consumption of Bitcoin are not an inherent feature of blockchain.

IMO blockchain probably has a future; Bitcoin does not.

But yes, even blockchain is over-hyped.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 8:20 pm

That's true, the energy consumption of bitcoin is not inherently associated with all blockchain derivatives. That said, I still think that blockchain systems add complexity and that in media it's being portrayed as a technological cure all which it really isn't. It's also convenient for media to link the 'success' (rampant speculation) of bitcoin with blockchain, as it somehow legitimizes the technology, even though bitcoin isn't actually being used where blockchain might find usefulness in future (or at least as a currency, bitcoin is failing miserably).
 
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Tue Dec 12, 2017 9:15 pm

blitzy wrote:
That's true, the energy consumption of bitcoin is not inherently associated with all blockchain derivatives. That said, I still think that blockchain systems add complexity and that in media it's being portrayed as a technological cure all which it really isn't. It's also convenient for media to link the 'success' (rampant speculation) of bitcoin with blockchain, as it somehow legitimizes the technology, even though bitcoin isn't actually being used where blockchain might find usefulness in future (or at least as a currency, bitcoin is failing miserably).

I guess I can mostly agree with that. I still take issue with the assertion that blockchain is somehow inherently "too complex" though; it's certainly less complex than many other things that power our digitally connected lives, and the underlying mathematics/cryptography is well-defined and well-understood.

Agree 100% that the current level of hype is ridiculous. People are treating it like the next coming of the internet or smartphones in terms of impact, and that's simply unrealistic. As you've essentially said, its range of applicability is much narrower, which inherently limits its potential to change our lives in meaningful ways.
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Wed Dec 13, 2017 9:56 am

Redocbew wrote:
That was years ago before the rise of mobile and power consumption became such a priority, but I expect that just shifts the curve a bit without really changing the general shape of it.


For the high-end consumer desktop, that's mostly just resulted in idle power becoming negligible while full power remains the same. Well, I guess AMD doesn't have >100 W TDPs anymore, but the 95 watt category for the top offerings has been standard for quite some time now.

Kougar wrote:
Too many people see value in it for it to be going anywhere. You guys heard about the Bitcoin futures market that started this week right?


The one that's entirely priced and settled in USD based upon the auction price on Gemini?

http://cfe.cboe.com/cfe-products/xbt-cb ... ifications

That one?

See, the only way that touches bitcoin demand is if someone starts deliberately gaming the Gemini auction price to manipulate the Cboe: This isn't far-fetched, it was done to chicken prices and even fricking LIBOR! Gemini, a very low volume exchange, makes it trivial (it was chosen only because it's the only US-based one basically)

Captain Ned wrote:
The whole concept of the distributed ledger, where every market participant holds a definitive and unalterable copy of the entire system record (however that may be defined by the market), is just too technologically "sweet" to not become a part of the fintech landscape. Operationally, it eliminates a vast swath of back-office workers whose sole task today is to ensure that the single definitive record is properly maintained.


But that's only part of the "crypto-currency" concept, right?

I mean, we have "blockchain" filesystems already: ZFS. And we have all sorts of competing distributed databases/filesystems too.

Bitcoin's novel insight was solving the double-spend problem, it's what Satoshi even said:

The Holy Whitepaper wrote:
In this paper, we propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions


You're more interested in a provably unaltered document trail, which a mere tree/chain of hashes can provide. You don't need an escalating proof-of-work contest to confer the privilege of adding another record.

Captain Ned wrote:
Woe unto someone who ends up having to take delivery on that futures contract in a market that can't sufficiently process the underlying transactions that give rise to the derivative pseudo-asset (the futures contract). A futures market in an illiquid asset is a mug's game, and I don't want to be Clarence Beeks (or the Duke brothers for that matter).


Nothing to deliver:" It's purely a USD denominated bet on the current price.

JBI wrote:
If it is true that most mining is occurring in China, then yeah it is probably mostly powered by coal. But I'm not sure we know that for certain.


It is difficult to say, because while we know the mining pool that mines a block (and the majority of mining pools are chinese), we don't know the geographical location of the participants.

There have been credible attempts to guess it:

https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/fileadmin/use ... -study.pdf

They say it's 50%, but it very well might be more.

Even then, it is known that there are large mining operations powered by (currently) under-capacity hydroelectricity projects, so it's clearly not all coal in China either.

JBI wrote:
I still take issue with the assertion that blockchain is somehow inherently "too complex" though; it's certainly less complex than many other things that power our digitally connected lives, and the underlying mathematics/cryptography is well-defined and well-understood.


Yeah, it's a really simple data structure and the basic concept is used (with more actually complexity, not chains but trees) in plenty of commonly used already existing things: ZFS completely pre-dates bitcoin, for one example.
 
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Wed Dec 13, 2017 12:53 pm

Indeed it seems very wasteful in term of power (though I think the power usage figures quoted around are inflated), and I do wonder how sustainable the evergrowing blockchain size is.

But all these doom projections assume the system is going to continue unchanged. Ignoring sidechain ideas, even the basic axioms may change. You already don't strictly need to keep the whole blockchain stored locally on every node. Bandwidth might be solvable with probabalistic partial downloading. For full-lightweight, I bet SPV can be improved if it's deemed not secure enough (not directly related, but this is interesting). Not sure about the PoW/PoS issue, but there are entirely different ideas like this one (don't know enough to tell if it's valid).

Glorious wrote:
Gemini, a very low volume exchange, makes it trivial (it was chosen only because it's the only US-based one basically)

What about GDAX and Kraken?
 
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Wed Dec 13, 2017 1:03 pm

meerkt wrote:
But all these doom projections assume the system is going to continue unchanged. Ignoring sidechain ideas, even the basic axioms may change. You already don't strictly need to keep the whole blockchain stored locally on every node. Bandwidth might be solvable with probabalistic partial downloading. For full-lightweight, I bet SPV can be improved if it's deemed not secure enough (not directly related, but this is interesting). Not sure about the PoW/PoS issue, but there are entirely different ideas like this one (don't know enough to tell if it's valid).


Yes, you don't strictly need to *keep* the whole chain if you once had it yourself, but if you start afresh and take someone else's indexes/prunes, you're implicitly trusting *them*. Which undermines the whole point.

People like to handwave this whole situation away and just say "oh we'll find a way", but that's not a given at all, and I would think it very unlikely.

PoS might relate to the power issue, but the size issue persists.

meerkt wrote:
What about GDAX and Kraken?


Wow, yeah. I'm not sure what I was thinking.

That's a good question.

I was more thinking like that Gemini has the closest ties to the regulators/wall street because it was the only one entirely based here and therefore "trusted".

I didn't realize that those other two were exclusively US based too.

I mean, that's crazy: Gemini doesn't even close the auction some days, what in the name of god are they thinking?
 
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Re: So who here is actually mining?

Wed Dec 13, 2017 1:16 pm

I'm not in the field, but it seems to me that if you trust the security of the underlying building blocks (SHA2, merkle trees, etc.), downloading just the whole block headers chain + random blocks in the middle should suffice. A single user might not verify all blocks, but depending on your choices for randomness, 1000 or 10000 users could be at 99.99...% combined.

There's also the old checkpoint blocks idea, not sure if it was ever implemented, where the client software can come with the hardwired hashes of every Nth block, like 100,000.
 
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Gerbilus Supremus
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Joined: Tue Aug 27, 2002 6:35 pm

Re: So who here is actually mining?

Wed Dec 13, 2017 1:40 pm

meerkt wrote:
I'm not in the field, but it seems to me that if you trust the security of the underlying building blocks (SHA2, merkle trees, etc.), downloading just the block headers + random blocks in the middle should suffice. A single user might not verify all blocks, but depending on your choices for randomness, 1000 or 10000 users could be at 99.99...% combined.


The underlying building blocks aren't the problem: How do I know the balances? I can't know if a block has a valid solution if I can't confirm that the transactions within it move coins that actually exist. If I'm just taking the network's word for it, that ain't trustless.

This is different that the majority attack: that involves manipulations forward in time by potentially being able to construct parallel chains to the contemporary one that you then present (and win) because they have slightly greater depth. You can't, for instance, just go hundreds of blocks back in time before your majority and start rewriting those. That would require a supermajority, which increases (albeit decelerating) the further you go back. Practically speaking, even going a few hours backwards in time is completely infeasible.

If you don't know the balances, they can do whatever the heck they want with transactions from any point in time: you don't know that they are wrong. And that last bit:

meerkt wrote:
A single user might not verify all blocks, but depending on your choices for randomness, 1000 or 10000 users could be at 99.99...% combined.


What randomness?: Sybil says hello.

This is *why* the unit of record in bitcoin is the product of an INSANELY difficult Proof-of-Work: You can't just fake eleventy bajillion in hashrate.

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Like I said, most of these "solutions" undermine the whole point. I don't mean mildly or incidentally, I mean they bluntly negate the entire concept.

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