Taking out debt to gamble. Good grief.
Bitcoin discussion and news
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Fez909
toilet expert
I don't think that article is accurate.
Those pie slices they show are mining pools, not miners. The miners can be located anywhere in the world and yet still use a mining pool based in China.
Take Google, for instance. It's based in America, but most of its users are not. Google's search share is 74.24%. Would you say that 74.24% of search engine users are in America? Nope.
Same argument with bitcoin miners.
bimble
floofy
I don't understand what that means - can you explain ? I mean if i were a miner living in say India why & how would i use a mining pool based in china, what does it mean?
A financial commentator's perspective: bitcoin investing reinforces the view that there is a lack of faith in traditional financial markets. Has some merit when hearing pompous pronouncements from heads of banks that took a bath with CDOs
Bitcoin’s rise is no joke, it is a sign of the failure of financial services
Bitcoin’s rise is no joke, it is a sign of the failure of financial services
mwgdrwg
Be a Pisces. Jam.
When I hear the chief exec of RBS going on the news to say that Bitcoin is a bubble, I tend to think otherwise.
bimble
floofy
If you want some almost entirely clueless speculation: when the bitcoin bubble does finally burst, I can see all the libertarian loonies retreating to gold. That's a lot of potential gold demand waiting in the wings. If gold doubles in price within the year, I want 10% of whatever you make.
Fez909
toilet expert
OK, I haven't read all this thread so I apologise if I'm explaining stuff you already know:
The way bitcoin mining works is you solve mathematical equations/puzzles on your computer until you hit a certain value. That is called a "block" and it's really hard to find one. When you do, you get a reward of a number of bitcoin. It's essentially luck as to who finds it, but the more equations you can solve, the greater the chance of finding the next block.
If you were mining on your own, you could find a block and earn a shitload of money/coin, but your computer is not going to be able to solve many equations so it will almost certainly take you a Very Long Time to find one. Maybe years. (You could get extremely lucky and find one in your first go, but the odds are very much against you).
So instead of mining alone, people mine in pools. You all try to solve the equations together and this drastically cuts down the time required to find a block. When you do, you share the reward bitcoins out depending on how much effort you contributed towards finding it. Your rewards will be much, much lower than if you'd found the block alone, but the key is you don't actually have to find one yourself when you're in a pool, so you get a reward anyway.
The bigger the pool, the more likely you are to find a block quickly, so the quicker you'll receive a payout. If Chinese pools are the biggest, then you might prefer to use those to get a payout quicker, rather than wait longer on a smaller pool for a bigger reward.
Does that make sense?
bimble
floofy
^ yes, I understand that Fez909 . But about whether its decentralised or not, have a look at the article above about the vast 'pools' in Inner Mongolia run by one Chinese company. If the director of that company decided to flip a switch the whole protocol of btc could be changed, or a change rejected (as happened with the recent 'hard fork' , as I understand it that was basically a fight between chinese mining conglomerates and everyone else ?)
The idea that bitcoin is without centralised power in the hands of a few does seem really far fetched. It may once have been the intention of blockchain but hasn't worked out that way.
The idea that bitcoin is without centralised power in the hands of a few does seem really far fetched. It may once have been the intention of blockchain but hasn't worked out that way.
Fez909
toilet expert
This set up you describe here is slightly differen to a mining pool. You don't actually need a "mining set up" to have a pool - you could do it yourself in the UK and it wouldn't cost much to run. It's just a web app that coordinates various miners pooling their computing resources and keeping track of payouts etc.
What you describe/hint at does exist, though. There are set ups where you can rent computing power to do your mining for you. You are essentially gambling that the money you pay to rent someone else's computing power is going to be less than the value of the bitcoin you receive from the mining you can perform with this rented computation.
You can even do this yourself if you have a PC and want to 'rent' it out to miners. Again, you don't need to be in China to do this (even if the company organising this service is), but given the electricity prices in the UK, it's unlikely to be profitable for you.
Fez909
toilet expert
That article says his plant is responsible for 4% of all bitcoin mining. How many plants has he got? Because you need more than 50% to be able to do what you say.
But yeah, it's possible if you get more than that.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
The chinese example gives us the most tangible evidence that this is fucked up. Call me thick but I just in my mind linked coal power stations running vast bitcoin mining operations and the cancerous smog affecting bejing. Chinese pea soupers.
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
Yes, it is amazing that we are destroying the Earth in order to create this stupid fake money.
Ranbay
The same rules apply
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
At least everyone will be high when we die
Even the charm of the fact that it is mostly used to buy drugs is gone now
mwgdrwg
Be a Pisces. Jam.
I'm afraid the Earth was fucked before Bitcoin.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Looks like quite a few shorts got margin-called losing millions for some already. Suggesting to short bitcoin is currently like suggesting one shove ones hand into the maw of some sort of motorized machine containing whirley jagged metal bits and a big appetite. I read an article this morning that suggests bitcoin is even eating into the gold market. For silly backed-by-nothing funny-not-money bitcoin is shaping up to be something of an energy hungry beast. It's going to take more than scornful dismissal and an aire of contempt to make this thing fold-up and fail for all the sound well understood reasons it should be expected to fold-up and fail. I don't think bitcoin is in a bubble, that happened years ago, now it's going to take more than a pin to pop it or finally wrestle it to the ground. "Bitcoin isn't a bubble, it's the pin" someone said recently... there might be something to that, but what is it popping, the incumbent financial system? The dollar? Society? Earth?
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NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
This kind of shit ain't helping, if anything it could well be erasing any progress made by decreasing solar prices. Climate change has put us in a hole of sorts and thus there's no good reason to continue digging.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
The bubble is pretty quantifiable. Each block has around 2000 transactions on it. That hasn't gone up really and that's its actual value, its only use value. With fees maybe 5k per block. Everything else is bubble.
bimble
floofy
I don’t think that makes sense. People don’t own the blocks .
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Bit coin is the blocks. That's what the mining releases. And it releases new bc at the same time by adding them to the new block. But bit coin's only use is for exchange. Not only is it a bubble but its bursting point is built-in by limiting the number of blocks that can be released. Add up all the blocks and multiply by the average transaction and you have its only possible use value, which is relatively tiny.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
other than the rapidly eroding anonymity purposes I really don't see the actual use value at all. Probably being thick, I can spot the labour value that goes into the coin- energy expenditure- but wheres the use that makes it better than straight barter or ordinary curency if dodging tax and buying pot no longer escape scrutiny from Those Who Watch
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It enables long - distance exchange without third party verification of the currency. So it's particularly useful for buying drugs or dodging tax. But only a tiny number of people use it really. It's completely dwarfed by the conventional bank-mediated methods.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
its use value is also in that its a non reactive metal easy for someone to shape into something beautiful. Nobody is making a tiara out of bitcoins except Ranbay when his ship comes in
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Well... what would a bitcoin bubble popping look like? Massive fall in prices like... 10 or 20 percent in the space of one day perhaps?
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