I believe they believe they are helping people and the work is valuable at some level, if they are successful, yes. At the very least they aren't intrinsically opposed to the field.
I assume you’re aware, but for clarity: it’s not possible to sic the bitcoin network on anything, even cracking sha256, which it uses internally, due to hard-coded ASICs that incorporate specific quirks of the proof-of-work.
Depends greatly on the conditions of the facility they were mining in. Heat kills these units. A professional set-up (not to be confused with a large one) will have much more mild impact on the units than a building with poor thermal considerations. Then again, high end miners will be running custom firmware which could also compromise the card lifespan.
Hard to say the number because it is difficult (but sometimes not impossible) to deduce the device from on chain data. ASICs do exist but they have not obsoleted GPUs like has happened on other projects (such as Bitcoin.)
FPGAs were never big for mining. There was like 3 months in early Bitcoin where they people seriously tried deploying them but the simple fact is they are way too expensive from manufacturer markup for mining. And if you want to make your own you’ll just end up making an ASIC instead.
If that’s what you took away from my post, I must have done a poor job with it.
Firstly emergent consensus is a big part of decentralized systems. Core providers convening on a decision and supporting it is perfectly healthy. That’s quite different than a CEO saying things will be X way and everyone just having to accept it.
Additionally, my point is that people WILL likely try to have a contentious chain (as is their right in a decentralized project), but due to the maturity of Ethereum the technical consequences are much more impactful than the BTC/BCH scenario.
People will describe technical mechanisms, but they are all pretty irrelevant since a miner rebellion would easily modify the software.
The real mechanism is that all the major players can’t accept two forks and maintain sanity. For example, Circle will have to choose which chain has a $1 peg for their USDC reserves, and they will certainly choose the chain supported by the core devs and the one the rest of the major players are selecting as well.
That leaves the rebel chain in a very compromised position. With the peg being removed many defi protocols would be in an exploitable state. Removing all those abandoned and compromised services ends up with little reason for anyone to use the chain.
To be honest, I still suspect someone will try. But it will be a mess and there will be lots of financial loss for users.
Fees are based on resource usage. In Bitcoin this is usually the total data size of inputs and outputs that are used to make the sum. This is where the issue of dust arises, when an address holds a mass quantity of low value inputs, but combing them yields a very large and therefore costly transaction.
In some other chains, like Ethereum, the accounting is ledger based. With these systems theres is no variety in input count, but it similarly scales by transaction computation so more complex contracts are more expensive.
Both networks have a fluctuating transaction cost due to congestion competition, but the “base cost” in either is totally unaffected by the value/total amount of currency.
I find it hilarious that instead of using a battle tested and widely known cryptocurrency that relies on actual cryptographic techniques, like Monero or Zcash, they’ve embraced a crypto that basically no one has heard about, no one was using, and relies on Secure Enclaves for privacy. Which are very likely backdoored by Intel and/NSA or at the very least one hack away from total compromise. SGX has had hacks already.
In my opinion, given the application is cryptocurrency, reimplementations are pretty valuable. It’s important to avoid systemic failure due to a large percentage of nodes having the same exploit or bug. A fully featured reimplementation like this is really great for Bitcoin!
Seems petty. Of course it’s easier to make changes when you just launched and there are less parties and more centralization at a leadership level. 8 months doesn’t really seem like something worthy to brag over.
I agree it’s shortages and not really miners to primarily blame for the GPU issues… but the type of mining you are doing is not the same as professional miners. There is tons of demand.
Personally I went through a lot of the same considerations and the indecision and flip flopping got quite tiring.
Eventually I just simplified things. Living in a property you own gives so much more for your money compared to what one could afford at the same level renting. And on a long enough timeline crashes have had minimal impact. Many of those disruptions would affect the financial markets too so unless you’re extremely conservative leaving the money in stocks is not very safe either. I’m not renting for another 5 to 15 years with a small place and a nosey landlord jacking up rent regularly. So I bought.
A centrally controlled emission is a feature that has significant downsides. Whether we want this feature is the point of discussion... Societies with economies existed before fiat and this centrally controlled emission seems to be quite shaky now.
It’s not about suckers or even wealth, it’s about whether control should be given to a greater entity who may save us, or if such a thing is too important to trust to a very human and often flawed agency.
People who are adamant about Bitcoin were already sold on it before they found it. Just as those who adamantly oppose it.
I don’t think delivery choices really have anything to do with someone’s intelligence. Some of the most intelligent people I know have horrible diets, some to the point of nearly refusing to eat anything but a few select dishes, others just extreme laziness when it comes to food. It’s a total afterthought.
In this situation, I think it’s more that when you really want a burger, Chinese food just isn’t going to cut it. A kinda soggy burger is still better because it’s what you want.