Hacker News Reader

Comment by mdoms | Hacker News Reader

So in a fantasy universe that doesn't exist this analysis doesn't make sense. Ok?

These uncapped forks do exist, they’re the reason the whole community split in 2017; so when those “analysis” articles ignore them and ignore the fact that the white paper and Bitcoin’s creator explicitly called for on-chain growth and scaling, they’re being either dishonest or ignorant.

It’s like someone saying “Look at how wasteful this car limited to 20MPH is! All cars are wasteful!”. No, not all cars, especially that the original design explicitly said to scale the engine as more speed is needed.

> they’re the reason the whole community split in 2017

This makes it seem like it was some sort of 50/50 split, but in reality it was more like 99/1. A tiny group split off to do their own thing while "normal" bitcoin is just chugging along with unchanged block size. It's all fine and well that Satoshi may have wanted something different for block sizes, but he hasn't been involved in bitcoin development for over a decade now so his wishes are pretty irrelevant. Right now, the vast majority of "bitcoin" value is in the original one and speculating about how things could be different is just the crypto version of "world peace is easy if we all could just get along".

>This makes it seem like it was some sort of 50/50 split, but in reality it was more like 99/1

In reality most bitcoin owners/users were the silent majority, and the "default" option was to do nothing, so they did nothing.

>speculating about how things could be different is just the crypto version of "world peace is easy if we all could just get along".

bitcoin's current blocksize/transaction fees are basicially an artificial problem that could be fixed with a minor storage/bandwidth tradeoff. It's more like "world hunger could be solved if we produce more food and stop limiting ourselves with insane protectionist trade policies".

But you make it seem as if it’s a done tale, as if there were no bad actors, no companies set to profit from selling their own “Layer 2” solutions, no censorship, etc. Reality is, even if the whole planet (not only the 99% of the community you claim) were set on a broken vehicle which they can barely drive but just speculate on, it won’t be long before most realize that this is just that, a broken vehicle meant for speculation and has nothing to do with peer to peer electronic cash, you know, Bitcoin.

So when you discuss miners, on a network DESIGNED to emit less Bitcoin and change to transaction fees down the line, it’s ultra important to note that this actually working vehicle exists and the same miners protecting the speculative vehicle are also protecting the working one. And when calculating for the working one, miners are set to be some of the richest businesses on the planet, even when ALL Bitcoin has been already mined, a 100 years from now.

Perhaps, if and only if bitcoin manages to win out against the traditional banking system AND the governments of the world do not regulate miners into oblivion. Even if some form of cryptocurrency does win out against the combined might of traditional banking and governments, let's hope for the sake of these mining companies that the winning currency is one that both depends on Proof of Work (I can stake PoS chains just fine from a raspberry pi, after all) and also requires hashing of the type supported by the current equipment of the miners.

All in all, the chance that a crypto mining company becomes one of the richest businesses on the planet is slim and the chance that that company will be one of the mining companies already existing is slimmer still. Buyer beware when investing in the current crop.

As someone who is more familiar with BCH rhetoric, I can tell you that what the parent comment is referring to is not mining companies but rather LN relay node operators and other "services"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g

I don't see how any of this undermines the post. What “uncapped fork” could these big miners switch to that would give them anywhere near the revenue they have today?

I won’t point you to any, but you should dig deeper into the 2017 block size wars and understand why the community forked then and how, avoid the commercially appealing answers and the laser eyes.

I assume you're alluding to bitcoin cash. I don't see what it has to do with any of this, given that the aggregate transaction fees are not enough for big fish like the ones my article to migrate to at scale.

When you discuss miners, on a network DESIGNED to emit less Bitcoin and change to transaction fees down the line, it’s ultra important to note that this actually working vehicle exists and the same miners protecting the speculative vehicle are also protecting the actually working one. And when calculating for the working one, miners are set to be some of the richest businesses on the planet, even when ALL Bitcoin has been already mined, a 100 years from now, because of transaction fees.

Crypto is still very, very, early. I assure you of that.

This article is about bitcoin miners. What I'm struggling to understand is, what does any of that have to do with bitcoin miners? Are you just wishing I'd pump BCH or something?

You mentioned it before that I did. And no I don’t want you to pump it, but answer the following yes/no questions please:

-) Did your article discuss miner profit from finding Bitcoin?

-) Did you mention that Bitcoin’s emission halves and will eventually end?

-) Did you mention that miners profit from including transactions?

-) Did you mention that transactions become the SOLE source of income once all Bitcoin is mined in around a century from now?

-) Did you mention that BTC is a version of Bitcoin which allows only for a maximum of 200k transactions every ten minutes?

-) Did you mention that the original design should allow for millions (and billions 30 years from now) of transactions every ten minutes?

-) Would such a huge number of transactions processed render miners more profitable than your calculation?

-) Would revenue from fees be much higher than the 1-2% you mentioned miners currently do?

-) Does omitting the above facts render your article possibly half-factual?

No, not all cars, sure, but like, the vast, vast majority of 'em.

You're still ignoring the practical for the theoretical.

I've seen this pattern play out online and offline countless times. A perennial favorite is dialog patterned like so

    "Ethereum is ok because proof of stake will solve problem X."
    "Is proof of stake currently in use?"
    "Well, no, but it will be soon/someday/eventually."

I call it crypto-wishful thinking, but only for lack of a better name.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com