mining was always intended as a bootstrap, not a means unto itself...
Not so; mining is what fixes the history of transactions and protects the integrity of the entire currency. If you can out-mine everyone else, by even a small margin, you can rewrite recent history in bitcoin, selectively permit transactions between other peers, cause general havoc. The reward for mining was the bootstrap, but mining itself is a critical part of what makes bitcoin work. And this part is principally what's broken, because it uses a hardware-optimisible hash.
this is why it is useful to run a bitcoind and contribute to the network, even if you do not mine. as for contributing with a CPU or GPU it is simply not worth the power cost. buy coins and run nodes; participate in the digital economy!
I'll happily use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange in the same way I would any currency. I just think we need to grow up and look at the project critically; has it met its goals? No. Then like good engineers, try again. Bitcoin was supposed to be different: 1) It was supposed to be outside the control of any individual or group. This is obviously failed, as mining pools have actually had to voluntarily stop growing in order to not pass the 50% margin of dominance over the mining pool. 2) It was supposed to be scaleable by individuals to prevent monopoly; the old myth "if anyone looks like they'll become dominant, we'll all fire up mining rigs and stop them!"-> does this look realistic anymore? 3) It was supposed to be a "free market currency" obeying simple supply and demand, but there is evidence of price fixing and market manipulation by those with enough money to pump and dump the currency when it suits them. 4) It was supposed to be untraceable, but for architectural and simple network-analysis reasons, it's not untraceable to a large enough opponent. If you ask me, this is the reason the NSA hasn't just fired up its sha256 brute-forcing rigs to out-mine everyone and destroy the currency. There are areas where bitcoin has succeeded. It's offering a real alternative to credit cards and conventional banking online, and that's great. But the political, architectural and privacy goals are a flop, and the mining pools who control bitcoin at this point won't back the developers if they try to fix the architecture. It's deadlocked; it needs replacing. And, as big and awesome as bitcoin is, nobody should every have expected us to get P2P anarchic crypto-currency right the first time. On Tue, 15 Oct 2013 03:16:55 -0700 coderman <coderman@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 3:03 AM, Cathal Garvey <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
.... People focus too much on the "profit" miners make, and not the verifiability and anarchism they are supposed to be providing to the bitcoin network.
this is why it is useful to run a bitcoind and contribute to the network, even if you do not mine.
as for contributing with a CPU or GPU it is simply not worth the power cost.
buy coins and run nodes; participate in the digital economy!
mining was always intended as a bootstrap, not a means unto itself...