Quote from: ranochigo on January 12, 2018, 06:13:43 AM

Quote from: squatter on January 11, 2018, 09:25:09 PM

Bitcoin cannot be a store-of-value (or useful) if typical users cannot transact. There must be network liquidity. There must be a competitive mining ecosystem to prevent censorship. The consequences of lacking such (particularly due to Bitmain's dominance) may become clearer over time.

I just sent a transaction and it has a confirmation in 10 minutes.

What's your point? Who suggested you couldn't? The point was about hardening Bitcoin's network from attack. You conveniently omitted from the quote the statement about considering future nation-state attacks and censorship.

Quote from: ranochigo on January 12, 2018, 06:13:43 AM

Quote from: squatter on January 11, 2018, 09:25:09 PM

ASIC mining may not be profitable for casual users. But consider three things. First, this never-ending trend in difficulty increase (the growth hype phase mentioned above) will not last forever. The time to invest is when blood is in the streets, not when hype is at its peak.

When the difficulty starts to decrease, it means that it is no longer profitable to mine Bitcoin.

Yes. And marginal miners who can't cover their overheads shut down. The difficulty will only adjust downwards until an equilibrium is met and the trend reverses. That's the entire point of the difficulty adjustment algorithm. If mining speculation far outpaces price discovery, marginal miners shut down. This isn't a permanent situation.

Quote from: ranochigo on January 12, 2018, 06:13:43 AM

Quote from: squatter on January 11, 2018, 09:25:09 PM

Second, "profitability" should not only be considered on a short term overhead basis. Consider mining as a long term investment, not some immediate USD ROI. Also, consider it as an investment in the currency, since decentralized mining is required to secure Bitcoin from majority-miner attacks.

Unfortunately, the "profitability" in the long term will not pay for your hardware, your time nor for your electrical bills.

Re-read what you quoted. Coins I mined years ago have ROI'd many times over. You're only thinking in terms of someone who immediately dumps to cover all overheads. You say you're talking about long term profitability when you're actually referring to short term profitability.

Quote from: ranochigo on January 12, 2018, 06:13:43 AM

Considering mining as a long term investment, I would rather buy Bitcoins. If the investment fails, at least I don't have a useless $1000 paperweight sitting around. Yes, decentralised mining is required to prevent 51% attack but it isn't profitable for anyone to do so. Miners certainly do not want to have millions of dollars of paperweight either.

No one said it wasn't more profitable just to buy bitcoins. The theme of this thread is concentration within the mining ecosystem. Hence "consider it as an investment in the currency, since decentralized mining is required to secure Bitcoin from majority-miner attacks." The implication is that a casual mining investment will be less profitable than merely buying bitcoins. But merely holding bitcoins also gives you no say over the network. Only economically important (transacting) nodes and hash power is relevant to consensus change.

Quote from: ranochigo on January 12, 2018, 06:13:43 AM

Quote from: squatter on January 11, 2018, 09:25:09 PM

Third, consider potential future transactions costs, particularly large UTXO consolidations. At some point, you may need to mine (including pooling hash power) in order to ensure that your transactions are published on the network at all.

No. You don't need any hashpower to broadcast a transaction. Unless you own at least a big farm, you won't be able to confirm your own transaction. Pools don't give a damn about their user's transactions, especially if they are small time miners. I think this argument is more towards scaling as opposed to everyone running a miner.

Again, you are only thinking in terms of never-ending difficulty increase (sort of like a never-ending bull market). If you think mining speculation will always look like the 2013-2018 period, I think you are gravely mistaken. That's not how markets work.

It's predicted that ASIC fabrication will become more competitive in the future, as optimizations become increasingly difficult. That can significantly level the playing field vs. players like Bitmain. For example:

Quote

[The 14nm chip] is a very good thing for decentralization, explains Antonopoulos. What it does is it extends the shelf life of mining equipment from 2-3 months of useable life cycle to almost two years, which levels the playing field among all participants in the system.

You're also only thinking in terms of the current pool ecosystem, as if it's static. Pool incentives can certainly evolve over time to address the needs of miners. Like the exchange system, all current market participants flood to only a few entities. That may not always be true, especially if the interests of pool miners begin to diverge significantly from those of operators of prominent pools.