Re: Bitcoin - What if governments restrict or block electricity supply for mining?
Ok, the protocol will balance out the difficulty, but it does not solve the problem that we might be losing a lot of hashing power. The very thing that strengthens the network.
Do you have any suggestions on how Bitcoin mining operations can be masked to make it more difficult for them to detect it?
Do you have any suggestions on how Bitcoin mining operations can be masked to make it more difficult for them to detect it?
As usual, i was still editing my previous post while you were already replying to it (my fault, i should stop re-editing posts i already made)...
Basically: it's hard to answer the problem about the strenght of the network, but my best guess would be that if you push out the mining farms, the difficulty will indeed decrease, but as long as one entity doesn't controll >50% of the networks hashrate, it shouldn't matter that much if the hashrate decreases (so the difficulty decreases).
I remember back in ~2015, one of the bigger mining farms was rumoured to have >50% of the hashrate, and even then, it wasn't catastropic... It wasn't in their own monetary intrest to do a 51% attack anyways.
I also belief that if you push out the mining farms, ASIC development might slow down, but i don't think it will stop altogether... So a couple of years after the mining farms have been put out of business, more efficient ASICs will be distributed in smaller amounts to the home miners, so the antique ASIC's that are gathering dust in the old ASIC farm's warehouse won't be able to do a 51% attack, since they'll be outdated and, if turned on, won't controll >50% of the networks hashrate.
This is just my personal belief tough... Anything can happen...
As for masking your mining farm: i don't really think it's a good idear to start hiding mining farms... It sounds fishy thus gives bitcoin mining (and bitcoin) a bad rep with the general public. If you do everything legally and out in the open, i think it gives us, as a community, a better image... And the better our public image, the more people will adapt (also: my personal opinion)
Unfortunately not everyone can relocate to other Bitcoin friendly countries, so they are forced to change tactics to mask their operations. Weed farming was illegal in most countries and things changed over time. Why do we have to shutdown mining operations, when most governments are banning Crypto currencies, because they want to protect their own reserve currencies and/or protect their monopoly on money creation?
A year or two from now, they might change their minds and then you lost valuable time and money, because their policies and decision making was wrong or even rushed due to a lack of information or even based on misinformation.
I might sound a bit anti-government there, but I think most of these governments are making rushed decisions based on poor advice given to the policy makers.
Some of these mining operations just need to survive, until the storm has past. Until then, they have to hide their operations.
