They'll barely get a ROI given that the difficulty will soon rise again. Would have been better to just buy $2 million of coins from an investor.
That's fairly narrow minded. Diff increases, but so does something else. Think hard enough and it might come to you.
I am going to guess network hash rate?
I guess he means price. That was hard work, should have put an ice pack on my head while thinking about it.
My 2 cents worth - Difficulty increases, but so does something else - the fully diverse p2p nature of the system.
Of course I was being a bit sarcastic.
I'm wondering what you mean by the fully diverse p20 nature of the system. Adoption?
I just keep thinking that the higher the efficiency, the power and cost of every new generation of equipment, the fewer miners will be out there because they can't compete. This seems like we will soon know where the Bitcoin mining hubs are - 15% of the network is expected to be in one place in Iceland according to this report. Others my follow.
When you know where the majority of the hubs are, you stop having a true p2p system and instead you have something where governments can go and unplug the network. That would be ok if there are enough networked pc's out there to take over, but what if the majority switch off their machines, sell their equipment, etc?
I'm not an expert in these things - I just think it looks a risk factor for the future stability and prosperity of the currency.
You have a point. The transition to ASIC's scared me just for this reason. Bitcoin is going through a period where security has declined substantially since the days of purely GPU mining. It's changing though and I feel that it will diversify further, just give it some time.
If Bitcoin survives this, it's only going to strengthen it in the long run.