Was bored so plugged some numbers into the bitcoinwisdom calculator. ASIC miners are running between .5 to 1 w/Gh. So his top end of hashing power is 24000 Gh/s. The calculator says that will give you about 6 BTC in the first month with that amount dropping whenever the difficulty increases.

So if I didn't make a mistake then he is fos even with free electricity and some free top of the line ASIC miners.

Not to mention a single computer drawing 12KW is insane. That's 100 amps in Canada. Just for comparison, your typical desktop power cord is only rated to 10 amps, not to mention that the power supply will typically max out at much less than this. Maybe a roomful of ASIC miners, with a bunch of dedicated circuits could draw this much.

lol

If by 'computer' he meant a series of asic miners, then maybe

if BTC goes mainstream it will destroy the energy consumption.....
and will price everything very high due to energy cost per transaction....
Price = energy....

Bitcoin’s power usage per transaction isn’t remotely sustainable as a wholesale replacement for the conventional financial system.

lol at BTC bugs thinking this will be ever the case....

Power usage is not a function of the number of transactions processed.

Anyone know a fix for a bug in Electrum where an amount received shows up as +0.? Tried changing servers and restarting the program.

i dont know about electrum or this error, but you could always just recreate the wallet if you have the seed words, using mycelium or multibit hd for example.

They do like to spend it, but they cannot be that obvious. Think about Pablo Escobar, for example, where they had just piles of cash hidden away because they couldn't launder it. So much money, that huge portions of it was written off because it was eaten by rats. So much better to have Bitcoin.

Setting up a business to launder Bitcoins is also so much easier. All he needs to do is set up a gambling site, and keep playing the house until he loses enough, and there's your laundering. Super easy.

Yes, you need to pay off the lower guys. It will take time, but in the end, they will prefer Bitcoin to cash.

LOL @ thinking the cost of Bitcoin is even close to the cost of the conventional financial system and how much money is leeched out through that.

Sounds like a 9 figure business is in your future setting up a money laundering operation for a cartel.

Good luck!

It's basically a function of price. The incentive to mine more exists whenever the price and reward is greater than the energy costs to mine it. If Bitcoin becomes mainstream, price would have to rise dramatically, and that would incentive a ton of mining.

No. This is heinously wrong.

Tom is absolutely right. Miners will add ASICs as long as they are profitable and the profitability is purely decided by power consumption and bitcoin price. So price goes up miners add ASICs and power consumption of the network increases. Have never seen anyone disagreeing with this.

How often should you update electrum? Besides having your seed what precautions should be taken if and when you update?

He wrote that power consumption of the network is basically a function of price.

This was wrong, is wrong and will continue to be wrong.

What you wrote, however, is correct currently and in the near future.

Power consumption cost will always trend toward the price * reward + transaction fees.

There is obvious lag when equipment is being produced, or there is a lot of variance in the price.

Seed is sufficient.

Make sure you are getting a legit copy of it. If there was a malicious version, it might be possible for it to steal your keys.

Mining profitability is a function of bitcoin price, power rates, power consumption, difficulty level, mining reward, equipment costs, and operating costs.

Now price alone cannot increase difficulty levels enough to discourage additional energy usage. If price doubles, difficulty will rise but not double, as then no new miners would be profitable and the difficulty would have to fall back to some equilibrium. Therefore a doubling in price will increase, but cannot double, the hash rate of the network.

But improvements in mining technology can make difficulty rise without a corresponding increase in energy usage, and this throws off the whole price:energy relationship.

On top of that, mining reward is going to get cut in half every few years, which is enough to offset a doubling in bitcoin price without making any new miners profitable. Yes transaction fees will help a little, but right now are not the significant part of the reward.

Hash rate isn't important since efficiency of hashing improves with time, but more cost of achieving that hash rate.

Transaction fees will need to increase with time, and obviously a situation with mainstream adoption would increase transaction fees as a whole significantly.

Thanks, I got some more info from my co-worker. He said his friend has 10 computers set up and is cloud mining. Hes been doing it for 2 years now and has been re-investing everything hes made so far into hardware because he wants to double his mining rigs and start his own cloud mining groups (scam?).

Anyway my co-worker has been texting and asking for 2 days now about bitcoin and what I think the price will be how much I think he should buy (his friend telling him this was the first he heard of bitcoin). I told him I think its risky, but wouldn't hurt to have some exposure but to consider it as money spent when ya buy them. He signed up at coinbase and is waiting to get approved to buy 2 coins.

In the couple years I've known and been into bitcoin I've talked to a lot of people I know about it. Other then the last bubble this past month was the first time Ive spoken to a few people about it and they were excited about and bought some. I could be wrong, but it just feels like we are at the beginning of another bubble.

The beginning of a bubble is a good time to get in, as long as you can get out before the end.

Improvements in mining technology don't help the total energy used by the network. With all other variables staying the same improved power efficiency of ASICs just brings more ASICs online, keeping the total energy costs in the same ballpark and increase the difficulty.

Equipment cost and most operating costs are fixed so the relation between price and power consumption of the network is pretty straightforward. I am not saying a doubling in price will double the power consumption of the network but any significant increase in price will increase the power consumption.

Mining reward is of course the only thing that will drop the energy use of the network because the reward halves. But the price is doubling faster than the reward is halving and at some point fees will become significant.

Not sure if this is the best place to ask but I've no other idea wtf to do.....could someone direct me to a reputable bitcoin trader please?

Would this work? Have a coin that is worth exactly the same as bitcoin on a different blockchain. However you send 10 coins to this coin that has no mining reward or fee and is merged mined with bitcoin. Thus you will send 10 btc and it shows up as 10 btc on the new coin call it 2017bitcoin. The life of the coin only lasts 1 year. At the end of the lifespan, all remaining coins are sent back to the address that sent them automatically. It might even be part of the Electrum client. Most stores only accept this coin for payment.

For example suppose you have 55 btc on electrum.

You send 10 btc to 2017btc wallet, also on your electrum client.

Thus you have 45 btc and 10 2017btc.

You go to overstock.com and spend 2 btc. Overstock only takes 2017btc. You now have 8.000 2017btc. You do no more transactions. On December 31, 2017 the client automatically send the coins back to your btc wallet. Thus you open you client on July 14th, 2018 and you have 53 btc.

This could all be done without you even knowing 2017btc exists. In 2018 the 2017btc blockchain is obsolete and can be deleted, however 2018btc is started.