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Inge
Thread on the continuous decline of the BTC security budget:
twitter.com/MorganTBennett/status/1482411627655933953
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merope
Half the numbers he mentions are irrelevant though
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merope
The security of the network is determined by the hashrate in relation to the number of devices actively mining
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merope
Don't recall the exact numbers I calculated, but the number of bitcoin asics is somewhere in the order of 1-10 million devices (assuming Antminer S9 or S19), for a value of several billion dollars worth of hardware
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merope
The mining incentive for for-profit miners is determined by the coin emission * price - and thanks to the massive pumps in price in the last year, the emission rate of BTC is extremely high
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merope
The only relevant thing in that post is the fees are not fully replacing the decreasing base reward - but that's only part of the picture
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merope
You could have an emission rate of 1 BTC/year, but if that 1 BTC were worth ten trillion dollars, mining would still be more profitable than it is today
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merope
A much bigger threat to mining is the increasing cost of electricity, which forces miners to move to places with cheaper (and often dirtier) electricity, or shut down their operations
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Inge
is determined by the coin emission * price - and thanks to the massive pumps in price in the last year <--- did you mean what you typed? the emission is fixed, only the price increased.
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merope
Yeah sorry, I used the same term for raw emission in btc and for the "emission" in fiat (which is the sum of base reward + fees, multiplied by the price)
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merope
Btc has the highest "emission" in usd, in the range of 500$/second
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merope
Only matched by Eth
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Inge
right. So if the price goes up 2x/4 years, then the total $ emitted will double as the block reward halves. HOWEVER it does mean that the $ securing the network stays the same while the market cap doubles
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pauliouk
I'm guessing the price of asic's scales with the price of BTC?
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merope
Inge: that's right. Though I don't think the market cap is inherently relevant. The "amount" of security does not depend on it, nor would the network become less secure if the market cap went up while the fiat emission stays the dame
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nioc
is the question, what is the worth of the network and what is required to secure it?
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merope
Mining security is not an on/off switch, it's a relative amount. The bigger the mining network, the more resources it takes to attack it. Given bitcoin's mining network size, I'd say it's pretty secure - for the time being
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merope
It would be extremely hard for anyone to come up with another 2 million antminer S19s (or more) to pull off a 51% attack on Bitcoin
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nioc
no need to purchase 2 million miners, just take over 51% of what exists
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nioc
"just"
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pauliouk
would have to be state sponsored no doubt
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merope
Even with all the state sponsoring, it would still require a massive amount of raw resources to manufacture all that silicon
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merope
As for hacking the existing devices/pools, that's a whole other issue
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merope
Ah, found my previous estimates
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merope
As for ETH + ETC, their combiner networks are equivalent to roughly 18 Million Vega gpus, for a rough cost of 7-8 billion USD
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merope
By comparison, the Monero network is ~400k Ryzen 3600X cpus, or ~150k Ryzen 5950X
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pauliouk
hmmm, just need to win a few hundred mil on the lottery, buy a warehouse, hook up some cooling, then buy every Ryzen, mobo and memory combo I can find
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pauliouk
wonder how the network would react if you just dropped like 100K 5950Xs onto p2pool
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merope
That would be roughly 2GH/s. At that rate, you would be better off just solo mining
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pauliouk
I'd still p2pool it, just setup my own sidechain :P
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merope
(And would be in control of nearly 40% of the total network)
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merope
If you're mining on p2pool on your own sidechain with nobody else, then you are effectively solo mining
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merope
Might as well connect the miners directly to the node
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merope
(Or through a proxy, to avoid ddosing your own node)
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pauliouk
would still take a month or so to put together and rack up 100k machines
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merope
And also 100+M USD for the hardware alone
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merope
Plus the warehouse with industrial cooling, plus the people required to assemble all that, plus a cheap energy source that can supply ~25 MW
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pauliouk
cover the roof with solar panels and put a claim in for hybrid power grants :P
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merope
Lol
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merope
That would be quite the big roof
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pauliouk
could probably charge the UPS's with solar :)
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pauliouk
oh and lighting etc... then just run everything else off the mains... so long as there's some kinda solar/renewable energy in use, the government is likely silly enough to give you a 25% discount for utilities
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merope
I assume you're talking about the US?
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pauliouk
UK
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pauliouk
thought I suppose US probably has something similar in the more urm climate friendly states
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merope
Good luck getting a large enough energy storage system that can supply enough power for the night though
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pauliouk
looking at what? peak 300W per rig?
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merope
~250W while mining steadily, from what I've gathered
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merope
(Assuming some efficient tuning)
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nioc
my 3900X runs at 140W from the wall
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merope
Hashrate?
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nioc
14,600
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nioc
3800CHz at 1.025v I think
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nioc
*GHz
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merope
Nice
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pauliouk
pretty damn good
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pauliouk
I haven't measured my 3600, but the overall power usage of the house hasn't gone up over the last year so, probably not terrible
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nioc
my elec costs just went up 10%
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pauliouk
gas/elec combined here, fixed rate recalculated annually
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sech1
I don't think it's physically possible to just buy 100k Ryzen 5950X
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sech1
not in one go at least