I started it, but I got so grumpy about the way mechanic had behaved these last 10 months that I stopped.
If you think there really is a point worth listening to, it makes me curious...but dude was so badly wrong about a lot of stuff, it's gonna be hard to bother.
So I figured that this would, understandably, be most people's response. That said, I actually find almost everything he says in this rant pretty convincing. It's why I've been obsessed with high hashrate home mining since the time of this post.
I only watched the first few minutes, but I already didn't find it very convincing.
He mentioned about Roughnecks mining a BIP110 block and the rest of the miners just ignoring it. But, as far as I remember, the BIP110 chain was never actually ahead of the main chain... so it's not like they were deliberately censoring Roughnecks. They were just building on top of the longest chain, like they're supposed to.
As to some of the other stuff he's saying... I think centralization is a real concern, but the game theory of option value is a relevant point to remember. In that post, I explain how the option to go non-custodial (even if few people actually use it), could be enough to discipline the behavior of custodians. Similarly, the option to break away from centralized mining operators could be enough to discipline the behavior of the large miners, even if no one is actually breaking away. Just some thoughts.
Yeah, I agree that his Bip110 example kind of sucks. They didn't actually even have the support of node runners. That said, I do think this is different than your custody example in that post. If no one actually builds on a censorship resistant block, it's dead in the water. The option still isn't even really there yet. Not a problem if there's a meaningful minority building on it, but the level of mining pool centralization is pretty overwhelming. And probably more concerning, ever since that post I referenced in the comment to @Scoresby, I've been pretty concerned that even with the option, industrial miners just don't care what happens to bitcoin to begin with. They're cashing out for dollars, so there's no incentive one way or the other. Since that post, I've only seen more evidence of this being the case.
I think if we need miners to "care what happens to Bitcoin" we are in big trouble.
Miners, like any other Bitcoin user, seem like they will do what best serves their interests. But more than this, Bitcoin mining being permission less means that even people who hate Bitcoin and want to see it fail can mine. If we require miners to be altruistic, then anyone who wants to attack Bitcoin will mine.
What value do you see home miners bringing that industrial miners do not bring?
Circling back around to this, as it's been eating me up. I think I'm going to really let these thoughts congeal and give them their own post, but here's the quick and dirty.
Last week I had an hour-ish call with a proprietary mining company, picking their brains about getting machines down to Mossel Bay. They were really helpful and generous with their time. They even brainstormed ideas for me that wouldn’t benefit them at all.
At the end of the day, they behaved exactly as you're describing. But here's how that looks with these guys (and honestly every helpful group I've spoken with). The CEO pulled up his software and showed me all of their sites, what's being done, and how the payouts work. He's running script and Equihash rigs that pay him a mix of bitcoin, doge, Zcash, and USDC, which covers the hosting. A L9, on script and an S21 Pro, screaming loud, burning hot, and requiring a hole in the wall, on SHA-256 were about a penny apart in daily profit. His advice for me was to skip mining bitcoin altogether and go for the altcoins. Miners that are home-friendly (read: good for decentralization), are altcoins. Go with them and the pool can convert to bitcoin for payouts. The operations director then told me that they're just more "open minded" then guys like me and other maxis. She's living out your point above, and it's basically led her somewhere else entirely.
If "miners follow their interests" is our security model, then what's going to be secure are altcoins priced in dollars. If we follow incentive as defined above, we all end up mining Doge. I'm not saying its any safer to rely on martyrs. I'm saying the incentives aren't currently aligned. If Foundry begins censoring transactions, these guys lose nothing, because they're already cashing out USDC (which I'm also convinced is basically a CBDC after the Genius act, but that's a whole other rant). The home miner loses a ton though! That's not altruism, it's real skin in the game. Of course it only matters if the home mining world is contributing enough to actually build blocks on top of one another, and I don't think we'll get there even if everyone is running three bitaxes. A decent percentage of bitcoiners running s19s is a different story.
When I told them unequivocally that I'd die on the bitcoin-only hill, they were still gracious with me. So, again, these were on the nicer end of proprietary miners that I've met. That said, it was abundantly clear which of us would scramble to switch pools when the whitelist memo shows up and which of us wouldn't even read it...
When the US and Chinese governments decide to do so, they can just say to the people running Foundry and Antpool that only whitelisted addresses can receive transactions. The industrial miners, who are using those pools and the Antpool proxies specifically because they're easiest to be compliant with aren't going to bat an eye. They're not going to have any of their own transactions stopped in the mempool. So it's the industrial miners that you're counting on to be altruistic if you want them to remain censorship resistant, which just isn't going to happen. We need more high hashrate home miners specifically because it's their transactions that are going to be rejected when this happens. It's actually the home miner who is more self-interested when he mines specifically to keep the network decentralized.
I'm not suggesting that we "require" miners to do anything. I'm suggesting that if we want bitcoin to remain censorship-resistant, in addition to improving privacy options, we need to work on decentralizing mining. Personally, I'm into it for what one might call altruistic reasons as well, but decentralizing mining protects any network user who wants to engage in actual peer to peer transactions.
Anything that comes from Matthew Kratter or "bitcoin mechanic" is simply non-credible and are lies and fallacies. Dismissed without even wasting a second watching this.
You missed the double-irony, sharing it on this platform as well! Honestly, I use other centralized platforms other than just YouTube and stacker.news as well. I'm not sure what that really says about whether we need decentralized alternatives though.
I started it, but I got so grumpy about the way mechanic had behaved these last 10 months that I stopped.
If you think there really is a point worth listening to, it makes me curious...but dude was so badly wrong about a lot of stuff, it's gonna be hard to bother.
So I figured that this would, understandably, be most people's response. That said, I actually find almost everything he says in this rant pretty convincing. It's why I've been obsessed with high hashrate home mining since the time of this post.
I only watched the first few minutes, but I already didn't find it very convincing.
He mentioned about Roughnecks mining a BIP110 block and the rest of the miners just ignoring it. But, as far as I remember, the BIP110 chain was never actually ahead of the main chain... so it's not like they were deliberately censoring Roughnecks. They were just building on top of the longest chain, like they're supposed to.
As to some of the other stuff he's saying... I think centralization is a real concern, but the game theory of option value is a relevant point to remember. In that post, I explain how the option to go non-custodial (even if few people actually use it), could be enough to discipline the behavior of custodians. Similarly, the option to break away from centralized mining operators could be enough to discipline the behavior of the large miners, even if no one is actually breaking away. Just some thoughts.
Yeah, I agree that his Bip110 example kind of sucks. They didn't actually even have the support of node runners. That said, I do think this is different than your custody example in that post. If no one actually builds on a censorship resistant block, it's dead in the water. The option still isn't even really there yet. Not a problem if there's a meaningful minority building on it, but the level of mining pool centralization is pretty overwhelming. And probably more concerning, ever since that post I referenced in the comment to @Scoresby, I've been pretty concerned that even with the option, industrial miners just don't care what happens to bitcoin to begin with. They're cashing out for dollars, so there's no incentive one way or the other. Since that post, I've only seen more evidence of this being the case.
I think if we need miners to "care what happens to Bitcoin" we are in big trouble.
Miners, like any other Bitcoin user, seem like they will do what best serves their interests. But more than this, Bitcoin mining being permission less means that even people who hate Bitcoin and want to see it fail can mine. If we require miners to be altruistic, then anyone who wants to attack Bitcoin will mine.
What value do you see home miners bringing that industrial miners do not bring?
Circling back around to this, as it's been eating me up. I think I'm going to really let these thoughts congeal and give them their own post, but here's the quick and dirty.
Last week I had an hour-ish call with a proprietary mining company, picking their brains about getting machines down to Mossel Bay. They were really helpful and generous with their time. They even brainstormed ideas for me that wouldn’t benefit them at all.
At the end of the day, they behaved exactly as you're describing. But here's how that looks with these guys (and honestly every helpful group I've spoken with). The CEO pulled up his software and showed me all of their sites, what's being done, and how the payouts work. He's running script and Equihash rigs that pay him a mix of bitcoin, doge, Zcash, and USDC, which covers the hosting. A L9, on script and an S21 Pro, screaming loud, burning hot, and requiring a hole in the wall, on SHA-256 were about a penny apart in daily profit. His advice for me was to skip mining bitcoin altogether and go for the altcoins. Miners that are home-friendly (read: good for decentralization), are altcoins. Go with them and the pool can convert to bitcoin for payouts. The operations director then told me that they're just more "open minded" then guys like me and other maxis. She's living out your point above, and it's basically led her somewhere else entirely.
If "miners follow their interests" is our security model, then what's going to be secure are altcoins priced in dollars. If we follow incentive as defined above, we all end up mining Doge. I'm not saying its any safer to rely on martyrs. I'm saying the incentives aren't currently aligned. If Foundry begins censoring transactions, these guys lose nothing, because they're already cashing out USDC (which I'm also convinced is basically a CBDC after the Genius act, but that's a whole other rant). The home miner loses a ton though! That's not altruism, it's real skin in the game. Of course it only matters if the home mining world is contributing enough to actually build blocks on top of one another, and I don't think we'll get there even if everyone is running three bitaxes. A decent percentage of bitcoiners running s19s is a different story.
When I told them unequivocally that I'd die on the bitcoin-only hill, they were still gracious with me. So, again, these were on the nicer end of proprietary miners that I've met. That said, it was abundantly clear which of us would scramble to switch pools when the whitelist memo shows up and which of us wouldn't even read it...
When the US and Chinese governments decide to do so, they can just say to the people running Foundry and Antpool that only whitelisted addresses can receive transactions. The industrial miners, who are using those pools and the Antpool proxies specifically because they're easiest to be compliant with aren't going to bat an eye. They're not going to have any of their own transactions stopped in the mempool. So it's the industrial miners that you're counting on to be altruistic if you want them to remain censorship resistant, which just isn't going to happen. We need more high hashrate home miners specifically because it's their transactions that are going to be rejected when this happens. It's actually the home miner who is more self-interested when he mines specifically to keep the network decentralized.
I'm not suggesting that we "require" miners to do anything. I'm suggesting that if we want bitcoin to remain censorship-resistant, in addition to improving privacy options, we need to work on decentralizing mining. Personally, I'm into it for what one might call altruistic reasons as well, but decentralizing mining protects any network user who wants to engage in actual peer to peer transactions.
Anything that comes from Matthew Kratter or "bitcoin mechanic" is simply non-credible and are lies and fallacies. Dismissed without even wasting a second watching this.
The irony of you sharing this kindo of content by a YouTube link, not a mirror on odysee or whatever, isn’t lost on me.
You missed the double-irony, sharing it on this platform as well! Honestly, I use other centralized platforms other than just YouTube and stacker.news as well. I'm not sure what that really says about whether we need decentralized alternatives though.
We use SN because the NIP for a reddit clone got abandoned, I guess.
But I don’t think we need to create more decentralized alternatives, just use the existing ones.
In this case, Odysse provides YouTube creators with a free channel mirroring service so there’s literally no excuse for not setting that up.
🔗 Privacy-friendly: https://invidious.tiekoetter.com/watch?v=xow_Mha9X4M