BT Daily News: Bitcoin miners don’t exist – but bitcoin validators do

por CHarvey 26 de septiembre de 2022

1. Bitcoin miners don’t exist – but bitcoin validators do

With the Ethereum 2.0 merge, Ethereum has moved from mining with PoW, to using validators with PoS. Mining and miners as we know them will no longer exist on Ethereum, and claims of up to 99.5% reduction in energy usage have been cited.

These energy savings are a red herring as it comes at the cost of decentralization. Decentralization is a fundamental first principle of cryptocurrencies, without it they are useless. A centralized public cryptocurrency's energy usage, even if tiny, is 100% wasted as the network has failed. Bitcoiners know this, and it's why they will never change the code.

So, back to the framing effect. The term validators has much more positive connotations towards it due to DINOs marketing efforts, and it's not as loaded of a term as mining. Less negative connotations means people will perceive the term more positively. Avoiding the framing effect by using a more media friendly term like validator will make it easier for people to understand the gain of PoW (More energy use, but decentralized) is greater than the loss of PoS (Less energy use, but centralized).

DINO has done all the work here by shifting the narrative to being PoS > PoW. The least we can do is leverage this effort for our benefit as they have done time and time again using the bitcoins brand to justify their Rube Goldberg machine.

So, calling bitcoin miners, bitcoin validators can prevent the framing effect from occurring and shift the narrative towards PoS < PoW. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum using the same term also makes discussions contrasting the two less nuanced making it easier for people to grasp. It's also more of a technically correct and explicit term as producing valid blocks is what miners (validators) do.

Below are the mining related terms we should change:
Bitcoin mining pools = Bitcoin validator pools
Bitcoin miners = Bitcoin validators
Bitcoin mining = Bitcoin validating

2. Three Reasons Bitcoin Is Oversold Like Crazy Right Now

The Bitcoin Hash Rate Hit All-Time High in September

Bearing in mind that exchange market prices are ultimately seeking to evaluate fundamentals, the network’s fundamentals are strong. In fact, the Bitcoin network’s hash rate marked a new all-time high in September.

Bitcoin Miners Keep Adding ASIC Units and Mining Facilities

Meanwhile, even with the hash rate sky high, miners keep building and building onto the infrastructure. That’s incredibly bullish for bitcoin’s long-term prospects.

For example, CleanSpark Inc., a Nevada-based bitcoin miner, recently spent $33 million to acquire a turnkey mining facility in Sandersville, Georgia. The publicly traded company (NASDAQ:CLSK) has guided investors to expect it to continue adding ASIC miners to its fleet through 2024.

Institutional Investors Aren’t backing Down

Another strong leading indicator for a future bull run is the avid and growing interest from institutional investors. Nasdaq, for instance, is one of the latest Wall Street incumbents to begin rolling out a custody service for institutional investors to get into crypto.

Institutional money is both smart and conservative. As the more risk-averse hedge funds, big banks, and traditional finance companies lean into crypto services, investors will notice the long-term bullish trend.

3. Ethereum Post-Merge Update: Where have the miner rewards gone?

With macroeconomic conditions dictating the overall market sentiment and price-action, it can feel like little has changed since Ethereum’s merge to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. The price of ETH has dropped 14.4% since the merge while the strength of the U.S. dollar has surged.

However, in the background, the merge has caused substantial changes to the tokenomics of ETH. As many readers might already know, the change from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to PoS means that the miners who had been previously incentivized to build and validate the blocks for the Ethereum mainnet are no longer needed.

Though the near term looks like it will be considerably volatile for all risk-on assets due to the global economy and geopolitical outlooks, it is an exciting time if you are a fan of Ethereum. The merge was an incredible feat and demonstrates the exceptional skills of the devs contributing to Ethereum’s code and vision.

Additionally, ETH stakers are seeing higher APYs as validators incorporate other revenue streams into the rewards they payout to stakers. Finally, we haven’t yet seen the full potential of what the ETH supply reduction will really imply. When activity starts to pick up again on mainnet and gas prices start to climb, we could see ETH become deflationary. These scarcity shocks will bring new dynamics to the market that could see ETH’s price rapidly move to the upside.

4. ASIC Repair – D-Central Expands ASIC Repair Center Despite Economic Uncertainty

D-Central offers a range of services related to Bitcoin mining. Notably known for its ASIC miner repair service. D-Central’s robust suite of mining services makes it an ideal hardware procurement partner. Its expertise in antminer repair and hash board repair of all kinds makes it a natural place in Canada to repair its equipment.

D-Central has been offering its services to bitcoin mining participants of all sizes since 2016. Its antminer repair service is well suited to some of the market’s largest mining organizations. D-Central is now in seduction mode with manufacturers to offer its warranty services.

D-Central is already a partner of Zeus Mining and Thanos Mining, and their services are displayed on the two respective portals. D-Central is also a redistribution partner of ARC Testers and PicoBT Hashboard Testers.

With a large inventory of parts and knowledge, D-Central has all the tools you need for your ASIC repair. D-Central has also launched its antminer repair training course in the greater Montreal area.

5. How do crypto mining pools work?

A cryptocurrency mining pool is a collection of miners that work together as one entity to augment their chances of mining a block and share rewards among each other in proportion to the computing power contributed by them in successfully mining a block.

The mining pool operator manages activities such as recording the work performed by each pool member, managing their hashes, assigning reward shares to each member and even the work to be performed by them individually.

In return, a mining pool fee is deducted from the rewards distributed to each member, which is computed based on the pool-sharing mechanism and depending on how these cryptocurrency mining pools share rewards, they can be of the proportional type, pay-per-share type or completely decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) pool type.

6. Advantages and disadvantages of a crypto mining pool

Cryptocurrency mining pools offer even smaller miners the opportunity to utilize their computational resources to earn a regular income without having to invest heavily in developing a dedicated mining rig that can cost millions of dollars.

Periodic payouts, clear and real-time visibility of the rewards potential and benefit from the professional management of a pool operator are just some of the advantages of joining a crypto mining pool.

However, not all crypto mining pools are safe, as demonstrated by Poolin, which recently announced that it was suspending BTC and Ether (ETH) withdrawals due to liquidity concerns. Moreover, considering that crypto mining pools make money by deducting a mining pool fee from rewards earned by mining activities, the actual earnings for each pool member are considerably lower than what is possible in the case of being a sole miner.

What’s more, is that the equipment needed for pursuing even mining pool operations can be very expensive and profits can be disproportionately affected by any increase in electricity or internet costs.