timbercrasher on Nostr: Lets have a serious discussion about bitaxes. This is a long post so hang in there ...
Lets have a serious discussion about bitaxes. This is a long post so hang in there with me.
The decentralization of the hash power by getting more bitcoiners to host cheap single chip (or a few chips) asics in their own homes is a revolution supporting a noble cause. But I want to speak the unspoken truth. This is not an attack on the revolution but rather a call to arms. Im on the side of fighting for bitcoin and decentralization. There is a serious hurdle hurting these open source miners. The prices of the various different forms of bitaxes are exhorbitant in terms of their fiat/bitcoin price vs their hashing power. We are so close to a break through moment and so close to reaching escape velocity. The hurdle is the chip in the bitaxe. They are using bitmain chips. It is incredible that these little machines can utilze such amazing hardware, but the chips are exclusively produced by bitmain and are expensive to get a hold of. Most of the chips are aquired by the disassembly of larger hash boards from larger asics like the s19 and s21. It is a time consuming process that also raises the cost of a bitaxe. The biggest selling point for bitaxes is that they are fully open source and very efficient. That is absolutely huge in a bitcoin world. But we live in a free market and there is competition on the market that completely smokes bitaxes and leaves them in the wake. You can purchase a Canaan Avalon Nano 3 directly from the manufacturer for $99 US dollars without a power supply. ($130 with manufacturer power supply). The Nano 3 makes 4 terra hash on high power mode for only 140 watts. The nano is not an open source miner but there in some serious value here for your fiat/bitcoin if you want to get into the world of bitcoin mining. As a customer of at home mining solutions, I would purchase the Nano 3 because my dollars produce more hash power. Efficiency is not a serious concern with these tiny miners when most people will only ever buy one, or a few of these at home miners. Im much more willing to toss out the noble cause of open source for a better deal. If I chose to go the bitaxe route, the closest bitaxe in terms of price in relation to the Avalon Nano 3 would be a bitaxe supra for around $120 dollars. A stock supra only makes 600 Giga hash. Thats 6.67 times less hash for the exact same price. Yikes. Even the newest generation bitaxe gamma falls short. A gamma costs about $170 and only makes 1.2 terra hash. So whats the big deal? Its not thats these bitaxe manufacturers are greedy. Its the chip is what drives up the price. Bitmain is the bad guy here. They run a monoply on the most efficient and the most powerful asic chips in the world. Free market participants are willing to buy their products. Bitmain has very little competition and can set the price to whatever they want if people keep buying. Ok, so how do we fix this and really, truly start the decentralized revolution? Its a simple answer but extremely hard to cordinate and fix. We need an open source asic chip that can compete. It doesn't need to be as efficient as what bitmain offers, but it needs to get somewhere in the neighboorhood. Can you imagine a world where bitaxes are under $100 and producing a minimum of 4 terra hash? Do you know that would actually present a serious threat to all of these mining pools with a monoply on all of the hash power? If every single bitcoiner in the United States alone (which is estimated to be about 50k bitcoiners) had an asic that made a minimum of 4 terra hash, that would be a total 200 peta hash. That means the pleb army would mine on average 14 blocks a year. Insane. Imagine if every single bitcoiner in the world had 4 terra hash of mining power? I asked Venice ai what is the estimated amount of people in the world that hold bitcoin. Venice ai said there are 106 million estimated bitcoin wallets holding some amount of bitcoin. Okay, lets do napkin math. Maybe out of that 106 million addresses theres only 500k bitcoiners. Just owning one, 4 terra hash asic in 500k people homes would equate to 2 exa hash total. 139 blocks mined a year on average! There is an average of 52,500 blocks mined every year. It would be 139 block rewards to decentralized miners. Can you see what we are missing out on here? Bitaxe adoption could play out like bitcoin adoption as well. An exponential curve. We need to drive the price down exponentially at all costs.
So the call to action goes out to all of the manufacturers of bitaxes. We are depending on you to combine your voices and/or resources to either develop a partnership, deal or whatever with a chip manufacturer, or someone smart needs to find out how we can offer a decentralized solution that can compete for a fair price on our own. Maybe round up the pleb army to start a bitcoin fund. Like a go fund me. We atleast need to get the talk going.
Once chips are cheap, open source and only produced in a form available for bit axes, rather than disassembly of a larger hash board, people will see the $99 or lower price tag and say, " wow. What an amzing little unit. I'll buy 2". I personally would buy 10 or more. My s19 is way too loud and power hungry. Obviously this is how we plebs win the hash war. But until then, we convince ourselves we are making a difference whilst the hash power stays centralized. Come on now. I know its hard and I can't be a difference by designing a chip myself, but there has to be some kind of value to what im saying here. Decentralization of the bitcoin network is paramount and necessary. This even goes for nodes. Only 20k nodes in the whole world right now. Absolutely pitiful. Every bitcoiner show run a node. Technically you should run a node before you ever buy an asic, but nodes are boring and dont make money. That is an issue for another discussion. So maybe one of you bitaxe manufacturers will see this and mention it to your bitaxe building friends. I bet its already a discussion you have had hundreds of times with them, but just know that we little guys care and want to make change as well. I personally believe bitcoin needs more decentralization. But what do I know. Maybe Satoshi in his wisdom knew the mining power would likely become centralized for a time. A trade off maybe? Or maybe this episode in bitcoins history was meant to happen. Hard to tell. But regardless of that point, power to the pleb army! #bitaxe #bitcoin #bitcoinmining #pleb
The decentralization of the hash power by getting more bitcoiners to host cheap single chip (or a few chips) asics in their own homes is a revolution supporting a noble cause. But I want to speak the unspoken truth. This is not an attack on the revolution but rather a call to arms. Im on the side of fighting for bitcoin and decentralization. There is a serious hurdle hurting these open source miners. The prices of the various different forms of bitaxes are exhorbitant in terms of their fiat/bitcoin price vs their hashing power. We are so close to a break through moment and so close to reaching escape velocity. The hurdle is the chip in the bitaxe. They are using bitmain chips. It is incredible that these little machines can utilze such amazing hardware, but the chips are exclusively produced by bitmain and are expensive to get a hold of. Most of the chips are aquired by the disassembly of larger hash boards from larger asics like the s19 and s21. It is a time consuming process that also raises the cost of a bitaxe. The biggest selling point for bitaxes is that they are fully open source and very efficient. That is absolutely huge in a bitcoin world. But we live in a free market and there is competition on the market that completely smokes bitaxes and leaves them in the wake. You can purchase a Canaan Avalon Nano 3 directly from the manufacturer for $99 US dollars without a power supply. ($130 with manufacturer power supply). The Nano 3 makes 4 terra hash on high power mode for only 140 watts. The nano is not an open source miner but there in some serious value here for your fiat/bitcoin if you want to get into the world of bitcoin mining. As a customer of at home mining solutions, I would purchase the Nano 3 because my dollars produce more hash power. Efficiency is not a serious concern with these tiny miners when most people will only ever buy one, or a few of these at home miners. Im much more willing to toss out the noble cause of open source for a better deal. If I chose to go the bitaxe route, the closest bitaxe in terms of price in relation to the Avalon Nano 3 would be a bitaxe supra for around $120 dollars. A stock supra only makes 600 Giga hash. Thats 6.67 times less hash for the exact same price. Yikes. Even the newest generation bitaxe gamma falls short. A gamma costs about $170 and only makes 1.2 terra hash. So whats the big deal? Its not thats these bitaxe manufacturers are greedy. Its the chip is what drives up the price. Bitmain is the bad guy here. They run a monoply on the most efficient and the most powerful asic chips in the world. Free market participants are willing to buy their products. Bitmain has very little competition and can set the price to whatever they want if people keep buying. Ok, so how do we fix this and really, truly start the decentralized revolution? Its a simple answer but extremely hard to cordinate and fix. We need an open source asic chip that can compete. It doesn't need to be as efficient as what bitmain offers, but it needs to get somewhere in the neighboorhood. Can you imagine a world where bitaxes are under $100 and producing a minimum of 4 terra hash? Do you know that would actually present a serious threat to all of these mining pools with a monoply on all of the hash power? If every single bitcoiner in the United States alone (which is estimated to be about 50k bitcoiners) had an asic that made a minimum of 4 terra hash, that would be a total 200 peta hash. That means the pleb army would mine on average 14 blocks a year. Insane. Imagine if every single bitcoiner in the world had 4 terra hash of mining power? I asked Venice ai what is the estimated amount of people in the world that hold bitcoin. Venice ai said there are 106 million estimated bitcoin wallets holding some amount of bitcoin. Okay, lets do napkin math. Maybe out of that 106 million addresses theres only 500k bitcoiners. Just owning one, 4 terra hash asic in 500k people homes would equate to 2 exa hash total. 139 blocks mined a year on average! There is an average of 52,500 blocks mined every year. It would be 139 block rewards to decentralized miners. Can you see what we are missing out on here? Bitaxe adoption could play out like bitcoin adoption as well. An exponential curve. We need to drive the price down exponentially at all costs.
So the call to action goes out to all of the manufacturers of bitaxes. We are depending on you to combine your voices and/or resources to either develop a partnership, deal or whatever with a chip manufacturer, or someone smart needs to find out how we can offer a decentralized solution that can compete for a fair price on our own. Maybe round up the pleb army to start a bitcoin fund. Like a go fund me. We atleast need to get the talk going.
Once chips are cheap, open source and only produced in a form available for bit axes, rather than disassembly of a larger hash board, people will see the $99 or lower price tag and say, " wow. What an amzing little unit. I'll buy 2". I personally would buy 10 or more. My s19 is way too loud and power hungry. Obviously this is how we plebs win the hash war. But until then, we convince ourselves we are making a difference whilst the hash power stays centralized. Come on now. I know its hard and I can't be a difference by designing a chip myself, but there has to be some kind of value to what im saying here. Decentralization of the bitcoin network is paramount and necessary. This even goes for nodes. Only 20k nodes in the whole world right now. Absolutely pitiful. Every bitcoiner show run a node. Technically you should run a node before you ever buy an asic, but nodes are boring and dont make money. That is an issue for another discussion. So maybe one of you bitaxe manufacturers will see this and mention it to your bitaxe building friends. I bet its already a discussion you have had hundreds of times with them, but just know that we little guys care and want to make change as well. I personally believe bitcoin needs more decentralization. But what do I know. Maybe Satoshi in his wisdom knew the mining power would likely become centralized for a time. A trade off maybe? Or maybe this episode in bitcoins history was meant to happen. Hard to tell. But regardless of that point, power to the pleb army! #bitaxe #bitcoin #bitcoinmining #pleb