Everyone will tell you to run your own node. My bitaxe costs less than my node and uses about the same amount of electricity. An s9 is even cheaper these days. Mining is still seen as elite. It shouldn't be. Currently doing both, mining is less hassle and costs less than running your own full LN node. Hash because you are helping secure your savings not for a profit incentive. Once we fix that narrative and point people to entry level miners we can make progress distributing hash power. Instead we keep telling everyone they need the biggest newest miner to profit or don't bother and the ones who buy an s21 will probably still lose at residential prices unless they are using the waste heat. Plus they are out millions of sats when they finally give up.

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James Pierog's avatar
James Pierog 1 year ago
Mining pool game theory for censorship resistance is non-trivial. Your bitaxe or army of bitaxes will not stop compliant pubcos and pools from orphaning your blocks filled with blacklisted transactions. For that you need substantial hashpower (+30% of global hashrate) to ensure non-OFAC compliant transactions are able to be settled. That means big international miners cooperating to resist censorship, and big pools resisting censorship. It’s not as simple as virtue signalling with a desktop toy if you are actually considering the ramifications of state censorship of the base layer.
It isn't just my "desktop toy." It it's about changing the culture until everyone is running them to secure the network and not just for an immediate profit motive, the same way everyone should run a node. That will drive down profits and force some of those bigger players to shut down too. Bigger hodlers should hash more, I just used the bitaxe as an entry level example. If you have 1 bitcoin I think you should at least run a node and 1 bitaxe, minimum. How much per month should you be willing to spend to secure a larger stack? It scales up from there. If you have 100 coins I think a much larger hashrate is appropriate. Any losses should be thought of as the recurring security cost of keeping your life savings secure. That other security first coin some people like to bring up is hopelessly unprofitable to mine at any electric cost and any CPU efficiency. That is because everyone mines as a matter of course. Bitcoiners could take a lesson. Mining isn't a thing you do for a profit motive. It is more of a civic duty, like picking up trash in the local park.