Bitcoin mining cost is based on hashrate complexity - not number of miners. Whereas hashrate will go up and down due to a number of factors, the general movement is upwards as less BTC are available to mine. This is exasperated by "halvening" that happens every 4 years. The cost of power to mine is relatively fixed cost. The upwards complexity level just represents less BTC output from mining, yet same power cost. Add to this the cost per BTC for mining, and you have a loss based economy. Why was this done in the architecture? Because they banked on Moore's law creating faster computing hardware so that it would keep up with mining complexity increases. That makes sense, however Moore's law and BTC mining complexity doesn't follow any mathematical predictability, so there will be times when BTC mining is unprofitable, and then times when it is. What makes these "bear markets" longer, however, is price speculation and as I don't believe BTC has found its natural price levels, it ceases to be a store of value since value cannot be held for any long time without high risk. It would be reasonable to hold based on the scarcity factor of BTC, but that assumes adoption rates are either maintaining or increasing. Current numbers do not suggest that. I'm not bearish on BTC, as I believe from a technology standpoint it is WAY better than Fiat currency alternatives. However just as Beta didn't win the video tape format wars, it isn't always the best technology that wins out. I do see the potential of a digital currency being widely adopted for worldwide commerce, but I'm just not sure if BTC is going to be it. I do see it as an asset class that isn't going away, however. It is just whether you see upwards potential in pricing and for the short term I'm not sure I can sit on that side of the fence right now. Lightning is great for commerce, but it isn't out yet and it still will require settlement in BTC. Although that might be days later, retail vendors need their cash to purchase new stock to sell, so it will create further mining needs and if there are less miners out there due to profitability, it could reflect in quite high mining fees again.
I'm not going to repeat my bearish position on Steem since it is in the post.
I did reference the power of Google in terms of algorithms for search and recommendations. YouTube recommendations are the key in its success, and there definitely needs to be a viewing portal/app that plays dTube on large screens (e.g. Apple TV, Roku, Android TV, etc.) that supports the viewers ability to hide spam content and only focus on content that is measured in popularity (not upvotes, but view count), subscriptions, and quality recommendation algorithms that hide spam and low grade content. Also the ability to filter by language is needed (I can't watch content in a language that I don't speak, so if it stops me finding content that I can consume, I'm not going to watch the entire network). Maybe much of this could be managed by quality applications that do this, but those apps need to be monetized to get the right developers onboard, and I'm not seeing any economical way to achieve that right now. I'd happily pay money to use a dTube viewing app (I supported the development financially of one for AndroidTV) but it is hard for developers to make a living doing this, so it really never achieved its true potiential.
When I looked into whether or not Bitcoin miners would all start operating at a loss in the future, I read that the complexity of the math problems that miners solve will decrease once miners start going offline.
The article I read said that feature was built into the blockchain to prepare for bear markets like this @beunconstrained.
In regards to Steem, you did mention that YouTube's recommendations was their 'secret sauce' but you never implied that Steem-based apps could fix their major content issues by implimenting similar recommendations.
@steeveapp is already doing this and I have found good authors through their service.
Thanks for sharing this @beunconstrained I watched the whole video.
So it will become more profitable for the miners that remain once some of the big mining operations go offline, but Bitcoin cash might take a serious hit.
RE: BCH. I never had any faith in it. When I discovered the truth behind ASICBoost and how Bitmain had been gaming the system so that they would get blocks before everyone else, I knew that the industry had to leave Bitmain big time. The fact is when you get a massive upswell in money coming in as we saw in 2017, greed and illegal/unethical practices take place to steal as much of the gold as they can. This has happened since the dawn of time, but with technology so much of this can be hidden from plain sight. The implementation of SegWit with Bitcoin was not only a sorely needed upgrade that would reduce mining fees and exchange fees dramatically, but also something all the exchanges didn't want. But eventually they had to cave. When it came to mining, the fact that Segwit implemented code that would bypass ASICBoost meant that Bitmain were left to play fair in the mining world again. They looked for other ways to regain their power, and one way was to buddy up with Roger Ver and pump a fork in Bitcoin. The truth is that Segwit and Lightning Network would remove the need for a fork, but at the same time, remove the advantages Bitmain would have. It seems that Roger Ver decided to do a deal with the devil here, and BCH was born. It was unnecessary and his efforts would have served the community better if he had pushed Segwit adoption by exchanges earlier, but he wanted bigger blocks. They got it, but I think the crypto community may have been smelling a rat all the time. So BCH.... It was dead to me when it first came out, and it is still dead to me. They have even tried to resurrect it with the new ABC and SV versions, but again they are being pimped by those in the community that don't have a long standing level of trust and you can't do business without trust. So BCH.... Not for me.
I think that there was a massive call to make money from no human labor effort (a practice I am 100% agreeing with), but using the fast changing world of technology to do it. What most tech people forget is that if you think that you can invest in a technology and not have to immediately look for the next thing when you release your product or service, then you are in the wrong business. Such is the case with crypto miners. They knew the math and they knew the risks, and many extended themselves way too far, to the point that they could not survive a bear market.
It is the old story of those that "haven't been around the block" have to learn the hard way that markets go up and markets go down. The real players are those that can make it through the down markets.
Thanks @beunconstrained and I agree with you about the real players being able to make it through the down markets.
I didn't buy any Steem at any of the all-time highs and I'm scattering my purchases over the course of at least a year to Dollar Cost Average at an amount that I am comfortable with.
Hopefully that is enough to get a really good position in Steem and do well throughout the bear market and afterwards.
I know it's possible that Steem will never go back up but I generally love using Steem-based apps so I have a different outlook than you because of that.
P.S. I appreciate the videos you are forwarding and will probably watch it during the day tomorrow.
I just tried @steeveapp. I must admit that it is an improvement to vanilla Steemit or Steemconnect, but the recommendations are pretty poor for me. Maybe it learns more as I use it, but at this point although it does help, it doesn't remove the low grade posting quality from my life. And since I don't have the time to sit down and read through posts on it for more than 15 minutes a day, I really need something like this to permeate into d.Tube for me. But it might be early days yet, so I'm not going to write it off - I will, however, stick by my criticism in that I think the level of problems here outweighs the benefits at this time. If that is to change, I'll reconsider my time investment here, but at this point I'm not yet feeling the optimism. As I said, that may change in the future, and I do pivot on these things given the appropriate evidence.
Posted using Steeve, an AI-powered Steem interface
Yeah @steeveapp still isn't seamless either. It works well on my Android phone but not so well on my iPhone.
I personally enjoy @steemit and @steeveapp more than Facebook and YouTube but I expect things to improve in the future.
I never really watched YouTube videos and I don't really enjoy Facebook that much.