Book Image

Bitcoin Essentials

By : Albert Szmigielski
Book Image

Bitcoin Essentials

By: Albert Szmigielski

Overview of this book

Blockchain is being billed as the technology of the future. Bitcoin is the first application of that technology. Mining is what makes it all possible. Exploring mining from a practical perspective will help you make informed decisions about your mining setup. Understanding what the future may hold for blockchains, and therefore for mining, will help you position yourself to take advantage of the impending changes. This practical guide starts with an introduction to Bitcoin wallets, as well as mining hardware and software. You will move on to learn about different mining techniques using the CPU, GPU, FPGA, and ultimately the ASIC as an example. After this, you will gain an insight into solo mining and pool mining, and see the differences between the two. The book will then walk you through large-scale mining and the challenges faced during such operations. Finally, you will take a look into the future to see a world where blockchain-based applications are commonplace and mining is ubiquitous.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Bitcoin Essentials
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 8. The Future of Bitcoin Mining

In this chapter, we will speculate about the future of Bitcoin mining. This is rather a fun chapter, as we can't be absolutely certain about what will happen. We can however, make educated guesses about where things may be headed. We will explore the possible ways in which mining may either become very centralized or go the opposite way and become decentralized.

There has also been a concern that mining pools have become too big. However, we think those concerns are not justified. After Ghash.IO became, for a brief moment, the biggest pool with more than 50% of mining power, miners moved their rigs to other pools and Ghash withered to about 3% of the network hashing capacity.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

  • Further centralization of mining power

  • Decentralization of mining and mining chips in all kinds of devices

  • Eliminating Proof of Work (PoW) in favor of something else

  • Can we do without mining?