I email Laszlo Hanec about GPU mining of Bitcoin
2010 Apr 28
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I email Laszlo Hanec about GPU mining of Bitcoin @ Satoshi Nakamoto
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Satoshi Nakamoto
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satoshinakamotonetwork@proton.me
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https://satoshinakamoto.network
Last week I received an email from Laszlo Hanec. He said he has
successfully using GPU card in his computer to mine Bitcoin, which was
much more effecient than CPU. I replied him as follows.
A big attraction to new users is that anyone with a computer can
generate some free coins. When there are 5000 users, that incentive may
fade, but for now it's still true.
GPUs would prematurely limit the incentive to only those with high
end GPU hardware. It's inevitable that GPU compute clusters will
eventually hog all the generated coins, but I don't want to hasten that
day. If the difficulty gets really high, that increases the value of
each coin in a way since the supply becomes more limited. The supply is
the same: 50 coins every 10 minutes.
But GPUs are much less evenly distributed, so the generated coins
only go towards rewarding 20% of the people for joining the network
instead of 100%.
I don't mean to sound like a socialist, I don't care if wealth is
concentrated, but for now, we get more growth by giving that money to
100% of the people than giving it to 20%. Also, the longer we can delay
the GPU arms race, the more mature the OpenCL libraries get, and the
more people will have OpenCL compatible video cards. If we see from the
difficulty factor that someone is using too much GPU, we can certainly
pick this OpenCL stuff up again then. Maybe my effort to maintain GPU
innocence is running out of time. It's worked out so far.
Satoshi
I email Laszlo Hanec about GPU mining of Bitcoin
2010 Apr 28 See all postsSatoshi Nakamoto
satoshinakamotonetwork@proton.me
https://satoshinakamoto.network
Last week I received an email from Laszlo Hanec. He said he has successfully using GPU card in his computer to mine Bitcoin, which was much more effecient than CPU. I replied him as follows.
A big attraction to new users is that anyone with a computer can generate some free coins. When there are 5000 users, that incentive may fade, but for now it's still true.
GPUs would prematurely limit the incentive to only those with high end GPU hardware. It's inevitable that GPU compute clusters will eventually hog all the generated coins, but I don't want to hasten that day. If the difficulty gets really high, that increases the value of each coin in a way since the supply becomes more limited. The supply is the same: 50 coins every 10 minutes.
But GPUs are much less evenly distributed, so the generated coins only go towards rewarding 20% of the people for joining the network instead of 100%.
I don't mean to sound like a socialist, I don't care if wealth is concentrated, but for now, we get more growth by giving that money to 100% of the people than giving it to 20%. Also, the longer we can delay the GPU arms race, the more mature the OpenCL libraries get, and the more people will have OpenCL compatible video cards. If we see from the difficulty factor that someone is using too much GPU, we can certainly pick this OpenCL stuff up again then. Maybe my effort to maintain GPU innocence is running out of time. It's worked out so far.
Satoshi