Is Bitcoin Mining Profitable in 2018?

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If you bought all of that, then I might just disappoint you. This article will discuss the version of blockchain technology that is used for Bitcoin cryptocurrency.

I consider the Bitcoin technology itself revolutionary. Unfortunately, Bitcoin has been used for criminal activities far too often, and as an information bitcoin data direct networks income specialist, I strongly dislike that practice. Yet, technologically speaking, Bitcoin is an obvious breakthrough. Since then, for almost nine years, only one critical vulnerability has been found in its implementation, when one malefactor snagged 92 billion bitcoins.

Fixing that required rolling back the entire financial record by 24 hours. Nevertheless, just one vulnerability in nine years is praiseworthy. Hats bitcoin data direct networks income to the creators. The bitcoin data direct networks income of Bitcoin faced the challenge of making it all work with no central system and no one trusting anyone else. The creators rose to the challenge and made electronic money an operational currency. Nevertheless, some of their decisions were devastating in their ineffectiveness.

I am not here to discredit blockchain, a useful technology that has shown many remarkable uses. Despite its disadvantages, it has unique advantages as well. However, in the pursuit of the sensational and revolutionary, many people concentrate on the upsides of the technology, often forgetting to take a sober view of things, thus disregarding all of its downsides. It is for this reason, for the sake of diversity, that I deem it useful to focus on the disadvantages of the technology.

A book that expresses high hopes for the blockchain. Quotes from this book appear throughout this article. You might have supposed that nodes across the world gather something bigger bit by bit. That is totally incorrect. In fact, all of the nodes that maintain the blockchain do exactly the same thing. Here is what millions of computers do:. There is no paralleling, no synergy, and no mutual assistance. There is only instant, millionfold duplication.

Every high-grade Bitcoin network client stores the entire transaction history, and this record has already bitcoin data direct networks income as large as GB. The more transactions processed on the Bitcoin network, the faster the size grows. And the greatest bulk of it has appeared over the past couple of years.

The growth of the blockchain. The growth of HDD capacity definitely lags behind. In addition to the need to store a large chunk of data, the data has to be bitcoin data direct networks income as well. Anyone who has ever tried to use a locally stored wallet for cryptocurrency discovered with bitcoin data direct networks income and dismay that he or she could not make or receive payments until the entire download and verification process was complete — a few days if you were lucky.

Sure, it would be more efficient. Second, clients would then have to trust servers. For example, this could be done in the case of post-stroke memory restoration. If each network node does the same thing, then obviously, the bandwidth of the entire network is the same as the bandwidth of one network node. But do you know exactly what that is?

The Bitcoin bitcoin data direct networks income is capable of processing a maximum of seven transactions per second — for the millions of users worldwide. Aside from that, Bitcoin-blockchain transactions are recorded only once every 10 minutes. To increase payments security, it is standard practice to wait 50 minutes more after each new record appears because the records regularly roll back.

Now imagine trying to buy a snack using bitcoins. If you consider the entire world, that sounds ludicrous even now, when Bitcoin is used by just one in every thousand people on the planet.

For comparison, Visa processes thousands of transactions per second and, if required, can easily increase its bandwidth. After all, classic banking technologies are scalable. You have certainly heard of miners and giant mining farms built next to power stations. What do they actually do? Bitcoin data direct networks income electricity consumed to achieve that is the bitcoin data direct networks income as the amount a city with a population ofpeople would use.

This is true, but the problem is that miners are protecting Bitcoin from other miners. If only one-thousandth of the current number of miners existed, and thus one-thousandth of the electric power was consumed, then Bitcoin would be just as good as it is now. It would still produce one block per 10 minutes, process the same number of transactions, and operate at exactly the same bitcoin data direct networks income.

If someone controls more than half of the computing power currently being used for mining, then that person can surreptitiously write an alternative financial history. That version then becomes reality. Thus, it becomes possible to spend the same money more than bitcoin data direct networks income. Traditional payment systems are immune to such an attack. As it turns out, Bitcoin has become a prisoner of its own ideology.

Mining is still lucrative, and the network is still stable. That is just an illusion, however. An estimate of computing power distribution among the largest mining pools. Gaining access to just four controlling computers would gain someone the ability to double spend bitcoins. This, as you can imagine, would depreciate bitcoins somewhat, and doing it is actually quite feasible. But the threat is even more serious than the above might imply, because the majority of pools, along with their computing powers, are located inside one country, which makes it much easier bitcoin data direct networks income capture them and gain control over Bitcoin.

Distribution of mining by country. Blockchain is open, and everyone sees everything. Thus, blockchain has no real anonymity. It offers pseudonymity instead. I am transferring a few bitcoins to my mother. Alternatively, if I paid back my friend for some lemonade, I would thus let him know everything about my finances. Would you reveal the financial history of your credit card to everyone you knew?

Keep in mind that this would include not only past but also bitcoin data direct networks income transactions. Some disclosure may be tolerable for individuals, but it is deadly for companies. All of their contracting parties, sales, customers, account amounts, and every other little, petty detail would all become public.

Financial transparency is perhaps one of the largest disadvantages of using Bitcoin. I have listed six major disadvantages of Bitcoin and the blockchain version it uses. Is it possible that no one sees the problems? Some people may be blinded, some may simply not understand how the technology worksand others may see and realize everything but feel the system is working for them. Yes, Bitcoin has competitors that tried to solve some of these problems.

Although some of those ideas are quite good, they are bitcoin data direct networks income based on the blockchain. And yes, there are other, nonmonetary applications for blockchain technology, but the main disadvantages are found in them as well.

So, if someone tells you that the invention of the blockchain can be compared with the invention of the Internet in terms of importance, be skeptical. Bitcoin data direct networks income ransomware to Web miners. Problems and risks of cryptocurrencies. Smart contracts, Ethereum, ICO. Alexey Malanov 12 posts. Six myths about blockchain and Bitcoin: Debunking the effectiveness of the technology August 18, Technology. About Bitcoin in general I consider the Bitcoin technology itself revolutionary.

Taxi Trojans are on the way. From ransomware to Web miners Problems and risks of cryptocurrencies Explainer: Don't show me this message again. Products to Protect You Our innovative products help to give you the Power to Protect what matters most to you.

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Seagate buying Xyratex is the latest competitive threat and the firm is said to be retrenching its core HPC business. DDN denies this and, coincidentally, has recently hired itself a chief marketing officer for the first time, one Molly Rector. DataDirect Networks is a substantial - staff - storage startup which makes and sells high-performance storage arrays for the supercomputing, high-performance computing HPC , object storage and big data enterprise markets.

What we have heard from an experienced storage source in Silicon Valley is that troubles are mounting at DDN and it is finding it hard to be profitable in the face of competition from significantly larger companies, such as NetApp with its E-Series Engenio storage arrays.

Our source says that DDN has already had two layoff rounds and another may be imminent, with likely presentation as getting rid of poor performers. Now they have fallen back to Adopter member status and are no longer on the board.

This, we hear, reduced their annual dues by around 90 per cent. Bloch's business networking profile says he was a DDN president from to March It looks as if, after a brief interruption, he's back as president again. Revenues in were boosted by a really large web customer who bought less from them in It was the largest revenue year in DDN's history.

The company's revenue growth curve appears to be saw-tooth in shape with being an upward line and a downward one. What will happen this year? We can easily imagine that Bouzari and Bloch will want it to swing back up. Jeff Denworth, recognised as a highly intelligent communicator with an ability to present situations positively, is now leaving DDN entirely amicably we should stress and Molly Rector is becoming DDN's chief marketing officer CMO: The last major marketing initiative at SpectraLogic involved Black Pearl appliances and a way of storing objects on tape, giving Rector object experience.

Bouzari was quoted in the release about her appointment: What strikes us as curious here are two things. Generally board members are people who have moved on from executive management positions. Generally, again, senior executive positions are filled by recruiting executives already doing the job in another company or up-and-comers, not the mature ex-execs who are given another crack at the whip. One possibility is that the two were put in place to hold the fort while attempts were made to sell DDN, possibly to Cray, but this is just a possibility — and, of course, no one at DDN will give such an idea presented by us any credence at all.

Another possibility was that an IPO was being prepared, the revenue fall made it a struggle and it was eventually canned but, again, DDN wouldn't be expected to talk about such a thing with us. But management team members have left and Bloch has had to return, we hear, to help save the company.

That's one possible way to look at it. Bouzari is CEO and chairman and Bloch is a director and president. They started the company in and, fifteen years later, are still actively running it. He was also a co-founder and board member of Whamcloud. DDN is Bouzari and Bloch's baby, their very own toy. They will not, and need not, relinquish control and there is nobody around who can tell them to.

DDN has no people on its board with equal or larger stockholdings than them who can suggest and advise different courses of action — at least, not with any authority. It is effectively a closed shop run by two seasoned, experienced, hands-on and clearly self-sufficient founders who are not ready to move on. They have done great things with DDN, expect great things from their staff, and more great things are possible, but This is normality in the storage technology business. The chances are DDN will grow through it, perhaps with another cut-back or two and perhaps with some more management changes; the founders want a lot from their execs.

That seems to be Bouzari's and Bloch's way of doing things. It's worked for them in the past and, unless there are big problems we don't know about, there's no reason to suppose that it won't work for them in another run round the block.

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