If I understand this requirement correctly, any government can get information about any of their citizens after they add KYC info. That could increase persecution. Forget a small number of users being exempted from mining. An entire country like China could prohibit their citizens from mining, which is likely after recent crackdowns.
Bitmain hasn’t thought this through, or perhaps they did and don’t care anymore.
IMO a line has been crossed. As always I want what is best for Zcash, and in this case, it has completely flipped my opinions about ASICs (specifically, Bitmain).
From what I can tell right now bitmain needs cash flow and in order to get that from the Bank of China they need greater regulatory compliance, I also think thats why they sent those coupons, besides their lower recent earnings they knew this was gonna piss people off, soften the blow somehow, idk
That doesn’t even make sense, if you don’t register you forfeit any orders pending, no one else is affected
It says right on the email, if you don’t want to do it, don’t
you can’t buy anything from that website until you do
That’s the revocation part, all your information will be deleted if you revoke, top of the email says it could be blocked, it’s a gamble like I said
I don’t advise one way or the other, I hope your right, it seems to me like bitmain didn’t want to do this because if they had they would have done it a while ago so their hands are tied, they’re bound to have lost a decent percentage of their entire customer base over this too (also counter intuitive to business), idk
Bitmain demonstrably cannot be trusted as competent to keep such a database secret, since their customer database has leaked before.
This information is putting potential buyers of the hardware in danger of any future crackdowns (regardless of where they buy from; not just if they are in China).
It sets a precedent that mining can be considered somehow suspicious or disrespectable. This is an offensive violation of privacy.
You can do another ID but it is manually reviewed. It would be nice if American or European companies would compete if coins will not fork to keep ASIC’s off the networks.
But will they keep KYC data on an online server? I’d guess that once verification is confirmed data gets stored on offline istance/backup. Wouldn’t see any valid reason to keep such sensitive data on a productive server instead of just storing it locally… If offline storage ever gets leaked it would be bitmains end .
Many GPU retailers register ID card or passport to keep track of their personal limits, I don’t see how this should be any different. If you don’t feel safe sharing your personal ID: pick another solution or pick another supplier.
I personally don’t see any downside on this decision but only a more regulated and fair market (note the limit of 150k)
I think this sets a completely new aspect to ASICs that if had been enforced when the Foundation Governance panel was voting would likely have shifted the outcome. But for now Zcash Company has to make the call to implement a hard fork or not there isn’t an easy answer but make no mistake, inaction is a choice. The pace at which things are changing is simply too fast. Even if the Foundation Board voted tomorrow to recommend a hard fork they are powerless to actually do so. In the future hopefully the Foundation will have the development support to sustain the codebase but as it stands now they do not.
If Zcash Company is greatly offended by this action they are the only ones who currently have the power to do something about it.
For the moment, Innosilicon seems to be the only other option (which I’m not a fan of due to the way they pre-mine). If Bitmain is requiring KYC, you can be sure that Innosilicon will also be required to add it.
@bitcartel would this undermine the open-hardware/open-manufacturer design idea? If the manufacturers are requiring info that they can’t safely store, which also goes against privacy, I don’t see how anything but GPUs would work.
Given Bitmain is the leader in the space, I tend to agree that where Bitmain goes, others will follow. Whatever prompted this decision will probably apply to other manufacturers too.
The Foundation is best placed to provide an update on their open-hardware idea. My only thought here would be that the hardware business is infamous for being tough and unforgiving. As an example, Siacoin who developed mining hardware for their network, now plan to temporarily fork the network away from Bitmain devices [1], while at the same time are being sued by their own supporters [2] [3].
I’m not sure about that as (correct me if i’m wrong), Bitmain is the only manufacturer in Mainland China. Inno I’m pretty sure is Hong Kong based and although same country technically different rules apply. I think if they were required to do it they would have already posted it.
Bitmain aleady has your name and address. I just gave them an expired Drivers License and they marked me as verified. I still have some concerns but my main one was who/which regulatory was asking for this. I thought is was US/EU which I 100% do not want them to have. If it’s China making sure purchasers are not nationals or reselling to nationals then I’m more on the fence.
I’d like more options in Asic TBH, In GPU world we have 2 which is really just 1. Now again in Asic land we have 2, one is excellent sol to watts but is maybe probably pre-mined? ( is there hard proof on that yet) the other is not as efficient but is cheaper and requires you to give up identification. I consider asicminer to be fake so they dont count.
There are options although these Asic manufacturers need to be shown who’s actually running the show. So for 2020 either go POS or give us another hardware reset but this time the hardware should be created by ZEC.
Design an asic and license it out the same nvidia does or the way Arm does it. Or do it in house. It should be this or POS. Either way if you treat hashrate as equal to currency then ZEC should be in control of it’s inflation not Inno amd nvidia bitmain.
If I had to speculate, the main reason they are doing this is because they deal with huge amounts of Bitcoin being paid for thier hardware and thier aspirations of becoming a US publicly traded company make these transactions incompatible with US laws if a US citizen is using unreported Bitcoin income to purchase equipment. They have been selling miners to US citizens for awhile now and this could be perceived as a tax loophole by the US.
