After a long hiatus from mining anything, I recently bought a BitAxe Supra and pressed it into service. The reason I got back into it wasn’t so much that I expected to actually mine a block successfully, but rather because of the ease with which it was to set up and start mining. There was also a little bit of satisfaction realizing that this was supporting the disparate and decentralized needs of Bitcoin mining knowing that mining has become largely centralized in a way through the large industrialized pool operations.

Looking forward, I do wonder what effect the eventual reduction of the block rewards will do to the large mining operations. If the price per Bitcoin doesn’t increase at a rate enough to offset the eventual reduction of block rewards, industrialized mining operations might dwindle. It seems as if that has already been happening somewhat. Maybe this will have the effect of lessening the (potential) influence of the large operators. I worry about some large pool operator(s) requiring members to run customized mining software to be part of the pool that could hijack consensus on the Bitcoin network.

Lastly, I bought my BitAxe solely with Bitcoin. I’m liking having the option to buy purely with Bitcoin. The Bitcoin economy needs more of that.