Merged Bitcoin - Part 3
- Thread starter Dr.Sid
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- bitcoin cryptocurrency
arthwollipot
Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
Except that no it won't, because there are many other cryptocurrencies that are equally as problematic as bitcoin, and people will switch to mining those instead.
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
Not necessarily. The miners still get to collect the transaction fees in the block and if these are worth enough money then the mining competition continues.
Suddenly
No Punting
Maybe I missed something but if that mining competition stops doesn't the currency grind to a halt or has already done so?
How long until that happens, do you think? The charts I have seen look more like a limit curve, that will approach but never actually reach 21 million.
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
Mining competition doesn't "stop". It just decreases if the block rewards are no longer profitable.
The reverse of what is happening today would occur: the mining difficulty would decrease (to keep the block rate constant) so that the remaining miners would need less energy to mine.
For this to happen, the number of transactions would have to decrease steadily so that less can be raked in via transaction fees or the price of bitcoin would have to decrease steadily over the long term. Anything's possible.
trustbutverify
Penultimate Amazing
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Why would the currency grind to a halt? It's valuation would still be dynamic, due to a variety of factors reflecting utility and speculation. Mining, however, would grind to a halt, of course.
trustbutverify
Penultimate Amazing
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That's a good question.
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
You should have read my post above.
As long as bitcoin has value, mining will never grind to a halt. At worst, it could become so easy that it could be done on an ordinary PC again (unlikely).
arthwollipot
Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
Except that it wouldn't, as I have pointed out. They won't be mining bitcoin any more, but they'll be mining something.
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
Why do you think that nobody will mine bitcoin anymore? Do you think that they don't want the transaction fees?
arthwollipot
Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
No, for the purposes of the current discussion it would be because there is no more bitcoin to mine. Remember, this started when someone said that bitcoin mining would stop when it hit the hard cap.
arthwollipot
Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
Here it is.
My response to that is that the miners will simply mine something else, and thus the energy problem will not be solved at all.
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
You clearly don't get it. As well as the "block reward" (currently 6.25 BTC) miners also get a "fee reward" which is the total of all the fees that are offered by the transactions in the block. This is why you need to offer a decent fee to get your transaction included in the blockchain. The average fee reward of the last 6 blocks mined is about 0.06 BTC (about $2,500 at current prices) (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/bloc...3057cc645c0e5221357d7982aadc1104de38ac7b688df).
It was always envisioned that once the "hard cap" was reached, miners would mine for the fee reward.
Of course, this will take a long time because the block reward halves every leap year. At that rate, it will take 10 years before the block reward is less than 1 BTC, 22 years before the block reward is on a par with the fee reward and the block reward won't (effectively) go down to zero until about 2140.
A lot of things can happen between now and then. In the mean time, don't expect the energy wasted on mining to decrease any time soon.
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psionl0 said:
So ... something will continue, that some call "mining," and others call "computations," then. We have no idea how efficient or inefficient this energy usage will be, do we?
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
The fact remains that there will always be a reward for adding a block to the blockchain ("mining" for want of a better word) so there will always be an incentive to "mine".
It is logical to presume that as the rewards for mining decrease, so will the energy dedicated to mining but we are talking about decades into the future and that is crystal ball territory.
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TurkeysGhost
Penultimate Amazing
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https://www.yahoo.com/now/blockchain-city-citydao-falls-victim-144234562.html
Damn, it's just like the old frontier days of getting screwed in a shady land deal. The spirit of the old west is alive!
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
This is nothing new. The entire internet (whether it involves cryptos or not) is the wild west.
Everybody should know by now that the following maxims apply:
- Every unsolicited text or Email is a scam.
- "Click Here" means "DON'T Click Here"
- Every word posted on the internet, whether privately or not, is a public broadcast.
Governments digging up dirt on private individuals are still a greater threat on the internet than scammers.
jeremyp
Philosopher
That is just blatantly false. Thousands of people are scammed on the internet every day - actually, probably every minute. On the other hand, if you think your government is interested in digging up dirt on you, your ego has almost certainly got the better of you.
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
So what? Only people who think they can make great riches with minimal effort are susceptible to scams. More sensible people have nothing to fear from scammers.