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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 24th, 2023

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  • The gist of you comment is valid and points out a major flaw:
    miners need to operate at a gain.
    With shrinking amounts of BTC being created by the network for producing blocks (that reward getting halved each 210,000 blocks), that gain is at risk, because it can be doubted whether transaction fees can cover the gap.
    With that gain being at risk, the network security is going to be at risk.

    Ethereum did the right thing and aligned ETH holders and block producers by switching from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
    That also reduced the ecological footprint to a tiny fraction of what it was before.




  • Isn’t it the other way round?
    Difficulty drops because miners are losing money while mining and shut down miners, which by protocol makes the Bitcoin network adjust to the resulting difficulty (happens each 2.016 blocks afair).

    Let more and more miners shut down and you get an idling amount of mining power capable of attacking the network. Why would they do that you may wonder. Well, shorting BTC, attacking the network and cashing in could be a way to recoup their losses. Mining equipment isn’t cheap and letting it idle makes no money.
    I’m not saying this will happen soon or at all. I’m just saying it can happen. It’s one of the flaws of proof of work (PoW).









  • Yeah, like let’s complain about lithium having a limited supply (which can be recycled until the cows come home) while burning fossil fuels all the while - which are also limited but gone after having been burned. The cherry on top is burning them pollutes the air and causes climate change.
    Aside from new mining techniques and new battery technology there’s still the option to improve the situation by moving people and goods onto rails and operating the trains directly by electricity and not through batteries - a technology already available. It just needs to be implemented at more places.
    I’m aware that this is no solution that fits all situations, but I’m damn sure a lot of situations would be improved by having more rails/trains.