Re:The Bitcoin Blocksize: A Summary
by pstrateman on Wednesday August 12, 2015 @02:40PM
(#10049750)
> they may choose not to, from the belief that enough of them will turn into $0.16 offered fees in the future
Another miner will pickup those transactions and mine them.
Blocks are either full and there are fees or blocks are not full and fees are approximately zero.
Unfortunately the block size cannot be limited by individual miners.
Re:The Bitcoin Blocksize: A Summary
by maxerickson on Wednesday August 12, 2015 @02:43PM
(#10049767)
This is only true while there is a glorious block reward subsidizing everything.
(Which I realize is for a long time in terms of there being a block reward, but if bitcoin falls by 50%, so does the reward...)
Re:The Bitcoin Blocksize: A Summary
by pstrateman on Wednesday August 12, 2015 @02:54PM
(#10049843)
The marginal cost of mining is actually relatively small for large scale operations compared to the fixed costs.
(In general you cannot get 10+ MW of power without agreeing to pay for installed capacity and energy separately)
Say it is $0.15. A miner can make extra revenue at ~0 cost by filling a block with $0.10 offered fee transactions, but if there are many of them, they may choose not to, from the belief that enough of them will turn into $0.16 offered fees in the future (the cost is clearly ~0 in the short term, it's harder to say what it costs them in the long term to propagate the impression that low fee offers will still eventually clear).