Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over the last 30 days

Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by geofft on Monday December 21, 2015 @09:56PM (#10775500)

Stupid question: if control of 50% of the hash power is so unimportant, why does Bitcoin rely on hash power anyway? Why not simply have a consensus system without proof-of-anything?

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by ozmbie on Monday December 21, 2015 @11:28PM (#10775826)

If you remove proof-of-work, then the question then becomes: what else do you measure consensus by? A few other crypto currencies have tried other metrics but they all aim to for the same thing: removing the need for human trust.

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by wizeman on Monday December 21, 2015 @10:55PM (#10775722)

Well, consensus between whom? How would you do distributed, anyone can participate at any time, byzantine consensus but still prevent Sybil attacks?

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Re:Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over t... by circlecrimson on Monday December 21, 2015 @10:08PM (#10775548)

I think the reason is because then there would be no way for new coins to be mined and given to those who are rewarded for ensuring the security of the network.

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