Running Bitcoin uses a small city’s worth of electricity

Re:Running Bitcoin uses a small city’s worth of electricity by ZenoArrow on Monday October 02, 2017 @03:35PM (#15387183)

> "My best hope is that there will be some kind of OPEC cartel that agrees to limit production."

Those limits were baked into the design from the start. In the current design there are only 21 million Bitcoins that can be mined, and we're approximately 80% of the way to that target.

http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/

Also, Bitcoin is designed to be harder to come by as time goes on. The number of new coins issued diminishes over time. See the Supply Growth section here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

"12.5 bitcoins per block (approximately every ten minutes) until mid 2020, and then afterwards 6.25 bitcoins per block for 4 years until next halving. This halving continues until 2110–40, when 21 million bitcoins will have been issued."

There will come a time when Bitcoin mining is no longer profitable. If the scaling problems with the transactions are solved in time, we may see more people trading in Satoshis (fractions of a Bitcoin). The scaling problems are pretty hard to solve though, it's probably going to take a hard fork to make Bitcoin a true alternative to traditional government-backed currencies.

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Re:Running Bitcoin uses a small city’s worth of electricity by VMG on Monday October 02, 2017 @04:18PM (#15387542)

I am aware of this, what I meant was a limit on hashrate

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Re:Running Bitcoin uses a small city’s worth of electricity by ZenoArrow on Monday October 02, 2017 @05:15PM (#15388033)

Hashrate is also limited by design:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty#What_network_hash_rate...

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Re:Running Bitcoin uses a small city’s worth of electricity by VMG on Monday October 02, 2017 @05:31PM (#15388139)

Each miner has an incentive to outcompete other miners. A mining cartel can agree to keep difficulty and hashrate low. It is also comparable to a truce in a military conflict.

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Re:Running Bitcoin uses a small city’s worth of electricity by ZenoArrow on Monday October 02, 2017 @06:20PM (#15388458)

> "A mining cartel can agree to keep difficulty and hashrate low."

Won't work. If a mining cartel agrees to keep difficulty and hashrate low, they're just making it easier for those outside the cartel to mine more Bitcoin.

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Re:Running Bitcoin uses a small city’s worth of electricity by VMG on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @05:38AM (#15391233)

With unused mining hardware reserves they could smash outsiders by ramping up the hashrate.

Cartels usually don't last forever, but they can last for a while. In the case of bitcoin, it could reduce total energy consumption.

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Re:Running Bitcoin uses a small city’s worth of electricity by ZenoArrow on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @12:04PM (#15393382)

In one comment you're suggesting a cartel should keep the hashing rate low, in another comment you're suggesting the same cartel should increase the hashing rate to keep out the competition. What are you really proposing? Keeping it low until any form of competition shows up? That competition is always likely to be a factor for as long as Bitcoin mining is popular.

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Re:Running Bitcoin uses a small city’s worth of electricity by VMG on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @07:31AM (#15399719)

> Keeping it low until any form of competition shows up?

Exactly. This is similar to how price dumping works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)

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Re:Running Bitcoin uses a small city’s worth of electricity by ZenoArrow on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @04:41PM (#15404420)

You're not listening. I'm suggesting it'll never work for Bitcoin as the available competition is ever present. A cartel gains nothing by mining at a slower rate.

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