Re:Coinbase Wants to Be Too Big to Fail
by pjc50 on Thursday September 27, 2018 @05:27PM
(#18088879)
This isn't even true for bitcoin; anyone can fork it, there has been at least one fork already, and the miners can easily decide to hardfork across to keep the block rewards going when they run out. It doesn't help that the miners are increasingly cartelised.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Coinbase Wants to Be Too Big to Fail
by sparkie on Thursday September 27, 2018 @05:40PM
(#18089017)
If miners attempted to hard-fork in inflation, do you think users would follow their chain?
It was already attempted on the first halving from 50BTC to 25BTC. Guess which one won?
Miners don't make the rules. They enforce them. The network of economic users decide the rules that they are willing to validate in their software client.
Re:Coinbase Wants to Be Too Big to Fail
by bduerst on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:15PM
(#18089709)
This fact makes bitcoin even more dangerous. Miners are only going to fork the network in a direction that benefits them, sometimes at the expense of everyone else and the network. This is called tragedy of the commons, and the block-size debacle is an example of that.
Re:Coinbase Wants to Be Too Big to Fail
by sparkie on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:32PM
(#18089804)
The only direction that benefits miners is the direction where they have the maximum potential for profit by selling the coins they earn through transaction fees.
This will inevitably be the network which most people are transacting on.
The actual incentives are a bit skewed currently because transaction fees are dwarfed by the block subsidy.