Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
by sjeohp on Monday February 18, 2019 @05:15PM
(#19194985)
Mining gold gets harder over time. If you want more gold that's the price you pay.
Trust-less consensus may be the same. Nature doesn't care either way.
Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
by ForHackernews on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @06:13AM
(#19198162)
Nature has nothing to do with it. Bitcoin is a poorly-engineered human-designed, human-built system.
Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
by sjeohp on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @02:13PM
(#19201842)
Math has everything to do with nature.
Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
by ForHackernews on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @04:21PM
(#19202934)
Endlessly re-calculating SHA-256 over and over is not some beautiful mathematical principle.
Yes, that's exactly the point. Bitcoin is insanely inefficient because PoW is insanely inefficient. Unlike other "inefficiencies" where there is a logical relationship between "energy spent" and "useful work accomplished", with PoW there is no such relationship since the energy isn't spent doing useful work (i.e. processing transactions). Yes, more power into the network makes it "more secure" by making it "more expensive" to perform a 51% attack. The increased expense is distributed across the network in the form of increased difficulty. If a 51% attack was already implausible (which most bitcoin enthusiasts would say is true), then making it even more expensive doesn't actually do anything useful.