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Re:PayPal to allow cryptocurrency buying, selling and shoppi... by phocion on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @02:02PM (#24850393)
How is the underlying trust mechanism inefficient? You can run a fully validating Bitcoin node on an old laptop without any issues. Even a raspberry pi can handle it.
Re:PayPal to allow cryptocurrency buying, selling and shoppi... by throw51319 on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @06:06PM (#24852753)
Yeah but isn't it like, as the number of transactions increase the computing power must increase?

So if you had the world transacting on the blockchain ledger, it would take a crazy amount of computing power just to validate?

Re:PayPal to allow cryptocurrency buying, selling and shoppi... by phocion on Thursday October 22, 2020 @12:13AM (#24854809)
The computing power used for proof-of-work is not proportional to the number of transactions. Computationally, it's relatively cheap to verify the entire transaction history.

The real energy consumption comes from miners who use a crazy amount of computer power to secure the network. Bitcoin's transaction history is immutable because changing it would require an even crazier amount of computing power - too much for any malicious actor who tries to attack the network.

The amount of energy used is a feature, not a bug. There are no alternative designs known that could replace proof-of-work while keeping its security assurances, permissionless participation, fair distribution of coins, unforgeability, etc.

Re:PayPal to allow cryptocurrency buying, selling and shoppi... by xur17 on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @07:21PM (#24853371)
No, that's not how it works.
Re:PayPal to allow cryptocurrency buying, selling and shoppi... by throw51319 on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @07:27PM (#24853414)
So why do they have farms in china for bitcoin mining?