Re:Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in ...
by estaseuropano on Monday February 08, 2021 @08:41AM
(#26064268)
I always understood that there is only a limited number of transactions in each block. So higher transaction number = higher block number needed and therefore likely higher competition and higher transaction cost.
This means that more blocks needed = more miners motivated to mine.
Does the higher number of 'failed' mining not also increase with the number of miners?
And proof of work increases with each block does that not imply higher energy cost per mined block?
Re:Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in ...
by londons_explore on Monday February 08, 2021 @08:45AM
(#26064319)
> I always understood that there is only a limited number of transactions in each block.
Correct.
> So higher transaction number = higher block number needed
No. The rate blocks are made is fixed (on average), and that limits the total transaction capacity of the whole network. That's why people are working on things like the Lightning Network as a way to add more transactions.
Other efforts to either have more blocks per hour or more transactions per block have (mostly) failed.
Cost of running the network also goes down with time as fewer bitcoins are issued as block rewards.
It goes up with the price of bitcoin, as more miners spend electricity on mining.
Those things have historically led to increased energy costs for the network, but in the future they could well lead to decreased energy use too.