Re:Inside the Race to Build the World’s Fastest Bitcoin Miner
by ArikBe on Tuesday April 23, 2013 @12:25PM
(#5596103)
I'm not sure I follow, Bitcoins are mined at a rate of one block every 10 mins (on average). The difficulty setting adjusts based on how much processing power is thrown at the problem. Supply is constant.
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Re:Inside the Race to Build the World’s Fastest Bitcoin Miner
by eterm on Tuesday April 23, 2013 @01:14PM
(#5596459)
If the difficultly increases after the coins are mined, then it would always be playing catch-up and actually a flood could occur.
It is my understanding (but I could be mistaken, there is a lot of FUD around BTC) that someone could in theory mine 500 hashes in a ten minute window then 'retire' having boosted the mining rate. This would not only net them a lot of bitcoins immediately but also restrict others supply of bitcoins.
Supply is roughly constant given a slowly increasing mining pool, supply isn't shock resistant.