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I'm not 100% sure, but I believe there is a catastrophic situation that could leave Bitcoin fully stranded. Because that difficulty factor changes over many mi
by Klathmon 9y ago
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe there is a catastrophic situation that could leave Bitcoin fully stranded.
Because that difficulty factor changes over many mined blocks, if the ASICs all suddenly stopped mining that chain, there might not be enough hash power to ever find another valid block.
And until so many blocks are found, the difficulty won't change, so the chain will be fully and completely dead (at least on the scale of months)
- splintercell 9y agoCan even 1 ASIC card owner mine enough next few blocks?
- Klathmon 9y agoI seriously doubt it. It might be able to get one at some point, but almost definately not multiple. For a rough idea of the scales, just look at the current reward for finding a block (12 btc) and it's current value (about $31k USD). Miners are just barely breaking even on ASICs, so a $31k miner should be able to pay for itself over it's lifetime. So unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars of miners, you aren't going to realistically find a block, and unless you have millions of dollars of ASICs you aren't going to be able to mine enough to keep a chain from dying on your own.
- splintercell 9y agoSo I presume that a hard fork would become economically very viable at that point.
- Klathmon 9y agoBut then you've just created a new coin that shares a bit of history with another one.
- splintercell 9y agoYes, and unless you're in the mood of arguing over Theseus's ship paradox, with hundreds of thousands of stakeholders. Essentially this currency would become what Bitcoin is today.