3 ms·
If mining becomes unprofitable, miners will stop mining and the total network hashrate will go down. The protocol will adjust by making mining easier, until it
by ufo 9y ago
If mining becomes unprofitable, miners will stop mining and the total network hashrate will go down. The protocol will adjust by making mining easier, until it balances out at one block being mined every 10 min.
In a competitive market we should expect that mining costs (energy consumption) would converge to the mining reward, which is currently at 12.5 bitcoin per block. (I don't know how competitive mining really is at this moment though)
Of course, it is important to remember that if the mining difficulty becomes too low it gets cheaper to launch a 51% attack on the network.
- beat 9y agoThat's a tragedy of the commons problem. No one is incentivized to mine less. The price then sets itself against the cost of hardware arms racing and electricity.