4 ms·
But you missed the fact that the difficulty is increasing at a rate that makes old un-efficent hardware mostly useless, even in big numbers. Even ignoring the
by Klathmon 9y ago
But you missed the fact that the difficulty is increasing at a rate that makes old un-efficent hardware mostly useless, even in big numbers.
Even ignoring the power required, you'd need 67+ MILLION AntMiner S3s, and those still are just barely profitable if you are able to get power for $0.03 per KWh, and are still sold for over $100 a piece.
I'd be willing to wager that even if you were able to buy every single S3 that exists you wouldn't even be close.
- amluto 9y agoSo... what happens if the price of Bitcoin stabilizes and then drops enough such that even the most recent generation of miners are no longer profitable if all of them are running?
- Klathmon 9y agoIn that case Bitcoin might be caught in a "big freeze". Bitcoin takes about 2000 blocks to adjust difficulty, so if it becomes worthless overnight, the amount of hash power could drop enough that no new blocks will ever be found, and without any new blocks the difficulty will never adjust. So one player would need to buy the vast majority of all miners, and even then they would only be capable of doing a double spend attack on a dead blockchain.