4 ms·

Would lower the carbon footprint of the mines.

• wmf 8y ago
  The "losing" miners would continue mining on a separate chain (e.g. Monero Classic) as long as it was marginally profitable. They wouldn't just throw away their hardware.
  • Kadin 8y ago
    Only until someone does the same thing to the other chain. The logical next step is for the miners leaving the biggest chain to concentrate on a chain where they can successfully pull off the same attack that just drove them away, and on down the line until all chains have been taken over by one large participant each. The steady-state is a reduction in mining activity across all public blockchains by ~50% or so, although that's probably an upper bound that wouldn't actually be reached.
• QML 8y ago
  In theory, if all members of the cartel were to follow the rules, then yes. However, Bitcoin mining suffers from the same problem that Californian farmers face when there's a drought -- the tragedy of the commons [1]. In both scenarios, there is an individual incentive to deviate from the rules set: with Bitcoin, it would be with people secretly mining; with farmers, it would be with people secretly taking more water than their allotment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons