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Are the drawbacks of Bitcoin (massive global electricity usage, makes email/malware extortion scamming much easier) worth the advantages (the ability to anonymo

• sparkie 8y ago
  Bitcoin is going to drive research into renewable (cheaper) energies faster than all of the G20 combined. The reason is simple: Mining profitability is measured in Hashes per Joule. Increasing hashes means bringing down the price of mining equipment, which is happening already, and it is reaching the limit of Moore's Law, meaning that the mining equipment will have a much longer lifetime, and the amount of energy it will burn in that lifetime will dwarf the cost of the chip. In effect, the "Hashes" in the above equation will become negligible - mining profit will be measured solely in Joules. If miners want to remain competitive, their profit will be the difference between the bitcoin reward and the cost of their electricity. The mining reward is unpredictable, but the subsidy is going to decline over time. The clear path to increasing profitability then, is to reduce expenditure on energy! Miners have an absolute requirement to invest in cheaper energies, because if they don't their competition will, and they will go out of business. Industrial mining is a race to see who can develop the cheapest, most abundant, lowest maintenance energy solutions.