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your understanding of bitcoin is very lacking. miners never waste any energy, they spend it to acquire proof that they spent it. that proof has value and while

your understanding of bitcoin is very lacking. miners never waste any energy, they spend it to acquire proof that they spent it. that proof has value and while value of the proof is larger than market value of bitcoin rewarded for the proof - miners will keep mining. also miners are not middlemen - they don't control transactions, they don't control the peer to peer network. they are there to publish the proof and get their reward. you really should inform yourself on the topic before debating it.

jayd16 8y ago
Miners are literally there to skim value out of a transaction. They're middlemen. And it is a waste. There are plenty of more efficient ways to make a transaction. I get that bitcoin is designed around this waste but that's hardly an excuse.
- keymone 8y ago
  There is zero waste. You don’t understand bitcoin. Bitcoin is not about transaction efficiency or throughput, use MySQL for that. Bitcoin is about secure ownership of money, peer to peer exchange and immutable fiscal policy. What you call waste is simply price for some level of security that isn’t backed by any armies. Edit: also, no, miners aren't middlemen, that's just another misunderstanding on your part. middleman has control over the process they facilitate, miners have no control over anything but construction of blocks and how much energy they are willing to spend. you could argue miners can choose to ignore transactions coming from me (if they manage to figure out how to identify them), but it's a competition of independent parties so there will always be other miners that do not choose to ignore me. for that to be an issue big enough to call miners middlemen you'd need majority of miners to collude on something quite obvious and demonstrable, which would undermine bitcoin project itself, rendering miners' own investments in bitcoin and infrastructure worthless - not in their interest. besides, with confidential transactions this entire point will be moot.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Bitcoin is not about transaction efficiency Hold on, the response to “Bitcoin is inefficient with energy” is that efficiency doesn’t matter? That isn’t moving the goalpost so much as removing it.
    - keymone 8y ago
      you missed a word there it seems? Edit: seems like you've edited your message. next time try to be more polite and mark your edits. i'm not saying efficiency doesn't matter, i'm saying primary goals of bitcoin are different.

jayd16 8y ago

Miners are literally there to skim value out of a transaction. They're middlemen. And it is a waste. There are plenty of more efficient ways to make a transaction. I get that bitcoin is designed around this waste but that's hardly an excuse.

keymone 8y ago
There is zero waste. You don’t understand bitcoin. Bitcoin is not about transaction efficiency or throughput, use MySQL for that. Bitcoin is about secure ownership of money, peer to peer exchange and immutable fiscal policy. What you call waste is simply price for some level of security that isn’t backed by any armies. Edit: also, no, miners aren't middlemen, that's just another misunderstanding on your part. middleman has control over the process they facilitate, miners have no control over anything but construction of blocks and how much energy they are willing to spend. you could argue miners can choose to ignore transactions coming from me (if they manage to figure out how to identify them), but it's a competition of independent parties so there will always be other miners that do not choose to ignore me. for that to be an issue big enough to call miners middlemen you'd need majority of miners to collude on something quite obvious and demonstrable, which would undermine bitcoin project itself, rendering miners' own investments in bitcoin and infrastructure worthless - not in their interest. besides, with confidential transactions this entire point will be moot.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Bitcoin is not about transaction efficiency Hold on, the response to “Bitcoin is inefficient with energy” is that efficiency doesn’t matter? That isn’t moving the goalpost so much as removing it.
  - keymone 8y ago
    you missed a word there it seems? Edit: seems like you've edited your message. next time try to be more polite and mark your edits. i'm not saying efficiency doesn't matter, i'm saying primary goals of bitcoin are different.