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> Just make mining useless. This would make Bitcoin useless. > Cannot the bitcoin developers put in a massive difficulty jump at this point? No, because the

> Just make mining useless. This would make Bitcoin useless. > Cannot the bitcoin developers put in a massive difficulty jump at this point? No, because the miners will continue to run the useful version (for some definition of useful). Changing the algorithm would require a hard-fork and a hard-fork to turn down the network will result in the "new" branch of the fork ... turning down, while the old one continues.

AtlasBarfed 7y ago
Why would people no longer mining make bitcoin useless? There's a supply of existing bitcoins that can be split to ludicrous degrees. Scarcity is already enforced by the difficulty, and a huge difficulty jump won't affect that. If bitcoin can't survive without mining (which IIRC isn't related to transactional processing or any actual use of bitcoins), then bitcoin has a guaranteed uselessness point when the difficulty jumps exceed, I dunno, the output of the sun? As for code changes, what is the lightning network about? Isn't that a code change? And if every major exchange enforced the switch, and miners kept mining coins that the exchanges didn't take, then those coins would be worth much less. I'm not saying the code change is easily done or even technically feasible. But it should be considered. Bitcoin is immoral in the age of human global warming.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
  > Why would people no longer mining make bitcoin useless? Because mining is what secures the network. > which IIRC isn't related to transactional processing Transactions are confirmed by being included in mined blocks. The amount of compute power burned to mine that block, and the following blocks, is what prevents someone from pretending a different transaction (moving the money somewhere else - a double-spend) happened first. > what is the lightning network about? Isn't that a code change? Software running on top of the existing mining network, although downwards-compatible changes were made to enable it. The downwards-compatible is key here. > if every major exchange enforced the switch, and miners kept mining coins that the exchanges didn't take, Then someone would make an exchange that still trades "original Bitcoin" and get rich, and the exchanges would go bankrupt. More sensible and less controversial changes failed or resulted in splits (with the chain that remained downwards compatible being the most valuable one). (Downwards compatible is the easiest approximation I can come up with for the much more complicated reality.)
  - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
    I did not know mining was performing blockchain transactional comps. I thought it was a scarcity mechanism. Thus BTC is a bankrupt idea, since it assumes geometric growth in energy/computation. Time to sell!

AtlasBarfed 7y ago

Why would people no longer mining make bitcoin useless? There's a supply of existing bitcoins that can be split to ludicrous degrees. Scarcity is already enforced by the difficulty, and a huge difficulty jump won't affect that. If bitcoin can't survive without mining (which IIRC isn't related to transactional processing or any actual use of bitcoins), then bitcoin has a guaranteed uselessness point when the difficulty jumps exceed, I dunno, the output of the sun? As for code changes, what is the lightning network about? Isn't that a code change? And if every major exchange enforced the switch, and miners kept mining coins that the exchanges didn't take, then those coins would be worth much less. I'm not saying the code change is easily done or even technically feasible. But it should be considered. Bitcoin is immoral in the age of human global warming.

tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
> Why would people no longer mining make bitcoin useless? Because mining is what secures the network. > which IIRC isn't related to transactional processing Transactions are confirmed by being included in mined blocks. The amount of compute power burned to mine that block, and the following blocks, is what prevents someone from pretending a different transaction (moving the money somewhere else - a double-spend) happened first. > what is the lightning network about? Isn't that a code change? Software running on top of the existing mining network, although downwards-compatible changes were made to enable it. The downwards-compatible is key here. > if every major exchange enforced the switch, and miners kept mining coins that the exchanges didn't take, Then someone would make an exchange that still trades "original Bitcoin" and get rich, and the exchanges would go bankrupt. More sensible and less controversial changes failed or resulted in splits (with the chain that remained downwards compatible being the most valuable one). (Downwards compatible is the easiest approximation I can come up with for the much more complicated reality.)
- AtlasBarfed 7y ago
  I did not know mining was performing blockchain transactional comps. I thought it was a scarcity mechanism. Thus BTC is a bankrupt idea, since it assumes geometric growth in energy/computation. Time to sell!