4 ms·
We might be talking past each other, the point I was disputing is that miners are incentivized to expend energy, which is not true. They are incentivized to pro
by thebean11 6y ago
We might be talking past each other, the point I was disputing is that miners are incentivized to expend energy, which is not true. They are incentivized to produce hashes.
If you hold the hardware constant then hashrate correlates to energy usage obviously, but it's not quite the same thing.
- chriswarbo 6y agoArguably. Hashrate was chosen as a proxy for compute power (which was chosen as a proxy for time). Compute power (or hashing power, now we have ASICs) is effectively a measure of energy, since the hardware cost gets amortised.
- lxgr 6y agoIt does lead to the same thing though if you think it through: There's always a constant number of transaction space available in a 10 minute window, which is auctioned off to Bitcoin users and yields a certain sum of unclaimed mining fees. This sum is importantly unrelated to either the current hashrate or the energy efficienc in standing up that hashrate. As long as the total hashrate is "cheaper" than that, in terms of hardware and electricity costs, there is an economic incentive for somebody to start mining (more) – so somebody will.