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I am a bitcoin owner. That said, I agree that the PoW mining reward is excessive. Right now, a 51% attack on the network costs upwards of $2M/h[1]. That is an

I am a bitcoin owner. That said, I agree that the PoW mining reward is excessive. Right now, a 51% attack on the network costs upwards of $2M/h[1]. That is an obscene amount. I argue this comes from the very high growth not being expected by the creators. Most of the miner rewards right now come from inflation (in spite of inflation being less than 2% per year). This was intended to allow the network to grow permissionlessly - so, anyone can sacrifice real-world resources for some tokens, and they don't have to buy from someone already owning it. The reason such a sacrifice is required is that you need a form of scarcity to prevent a Sybil attack[2]. Otherwise, a single person could spin up countless VMs to fake identities, which would be unfair. Since everyone must have heard of Bitcoin by now, I believe this high reward is no longer warranted, and results in a lot of waste. It should be reduced, to reduce the electricity budget of miners. A larger share of this cost should be borne by people actually using the service - i.e. transaction costs. I believe that Bitcoin should reduce its block time, in order to trigger the reward halvings more quickly. [1] - https://www.crypto51.app/ https://www.crypto51.app/ [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack

anonporridge 5y ago
> I believe that Bitcoin should reduce its block time, in order to trigger the reward halvings more quickly. Regardless of whether this is a good idea or not, it's not going to happen. This would be a hard fork in the network. Bitcoin already went through a massive civil war over the block size, which is a much less contentious issue than the supply issuance rate. It took years just to get the Segwit softfork out the door and years more to be widely used. What you're suggesting would start a civil war that would rage for years, if not decades, and by the time it was finally resolved, the network would have already gone through a halving or two and naturally reduced the miner reward.
- danuker 5y ago
  > This would be a hard fork in the network. > What you're suggesting would start a civil war that would rage for years, if not decades Yes, absolutely. I do believe even governments might react more quickly here, by taxing negative externalities, than this happening. But I wish it did, so people would stop worrying about the power used.
postalrat 5y ago
Thats only 40 bitcoins per hour. Pretty cheap considering how many coins many people have.
thebean11 5y ago
$2M/h seems pretty low. A multi-day attack would be super affordable for any billionaire or government.

anonporridge 5y ago

> I believe that Bitcoin should reduce its block time, in order to trigger the reward halvings more quickly. Regardless of whether this is a good idea or not, it's not going to happen. This would be a hard fork in the network. Bitcoin already went through a massive civil war over the block size, which is a much less contentious issue than the supply issuance rate. It took years just to get the Segwit softfork out the door and years more to be widely used. What you're suggesting would start a civil war that would rage for years, if not decades, and by the time it was finally resolved, the network would have already gone through a halving or two and naturally reduced the miner reward.

danuker 5y ago
> This would be a hard fork in the network. > What you're suggesting would start a civil war that would rage for years, if not decades Yes, absolutely. I do believe even governments might react more quickly here, by taxing negative externalities, than this happening. But I wish it did, so people would stop worrying about the power used.

postalrat 5y ago

Thats only 40 bitcoins per hour. Pretty cheap considering how many coins many people have.

thebean11 5y ago

$2M/h seems pretty low. A multi-day attack would be super affordable for any billionaire or government.