>if we turned off all bitcoin miners today, bitcoin would go to zero instantly You talk about this like this is an easy action with profound consequences. It

>if we turned off all bitcoin miners today, bitcoin would go to zero instantly You talk about this like this is an easy action with profound consequences. It's like saying If everyone killed themselves, there would be no people. This is trivially true, but it's not going to happen. >(as its worthless without continuous resources being pumped into it). All forms of transaction has some form of resources put into it. The quantity of resources is what is at issue here. Bitcoin does not need the massive quantity of resources it currently uses to operate. That is an artifact of the high value of Bitcoin coupled with the subsidy of the mining reward. I'm not sure if the creator(s) of Bitcoin evaluated what kind of value a Bitcoin should have over time, The mining reward halving rate suggests that they were not expecting it to have a continual average rise above 20% per year (which makes sense because that would be insane). To date, however, it _has_ been averaging more than that, resulting in an increase in value of the mining reward relative to other currencies. Should the value drop or simply not increase for a extended period, the mining subsidy becomes less. Then only the most efficient miners can make money mining and the difficulty drops to a new equilibrium as the ones who can no longer make money drop out.