4 ms·
Not at all. For example Ethereum and Monero etc have floating blocksizes that will adjust due to market demand. The fee market can get pricey for a while, but i
by px43 4y ago
Not at all. For example Ethereum and Monero etc have floating blocksizes that will adjust due to market demand. The fee market can get pricey for a while, but it quickly adapts to new volume. In the early days Satoshi begrudgingly put in a 1mb block size limit to prevent DOS, and later through some underhanded political BS, that limit was basically made permanent.
Also you seem to think that network usage is related to some way to electricity usage. Even today, a single person with a laptop could be the only miner, and the network would still run just fine.
The current block reward on Bitcoin is 900 coins per day, so the upper bound on electricity usage is however much power 900 BTC will get you. That number gets cut in half every 4 years, so generally, the max electricity expenditure is actually going down, except that the price of BTC is currently going up faster than the rewards are going down.
Energy usage is directly correlated to price, not utility. There is a loose connection between utility and price, but since utility got capped in 2015 or so, the price has continued to go up, so that connection is pretty tenuous.
- noduerme 4y ago> through some underhanded political BS There is this weird assumption that Bitcoin was "managed" or that political forces were at work. It was simply a war between some developers and others. Not to you specifically, but in this thread: I find it troubling, this new reflex of ascribing to dark conspiracies what are banal historical facts. The growth of the blocksize was inevitable once it took off; now we have lots of shitcoins, and a few that are stores of value and some that are means of exchange. Lots of hucksters showed up, but no one planned anything. (And looking at the state of things now, it clearly shows). https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/17/bitcoin-xt-alternative-cryptocurrency-chief-scientist https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/17/bitcoin-x... never ascribe to conspiracy what can be ascribed to stupidity.
- njarboe 4y agoUnless they were actually at "war" shooting guns and killing people, groups of people using non-violent means to achieve an end is politics. One of Carl von Clausewitz most famous quotes is "Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln" or "War is merely the continuation of politics by other means". A conspiracy is just a group of people working towards a goal and keeping most of their actions secret, i.e. many groups.
- idiotsecant 4y agoThere is always politics any time more than one person coordinates to do something. Bitcoin was definitely not an exception.
- rchaud 4y agoThere's politics implicit in any situation where one person can stand to gain over others. The instinct to call it a conspiracy may come from the strong beliefs some have that Bitcoin was 'neutral' and designed to not be dominated by a small number of parties.
- nwah1 4y agoMining for rewards is not the only way mining can occur. It can also occur from fees. And since the total number of bitcoins is capped, it will soon only happen via fees. The amount of fees is unlimited, and the total possible energy usage is currently unlimited and will remain unlimited, and scales with use.
- latchkey 4y ago> it will soon only happen via fees The year 2140 isn't my definition of soon.