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I wonder what Bitcoin reward halving will do when it next happens (2016). It should certainly make it much less worth investing in as much electricity, and sho

I wonder what Bitcoin reward halving will do when it next happens (2016). It should certainly make it much less worth investing in as much electricity, and should thus bring down the carbon footprint.

kahoon 13y ago
When Charles Stross is talking about "carbon footprint" he ignores the not even comparable amount of resources that the current world wide banking infrastructure devours.
- vkou 13y ago
  The banking infrastrucutre devours resources, and provides liquidity. What you should compare the carbon footprint of BTC with the carbon footprint of mints and treasuries.
- VMG 13y ago
  I like to compare it to gold mining
  - deleted 13y ago
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Jtsummers 13y ago
If the BTC reward drops too low the fees will start going up. As long as they're able to collect sufficient fees I wouldn't expect the number of miners to decrease.
maxerickson 13y ago
It depends on whether mining activity has saturated the reward by then. (current hardware seems to still be returning more than 10x the electricity cost, based on squinting at http://minr.info/ http://minr.info/ Edit: And that is after the price drop.)