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Topic: if the number of transactions doesn't pick up by 8/16 miners will have to quit (Read 4081 times)

sr. member
Activity: 365
Merit: 251
Moore's law is about the number of transistors on a processor. Processor speed is generally a byproduct, but hasn't kept up in percentage terms for quite a while now.
That's mainly because most software written for general purpose CPUs doesn't scale well to many threads. Mining does scale well, so I'd expect hash power to increase with the number of transistors.

Minnig will always remain profitable for "enough" people. ALWAYS.
That remains true until all Bitcoins are created. Then the only reward is transaction fees which as of right now is pretty much nothing.
Total transaction fees will surely increase over time. Either by the number of transactions increasing, or the fee per transaction, or both. At the moment mining is effectively paid for by inflation. As that ends, we may find that Bitcoin transactions are no cheaper than credit card ones.
full member
Activity: 136
Merit: 100
The endgame for Bitcoin is either rise to power or dive into oblivion. The former ensures high enough fees by virtue of its design.
Genius.
newbie
Activity: 30
Merit: 0
The endgame for Bitcoin is either rise to power or dive into oblivion. The former ensures high enough fees by virtue of its design.
full member
Activity: 126
Merit: 100
if only there where other coins that could be mined... that wouldn't have a black reward reduction at that exact same time, thus providing an alternative , man wouldn't something like that be sweet? Like a Lite version of bitcoin... or some sorts of alternate coins, altcoins if you will. But that is just crazy talk, it would never happen.
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1008
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
That remains true until all Bitcoins are created. Then the only reward is transaction fees which as of right now is pretty much nothing.

If Bitcoin isn't any larger than it is now then in a hundred years or so it won't really matter.  Realistically even a decade from now Bitcoin will be much larger or it won't exist.

oh yeahh....thats right, mining new coins will continue for some time.  boy Satoshi thought of everything Smiley
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
That remains true until all Bitcoins are created. Then the only reward is transaction fees which as of right now is pretty much nothing.

If Bitcoin isn't any larger than it is now then in a hundred years or so it won't really matter.  Realistically even a decade from now Bitcoin will be much larger or it won't exist.
sr. member
Activity: 342
Merit: 250
The block reward is scheduled to be halved on around august 2016.
when that happens unless the amount of transactions fees rises to compensate for the reward drop,
mining will become unprofitable and the hash rate will drop rapidly.
what can be done to prevent this  Huh
What needs to be prevented, exactly? And why?

People saying bullshit like "mining will become unprofitable" clearly haven't got a clue how mining and the adaptive difficulty works.

Minnig will always remain profitable for "enough" people. ALWAYS.

That remains true until all Bitcoins are created. Then the only reward is transaction fees which as of right now is pretty much nothing.
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1008
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
if bitcoin continues its dominance over other cryptos and also reaches a certain
size, the tx fees could be large.

...or it could get overtaken by another coin (although we'll see it coming).
will be interesting.  the thing about alt coins competing with bitcoin
is they have such low adoption and low relative value, with maybe
the exception of litecoin.  so, no one can really say right now what
will happen because there are too many unknown variables.
full member
Activity: 136
Merit: 100


I'm confident that if the network doesn't double in hash once it matures every year aka grow in accordance to Moore's law, then the network will become insecure and miners will abandon it for other, more miner friendly, PoW currencies.

How do you figure?  the network is supposedly already more powerful than the world's top 500 supercomputers combined.  If it shrinks a little bit,
it's still plenty secure.

What do you mean by "miner friendly"
What I mean by miner friendly is a cryptocurrency that has more than one revenue source for miners, or an inflationary PoW cryptocurrency.  A cryptocurrency with a fixed amount of bitcoins will eventually solely rely on tx fee's to support mining growth.  An inflationary currency will rely on tx fee's as well as block reward.  The only question is the amount of inflation that is required to balance mining profits and price stability.
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1008
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political


I'm confident that if the network doesn't double in hash once it matures every year aka grow in accordance to Moore's law, then the network will become insecure and miners will abandon it for other, more miner friendly, PoW currencies.

How do you figure?  the network is supposedly already more powerful than the world's top 500 supercomputers combined.  If it shrinks a little bit,
it's still plenty secure.

What do you mean by "miner friendly"
newbie
Activity: 42
Merit: 0
luckily we got 5KaymNfFPhs1bp44zxYMopHKdDYyMxww4YJ2MJmE6GEz4Y8fxzi    to funnel money into everyone's account and cause inflation  Roll Eyes
full member
Activity: 136
Merit: 100
There are several aspects to consider, but is likely to be profitable forever.

Just two out of many:

- ASIC miner companies price per GH/s is based on BTC market price.( Which is abusive practice IMO ) That's why they sell it to you instead of mining, they decide how much you may profit if anything at all. The actual manufacturing cost is very low in comparison to street price, so there is a big margin to be reduced.

-  Difficult should adjust with people giving up.


 

PoW cryptocurrencies cannot rely on a decrease in hashrate to increase mining profitability because the security of the network is derived from the hashrate.
full member
Activity: 136
Merit: 100
Sweft's Law:  The network hashrate of a proof of work cryptocurrency must rise at a rate at least equal to that of Moore's Law to provide minimal network security.
Moore's law is about the number of transistors on a processor. Processor speed is generally a byproduct, but hasn't kept up in percentage terms for quite a while now.

The security of Bitcoin's network is that it's always more profitable to play by the rules than to break them.

I don't know what you mean by it's more profitable to play by the rules than to break them.  Who is it more profitable for?  This generalization is vague and has hardly any evidence supporting it and even if it was sound it's reasonable to assume that people would sacrifice profit to destroy competition.  So the premise is irrelevant.

I'm confident that if the network doesn't double in hash once it matures every year aka grow in accordance to Moore's law, then the network will become insecure and miners will abandon it for other, more miner friendly, PoW currencies.
sr. member
Activity: 364
Merit: 257
There are several aspects to consider, but is likely to be profitable forever.

Just two out of many:

- ASIC miner companies price per GH/s is based on BTC market price.( Which is abusive practice IMO ) That's why they sell it to you instead of mining, they decide how much you may profit if anything at all. The actual manufacturing cost is very low in comparison to street price, so there is a big margin to be reduced.

-  Difficult should adjust with people giving up.


 
hero member
Activity: 493
Merit: 500
Sweft's Law:  The network hashrate of a proof of work cryptocurrency must rise at a rate at least equal to that of Moore's Law to provide minimal network security.
Moore's law is about the number of transistors on a processor. Processor speed is generally a byproduct, but hasn't kept up in percentage terms for quite a while now.

The security of Bitcoin's network is that it's always more profitable to play by the rules than to break them.
legendary
Activity: 2674
Merit: 2965
Terminated.
There is a certain amount of SHA-256 ASIC mining gear in existence and this mining gear just can't magically "disappear".
Presumably it can switch to alt-coins, though.
To some alts, yes.
full member
Activity: 136
Merit: 100
This is a well known problem I described back in 2011 and extensively wrote about it.  I created a law for all proof of work crypto currencies that is known as Sweft's law.

Sweft's Law:  The network hashrate of a proof of work cryptocurrency must rise at a rate at least equal to that of Moore's Law to provide minimal network security.

The thread is here of anyone wants to read it.


https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-deflationary-problem-12109
full member
Activity: 126
Merit: 100
If the price of bitcoin doubled by then, the monetary reward in $USD would be the same when the reward is halved
this
newbie
Activity: 9
Merit: 0
If the price of bitcoin doubled by then, the monetary reward in $USD would be the same when the reward is halved
member
Activity: 87
Merit: 10
The future decrease in mining payouts will artificially increase the value of mining before the drop in mining payouts.
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