Hello everyone, I didn't look around the forum very much so please excuse me if this question has been asked alot before. In any case it is not clearly explained on the official bitcoin wiki.
My question is, besides 'regulating' the rate of blocks found, what is the role of difficulty? The emergence of ASICs will probably cause a great increase in difficulty this year. Does difficulty also reinforce the security of the network? I find this interesting because if so, I'd say the bitcoin value can be expected to go up with the prevalence of ASICs since they will lead to a more secure network and might attract more investors.
My question is, besides 'regulating' the rate of blocks found, what is the role of difficulty? The emergence of ASICs will probably cause a great increase in difficulty this year. Does difficulty also reinforce the security of the network? I find this interesting because if so, I'd say the bitcoin value can be expected to go up with the prevalence of ASICs since they will lead to a more secure network and might attract more investors.
I think the difficulty affects the security of the system as well, such that the more difficult it is to create a block, the more difficult it would be to break it. Not 100% sure about that though.
