Why issue New Bitcoins to fewer & fewer people ?

NicholasB54

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Quote from: secbc on December 18, 2013, 08:29:12 PM

The hashing itself is the confirmation of transactions that have taken place, so this important for the entire Bitcoin system.

To get people to do this work there needed to be a way to incentivize people, hence the "reward" for solving the block, which is the issuance of new coins to that person.

The reason it takes a lot of hardware now is because alot of people are trying to earn these rewards and the Bitcoin protocol self adjusted the difficulty of solving these blocks to keep it on average around 10 minutes between blocks.

So, if noone else started mining after 2 years ago then we would still be good with few kHash/sec

Excellent, got it, thank you.

secbc

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The hashing itself is the confirmation of transactions that have taken place, so this important for the entire Bitcoin system.

To get people to do this work there needed to be a way to incentivize people, hence the "reward" for solving the block, which is the issuance of new coins to that person.

The reason it takes a lot of hardware now is because alot of people are trying to earn these rewards and the Bitcoin protocol self adjusted the difficulty of solving these blocks to keep it on average around 10 minutes between blocks.

So, if noone else started mining after 2 years ago then we would still be good with few kHash/sec

NicholasB54

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Quote from: bumpk1nK on December 18, 2013, 07:52:48 PM

Quote from: NicholasB54 on December 18, 2013, 07:40:19 PM

Is there a technology reason requring high processing power for mining that justified this situation ?

If you mean why useless mining is required (finding hashes), because it is decentralized way how to prove you doing some work and you cannot cheat it

Ok, Yes that's one question why the useless hashing ?
Yes it is decentralised but why does the hashing rate have to keep burning more and more electricity ?
If a few kHash/sec was Ok 2 years ago (a guess I've no idea if it was) why does it need 9 Thash/sec globally today
I guess that boils down to why do we (sorry 'they') not alter something else

I know there are 2 separate processes - processing blocks and issuing coins - I think the issuing of coins happens based on time - so it looks like it started out as some form of merit payment system Huh

??

bumpk1nK

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Quote from: NicholasB54 on December 18, 2013, 07:40:19 PM

Is there a technology reason requring high processing power for mining that justified this situation ?

If you mean why useless mining is required (finding hashes), because it is decentralized way how to prove you doing some work and you cannot cheat it

NicholasB54

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Quote from: Sheldor333 on December 18, 2013, 06:56:08 PM

Well simply it had to be that way. Those with money will always be ahead of us regular people, simply because they have money, they do so. I don't see a way to distribute BTC without having this problem. You can't simple hand them out since then they wouldn't have any value. As for a small group having a lot of them. Consider that 100 BTC richest addresses already have about 500.000 BTC or even more. At beast that is 100 people, which I highly doubt, and that is just 100 addresses. Even I who have about 0.0001 BTC have 2 addresses, I don't know even why.
So it's hard to many any kind of currency that can be equally distributed without some problems. People will be people no matter what you do. It will take time, probably a lot of it till we get even close to what we have in mind as perfect society.

Thanks for taking the time to reply

Is there a technology reason requring high processing power for mining that justified this situation ?
You seem to be saying No there isn't - it's just the way of the world - yet Bitcoin at another level wishes to upset the norms

Surely the brain power that has brought Bitcoin this far could manage something a lot more equitable, if that was desired.

Not sure I accept it would be worthless if more equitably or meritoriously distributed, in the extreme if each of the 7 billion people alive has 3 mBTC then each BTC has some value because everyone wants it to have value. It may be a small value and not a collectors item, but it
could still be used to send money anonymously across the globe
could still be de-centralised
could still be provably unique

Not sure how many US$ are in existence probably a lot more than the 21 million BTC that will eventually be circulating - that still manages to maintain some value.

Edit Added : Ref the 100 top owners point you made - The existing already issued BTC are likely better/more broadly distributed than the remainder that will be mined by machines costing thousands of dollars each - far fewer home PCs and home based hardware mining going forward.

Sheldor333

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Well simply it had to be that way. Those with money will always be ahead of us regular people, simply because they have money, they do so. I don't see a way to distribute BTC without having this problem. You can't simple hand them out since then they wouldn't have any value. As for a small group having a lot of them. Consider that 100 BTC richest addresses already have about 500.000 BTC or even more. At beast that is 100 people, which I highly doubt, and that is just 100 addresses. Even I who have about 0.0001 BTC have 2 addresses, I don't know even why.
So it's hard to many any kind of currency that can be equally distributed without some problems. People will be people no matter what you do. It will take time, probably a lot of it till we get even close to what we have in mind as perfect society.

NicholasB54

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Activity: 51

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I've been having some doubts about Bitcoin, and chances are I may not be unique or special in any way, so I guess others may be worrying about the same things.

I know if you start from the IT persons perspective this all makes sense.
We want a decentralised currency, we want it to be secure & robust, and the Bitcoin paper/protocol/software delivers this ... makes sense .. and appears all noble aspirations ... until we come to mining.

In the next 12 months miners will be rewarded by the issuing of Bitcoin that could amount to anything from $130 million - $1.3 Billion or even ($0 - $100 billion).
At the same time mining hardware with any kind of payback is well outside the reach of many people, so Bitcoin is now starting to concentrate wealth into the hands of a small group of people.

Is this necessary and why ?

Topic: Why issue New Bitcoins to fewer & fewer people ? (Read 489 times)