Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Drops by 6% In First Adjustment After Halving (coindesk.com) 48
The Bitcoin network just fine-tuned a key parameter to coax back miners who quit after last week's halving hammered their profits. From a report: More than 20 exahashes per second (EH/s) of computing power -- the equivalent of around 1.5 million older-generation mining machines -- has been switched off from Bitcoin since the network's halving. The 7-day rolling average of Bitcoin's hash rate has dropped over 20% from around 122 EH/s just prior to the halving on May 11 to now 97 EH/s. The once-in-four-years event reduced miners' block rewards from 12.5 to 6.25 bitcoin (BTC) per block. The hash rate drop after the halving has significantly outrun the hashing sprint prior to it. As such, Bitcoin's mining difficulty, which measures how hard it is to compete for block rewards, decreased 6% to 15.14 Trillion at 2:00 UTC on Wednesday in the network's first biweekly difficulty adjustment since the halving. The amount of computing power connected to Bitcoin has been on a roller-coaster ride over the past two weeks. Bitcoin's mining difficulty adjusts itself every 2,016 blocks, roughly 14 days, to ensure the average interval between blocks remains at 10 minutes. If a large number of miners are switched off from the network, resulting in a longer-than-10-minute average block interval, the difficulty will decrease to encourage participation. And Bitcoin's third halving on May 11 happened exactly at the halfway mark of the previous 2,016-block difficulty cycle.
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Why and how is that a troll?
It's a pyramid scheme (read: scam) and you know it, troll.
Relative investment strategy check (Score:1)
Do twins qualify as "halving"?
What's the plan when all the coins are mined? (Score:1)
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But if and when we get to the point where There are no new bitcoins, what incentive will there be for people to continue to provide computing power?
I think the miners also process the transactions (and take a cut from that), so that by the time all the bitcoins are mined the miners make their income off of those processing fees.
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Not quite. When you find a magic hash you're allowed to write a block to the chain. That block contains transactions, and people can bribe you to include their transaction instead of someone elses's. Currently you're also allowed to include a special transaction granting yourself a bitcoin from thin air.
There isn't actually a requirement for the latter, although it presumably keeps the transaction fees down to their current low, low rate of $6 (average)....
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It's confusing, because people imply that Bitcoin is an alternative to fiat currencies.
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Originally bitcoin promised transaction fees that were so small you wouldn't even notice them. Like fractions of a penny. Apparently nobody did the math.
That $6 US per transaction is an average, and that's right now. *Most* of the expense is actually paid by the creating a bitcoin out of thin air part. The actual per transaction cost is about $36 US, which you will have to pay more and more of as the bitcoin reward is reduced.
Re: What's the plan when all the coins are mined? (Score:1)
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Yes, but on the plus side there is a lot of direct competition. Basically you can offer a "bribe" fee to have your transaction accepted as part of the next bundle. Some miners may accept your offer, and some may decline. If you are willing to let your transaction take a while, perhaps you can get a lower fee. If enough miners decline, they will tend to win and your transaction takes a long time with no progress. Or you wait and find that there are no takes, so you make a bigger offer.
Re:What's the plan when all the coins are mined? (Score:4, Funny)
Bitcoin V6
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The mining never ends. When you solve the hash, you complete a block (you "mine it"). For completing the block you get a reward: the sum of the transaction fee of every transaction you included in the block, and the block reward. The block reward decreases over time, eventually there will be no block reward, however the transaction fees will continue. With a large number of miners, the miners can also be picky and pick transactions with higher fees to include in their block attempts.
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Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin, the 'currency of the future' is nothing more than a speculative instrument, and it's current value is only due to rampant fraud and manipulation by the exchanges. Even the hipster coffee shops no longer accept it, not that it was ever viable for day-to-day spending to begin with.
But muh decentralization, over 60% of the hash rate is now in the hands of two Chinese mining pools, and it's only a matter of time before someone decides to attack the network.
Re: Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Who cares (Score:4, Insightful)
Stock markets are heavily regulated. Wash trading, insider trading, fraud and market manipulation - stuff that would earn you a jail sentence in the real world, is de rigeur in the world of cryptocurrencies.
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In addition, stock trading and registration is pretty secure. I don't remember hearing of someone "stealing" your stock shares by hacking your account. Like bank accounts, I have pretty high confidence that the stock registrar (someone like a Vanguard or Fidelity) is competent at the task. In addition, almost all are members of FINRA/SPIC which provides some insurance over theft and regulations.
It seems like digital wallets are not very secure. I'm sure it's always user error, but the risk seems higher than
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A lot of people, including a substantial portion of bitcoin aficionados, do not seem to fully understand that price.
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But muh decentralization, over 60% of the hash rate is now in the hands of two Chinese mining pools, and it's only a matter of time before someone decides to attack the network.
I don't know if that's true, but it seems possible. In any case, this is the flaw in blockchain that makes it worthless in the long run. You have to keep running just to stand still, from a security point of view (as I understand it).
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The best parasite never kills the host (Score:2)
What a fucking cancer.
Re:The best parasite never kills the host (Score:4)
You don't understand cancer nor bitcoin.
Damn (Score:2)
So the network self corrects itself to compensate for a fall in its completely worthless contributions to CO2 emissions.
Aliens will one day look at our scorched planet and find references to a species who knew they were screwing up the world, and then decided to dedicate burning through huge amounts of energy for absolutely no gain, and they will laugh at the absurdity of that idiotic race.
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Your argument only works if the carbon emission from Bitcoin mining are less than those from traditional banking - people getting into cars and planes and commuting to banks and offices all over the world also have a carbon footprint. if Bitcoin can eventually obsolete the current banking system you end up with fewer carbon emissions.
Whether global warming is actually bad is also an open question. e.g. A higher temperature means a wetter planet with the Sahara turning green, Tibet getting enough rainfall to
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The difficulty moves on a sliding scale depending on the amount of participants.It also favors the more efficient miners. If their are not enough miners, the difficulty goes down decreasing the energy spent. If there are too many miners only the most efficient stay in business reducing the energy spent. Long term it leads to efficiency.
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False, those banks are moving and storing money. Money is necessary. Bitcoin is not money, it fails the tests for money and is merely a game token that presently can be exchanged (with a lag so illiquid) for wildly varying amounts of money that may go to zero.
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I dont deny the world is warming. My question is is it a bad thing?
That is a bit off topic, but my simple and quick answer is that world warming might plausibly be a good thing if it is "slow enough". Unfortunately, it is also highly likely that there will be regional tipping points where change is quite rapid along the way, and that will cause immense human misery for a few billion people. Things a bit better for Tibet and Chad and Siberia a century or two in the future is probably not a great trade off for, say, southern India drying up and killing 50 million people fr
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I agree with you that the best way to save human lives is development.
A well renowned climate scientist did a 100 year simulation for Bangladesh - How many lives would be lost due to sea level rise in a world where full fledged development was pursued with extensive fossil fuel use vs how many lives woud be lost due to poverty, disease and starvation in a world where development was slowed down so as to use renewables instead of fossil fuels. By a factor of 5 more lives were lost in a world not using fossil
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Global Warming advocates remind me of the anti-immigration folks in the US.
The MAGA folks are like - Our ancestors got in through unrestrcted immigration to the US, now you stay out.
Greenpeace is like - Our Parents got rich off fossil fuels, now you stay poor.
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Greenpeace is like - Our Parents got rich off fossil fuels, now you stay poor.
I a bit of unfair exaggeration there, but there is more than a kernel of truth to the general idea. No country suffering from deprivation is going to hesitate to burn cheap coal in a polluting generator to improve the lot of their citizenry. But once the citizens feel comfortable that starvation is no longer a threat, they start noticing is what would improve the lives of their family is better air, rather than a new phone.
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Your argument only works if the carbon emission from Bitcoin mining are less than those from traditional banking
They are. Very VERY much so. Bitcoin does not provide traditional banking and therefore doesn't offset it. They provide a currency transfer service, that is all, so their carbon emissions can at best be compared to the processing of VISA transactions. In that regard studies have already concluded they are 5 orders of magnitude worse for carbon emissions than traditional methods of doing exactly what bitcoin does.
Also cars, commuting, banks? WTF are you talking about. It's 2020. I have gone to a bank precise
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Coax back? (Score:4, Informative)
The Bitcoin network just fine-tuned a key parameter to coax back miners who quit after last week's halving hammered their profits
No, this isn't to coax them back. That would be pointless, as if they came back the difficulty would just go up again and they'd leave. Furthermore, nobody really cares much whether or not they left (well, maybe the other miners care, but actually they'd rather see them stay gone than come back).
No, there is no coaxing intended. This is merely to stabilize the block rate. The algorithm defines that a new block should be mined every 10 minutes on average. If half the miners left, then you'd end up with blocks every 20 minutes. So the algorithm periodically makes the mining easier or harder to compensate for the hash pool size so that no matter whether there is 1 miner or 1 billion miners, it only takes an average of 10 minutes to mine a block.