> Bitcoin is expected to go through a "halving" within the next day or two, a preprogrammed event that could impact production of the world's largest cryptocurrency.
> A halving, which occurs about every four years, was designed by bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, to effectively reduce by half the reward that miners of the digital token receive. The idea is that by cutting in half the amount bitcoin miners currently make for their efforts, fewer bitcoins will enter the market, creating more scarcity of the cryptocurrency.
If you have cheap electricity and a $5,000 AntMiner you can mine profitably. I would expect the halving to push out those who have more expensive electricity, not necessarily the smallest operators.
Assuming that miners are rational actors, the hash rate should settle at a point where the expenses to mine a block (energy, hardware depreciation, etc) equal the rewards (block reward and fees), so, if the price of BTC and the fees stay constant, halving the block reward should reduce energy waste.
Conversely, energy waste is proportional to, the BTC price.
Energy waste could also be reduced by instituting a global tax on Bitcoin mining. The cost to miners would remain the same (because it's still equal to the rewards), but a part of what would be spent on wasted energy is now spent on taxes instead. Unfortunately this is highly dependent on avoiding tax cheating.
Just BTC mining? Not all uses of energy? It makes more sense to do a fossil fuel tax, which penalizes all activity that doesn't justify its environmental cost, as opposed to playing whack-a-mole with whatever uses are least popular right now.
Crypto mining is unique in that the absolute consumption provides no benefit at all. The "work" consists purely in demonstrably having spent a certain amount of value, and the energy is purely an unit of accounting. So if you could manage to make this unit more expensive for EVERY miner, the accounting system would work as before, the safety properties of the system would be unchanged, and less energy would be used.
I can think of no other use of energy where this situation holds.
Not really, it just means what it means: a block rewards 2 times less than before. What happens regarding the number of miners growing or shrinking depends on a lot of factors. If you're so sure it's gonna increase the mining power, then I suggest you invest in it right now.
ah it's orange site, you're supposed to be aware of everything and context is frowned upon
edit: this is sarcasm if not clear but it reflects how often stuff gets posted here without an indication what is interesting about the topic (and it's poor form!)
