0 sats \ 3 replies \ @ek 21 Oct 2022 \ parent \ on: I'm Peter Todd, cryptochronomancer/web-π dev, AMA bitcoin
Doesn't the difficulty adjustment help here? If it's not profitable and miners drop out of the network, the difficulty will decrease until it gets profitable enough such that miners are willing to mine again?
I thought there is a similar equilibrium here as you described with inflation rate and the rate of coin loss?
I am more afraid in too many miners dropping out too fast such that the difficulty adjustment won't happen for a very long time.
You forgot the second part of that quote:
We want mining to be reasonably profitable, and something anyone can usefully do with a minimal amount of capital and expertise.
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How does that answer my question if the difficulty adjustment isn't making sure that there are always miners who are profitable? I saw your reply as an argument for tail emission.
I can see how tail emission could help that miners are "reasonably profitable" but I can't see how it helps with the second part of that quote. Or was that just a general statement?
Then I am not sure if that is possible at all: How do you want to level the field such that mining is "something anyone can usefully do with a minimal amount of capital and expertise"?
In a highly competitive market, my understanding is it will never be easy to get in and turn a profit without a lot of capital and/or expertise.
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What tail emission fixed re: relative profitability between different miners is it makes mining easier at a small scale, with less incentives to do things like reorg blocks for more money. That's why I pointed you to re-read that comment, where I explained all that.
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