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by MereInterest 2981 days ago
No. The block reward will be replaced by increasing transaction fees. If at any point the net income of miners is negative, miners will stop mining, and bitcoin becomes impossible to spend, driving transaction fees up. If the total amount of electricity wasted is ever small relative to its market cap, there will be a financial incentive to launch a 51% attack on the blockchain. Bitcoin does not scale. Bitcoin's design relies on not scaling.

Bitcoin will either be wasteful in proportion to its market cap, or it will be vulnerable to attack. There are no other options.
1 comments
sowbug 2981 days ago
> there will be a financial incentive to launch a 51% attack on the blockchain

Anyone with that computing power will use it to earn transaction fees, not to attack Bitcoin by sniping funds through double-spends. If Bitcoin were ever attacked such that transactions were not immutable once confirmed, people would stop using it and the value of Bitcoin would drop. A 51% attack only destroys Bitcoin. There is no financial incentive (at least not in terms of Bitcoin).

(This is in the original white paper.)

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thisisit 2981 days ago
That is assuming a 51% attack is only about double-spends. There are other attacks which can be done without trying to double spend.

Still it this exact belief in math that will become a self fulfilling prophecy and keep bitcoin afloat way past someone executing 51% attack.

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sowbug 2980 days ago
Right, my reply simplified the issue.

But generally, it's a fair generalization that if step #1 in taking down Bitcoin is acquiring >50% of mining power, most rational actors will go off-mission and decide that step #2 is mine Bitcoin, not screw with it.

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