[jgeerts]

> This seems like a pretty flawed idea and an attempt to justify the incredible amount of electricity required by bitcoin.

It's not "required", it's only that high because it has so much success. Bitcoin would be working with only one miner running, the first blocks were minted on a private computer.

[noxer]

Sorry but that's BS, It absolutely requires the energy. If it would be running on a privet computer still then anyone with such a computer could double spend which would make it useless regardless of success.

[jgeerts]

That’s not the point, I didn’t say that it would be a good idea. The point is that it would work with just 100 or a 1000 miners if no one has 51% of computing power, hence the computing power is a consequence of Bitcoin’s success.

[noxer]

But you are wrong, it would absolutely not work. The only way to make sure no one has 51% and no one can simply get 51% (buy cloud computing for example) is if the 51% is more than what feasibly can be bought or it would at least need to cost more than what you could gain from a double spend.

Also its about hash power not number of miners, that's completely irrelevant. 100 or 1000 miners that means nothing.

[UncleMeat]

It would work in the sense that you've be able to add more transactions to the chain. But it'd also be very easy for somebody to double spend.