[jstanley]

> if energy were priced correctly ... would BTC become higher in value? ... If energy were to become more expensive, the growth in supply would slow.

It doesn't work like that. The consensus algorithm targets 1 block mined every 10 minutes. If the amount of energy expended goes up (i.e. blocks are mined more frequently) then the difficulty increases to counteract it. If the rate of block production decreases, then the difficulty decreases to counteract it.

This page has more information: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty

(I've used "difficulty" here in the English-language way. Confusingly, "difficulty" is kind of backwards in Bitcoin - the "difficulty" is a number that a mined block hash must be below - it gets more "difficult" to mine a block if the "difficulty" number is lower. Maybe it should be called "easiness" instead of "difficulty").

[ziml77]

And this is exactly the problem with Bitcoin. Adding more computational power to the network changes absolutely nothing in terms of the amount of mining completed per unit time. Instead it just shuffles around the chances of being the one to succeed at a block.

This is something that I'm not sure many people actually understand. Because in the physical world, increasing your energy input into mining will result in more output of the resource you're mining. Adding another excavator to your mine doesn't reduce the effectiveness of every other excavator in the world.

[ChrisClark]

Yeah, the only point of the mining system is to secure the blockchain. As more and more energy is spent on it, the more energy is needed to attack it.

It just turns greed into security. As long as it's profitable to mine, it's practically impossible for someone to do a 51% attack.

[Siira]

It directly increases the difficulty of doing a 51% attack.