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by lhorie 1741 days ago
Forgive me if this is a dumb comment, but my understanding is that bitcoin's footprint is largely due to mining, correct? But bitcoin itself is considered an asset (in the US, at least). So in theory, it's possible to just trade bitcoins off-chain (either on another blockchain or just using boring centralized tech) without necessarily incurring a corresponding increase in mining-related costs, right?

IIRC Polkadot staking has a 28 day minimum unstaking cool-off period, yet one can stake/unstake instantaneously in Kraken, so I'm led to believe that off-chain transactions must already happen to at least some extent.

Am I missing something?
2 comments
cesarb 1741 days ago
> So in theory, it's possible to just trade bitcoins off-chain (either on another blockchain or just using boring centralized tech) without necessarily incurring a corresponding increase in mining-related costs, right?

The mining-related costs are mostly unrelated to whether the bitcoins are traded on-chain or off-chain. The mining-related costs are more directly related to the price of bitcoin, or rather, how much a miner can earn with the block rewards and transaction fees. By trading bitcoin, even off-chain, you increase the demand for bitcoin, and therefore indirectly increase its price; the only difference is that by trading off-chain, the miners don't receive the transaction fees (which are currently less than 2% of the block rewards).

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Uehreka 1741 days ago
But if you’re trading bitcoins “off-chain”, doesn’t that mean you’re negating the point of a blockchain-based currency?
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lhorie 1741 days ago
Yes, but for my purposes as a layperson using a currency, I'm choosing to trust a system that is opaque to me anyways (be it a bank/exchange/other financial institution vs a validator pool). One could argue, for example, that anti-fraud mechanisms in off-chain systems don't have a on-chain counterpart, despite being a desirable feature, so IMHO, if the argument goes that crypto can't do things on-chain that regular currencies can, it seems most feasible to just treat them as digital assets to be tradeable over existing centralized systems, no?
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