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by hrhrhrhrhr 1640 days ago
I think if the value drops then the security requirements would also drop. And all the existing UTXO's that were already mined when the difficulty was high would also stay secure, so they'd be comparable to Gold bars that could be stored for thousands of years without spending any energy.
1 comments
DarylZero 1639 days ago
> all the existing UTXO's that were already mined when the difficulty was high would also stay secure

Not really, because if there's not exactly one social consensus chain, then you can't prove you're the only owner of anything.

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hrhrhrhrhr 1639 days ago
What do you mean by "social consensus chain"?

Any UTXO that you create now, when the mining difficulty is quite high, is going to have a very high security, even if the mining difficulty goes down afterwards.

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DarylZero 1638 days ago
E.g. right now the social consensus is that the longest chain _minus the top 5_ blocks is the "settled" consensus of committed transactions. If you own the coin in a block 6 deep, then you can prove it.

As the difficulty gets lower, the number of transactions to drop from the top gets higher, and maybe also less certain.

It makes no difference about the mining difficulty in the past. If double-spends are possible _today_ then you can't ever prove you own the coin, regardless of whether you could do it in the past.

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