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The Hard Math Behind Bitcoin's Global Warming Problem (wired.com)
7 points by tooba on Dec 15, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments



“As the price of bitcoin stabilizes, then the net worldwide energy because of the block reward will start to decrease rather than increase.”

I don't think so. As long as PoW is in place, the level of work required to create a block must be high, no matter what the reward is. If the blocks are too cheap, then a determined attacker with the incentive to destroy, control or harm bitcoin (a state actor who loves capital controls and hates money laundering perhaps?) could easily buy enough hashing power to squeeze out the honest miners, who need to be profitable to stay in business, and eventually control a majority.


Quite some typos and inaccuracies (SHA-286? confusing power (in Watt, W) and energy (in Watt-hours, Wh, or Joule, 1 J = 1 Ws), and/or hashes and hash rate).




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