Comment on Bitcoin mining is no longer profitable
Hirom@beehaw.org 3 weeks agoThe network was built to adjust
Then why doesn’t it adjust to avoid negative social and environmental effects? My guess is that it’s because it’s not possible to adjust bitcoin’s algorithm, and that miners don’t have enough intensive to abandon bitcoin for something less destructive.
My understanding is that bitcoin’s core algorithm, which include the difficulty and consensus logic, cannot modified nor fixed in any way.
A hard fork is possible, which means leaving the bitcoin network and setting up an alternative (hopefully better) network with different result.
locuester@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
lol it can’t adjust on public approval. It’s software that runs. It’s valuable. If it wasn’t, people wouldn’t run it.
It can hard fork with a consensus mechanism change anytime someone writes one and people decide it’s the best path forward. Ethereum decided this and did this.
That’s not happening with Bitcoin because those that understand how it works agree it’s the best system to use.
I use Bitcoin as a store of value, and Solana for day to day stuff and financial investments like lending and liq providing. That’s my preference, for now. It’s a very fluid industry, nothing is set in stone, although Bitcoin appears to be pretty solidly the preferred secure store of value.
Hirom@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
It can. Software is written by people. Its authors can build it wigh an update mechanism.
Crypto currencies such have Tezos have a vote-based update mechanism and a community that periodically submits algorithm changes for approval.
Bitcoin doesn’t have a update mechanism that allows smooth change. Its take it or abandon it (ak hard fork). Peole can move away from it, and, it’s sad that so many people still haven’t.
locuester@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
It’s the same with all the chains. An algorithm change is a hard fork. If you don’t implement it, your validating node will not continue with the rest.
Bitcoin has the BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) process. BIP-52 is an example of a proposal to change the algorithm due to energy concerns.
If the humans reach consensus it will change. However, I maintain that software can’t be programmed to adjust for social concerns - the humans have to change it.
Hirom@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
Good point, with BIPs the Bitcoin community is more adaptive than I gave it credit for.
It still doesn’t prevent soft nor hard fork. My understanding is that a change in consensus logic require ALL users/miners need to deploy the new software to avoid hard forks. That’s impossible in practice. So a BIP to change the consensus logic would necessary cause a hard fork.
Not all chains handle this the same way nor suffer from this. Tezos for instance made its improvement proposal system part of its core. Using Tezos means automatically accepting chain and consensus logic change if they are approve.
Bitcoin sure have more hype and higher price, but appears to have more difficulty evolving compared to others.