Quote from: tromp on December 09, 2016, 03:13:04 PM

Except that if you reduce all miner's energy costs by 90%, they will all use their vastly increased profits to buy many times more hashpower to maintain their share of the pie. You end up with 10x more hashpower sitting idle 90% of the time.

In the end, you'll always have: cost of total energy spent on mining = block reward + fees ...

Thanks for your comment.
You make a very interesting point here. However, I don't think the math totally adds up. In order to have 10x hash power, the miners have to invest 10x more in ASIC equipment.
10x more equipment running 1/10_th of the time WOULD give you effectively the same energy consumption as the normal system, but with a few caveats:

The total capital investment would be (at least) 10x more, to reach the same level of rewards as today
In most places the energy cost would be more than 10x more, since you have to pay for the availability of that much power during much less time.
Also infrastructure changes may be needed for the larger operations.
To make it more clear. At 10x the hashing power sitting idle 90% of the time you have the same energy costs and 10x more capital investment
Even it that were the case -which it seems to me it can not be- Tic-Tac mining would present have several advantages, namely:
- Total hashpower of the system much larger than now, so more resiliency against rogue government attacks for instance.
- Mining becomes more capital intensive, less reliant on cheap energy. Capital is available worldwide. Energy seems to be way cheaper in China. So...
- The cooperation phase would bring a new block "exactly" every 10 minutes, thus having a more predictable system 90% of the time
- The cooperation phase seems to me less prone to collusion than the competition phase. So 90% of the time the network is more secure.

Still, I think you made a valid point but -in the end- we would end up with less energy (most likely not in that factor) but more capital and hashing power.
For a Chinese miner with zero energy costs this could be a nightmare, I suppose. But in order to get a more decentralized network I think it could be positive.