Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Bitcoin network cost is OK now, but may soon be hugely wasteful
by
go1111111
on 27/12/2013, 03:53:26 UTC
First of all, a probably more relevant comparison would be to the amount of money in circulation (M0), which is ~$10T.
This means, that at 1.3T per year, Bitcoin represents ~13% of the global wealth.

No, M0 is not equivalent to global wealth.

You do bring up a good point that the deadweight loss resulting from excessive government power is perhaps greater than 2% of gross world product, and therefore even if 2% of GWP was spent on the Bitcoin network it might be worth it if it weakens governments enough.

The question is does the block reward shrink fast enough to counter the growth in value?

And the question in the future is: will the block reward eventually fall off too quickly to keep the network adequately secure? In general, the strength of the network is determined in a very crude manner, based on hardcoded rules, picked at a time when Satoshi could not know how fast Bitcoin would gain traction and what kind of security it would need at different points in its evolution. I think this is Bitcoin's biggest weakness.