Quote from: razorseal on May 20, 2019, 03:52:39 PM

Question popped up in my head today... Figured no better place to ask.

Crypto (well, mostly. I don't like company owned and/or closed source currencies like zcash, ripple etc) is decentralized and is mined just about everywhere. Looking at btc for example, there is no company/ceo owning it and it can be mined anywhere in the world (albeit with specialized equipment, but that's another discussion lol). Mostly is China I believe. About %80-85. Now if Chinese govt said (and they could) no more bitcoin mining. If we see anyone, it's immediate prison if you're even involved in it.

China drops from 85 majority to %5... The other countries can't pick up the slack.

What happens? Let's not talk about the price of btc dropping. I'm talking more about hashrate etc. Will the algorhythm get easier so others can mine more efficiently to keep up with demand of handling transactions? It's not like it'll get so easy that we can start mining with our computers right?

Just trying to get a handle on it, so I understand... I guess my question simply is. Is BTC mining scaling? I believe it does scale. but will it ever scale so far back (if it needs to) that if regular desktops need to mine, they can? What if 95% of all miners using ASIC just quit now?

Thanks guys! please feel free to fill my curiosity!

As mentioned by NeuroticFish, the network can actually scale the difficulty of the mining algorithm back so that the network maintains a relatively consistent and (roughly) pre-determined rate of finding and mining new blocks. It would be possible, if all ASICs in the world died at once, to mine blocks with personal computers again. Is that likely? Not at all, but it's a fail-safe incase something does happen with the large mining pools and all of their hardware goes to hell at once.

Of course, I'm pretty sure that the network only adjusts the difficulty after a block is found. So if all of the hashing power went caput at once, it might be really, really difficult to keep the network moving until that one block with the pentahash-based string is found. That could hold up the network for days, worst case. But I don't know if the network can actively reduce the difficulty, and if it can, then what I just mentioned isn't an issue.