Re: Can a big dump render Bitcoin unusable because of the mining difficulty?
Hi, I have this theoretical question.
What is a probability or feasibility of this scenario - Imagine that somehow dumps a large enough amount of BTC, so the BTC price goes 90-95% down *before* the next mining difficulty adjustment happens. Because of the price dump many miners will turn off their machines - still before the next difficulty adjustment, so the mining process slows down greatly, so let's say 1 block per day - which could take the price down even further, causing massive panic, etc...which could result either in BTC nuclear winter or the whole crypto nuclear winter or BTC being replaced by something else?
What are the competent opinions on this? I believe this question probably has already been discussed, so apologize for that, I just could not find anywhere :/
A follow up question would be - why is the mining difficulty adjusted after each 2016 blocks? Wouldn't it be better to adjust it like - 2016 blocks or two weeks, whichever comes earlier? Would not this make the whole network more robust against such possible attacks?
Thanks!
What is a probability or feasibility of this scenario - Imagine that somehow dumps a large enough amount of BTC, so the BTC price goes 90-95% down *before* the next mining difficulty adjustment happens. Because of the price dump many miners will turn off their machines - still before the next difficulty adjustment, so the mining process slows down greatly, so let's say 1 block per day - which could take the price down even further, causing massive panic, etc...which could result either in BTC nuclear winter or the whole crypto nuclear winter or BTC being replaced by something else?
What are the competent opinions on this? I believe this question probably has already been discussed, so apologize for that, I just could not find anywhere :/
A follow up question would be - why is the mining difficulty adjusted after each 2016 blocks? Wouldn't it be better to adjust it like - 2016 blocks or two weeks, whichever comes earlier? Would not this make the whole network more robust against such possible attacks?
Thanks!
Most miners would stop; some would keep mining charging high tx fees, in the xxxx$ range perhaps, hence people with 50 bucks in their wallets would just forget about it whereas important transactions would be sent through anyway.
Slow days and yes, security risks of course but in case something dodgy had to happen there'd be a fork which would revert the blockchain to restart where the last legit block was mined so no biggie.
The real problem wouldn't be the problem per se, but people's reaction to it.
Once again.
Good thread.