Post
Topic
Board Speculation
Re: Is this the reason the bitcoin price is not exploding right now?
by
kokojie
on 17/09/2014, 01:18:49 UTC

Hm... why do you think PoW is one of bitcoins greatest strengths? It feels stupid to pay miners 1.6 M bucks per day for burning electricity. It was a great invention back in 2009 but now  we can all see its a flaw that might kill bitcoin. Especially when the difficulty is high enough so only big players will be able to profit from mining thus recentralizing the network to a few mining data centers
The miners are not "burning" electricity. They are using the electricity to perform mathematical calculations that prevent people from spending the same money twice. This is not unlike how banks power their computer systems to keep track of account holders' balances

Except Bitcoin already spends more on electricity, than VISA. But processes 0.001% of the amount of transactions VISA does.