From: Jefferson Carpenter <jeffersoncarpenter2@gmail•com>
To: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: [bitcoin-dev] Upgrading PoW algorithm
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2018 16:31:52 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <58fa85b8-cba3-ee34-8c96-41c6c7bfbf9c@gmail.com> (raw)
Bitcoin's difficulty will be maxed out within about 400 years, by
Moore's law. (After that - supposing the software does not crash when
difficulty overflows - block time will start decreasing, and it will not
take long before blocks are mined faster than photons can be sent across
the planet).
Bitcoin is the dominant cryptocurrency today, as the first mover: the
perfectly fair worldwide game of inventing the cryptocurrency has been
played and won. However, unfortunately, it has a built-in end date:
about 400 years from now. After that, it won't necessarily be clear
what the dominant cryptocurrency is. It might be a lot like VHS vs
Betamax, and a lot of people could lose a lot of money. It seems to me,
this could be mitigated by planning today for what we are going to do
when Bitcoin finally breaks 400 years from now.
Are there any distinct plans today for migrating to a PoW supporting an
even higher difficulty?
next reply other threads:[~2018-01-17 22:32 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-01-17 22:31 Jefferson Carpenter [this message]
2018-01-18 16:36 ` Peter Todd
2018-01-19 20:54 ` Jefferson Carpenter
2018-01-20 6:30 ` nullius
2018-01-20 18:36 ` Melvin Carvalho
2018-01-21 15:29 ` Glen Peterson
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