1/ Great article by @LaurentMT !
The TL;DR is that energy spent per block contributes not just to UTXOs belonging in that block, but retroactively to all global & past UTXOs.
The often-cited “energy spent per Bitcoin tx” number in many economic papers is flawed for this reason.https://twitter.com/LaurentMT/status/1034046547896492032 …
7/ The longer a transaction has occurred, the more stock it accumulates in the ledger history, and the harder it is for an attacker to revert.
-
-
8/ In terms of hashes, stock in ledger history only goes up, never goes down. In terms of actual economic cost (and
@LaurentMT ’s “number of Bitcoin.days secured” metric), it could in theory go down, if say, a Quantum computer is invented & mass-produced tomorrow.Show this thread -
9/ In terms of economic cost, stock in mining hardware could also go up & down. A sustained bear market would likely cause the cost of acquiring ASICs to go down, while a bull market would do the opposite.
Show this thread -
10/ Mining centralization reduces the security provided by stock in mining hardware. But mining centralization does *not* reduce the security provided by stock in ledger history. A miner with majority hash rate still needs to spend tons of energy to go back far in history.
Show this thread -
11/ To sum it up, Bitcoin is protected by high stock-to-flow ratio in 2 dimensions: (i) Stock in ledger history - security can be weakened with advances in computing (ii) Stock in mining hardware - security can be weakened with bear markets & a high level of mining centralization
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
