Bitcoin miners and the difficulty/transaction singularity

Bitcoin is more difficult to mine than ever and it has some folk worried the network might not be as viable as previously thought.

Why it matters: If Bitcoin’s difficulty gets too high it can become unprofitable to mine. Transaction fees don’t come close to covering upkeep, so they might look to mine other cryptocurrencies instead.

The bottom line: “Here is a technical quote about Bitcoin mining, hash rate, and difficulty, and how they affect Bitcoin’s overall integrity and, by extension, its price,” by a smart person. “Then there’s more to this quote because this needs clarification.” And then we comment some more on it because we’re extra smart.

Wait, is there a fix? Bitcoin is effectively a set of rules, and if enough network participants agree, those rules can be changed. So, of course, some people have concocted some pretty wild ideas about how to avoid miner exodus. This is one idea and this one is another.

What did Satoshi say? Bitcoin creator Nakamoto said this and that and some more. “Blippidy bloop bloop I’m a robot from the future,” he said in a forum post. 

Ultimately, this is a problem that the future generation of Bitcoin holders/users/investors/Citadel residents must face. Current predictions put the difficulty/transaction fee singularity to hit in another 10-100 years. So, there’s more pressing things to worry about.