However, the amount of mining is not dependent on the amount of transactions.
Entertain my ignorance on this for a second, but isn’t there some sort of dependence here? Like not a strictly casual dependence, but if transactions were, say, to magically halve for a few days, would that not affect the mining required and thus the total energy expenditure of the mining?
(Obviously the limit case would show this to be true, in that in the absence of any transactions at all, mining would cease. But I’m after something a bit more clearly casually related, somewhat like supply and demand in the marketplace – consumption of beef driving more supply and more methane, e.g.)
I see. But in the limit case where just everybody decided BTC is nonsense and stopped transacting entirely, while mining could continue, eventually it would die out, right?
So in a sense, do transactions not drive the need for mining? If that’s the case, the connection isn’t directly casual so much as one of complicity. Does that make sense or am I still barking up the wrong tree with this way of thinking?
Entertain my ignorance on this for a second, but isn’t there some sort of dependence here? Like not a strictly casual dependence, but if transactions were, say, to magically halve for a few days, would that not affect the mining required and thus the total energy expenditure of the mining?
(Obviously the limit case would show this to be true, in that in the absence of any transactions at all, mining would cease. But I’m after something a bit more clearly casually related, somewhat like supply and demand in the marketplace – consumption of beef driving more supply and more methane, e.g.)
No, transactions piggyback on the mined blocks but if there are no transactions mining still happens.
I see. But in the limit case where just everybody decided BTC is nonsense and stopped transacting entirely, while mining could continue, eventually it would die out, right?
So in a sense, do transactions not drive the need for mining? If that’s the case, the connection isn’t directly casual so much as one of complicity. Does that make sense or am I still barking up the wrong tree with this way of thinking?