My take on this question on Quora: Who will win the Bitcoin blocksize war?
Here we go:
To quote Niel Bohr:
“It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.”
But of course we can always make fairly educated guesses.
Thing is: Bitcoin is currently on a crossroads. At stake is the mother of all crypto currencies, the mighty Bitcoin. Due to its size and value, the Bitcoin network had to become a fairly slow mover. Changes take ages. But it’s becoming obvious that the status quo is not really sustainable.
The blocksize war (rather big name for a rather ludicrous challenge) can be seen as a forerunner of bigger things to come. It’s kind of obvious that the Proof of Work mechanism is working really nice, thank you. Unfortunately it tends to be a rather power-hungry (and therefore expensive) way to deliver seigniorage and validating transactions. Newer crypto contenders look into different models, like Proof of Stake, which of course have their very own challenges, but need way less power and are therefore much cheaper in operations.
To put things into perspective: about a year ago, I did a ballpark calculation onPower Hungry Crypto Coins. Back then, the equivalent of about 0.13 nuclear power plants was needed to run the mining infrastructure. Not much, one might say, to power a global currency.
But here we have the next problem: Bitcoin as a currency for everyday transactions just hasn’t taken off. As a currency, it seems a bit of a very clever solution in search for a problem. On the other hand, there are a couple of problems lying around, which would happily latch on to a blockchain based solution – well, if some technicalities would be in place. Hence all the initiatives around Bitcoin 2.0 and VC and other monies pouring into the space, efforts like sidechains, the increase of the blocksize or straight forward competitors like Ethereum.
So let’s come back to the question. The blocksize war is a mere skirmish – which could end up in a civil war. Bitcoin’s technical strength, the power of its network, is at the same time its most prominent weakness. Fiddling with technical specifications means a handful of software engineers tweaking a distributed infrastructure worth several billion Dollars. Some large changes, like the blocksize decision, need a hard fork of the blockchain.
From a miner’s perspective, forks that lower the ROI are always scary. Your margins are as volatile as the exchange value. But your operating cost, due to the energy consumption, are always to be paid in Dollars, EUR or Yuan.
And if the ultimate fork would happen, the switch from PoW to PoS, this would leave you with some server racks filled up with expensive scrap metal. Of curse, on the other hand: if competing currencies or models make Bitcoin obsolete, there’s nothing left to mine for you as well.
As a small Bitcoin holder you can just watch carefully. And if you want to treat your coins as an investment, then do as with any investment: don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
gert.is 