I have a book for you to read. Fooled by Randomness. It is aout trading ,but it is about how people have no clue about statistics.

> So after a block is found, mining would stop for several minutes and then quickly start back up again 3 to 6 minutes later.

Yes. Like thousands of miners are on the computer turnin thigns off aftera block is found.

Here is what goes on:

* It takes time for a block and work to go through the network, and miners to pick up new work. not everyone uses long poll, but even then there is a lot of communication - so once a block is found, a lot of miners still work on outdated data and get no shares.
* Block creation will never stabilize and  be predictable because it is RANDOM. One block per 6 minutes is AVERAGE. The variance is quite high.
* And yes, you have fluctuations of hashing power, but it is not because a block is found, more because of weather and people tuning off stuff at certain times, people not able to sleep with a mining rig running in their room, but mining during the day. THIS will no change, although at one point other people may be more dominant running data centers.

The effect will exist, but its strength will be less than you describe because:

1. Depending on the mechanisms that will be put in place to ensure inclusion in a block is a scarce resource, even after a block is found there will still be plenty of fees in the next.
2. Unless there's something else to compute, the decrease in profitability will have to be significant to pause mining, to avoid thermal cycles.
3. Some people just won't care enough about this to pause mining.
4. Even if the numbers are as you describe, instead of exp(10) we'll have 5+exp(5), which still leaves plenty of room for longer than average blocks.


They had better. But it's possible that in the future proof-of-work will be augmented with things like proof-of-stake so not a lot of mining will be necessary.

Yes.

We're hoping Bitcoin will succeed, which will inevitably cause its price to increase.


These days there are things called "computers" which can automatically halt the mining when a new block is found.

Propagating a block is supposed to take a minute tops. And this is completely irrelevant to the OP's point - people will mine on the old block, but if they find something their block will be invalid. Thus the finding of valid blocks will slow down.

He didn't say it will be completely predictable, only that it will be more predictable because it will no longer be a homogenous Poisson process.

Did you read the post? He explained exactly why this will change.

That's true. They will happen. I am happier about many fewer occasions.


This statement makes this kind of assumption for example: 'It is worth it to mine after one minute of the previous block being found.' If this assumption is true, then it will be twice as 'worth it' after an additional minute. After ten minutes, finding a block would then be worth ten times as much as the effort put in. This is not a stable situation- many more people would start mining and the benefit of mining would drop until your assumption becomes not true.

There is no "acting rationally" in social behavior driven by individual greed of each participant.  You may stop, guy next to you will be in the race trying to get ahead of you.

block creation is perfectly stable and predictable.  it was designed that way.

but it was designed by someone with a long-term vision, and you simply can't look at it in the short term.

it simply will not happen how you describe it.  we don't have to go far in history for examples. take current political and economic systems in the world. are our countries (governments) acting rationally and in the best interests of their citizens or hugely driven by special interest lobbying groups looking after their corporate sponsors? is news media presenting real news or rationalizing and dramatizing  everything to point that it isn't objective news anymore but a show to pump ratings?  I tend to think we live in the age of idiocracy especially here in the US  and the reason for all of this is human greed. I seen whole industry destroying itself driven by individual greed, if any one wonders, I'm talking about online porn industry. There is no acting rational in mass driven by greed and profits, can't see it working like that.

as long as you don't have more than a dozen, it would probably not waste much electricity at all.a fan does not have much mass so starting it would would not be too much burden.

it's not just the fans on the GPUs.

put a Kill-A-Watt on a miner sometime, and compare the power draw in the first five minutes of operation to the draw at steady-state.

How about in 140 years? Do you think people will mine if they get 0BTC for finding a block? Or maybe they'll wait until there is a fee offered causing the effect the Atheros is talking about.