Blockchain Bubble or Revolution: The Future of Bitcoin, Blockchains, and Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin is a digital currency, so it’s intangible, and it’s (in theory) middleman-free because it doesn’t rely on a bank or other institution to keep track of people’s money balances. Instead, Bitcoin relies on a network of computers around the world to keep a shared log, or ledger, of every past payment. This “shared public ledger,” as it’s known,... See more

villagers’ shared memory of past payments.

The University of Cambridge estimates that Bitcoin’s annual energy consumption skyrocketed from about 6 terawatt-hours (roughly the annual power consumption of Luxembourg) in 2017 to over 80 terawatt-hours (roughly the annual power consumption of Finland) in 2020.

three main things that hold Bitcoin back from being a viable payment system are the fees, waiting times, and volatility.

But the Bitcoin world has been trending more and more toward centralization in recent years. A few major players are gobbling up parts of Bitcoin’s essential infrastructure, and it’s getting harder for an individual (especially one who’s not rich) to have a say on the future of the currency.

Chinese pools control over 80% of the Bitcoin network’s hash rate and thus mine 80% of the world’s bitcoins,

This lines up perfectly with Bitcoin’s hodling epidemic: people hold on to their bitcoins because they know each bitcoin’s value is slowly increasing over time.[165]

Bitmain never reached the magic 51% (or, rather, 50% + 1 hash per second) benchmark, but GHash was above it for a few days.[391] To calm the community’s nerves, the GHash CIO swore to never mount a 51% attack[392] and pledged to cap GHash’s market share to 40% going forward.[393]