Miners are not paying their electricity bills with bitcoin (most of them). It's the other buyers, that buy the bitcoins from the miner in exchange for dollars, that in fact pay the bills. And those are willing to pay the current price of electricity required to create the block.
And mining costs have gone down before. It's when bitcoin's price falls making mining unprofitable, so some miners stop, which lowers the difficulty, which makes mining profitable again at lower level - mining costs decreased to match the price.
That's word juggling whether the miners pay with bitcoins or sell bitcoins and pay with fiat is totally irrelevant. Fact is, mining is paid with the block reward. Bitcoin pays itself by "printing" itself. The value that goes to whom sells the energy/hardware is extracted from every bitcoin in existence via inflation. Unlike with Fiat the inflation rate is hard-coded and declines so hyperinflation isn't a problem but then gain inflation will stop and then user will have to pay for the bitcoin network. Which currently would costs several thousandth USD per minute in energy alone.
That true, mining cost can go down and it did but in the long run it can (must) only go up.
If we assume after block reward is gone or very low, fees pay miners less so most miners stop and difficulty is adjusted then we have a imminent 51% attack risk. Low difficultly, bankrupt miners, mark flooded with cheap mining hardware and suddenly drooping energy prices are the perfect conditions for such an attack. Once attacked the price drops pushes more miners out of business and attacks are even cheaper. A crash is inevitable.
If you are so sure, you are welcome to make some money on it by shorting bitcoin before the halving which is in May.
And no, it's not word juggling, the value of money comes from the people who exchange things for money. Here they exchange either electricity, or USD for it. Miners are paying their bills by selling virtual tokens, if those tokens didn't have any value for anybody, they wouldn't be able to sell them. Whether the token comes from block reward or transaction fees doesn't change anything on the fact that somebody gave up USD to get the token.
> Bitcoin pays itself by "printing itself"
Kinda ironic now after FED printed more money in one week than the whole Bitcoin economy is worth. I'd rather have the printing controlled by math, than any person.
Maybe I do that already? Or maybe not because I stated above that the crash could very well come after the next halving but it could also take another few more halving each coupled with price waves as we have seen in the past. I have no clue how long this self fueling will work. Anyway the whole "if you sure about xxx why you don't yyy" isn't an argument.
You don't seem to understand where the value from new minted BTCs comes from.
How they are exchanged is completely irrelevant. Mined BTCs change the supply and that changes the price of all other BTCs. Any additional BTC makes all other BTCs a little bit cheaper/less worth. And that is where the value form the new BTCs come from.
Printing controlled by math avoids hyperinflation like I said above. Printing isn't the problem, that the printing stops is the problem. Or that the whole system was self fueling in the first place.
> If you are so sure, you are welcome to make some money on it by shorting bitcoin before the halving which is in May.
Only suckers take positions in a rigged game, short or long.
> Kinda ironic now after FED printed more money in one week than the whole Bitcoin economy is worth. I'd rather have the printing controlled by math, than any person.
Obviously that math is defined by people, so you're just pointing at it and pretending otherwise. The Bitcoin Core team can just change the printing rate any time; their lack of action is defacto action. Rather than an elected group of economists you've got a bunch of un-accountable, un-elected people with zero experience in the economics space shooting from the hip.
I'm really surprised to see so huge amount of misunderstanding of basic Bitcoin principles here on HN. These things were discussed 10 years ago. The Bitcoin Core team cannot change rules just like that, they are not the central bank of Bitcoin, while the elected group of economists have done that a couple of times before just to save their own asses. Talk about accountability...
Why are you replying to that post then? While ignoring all my arguments.
I know very well that the devs can't change the rules.
And you probably know very well that my arguments are very valid and there is not even a plan to fix this.
And mining costs have gone down before. It's when bitcoin's price falls making mining unprofitable, so some miners stop, which lowers the difficulty, which makes mining profitable again at lower level - mining costs decreased to match the price.