Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

> No, that's a feature. Kilowatt-hours are necessary for a "proof of work" to make bitcoins valuable.

Well not really, it has noting to do with value actually.

The whole mining thing would not have to take massive amount of resources to do. What bitcoin needs is a way to create the next block of transactions about every 10 minutes.

The way its done now is that every full node in the system accumulates transactions and could potentially create the next block. To decide what node will actually do it the current implementation of the bitcoin protocol basically do a big lottery and the winner creates the block.

the lottery thing is what is taking so much calculation as you are trying to find a special number that starts with only 0 bits, and the amount of 0 bits is dynamically altered so the entire network on average gets a new block every 10 minutes.

But this lottery system can and in my opinion have to change in the future so that every node can participate equally. The current system is wasting way to much resources on the consensus so its fewer and fewer nodes that actually participate in the lottery.

There is people working on alternatives. search for bitcoin and consensus algorithm

But if the block size change is any indication doing that change is probably going to start a real war or something.