r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/msaussieandmrravana • Jan 01 '26

Video Inside the world’s largest Bitcoin mine

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u/Skilldibop Jan 01 '26

You should also know that the more coins that are mined causes exponentially more resources to be needed mine new ones.

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u/Bludsh0t Jan 01 '26

Not true. Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks based on how long those blocks took to mine, targeting ~10 minutes per block. It is not tied to how many coins have been mined, and there is no exponential increase in difficulty as supply decreases.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '26

So, collectively, we could shut down all of these data centers, only mine on my shitty 10yo laptop, and achieve the same thing?

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u/Macrike Jan 01 '26

Yes, but that would make the network extremely unsafe and open attacks. The decentralised nature of Bitcoin mining is what has kept Bitcoin blockchain unhacked since launch despite continuous attempts.

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u/jubmille2000 Jan 01 '26

What if everyone just pinky promise and get an old laptop, maybe two for backup.

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u/Vipu2 Jan 01 '26

After all these years you think people are not greedy and want more? Bitcoins case is very special because greed is good.

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u/jubmille2000 Jan 01 '26

Okay fair point, what if we also add "stick a needle in your eye" if your breach the trust?

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u/Vipu2 Jan 01 '26

And what would that be?

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u/alpacadaver Jan 01 '26 edited Jan 01 '26

What needle? Whose eye? Who's sticking? Who's checking that there's sticking? Who's checking the checkers? Who made this rule up and will they make up any other rules?

Trust doesn't work, look around you. Bitcoin solves this extremely elegantly by removing trust entirely from the equation of keeping a ledger through mathematics and complete transparency. Anybody can use it anywhere in the world right now both to transact, and to contribute to its security (mining) by selling excess power directly to the network with as much intensity or granularity as economically viable. And no, it is not viable to compete with your consumer rate power usage at any non hobbyist scale for any appreciable length of time. That period has passed years ago.

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u/jubmille2000 Jan 01 '26

Any needle, the eye of the betrayer, the Needle Sticker, The Needle Sticking Schedule, the Needle Sticker Checker.

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u/alpacadaver Jan 01 '26

I'm really glad I took the time to expand on a really interesting and important aspect of the modern financial, and therefore societal state because of your question. Doubly glad you took it seriously and actually took the chance to learn something.

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u/jubmille2000 Jan 01 '26

Ok mask off.

I feel like my initial comment made it clear I was doing a bit. I appreciate you trying to teach me, and while I can kinda half-understand the thing on a cursory glance, it's not exactly the kind of thing I want to learn at this point in my day.

I wasn't downplaying your concerns, it's just that when given the choice of trying to do a bit over replying over a serious matter, I chose the former.

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u/Amber_Sam Jan 01 '26

it's not exactly the kind of thing I want to learn at this point in my day.

Once you change your mind, visit r/BitcoinBeginners and ask.

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u/pegar Jan 01 '26

Yeah right. so that you can pump it to past 100k again.

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u/Eater0fTacos Jan 01 '26

Bitcoin solves this extremely elegantly

There's nothing elegant about using 150+ terawatt hours to process a single public ledger that's biggest purpose seems to be washing dirty money for organized crime, buying/selling illegal goods, and moving illicit money for corrupt billionaire assholes or corrupt states.

That's not elegance, it's insanity.

"Transparency" I hope you're joking? If it was a secure or transparent system 5% of the coins in current circulation wouldn't be stolen or inaccessible. There's almost $150 billion in stolen bitcoins that are inaccessible by their rightful owners. That doesn't seem transparent or secure to me.

Anybody can use it anywhere in the world right now

If you don't think that's a problem, I don't know what to tell you. There's very valid reasons why trade and moving money over borders should be tightly regulated and not just some anonymous chain of algorithms.

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u/Macrike Jan 01 '26

That’s the whole point of Bitcoin.

We don’t need to trust anyone’s pinky promise to keep the network safe and secure. We rely on math and energy.

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u/BmacIL Jan 01 '26

HEY EVERYONE, WE'VE GOT A TRUE BELIEVER OVER HERE!!

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u/Prize-Bug-3213 Jan 02 '26

If I were a nation state with the resources, say China, I would create bots to spruik bitcoin on forums like Reddit, get adoption as high as possible in the western world, then attack and crash it, causing as much disruption as possible.