<p>A couple of things are at play here:</p>
<ol>
<li>The way proof of work mining works is competitive. The first computer to solve a block receives the reward. A bunch of other computers tried to solve it, but did not find the solution first, so they get nothing (this is one of the reasons why mining pools exist).</li>
</ol>
<p>Because of this, the fastest computer is more likely to get the block, thus making it more difficult. It's like an arms race.</p>
<ol start="2">
<li>The fewer unmined coins exist, the less the reward will be (called a reward halving, this is exponential). This delays the time it will take for 21 million coins to have been mined. Once all the coins are mined, the miners are just paid by transaction fees.</li>
</ol>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-03T06:04:41.647Z
2021-06-03T06:04:41.647Z
Alex K
<p>Really I don't know nothing about bitcoin but now I got curious read something and immediately come to something on mind.</p>
<p>I mean, there's a social economic comunity somewhere generating value based on the transactions registered, but as they're cheap and bitcoin wants to add value it adds some senseless? dificulty.</p>
<p>By the other way there's a full community of scientists and mathematicians fighting for devealing mysteries of nature and knowledge, but most often they don't have the economic resources for their task, hence there's a lot of simulations and sequances to solve and here we have a lot of people wasting non renovable resources adding up to climate change doing useless calculations just to generate esteemed value.</p>
<p>Do you see the equation here? If the difficulty added be practical intead of needed, bitcoin would be based on real value, even the mayor value of all that is knowledge.</p>
<p>So Instead of do nothing in order to increase value why not solve some practical mathemathical sequence or do x simulation of some deterministic experiment and share the results with science?</p>
<p>Or am I being the idiot that believes that the world has solution with a naif approach?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-03T07:17:55.947Z
You're reinventing [PrimeCoin](https://primecoin.io/)
MCCCS
<difficulty><academic-research><math>
What does it mean to make mining more difficult?
Lerian Acosenossa
# What does it mean to make mining more difficult?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-06-03)

Really I don't know nothing about bitcoin but now I got curious read something and immediately come to something on mind.

I mean, there's a social economic comunity somewhere generating value based on the transactions registered, but as they're cheap and bitcoin wants to add value it adds some senseless? dificulty.

By the other way there's a full community of scientists and mathematicians fighting for devealing mysteries of nature and knowledge, but most often they don't have the economic resources for their task, hence there's a lot of simulations and sequances to solve and here we have a lot of people wasting non renovable resources adding up to climate change doing useless calculations just to generate esteemed value.

Do you see the equation here? If the difficulty added be practical intead of needed, bitcoin would be based on real value, even the mayor value of all that is knowledge.

So Instead of do nothing in order to increase value why not solve some practical mathemathical sequence or do x simulation of some deterministic experiment and share the results with science?

Or am I being the idiot that believes that the world has solution with a naif approach?

**Tags:** difficulty, academic-research, math

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: You're reinventing [PrimeCoin](https://primecoin.io/)  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2021-06-03. Score: 0

A couple of things are at play here:

1. The way proof of work mining works is competitive. The first computer to solve a block receives the reward. A bunch of other computers tried to solve it, but did not find the solution first, so they get nothing (this is one of the reasons why mining pools exist).

Because of this, the fastest computer is more likely to get the block, thus making it more difficult. It's like an arms race.

2. The fewer unmined coins exist, the less the reward will be (called a reward halving, this is exponential). This delays the time it will take for 21 million coins to have been mined. Once all the coins are mined, the miners are just paid by transaction fees.


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