What happens if Bitcoin's price falls relative to its difficulty such that it's no longer profitable at all to mine?

the risk is the higher the fees go the fewer people that will want to (or even be able to, consider third world users) participate in transacting this coin, lowering volume and then price. See what happened on Nov 8th-12th when avg fees spiked to around ~$20 and BTC went from $7500 to $5500

you didnt know that? jesus

They would mine it at a loss because enough of them hold a fair bit of bitcoin and need it to survive. Some miners might go for BCH then of course, so it would greatly damage bitcoins reputation.

Yeah the fees are adjustable, there've been a few times when people have accidentally got them mixed up so instead of sending $1000 for a $1 they sent a $1 for $1000. JUSTed!

glad to help

whattomine.com/asic
there are other coins that use the same algo as BTC they could consider mining.

alternatively, BTC core devs could do a hard fork to implement their own form of EDA/DAA so the difficulty will adjust quicker than it currently does

Why would falling BTC price raise the USD price in fees? That's what I don't get.
I know fees are adjustable on our end, but I didn't know whether the miners can control whether they'll only mine for a certain fee.

As soon as the economic incentive for miners to mine disappears, they'd stop. No altruistic miner will simply continue on his own.

reverse, the high fees can cause BTC to be less attractive, lowering the price

Miners will switch off their machines / get squeezed out of the business when they are no longer able to maintain a profit margin. This is why we have only a few big players, these are the guys with the lowest costs, they will keep the difficulty just high enough that only they can make a profit.

Right, so only those with the largest transactions with the least time to complete will end up in the block because they'll pay the greatest fees. It's really no more risky to BTC than Surge Pricing is to Uber.

Yes, they can choose which to mine. Plus there ARE altruistic miners, however their altruism may well be a gamble: with fewer miners they become more likely to successfully mine the block

So all the biggest miners effectively set their own profit margins, but if the number of miners increased then more miners could offer to do it for cheaper?

less miner more profit for big guys

>all the miners set their own profit margins
Yes

>if the number of miners increased then more miners could offer to do it for cheaper
Yes

Not so much set them as get beaten out of them, the miners now were offering to do it for cheaper and have cornered the game, they're actually so much cheaper that they can fuck with it, they can also afford a loss now to increase their dominance in the future. Big players can do this shit for years, decades.

Think about this anons. You can buy an antminer join a pool and generate some revenue, but unless you have special circumstances you will be losing money doing this, how many months of red before you give up knowing the red will never end

Uber surge pricing is not comprable to BTC's issues as higher prices draws drivers immediately and thus handles the riders/hr very quickly.

BTC additional fees can attract more miners, but it takes time to build and setup ASICs and then the difficulty will adjust to shrink the profitability for all miners. More miners just uses more electricity.

I see. Thanks

You're right, the "2016" slow block problem is a known thing, which BCH has tried to solve. On balance though, it's not such a big problem as needs to be solved immediately - and a network change to handle it when the time come is expected

Holy shit first decent thread on Veeky Forums tonight. Thanks you, and thanks OP

Well it just changes the rate at which machines are flipped on and off, if it was instant you would literally start a fire

Miners that are unprofitable to mine will shut down. Miners with more efficient gear and cheaper electricity will continue to mine.