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RE: Good news – Steem is 371 percent up!
Sadly, I have no answers for your questions. But it made me thinking. Sometime at the beginning of this year, when bitcoin was worth 20 thousand dollars, I watched a video where the simple answer to the question "Why does bitcoin cost 20 thousand dollars?" was "Because there are people willing to pay 20 thousand dollars for a single bitcoin." Of course, the matter of why are they willing to do so and what value they expect to gain from it is more complicated. On the other hand, crypto mining costs a lot of energy, which is not only expensive, but also ecologically inefficient. Could this translate into the fundamental value (cost) of the coin?
I think miners influence the price of bitcoin but they are representing only one factor, on the suppl side.
Normally, if bitcoin price falls miners shut down operations, but remaining miners earn more. If price goes up, more miners are mining and their individual rewards decrease.
But now, authorities in different countries elevated electricity prices and miners had to sell more bitcoins to cover expenses. That can have caused an increased sell-of by the miners. But the demand side is week, also, and that should have other reasons.
High electricity consumption protects the bitcoin system from centralization. If you need several atomic plants to take over the system, it can be really secure and free from counterfeits.