BANKS PETITION MINERS AND NODES FOR OPEN-HOURS PARITY
Written by Arkinox
Banks from around the world have signed a petition to bitcoin miners and lightning nodes that was made public today. The petition requests that bitcoin miners and lightning nodes (together referred to as "bitcoin network providers") reduce their hours of operation so that both the legacy and bitcoin financial networks have "a fair and equitable share" of daily transaction settlement volume.
The petition recommends that bitcoin miners and lightning node operators simply turn off their machines between the hours of 5pm and 9am (UTC). The suggested schedule change touts compelling benefits like reduced electricity costs, reduced staffing costs, and higher fee potential for transaction surge demand when the machines turn back on each day. In summary, the petition recommends this change as a "critical step in the path for bitcoin to become a fully mature establishment financial network."
Shutting down the bitcoin network for a full 2/3 of each day would potentially drive up demand for block space even higher, causing increased profits for miners.Before any bitcoin network providers had a chance to respond to this petition, Coinbase shut down for a full 16 hours seemingly in compliance with the request, although they are not technically considered bitcoin miners nor lightning operators.
Later in the day, Marathon Digital Holdings responded to the petition with a counter-petition suggesting that traditional banks should increase their open-hours to 24 hours per day and 7 days per week. This would, MARA explained, decrease strain on the brittle legacy financial network by spreading out transaction demand. MARA's counter-petition was published at 8:33am the next day. At the time of writing, 8:46am, bankers have yet to respond as they have not yet woken up for the day.
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