&gt; This is incorrect. The blockchain requires miners to establish an unbiased ledger history. The difficulty parameter is tweaked so that the whole system can be future proofed against an adversary creating a convincing blockchain history (which was biased to double-spending or retracting a transaction).<p>What was the excuse in the early days of bitcoin then when the difficulty was orders of magnitude lower?<p>Difficulty is ever increasing just because of the financial model bitcoin tries to propagate. The author of bitcoin wanted to make it deflational and so it had to be this way.<p>That part has nothing to do with the integrity of the blockchain and you are mixing two concepts here: Blockchain, which was a great invention and bitcoin, a financial experience (nothing against experiences from my part) which turned out to be a waste of resources.