Is this feasable? (HYPOTHETICAL)

[Iorveth]

Would it be possible to halt all mining power except say 1 PH/s worth, and let the difficulty readjust normally (keep in mind that bitcoin difficulty would be 30x less), and have like a first come first serve sort of thing where for all OTHER bitcoin miners to begin mining again, they would have to sign up to a "queue", and be entered in as the rest of everyone ahead of them are allowed to mine again. Would this be possible? Would it actually make bitcoin difficulty MUCH easier until everyone was back in from the "queue", or am I just thinking too much?

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[irrational]

Current network hash rate is about 30 PH/s, so you're talking about a decrease in hashing power of 30 fold.

Difficultly adjusts so that blocks are completed on average about once every 10 minutes, therefore abruptly reducing the hash rate will result in blocks taking 30 times long... so blocks will take about 5 hours. Since difficulty only adjusts every 2016 blocks, it could take up to 420 days for difficulty to adjust to a sane level.

Yeah, we should probably keep hashing away.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Would it be possible to halt all mining power except say 1 PH/s worth, and let the difficulty readjust normally (keep in mind that bitcoin difficulty would be 30x less), and have like a first come first serve sort of thing where for all OTHER bitcoin miners to begin mining again, they would have to sign up to a "queue", and be entered in as the rest of everyone ahead of them are allowed to mine again. Would this be possible? Would it actually make bitcoin difficulty MUCH easier until everyone was back in from the "queue", or am I just thinking too much?

The purpose of mining is to secure the network.  "Free coins" are the compensation, not the reason.  It isn't feasible but if it was, it would undermine the security of the network and allow an attacker to accomplish an attack with a 97% reduction in cost. 

[S4VV4S]

Would it be possible to halt all mining power except say 1 PH/s worth, and let the difficulty readjust normally (keep in mind that bitcoin difficulty would be 30x less), and have like a first come first serve sort of thing where for all OTHER bitcoin miners to begin mining again, they would have to sign up to a "queue", and be entered in as the rest of everyone ahead of them are allowed to mine again. Would this be possible? Would it actually make bitcoin difficulty MUCH easier until everyone was back in from the "queue", or am I just thinking too much?

The purpose of mining is to secure the network.  "Free coins" are the compensation, not the reason.  It isn't feasible but if it was, it would undermine the security of the network and allow an attacker to accomplish an attack with a 97% reduction in cost. 

^^^ First thing that came to my mind.

[Skaterdiejosh]

LoL I was actually thinking the same thing. Crazy idea but what if all the major pools got together and shut down befor a difficulty adjustment was about to happen. Then after difficulty goes down put it all back online.. I was watching the litecoin difficulty for months and I actually started to notice huge declines in hashing power right befor difficulty increases !! Like major farms are doing just that ......