Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150 • Hacker News Board

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#231

Post by whiskers08xmt » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 9:58 AM UTC

angus-prune wrote: post #219

nodamage wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cryptocurrency enthusiast would tell you that the energy consumed is not "wasted" because it is necessary to secure the block chain. Personally I find this argument unconvincing and somewhat tautological. 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this and 2) why should we assume that securing the block chain is a actually good use for the energy spent? Especially if you consider that the process of…

It is worth comparing this against the cost of minting money. A brief search showed that the US mint used 694,462.4 gigajoules in 2011[1] (~0.2Twh). The US is ~25% of world GDP, so lets times this by 4 for a naive cost of minting across the whole world. This gives a cost of ~1Twh annually for minting the entire world's supply of money, with a total Gross world product of ~$80 trillion[2]. Bitcoin is using ~1.3Twh[3]…

This is not entirely true, as cash requires energy after it's been minted. Money transport, cashiers and gold old fashioned vaults all require energy. With that being said, PoW is definitely wasteful, and for crypto-currency to be taken serious on the world stage, another form of consensus algorithm is required. Personally I'm partial to Proof of Stake[0].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake#Criticism

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#232

Post by joshschreuder » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 10:03 AM UTC

zo7 wrote: post #123

Interesting, looking at the price graph Ethereum's price seems to correlate with Bitcoin's, which lost about %20 of value ($500) recently. In case anyone's wondering, the crash seems mainly driven by anxiety of an upcoming blockchain fork splitting the currency in two next month. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-15/bitcoin-battered-be...

The prices of all cryptocurrencies are strongly correlated with Bitcoin (ETH included). Partly because it is the most publicly known, but also because a lot of places still need to transfer fiat -> BTC -> othercoin

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#233

Post by colordrops » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 10:05 AM UTC

nodamage wrote: post #146

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me naive, but am I the only one who looks at mining as one of the worst inventions for consuming energy possible? Almost all of society functions on energy, some of the largest breakthroughs in society have been on sudden abundance of cheap energy and the machines, vehicles products they can create. Entire economies can be crippled by rising costs in energy (oil shocks of the 70s) and boom by sudden drops in cos…

A cryptocurrency enthusiast would tell you that the energy consumed is not "wasted" because it is necessary to secure the block chain. Personally I find this argument unconvincing and somewhat tautological. 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this and 2) why should we assume that securing the block chain is a actually good use for the energy spent? Especially if you consider that the process of…

> 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this and

No one has found a solution yet that is as secure as proof of work, so this point is moot until then.

> 2) why should we assume that securing the block chain is a actually good use for the energy spent?

Who is this "we" you speak of? The energy is being paid for and the market demand demonstrates that it is a good use.

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#234

Post by colordrops » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 10:08 AM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #169

Capt-RogerOver wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you knew the technical details of blockchains, you would not think that. And yes, the process IS much more than wasing massive amounts of energy. > 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this You are welcome to try. If you do come up with a less waisful solution you will be able to create your own altcoin and will make billions worth of dollars on it. Some very smart people have tried in the pas…

There's already a less wasteful solution, it's called fiat money.

Fiat money doesn't serve the same purpose as Bitcoin and in some ways is the opposite. Why are there so many trite unthoughtful comments being made about cryotocurrencies? I'm guessing people are turned off by all the scam coins and are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#235

Post by Nursie » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 10:27 AM UTC

mrb wrote: post #148

nodamage wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cryptocurrency enthusiast would tell you that the energy consumed is not "wasted" because it is necessary to secure the block chain. Personally I find this argument unconvincing and somewhat tautological. 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this and 2) why should we assume that securing the block chain is a actually good use for the energy spent? Especially if you consider that the process of…

1) No there is no other way. (An alternative, proof-of-stake, is still an active research area. Even Ethereum abandoned the idea of completely switching away from proof-of-work because they realized PoS isn't completely workable.) 2) Because a permission-less censorship-resistant decentralized financial system has the potential to truly improve society, hence worth spending energy on it. I have presented multiple arg…

>> No there is no other way.

There are various other ways, however many of them ditch the decentralised-trust nature of cryptocurrency. If this is not something important to you (which it isn't to that many people) then crypto-currency represents a huge waste of power for no appreciable gain.

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#236

Post by arve0 » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 10:28 AM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #210

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me naive, but am I the only one who looks at mining as one of the worst inventions for consuming energy possible? Almost all of society functions on energy, some of the largest breakthroughs in society have been on sudden abundance of cheap energy and the machines, vehicles products they can create. Entire economies can be crippled by rising costs in energy (oil shocks of the 70s) and boom by sudden drops in cos…

Consider that the alternative is all of the banking infrastructure that exists. The energy that banks and their employees consume is orders of magnitude less efficient.

I would like to see any numbers on that claim. For example expenses / turnover or profit.

Edit: or cost per transaction.

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#237

Post by Nursie » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 10:30 AM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #210

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me naive, but am I the only one who looks at mining as one of the worst inventions for consuming energy possible? Almost all of society functions on energy, some of the largest breakthroughs in society have been on sudden abundance of cheap energy and the machines, vehicles products they can create. Entire economies can be crippled by rising costs in energy (oil shocks of the 70s) and boom by sudden drops in cos…

Consider that the alternative is all of the banking infrastructure that exists. The energy that banks and their employees consume is orders of magnitude less efficient.

For the volume of transactions they handle, it's really not.

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#238

Post by Nursie » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 10:31 AM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #190

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me naive, but am I the only one who looks at mining as one of the worst inventions for consuming energy possible? Almost all of society functions on energy, some of the largest breakthroughs in society have been on sudden abundance of cheap energy and the machines, vehicles products they can create. Entire economies can be crippled by rising costs in energy (oil shocks of the 70s) and boom by sudden drops in cos…

The energy isn't wasted, it is converted. The closest analogy I can come up with is that gold used to back currency isn't wasted because it is stored in an underground vault rather than being used for jewelry or as a component in electronics. If you are creating a currency, then it has to be backed by something: gold, silver the cost of electricity, people's faith that the currency is worth something. A currency not…

>> The energy isn't wasted, it is converted.

The vast majority goes on hashing as fast as possible and getting the wrong answer many, many times... that seems pretty wasteful.

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#239

Post by zer0tonin » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 10:33 AM UTC

kpcyrd wrote: post #191

abalone wrote: post #63

All I can think of is the careless environmental impact of all that dirty electricity consumption. For, let's be honest, a mostly speculative activity. One cryptocurrency crashes, another gets hyped up, and the computational cycle repeats. When will it end.

1) Run your miner on green energy 2) Green energy demand increases 3) More green energy 4) Save the world

That's not exactly how it works.

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#240

Post by MereInterest » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 10:41 AM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #233

nodamage wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cryptocurrency enthusiast would tell you that the energy consumed is not "wasted" because it is necessary to secure the block chain. Personally I find this argument unconvincing and somewhat tautological. 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this and 2) why should we assume that securing the block chain is a actually good use for the energy spent? Especially if you consider that the process of…

> 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this and No one has found a solution yet that is as secure as proof of work, so this point is moot until then. > 2) why should we assume that securing the block chain is a actually good use for the energy spent? Who is this "we" you speak of? The energy is being paid for and the market demand demonstrates that it is a good use.

> Who is this "we" you speak of? The energy is being paid for and the market demand demonstrates that it is a good use.

This argument is nothing but an appeal to the majority. I could equivalently say that the existence of spam emails shows that spam emails are good for society. After all, spammers have paid for the electricity and bandwidth to send spam, and the market demand demonstrates that it is a good use.

Market demand is a useful tool for measuring the current state, not for predicting an ideal state.