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

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

#251

Post by blattimwind »

kushankpoddar wrote: post #161

There is a point of view out there that Europe's higher than average reliance on renewables has bumped up electricity prices there and contributed in making the place less competitive for industries. You can see that argument in action when European miners are losing out to others due to high power costs.

That point of view seems rather uninformed, because industrial and residential pricing of electricity, gas etc. are virtually unrelated, and the former doesn't include new extra taxes for renewables in any country I know.

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

#252

Post by Sleeep »

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]…

Your calculations are off by a large magnitude because you cited only energy consumption by the US Mint the US Mint only produces coins. Federal Reserve Notes (paper money) are printed by the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

And as sibling comments say, cash uses energy after it's produced.

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

#253

Post by kahnpro »

ebcode wrote: post #212
canoebuilder wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Why isn't everyone using "our best available option"? What are the benefits of thousands of different systems keeping a record of every single transaction , and how is this not a hindrance to widespread use of our best available option? Crypto-currencies have utility and uses but they are rather niche and specialized. Crypto-currencies aren't a mass market system. And they're not structured in a way that they c…

One benefit of having a distributed ledger (your thousands of different systems) is that it decentralizes trust. With fiat currency, you have to trust the government (or private company, in the case of the U.S.A.) that issues it, not to print so much that they debase it. I have no trust in my government, or fellow private corporations, given what I've been through. Bitcoin, on the other hand, well, at least I can rea…

It's incredibly foolish to think you're only trusting mathematics.

All you've done is shift your trust to the authoring process of the Bitcoin clients and to the majority of the miners. Authoring and distributing the clients, and determining the majority of clients and the majority of mining power, is still a social and political problem driven by human greed.

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

#254

Post by TeMPOraL »

ckastner wrote: post #189
mrb wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 2) Because a permission-less censorship-resistant decentralized financial system has the potential to truly improve society, hence worth spending energy on it. The other side of the coin: a permission-less censorship-resistant decentralized financial system also re-introduces a substantial set of significant problems that societies have already long solved for themselves.

In the words of Scott Alexander:

"People are using the contingent stupidity of our current government to replace lots of human interaction with mechanisms that cannot be coordinated even in principle. I totally understand why all these things are good right now when most of what our government does is stupid and unnecessary. But there is going to come a time when – after one too many bioweapon or nanotech or nuclear incidents – we, as a civilization, are going to wish we hadn’t established untraceable and unstoppable ways of selling products."

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

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

#255

Post by TeMPOraL »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #179
mrb wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It would be true in an ideal world, but in practice governments of different countries can and do regulate what can and cannot be done with bitcoins. Most of this is based on fear of losing control.

> in practice governments of different countries can and do regulate what can and cannot be done with bitcoins. Most of this is based on fear of losing control.

Most of the time people seem to say as if that was a bad thing. But consider what happens when government does ultimately lose control. You get Somalia.

As it is today, it seems governments worldwide agree cryptocurrencies are overhyped. They all seem to be saying basically: "it's cool you're having fun with new Internet points; just don't forget to fill in your tax form".

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

#256

Post by conanbatt »

verytrivial wrote: post #249
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…

> Call me naive I'd call you principled. The people scrambling for free money are treating the cost to the rest of the world as an externality. They'll chime in here to say "But what about other terrible system X?", but that, I'm afraid, does not absolve them. You're all terrible!

If they are paying for the electricity, they are absolutely responsible for what they are consuming.

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

#257

Post by kortex »

Nursie wrote: post #238
tomjen3 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I pan some dirt and it does not contain gold, I got the "answer" wrong. If I dig a hole and it contains no oil, I got the answer wrong. Seems pretty wasteful.

Scarecity is driven by an inability to readily harvest/create something.

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

#258

Post by TeMPOraL »

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.

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

The point isn't moot. The point is that maybe we should stop pushing this tech forward until a less wasteful securing process can be developed.

> Who is this "we" you speak of?

This comes up often, and the answer is usually the same: that "we" are the people who consider the society they live in as something to contribute to and grow, and not as an exploitable resource to parasite on.

> The energy is being paid for and the market demand demonstrates that it is a good use.

Market demand only demonstrates that there are some people who are willing to pay money for this. Not that it's good or useful (see the spam example of sibling's comment). This is true especially if the thing is paying for itself.

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

#259

Post by tigershark »

ebcode wrote: post #212
canoebuilder wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Why isn't everyone using "our best available option"? What are the benefits of thousands of different systems keeping a record of every single transaction , and how is this not a hindrance to widespread use of our best available option? Crypto-currencies have utility and uses but they are rather niche and specialized. Crypto-currencies aren't a mass market system. And they're not structured in a way that they c…

One benefit of having a distributed ledger (your thousands of different systems) is that it decentralizes trust. With fiat currency, you have to trust the government (or private company, in the case of the U.S.A.) that issues it, not to print so much that they debase it. I have no trust in my government, or fellow private corporations, given what I've been through. Bitcoin, on the other hand, well, at least I can rea…

Trusting bitcoin you are trusting the Chinese miners that have the majority of the hashing power. Bitcoin won't EVER be widespread if his whole network can process a mere 7 transactions per second (Wasting a huge amount of energy).

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

#260

Post by Nursie »

kortex wrote: post #257
Nursie wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

If I pan some dirt and it does not contain gold, I got the "answer" wrong. If I dig a hole and it contains no oil, I got the answer wrong. Seems pretty wasteful. Scarecity is driven by an inability to readily harvest/create something.

So what?

If you pan for gold and don't find any, that energy is wasted, not converted. So what? The initial claim wasn't "This facet of mining cryptocurrency is like gold" it was "The energy used is converted". It's not. It's burned.

>> Scarecity is driven by an inability to readily harvest/create something.

Cryptocurrency scarcity is artificial, and not driven by anything other than predefined scarcity curves. Even if two guys with CPU-only miners were the entire BTC network, scarcity would be the same, but energy output would be vastly lower.

The busy-work that is done for (say) BTC is only necessary because of the aversion to central currency authority in certain subsections of society. It's an artifact of that ideology.

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