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BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

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Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#31

Post by gtrubetskoy »

Squithrilve wrote: post #22
kiddico wrote: post #2

One of the only things I dislike about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. With the proof of chia being used in storage, does that imply a lower power cost? I'm not sure what proof of time is either... Does anyone know more about this and can clarify things?

> flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. I don't get it. Why won't you complain about monitor pixels, that don't display content using/wasting power or various unused/reserved bits transmitted every second ( https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-abhi-covert-00 ) that also waste power. Proof of work uses energy to meet some strict guarantees. This reminds me of complaining that SSL is computation…

> Why won't you complain about monitor pixels

or the Sun, what a waste of energy that is

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#32

Post by traverseda »

Squithrilve wrote: post #22
kiddico wrote: post #2

One of the only things I dislike about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. With the proof of chia being used in storage, does that imply a lower power cost? I'm not sure what proof of time is either... Does anyone know more about this and can clarify things?

> flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. I don't get it. Why won't you complain about monitor pixels, that don't display content using/wasting power or various unused/reserved bits transmitted every second ( https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-abhi-covert-00 ) that also waste power. Proof of work uses energy to meet some strict guarantees. This reminds me of complaining that SSL is computation…

The problem is that coin incentivizes* the use of electricity, which is a dumb thing to incentivize. Sure, we can incentivize the use of electricity, but we can also decide to incentivize something else.

A system like bitcoin but that only uses (all of) the CPU 10% of the time incentivizes a lot of cheap compute power for projects that need it. As an example. Algorithms that have similar loads to conventional software encourages more powerful general purpose computers instead of more powerful custom bitcoin ASICS.

There are much better things to incentivize.

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#33

Post by traverseda »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #31
Squithrilve wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. I don't get it. Why won't you complain about monitor pixels, that don't display content using/wasting power or various unused/reserved bits transmitted every second ( https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-abhi-covert-00 ) that also waste power. Proof of work uses energy to meet some strict guarantees. This reminds me of complaining that SSL is computation…

> Why won't you complain about monitor pixels or the Sun, what a waste of energy that is

Yeah, we gotta get on that dyson {sphere,swarm,etc} thing.

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#34

Post by jkdufair »

wbkang wrote: post #8
wyldfire wrote: post #6

> A bitcoin transaction wastes ^H^H^H^H^H^Hcosts -- FTFY. It's not a waste if you actually got something for it. e.g. your chemical ICE in your car produces heat that is useful in cold weather. Not waste heat if it has utility. Electric cars have to spend electrical energy to generate the same heat. That said, the fact that this keeps coming up would indicate that there's definitely a marketplace for a coin that cost…

Waste: use or expend carelessly, extravagantly , or to no purpose.

If we use the assumption is that the energy is carbon-based and we consider externalities, extravagant may well be the right term.

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#35

Post by [deleted] »

Squithrilve wrote: post #22
kiddico wrote: post #2

One of the only things I dislike about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. With the proof of chia being used in storage, does that imply a lower power cost? I'm not sure what proof of time is either... Does anyone know more about this and can clarify things?

> flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. I don't get it. Why won't you complain about monitor pixels, that don't display content using/wasting power or various unused/reserved bits transmitted every second ( https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-abhi-covert-00 ) that also waste power. Proof of work uses energy to meet some strict guarantees. This reminds me of complaining that SSL is computation…

[deleted]

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#36

Post by free_everybody »

Squithrilve wrote: post #22
kiddico wrote: post #2

One of the only things I dislike about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. With the proof of chia being used in storage, does that imply a lower power cost? I'm not sure what proof of time is either... Does anyone know more about this and can clarify things?

> flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. I don't get it. Why won't you complain about monitor pixels, that don't display content using/wasting power or various unused/reserved bits transmitted every second ( https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-abhi-covert-00 ) that also waste power. Proof of work uses energy to meet some strict guarantees. This reminds me of complaining that SSL is computation…

You can't possibly be comparing SSL with bitcoin mining. SSL provides a service that is immediately valuable to all parties. Bitcoin mining is done by people who want to get rich by not doing anything. The price of bitcoin is EXTREMELY speculative no matter how you look at it. What if Bitcoin were to fail for some reason? All the computation dedicated to mining coins which were never spent would be wasted. Entirely different scenarios here.

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#37

Post by joe_the_user »

Squithrilve wrote: post #22
kiddico wrote: post #2

One of the only things I dislike about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. With the proof of chia being used in storage, does that imply a lower power cost? I'm not sure what proof of time is either... Does anyone know more about this and can clarify things?

> flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. I don't get it. Why won't you complain about monitor pixels, that don't display content using/wasting power or various unused/reserved bits transmitted every second ( https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-abhi-covert-00 ) that also waste power. Proof of work uses energy to meet some strict guarantees. This reminds me of complaining that SSL is computation…

Uh, power that isn't used for bitcoin mining could be used to improve human lives in innumerable way - or not used at all and allow a decreased production of greenhouse gases.

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#38

Post by sillysaurus3 »

kiddico wrote: post #2

One of the only things I dislike about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. With the proof of chia being used in storage, does that imply a lower power cost? I'm not sure what proof of time is either... Does anyone know more about this and can clarify things?

If Bitcoin reached 2 trillion dollars, it would use about 2% of the world's power.

It seems tough to argue that a 2 trillion dollar GDP doesn't merit a 2% increase in power output.

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#39

Post by kiddico »

Squithrilve wrote: post #22
kiddico wrote: post #2

One of the only things I dislike about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. With the proof of chia being used in storage, does that imply a lower power cost? I'm not sure what proof of time is either... Does anyone know more about this and can clarify things?

> flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. I don't get it. Why won't you complain about monitor pixels, that don't display content using/wasting power or various unused/reserved bits transmitted every second ( https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-abhi-covert-00 ) that also waste power. Proof of work uses energy to meet some strict guarantees. This reminds me of complaining that SSL is computation…

What are you even getting at here?

That is a totally different use case. A display is supposed to always be on, while a cpu should turn off while not in use. When a cpu has no work it slows down to conserve power and reduce heat output. What happens when a monitor has no input data? It goes to sleep. It doesn't just display the last thing and continue processing a stream of data from it's input.

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#40

Post by kiddico »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #38
kiddico wrote: post #2

One of the only things I dislike about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. With the proof of chia being used in storage, does that imply a lower power cost? I'm not sure what proof of time is either... Does anyone know more about this and can clarify things?

If Bitcoin reached 2 trillion dollars, it would use about 2% of the world's power. It seems tough to argue that a 2 trillion dollar GDP doesn't merit a 2% increase in power output.

Solid point. Unless of course we can do it with 1% of the world's power, which is what I hope something like proof of space would allow.
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