The energy put into Proof-of-work is what makes the system immutable. People who complain about bitcoin's energy use, don't seem to grasp what makes the bitcoin Blockchain immutable. In order to change the Database, you have to go back and do the "work" which becomes practically impossible after approx. 10 blocks. You take that away and you'll make the system Tamper evident, and not Tamper Proof as it is right now. It's the only secure data base ever invented, and thats because of the energy used to secure it.
I don't see these people complaining how much energy Las Vegas wastes. Or Hollywood. What about professional sports? How much energy does going to war cost? All of these are less important than the only sovereign moneys system in the history of man-kind. So, please, stop complaining about the energy use, i left my violin at home.
BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia
271–280 of 309 posts
Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
>real economy Interesting you don't consider this real economy. Do you think banking is also not part of the 'real economy'
I may have been imprecise in terminology, but that's no reason to pearl-clutch about my choice of words. Resources spent on PoW are effectively an arms race (outrunning attacks on the network that other systems don't need to deal with). It's meaningful to distinguish between resources devoted to zero-sum arms races vs. positive-sum satisfaction of human desires. Resources spent on PoW take from the latter and add to…
> I may have been imprecise in terminology, but that's no reason to pearl-clutch about my choice of words.
I think you got your point across fine. Obviously it doesn't look like 'real' work since there's so much power being spent, seemingly unnecessarily. But I think it is easy to underestimate how effectively it can replace the current financial system.
Why do you think wealth can't be generated with digital currency? What part of 'positive-sum satisfaction of human desires' you think current digital system can't satisfy? And I think you're looking at the resources spent on digital currency and the current financial system in a different way. There's no need of people spending lots of time and energy to safe guard big lock rooms.
Banking can move to the digital ecosystem just fine. And it is just in its first iteration.
Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
I may have been imprecise in terminology, but that's no reason to pearl-clutch about my choice of words. Resources spent on PoW are effectively an arms race (outrunning attacks on the network that other systems don't need to deal with). It's meaningful to distinguish between resources devoted to zero-sum arms races vs. positive-sum satisfaction of human desires. Resources spent on PoW take from the latter and add to…
In economics jargon, financial services are explicitly defined as not the real economy as an outcome of how "real value" is defined. Finance deals primarily with nominal(price) values, versus real ones(cost of inputs, utility to consumer). There is some imprecision to this, of course: banks do use paper and labor, but not in the same way that a factory uses pig iron and labor. So banks would be defined as not real ec…
> In economics jargon, financial services are explicitly defined as not the real economy as an outcome of how "real value" is defined
What century was that? I think financial services fit very well into the proper functioning of the real world. I believe it does provide very 'real' value and I'm ready to disagree with the definition of 'real value'.
>while Bitcoin mining would be defined as real economy since it bottlenecks on an energy input.
Bitcoin mining isn't competing with the wealth transaction part, but the wealth creation part. The wealth transaction part was secured a long time ago and now there are efforts to make it more efficient without dealing with the race for creation - like Lightning Network.
Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, I was there at the event (I did the lightning talk at the beginning). Would love to answer any questions about Chia that anybody has, that I learned first-hand from Bram.
How does the proof of storage work and will proof of time be decentralised across all nodes in the network, or a subset of trusted nodes?
The paper on storage proof is here: https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/893
The proof of time is probably best described as being federated. Any peer can join, but it realistically will only be run by a very few peers with specialized hardware. This mistakenly trips up a lot of people as a "bad" thing, when it shouldn't.
The only purpose of the proof-of-time servers is to make replay attacks impractical. As in, if the network is 10 years old, an attacker would actually have to spend 10 provable years to manipulate it.
What if they collude with the time server? Well, they'd have to collude with all of them, which is unlikely, even if there are only a few. And second, it isn't worth the time server's work.
Again, the details are a lot more complicated, but hopefully that is a quick off-the-top-of-my-head explanation that gives some intuition.
Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, I was there at the event (I did the lightning talk at the beginning). Would love to answer any questions about Chia that anybody has, that I learned first-hand from Bram.
Going to watch the video in a bit but I've got a question: could I turn my home NAS into a farmer for this blockchain simply by reserving some of my storage space for it or does it still require a lot of computing power (CPU/GPU)?
That should work :) although it would need to be connected up to the network so it could reply to proof queries and "thread the needle" of the time servers.
Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
I may have been imprecise in terminology, but that's no reason to pearl-clutch about my choice of words. Resources spent on PoW are effectively an arms race (outrunning attacks on the network that other systems don't need to deal with). It's meaningful to distinguish between resources devoted to zero-sum arms races vs. positive-sum satisfaction of human desires. Resources spent on PoW take from the latter and add to…
> I may have been imprecise in terminology, but that's no reason to pearl-clutch about my choice of words. I think you got your point across fine. Obviously it doesn't look like 'real' work since there's so much power being spent, seemingly unnecessarily. But I think it is easy to underestimate how effectively it can replace the current financial system. Why do you think wealth can't be generated with digital currenc…
>Why do you think wealth can't be generated with digital currency?
I didn't say that. I said that the marginal unit associated with mining can't be credited with the wealth gains of digital currency applications. The criticism was of the mining costs you need to make this work, not the stuff you can layer on top of the currency itself. For it to be a social net positive, all those benefits would have to outweigh the mining costs.
>And I think you're looking at the resources spent on digital currency and the current financial system in a different way. There's no need of people spending lots of time and energy to safe guard big lock rooms.
Of course the financial system has to pay for similar "defense", but the comparison is not favorable to Bitcoin/PoW. The costs of securing conventional centralized mechanisms (or bank vaults) ramp up much slower than Bitcoin per dollar or per unit of wealth secured.
Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I may have been imprecise in terminology, but that's no reason to pearl-clutch about my choice of words. I think you got your point across fine. Obviously it doesn't look like 'real' work since there's so much power being spent, seemingly unnecessarily. But I think it is easy to underestimate how effectively it can replace the current financial system. Why do you think wealth can't be generated with digital currenc…
>Why do you think wealth can't be generated with digital currency? I didn't say that. I said that the marginal unit associated with mining can't be credited with the wealth gains of digital currency applications. The criticism was of the mining costs you need to make this work, not the stuff you can layer on top of the currency itself. For it to be a social net positive, all those benefits would have to outweigh the…
Fair point. I guess something only like PoS can avoid that problem, if it is infallible, which might not be the case.
>The costs of securing conventional centralized mechanisms (or bank vaults) ramp up much slower than Bitcoin per dollar or per unit of wealth secured.
Actually I think the costs are much less, because after a certain point, you're not working to secure the network but racing to make more bitcoin. The network can be secure with much less resources than what is currently being spent.
It is a misconception to think that effort to mine is to fight external attacks. It is more like fight between banks to transact faster.
Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The cost is reasonable in SSL case but unreasonable in Bitcoin case based on what criteria exactly Next to nonexistent cost per connection in standard case of SSL. We can saturate gigabit links using modern hardware with AES-NI. Outside of special deployment cases, the cost is a rounding error. We can't provide this capability in a cheaper way at the moment (or we would do that) On the other hand, we've got Bitcoin…
> while other solutions like proof of stake / space / ... exist and are much more energy efficient. They are only proposed solutions, not implemented in any existing systems so it's not fair to compare them. Proof of stake for example has numerous drawbacks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake#Criticism
Filecoin did some good improvements in cpu/energy usage and PoSpace
Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia
#279> 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…
Personally, I think it would be morally reprehensible to use energy to keep BTC alive if there are vastly more efficient alternatives that achieve the same goal. Though I am interested in counter-arguments.
Renewable energy exists yknow. We're not going to use up the sun's fusion energy with some dinky solar panels.
Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
One wine being generally better than another, is not about 'scarcity'. Yes - of course people will have differing opinions - but aggregate market demand can be different for something made with the same amount of labour - that is not an issue of scarcity. i.e. 'most people' can view one wine as better than the other with equal amounts of labour. Again - surely you can, if you want get into issues of 'scarcity' i.e. y…
I also found the wine example peculiar, as good wine and scarce wine aren't often the same, but I kept with it as it was brought up. Mistakenly I thought you had brought it up, sorry. "Aggregate market demands" are capitalism, where wine is a status symbol and "good" wine generally refers to price. You are continuing to view this only in the eyes of capitalism and considering "value" to include "profit."
""Aggregate market demands" are capitalism, where wine is a status symbol and "good" wine generally refers to price"
No - what I meant by 'aggregate market demand' was really just 'average price / perception of value' - and 'good' does not refer to 'price' - good wine literally is better.
I am not equating value and profit. I am equating value and price.
Some goods are generally better than others (i.e. most people will think one is better than the other) and require the same labour - this is my point - and it's unrelated to scarcity.