Proof of work was a mistake.
No way. Other cryptocoins (ones that don't rely on PoW) never could have existed without it.
Bitcoin Miners on Track to Use More Electricity Than All of Argentina
41–50 of 66 posts
Re: Bitcoin Miners on Track to Use More Electricity Than All of Argentina
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> miners can lower their fees This isn't how fees work. Fees are based purely on supply and demand. The payer sets their fee level when they create the transaction, and it's up to the miners which transactions they will include. Since there is always an excess of transactions, the miners typically select transactions to maximise their payoff. If miners were to "lower their fees", they'd be accepting low-fee transacti…
When energy becomes cheaper, miners can do more mining, leading to an increase in blocks. Given that people are only willing to pay so much for a transaction to complete, there is only so much demand at a certain price point. Once the supply of blocks increases, you eventually have price points where the demand no longer matches the supply. At this point a miner would lower their fee until the demand increases back t…
> When energy becomes cheaper, miners can do more mining, leading to an increase in blocks.
When there's an increase in blocks, Bitcoin increases the amount of mining required for a block, to prevent an increase in the supply of blocks.
Re: Bitcoin Miners on Track to Use More Electricity Than All of Argentina
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't have to match the energy burn, just the hash rate (so efficiency matters). You also don't have to do it all at once, you just have to be faster than the network (If the private blocks are calculated 10% faster it only takes ~10 days to go back in time 1 day). But of course this attack isn't practical, actually executing it would demonstrate that the public network was a farce.
> You don't have to match the energy burn, just the hash rate (so efficiency matters). Of course, but I don't know how anyone could be a lot more efficient that current miners, who are in a rat race to increase the efficiency of their mining operations. They probably think about energy consumption every waking hour of the day. > You also don't have to do it all at once, you just have to be faster than the network (If…
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Re: Bitcoin Miners on Track to Use More Electricity Than All of Argentina
#44Re: Bitcoin Miners on Track to Use More Electricity Than All of Argentina
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a very simplified way, proof of work is a way to roughly uniformily distribute the block generation "queue". In a network without identities how do you prevent someone creating hundreds of accounts to have a hundred times more chance to be next in line? You give them a hard problem, and now the odds of you being next in line is proportional to your computing power, which you can't multiply effortlessly. Proof of S…
> it does it proportionally to the amount of currency you have saved. Doesn't this have an inherent disincentive to new people joining and using the network? Sorta like the poor stay poor, the rich get rich?
You can look at the block rewards and mining fees as interest on your investment. The "saved" part is interesting too - I've seen variations where you have to lock your stake for a longer period (trading rewards for liquidity) or where you have to "burn" an amount of stake, permanently taking it out of circulation to get a spot on the line.
The inflation rate and actual utility of the currency are important factors too - if most of the currency is already distributed and the inflation is low (thus block rewards are low), the richer don't get much richer. If the utility is high, redistribution occurs more naturally as well.
Perhaps the inflation is not low but there are other distribution mechanisms that distribute currency based on utility in a higher rate than block rewards (for example on steem, of all newly minted coins in a block ~5% goes to the block creator, ~65% goes to content creators, ~6% to commenters, ~17% to curators and 7% as interest to those that have commited their stake in a long term deposit).
But yeah, in the end it indeed is a factor which is one of trade offs I mentioned, but there are ways to combat it.
Re: Bitcoin Miners on Track to Use More Electricity Than All of Argentina
#46Has there been articles or research done on how much energy is used to coin, print, distribute, and utilize fiat currencies?
Most of the wasted energy of fiat currencies is the huge amount of waste due to central banking and fractional reserve banking inflation: military spending, artificial house prices, artificially high stock market. If you add the effect of all these inefficient markets up, Bitcoin's cost for security (which is about 8%/year if you add up transaction fees as well) doesn't sound that bad (and the market shows that it's more efficient than the current system).
Re: Bitcoin Miners on Track to Use More Electricity Than All of Argentina
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not anymore then proof of work has I think. Want to join bitcoin mining? You need to invest in mining hardware, and have access to cheap electricity.
Do you have to mine for proof of stake, or is simply owning the underlying asset enough to "generate interest on the investment?"
For block rewards you'd have to mine. In particular you'd have to have a server running a node joined in the network ready to generate a block whenever your number is called.
Not everyone would want to do that, so there's usually a mechanism to indicate you want to be eligible to do so, depositing your coins or similar.
That's for block rewards - nothing prevents a blockchain currency to be designed to generate inflation and add interest on everyone's investment - some do exactly that.
Re: Bitcoin Miners on Track to Use More Electricity Than All of Argentina
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't have to match the energy burn, just the hash rate (so efficiency matters). You also don't have to do it all at once, you just have to be faster than the network (If the private blocks are calculated 10% faster it only takes ~10 days to go back in time 1 day). But of course this attack isn't practical, actually executing it would demonstrate that the public network was a farce.
> You don't have to match the energy burn, just the hash rate (so efficiency matters). Of course, but I don't know how anyone could be a lot more efficient that current miners, who are in a rat race to increase the efficiency of their mining operations. They probably think about energy consumption every waking hour of the day. > You also don't have to do it all at once, you just have to be faster than the network (If…
Re your PS, there will still be an old and new consensus blockchain no matter how fast you calculate the replacement.
(that's why it is a "chain", the head depends on all previous values)
Re: Bitcoin Miners on Track to Use More Electricity Than All of Argentina
#49does anyone else think that articles like this are fueled self interested parties who don't have a stake in crypto?
if crypto is here to stay, wont more efficient mining hardware, potentially more efficient software, and things like recent advances in solar relax these fears in reality?
Re: Bitcoin Miners on Track to Use More Electricity Than All of Argentina
#50does anyone else think that articles like this are fueled self interested parties who don't have a stake in crypto? if crypto is here to stay, wont more efficient mining hardware, potentially more efficient software, and things like recent advances in solar relax these fears in reality?
> does anyone else think that articles like this are fueled self interested parties who don't have a stake in crypto?
Journalists aren’t supposed to have a stake in the subject they cover. That’s the point. Not having a stake in cryptocurrency is “disinterested,” not “self-interested.”