Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitmain, the largest mining hardware company, made around $4B last year

coinsocial.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 165 posts

Re: Bitmain, the largest mining hardware company, made around $4B last year

#131

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

mrep wrote: post #121
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There needs to be a HN bot that just copy and pastes the same old stuff to comments like mine so people don't have to waste energy doing it over and over again. The fact that you're comparing Visa with Bitcoin is exactly my point: Humans make decisions based on the things they can immediately see and neglect things they can't see. That's what you're doing when you're comparing visa to bitcoin. I can't really explain…

> The fact that you're comparing Visa with Bitcoin is exactly my point: Humans make decisions based on the things they can immediately see and neglect things they can't see. That's what you're doing when you're comparing visa to bitcoin. Then can you explain the economic utility that bitcoin provides because it is more innificient way to store and exchange "value" than what banks provide? > I can't really explain thi…

> Then can you explain the economic utility that bitcoin provides because it is more innificient way to store and exchange "value" than what banks provide?

Let me ask you back. Can you prove with 100% certainty that banks are more "efficient" than bitcoin? What does "efficient" even mean? Did you take into account all the jobs required to run the banks? Did you take into account all the energy these bank employees consume? Did you take into account all the side industries that arise around banking system? Did you take into account all the corruption that took place over and over and over throughout history that eventually took everything down to zero? This question is really meaningless when you consider all these factors.

People tend to arrogantly think that they understand the world when they don't. All they do is try their best to make sense of things, and even with these scientific theories, nothing is absolute. Note that I'm not calling YOU arrogant. I'm calling humans as a whole.

I am not saying PoW is better. I'm saying people who think PoS is absolutely better than PoW are leaving a lot of things out of the picture when they draw that conclusion. Nobody knows what's better or what's more efficient. Maybe banking IS more efficient, but maybe in the long term (as in 100 years) it may be more inefficient. (History shows that there's A LOT of invisible inefficiency in the banking system, manifested as economic depressions)

Re: Bitmain, the largest mining hardware company, made around $4B last year

#132

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

mrep wrote: post #126
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This means you're an "engineer" but not yet an economist. Try to study economics if you're really serious about your career in cryptocurrency area, you'll find yourself thinking completely differently. At least you'll get to a point where you don't make a wholesale criticism like this but can say "I know it would be better to have a tech that consumes less energy, but I also understand why it's not a trivial issue, b…

As I am reading your comments more, it seems like you just don't understand this trifecta of software engineering, security, and economics. All blockchains that run code on untrusted nodes have the extremely difficult problem of securely verifying other nodes transactions which usually devolve into solutions that solve O(constant) problems on O(N) nodes with N/2 majority consensus governing the network. That is liter…

What if I told you I already understand everything you just said?

I think I answered your last question elsewhere in this thread, if you're genuinely curious, read that one.

Re: Bitmain, the largest mining hardware company, made around $4B last year

#133

Post by undersuit »

nradov wrote: post #130
undersuit wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more concerned that it takes something "wasteful" like mining to make people wake up. What about DRM techniques like HDCP? Even with hardware acceleration we've been wasting power for at least a decade to encrypt every single video stream so that we can stop piracy. Piracy still exists. Mining most definitely uses more power than video encryption but only one of them has really produced anything of value.

Can you quantify the energy wasted on HDCP? My understanding is that it's typically handled by efficient custom circuits.

Efficient? Maybe, you can still have inefficient hardware. The hardware dedicated to HDCP encryption is single purpose, just like a Bitcoin miner. I'd expect the Bitcoin hardware is far more tuned for efficiency than most hardware HDCP circuits since power usage is the major cost of owning a miner in the longterm.

I'm not aware of any actual metrics and like I originally said I'm pretty sure bitcoin mining still uses more energy.

Re: Bitmain, the largest mining hardware company, made around $4B last year

#134

Post by goldenkey »

undersuit wrote: post #120
goldenkey wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The encryption doubles as compression. Its not wasting power..

No, the HDMI and HDCP specs support encryption and compression on video streams. Encryption is not compression.

Actually, most encryption includes compression. Google it.

Re: Bitmain, the largest mining hardware company, made around $4B last year

#135

Post by undersuit »

goldenkey wrote: post #134
undersuit wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the HDMI and HDCP specs support encryption and compression on video streams. Encryption is not compression.

Actually, most encryption includes compression. Google it.

I don't mean to be snippy, but could you instead just give me proof of your claims?

Re: Bitmain, the largest mining hardware company, made around $4B last year

#136

Post by mrep »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #131
mrep wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that you're comparing Visa with Bitcoin is exactly my point: Humans make decisions based on the things they can immediately see and neglect things they can't see. That's what you're doing when you're comparing visa to bitcoin. Then can you explain the economic utility that bitcoin provides because it is more innificient way to store and exchange "value" than what banks provide? > I can't really explain thi…

> Then can you explain the economic utility that bitcoin provides because it is more innificient way to store and exchange "value" than what banks provide? Let me ask you back. Can you prove with 100% certainty that banks are more "efficient" than bitcoin? What does "efficient" even mean? Did you take into account all the jobs required to run the banks? Did you take into account all the energy these bank employees co…

> Let me ask you back. Can you prove with 100% certainty that banks are more "efficient" than bitcoin? What does "efficient" even mean? Did you take into account all the jobs required to run the banks? Did you take into account all the energy these bank employees consume? Did you take into account all the side industries that arise around banking system?

What? I thought you said you were well versed in economics. This is literally one of the core concepts for the benefits of economics because you can evaluate things on their "efficiency" (costs) versus the value they provide (revenue). Every "job", "energy cost", and "side industries that arise around banking system" are evaluated in the cost to run the business and if they were greater than the value they provided, they would not be in bunessines because revenue would be less than sum of those costs.

> Did you take into account all the corruption that took place over and over and over throughout history that eventually took everything down to zero?

Obviously corruption is not good for our systems neither are other economic problems such as negative externalities [0]. However, I don't see how cryptocurrencies solve them in a way that makes them better than current solutions as a whole.

> This question is really meaningless when you consider all these factors.

I'm not asking you to write a phd. Just give me one good economic use case outside of illegal markets for cryptocurrencies that is better than current technological solutions.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative

Re: Bitmain, the largest mining hardware company, made around $4B last year

#137

Post by doots »

School-Cotton wrote: post #123
kerng wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been wondering if an algorithm of Proof of Spending could somehow be in the mix. People should be rewarded for spending their money to enable a healthy economy. Of course something like this couldn't be the main part of an algorithm, but maybe somehow be considered. Not sure if there has been any research in that area.

What's to stop you from just sending the same money back and forth between addresses you control?

NEM implements an algo like Googles anti SEO / anti sybil

it's closed source though

Re: Bitmain, the largest mining hardware company, made around $4B last year

#138

Post by aianus »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #95
jacobr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With PoW you use your money to buy mining equipment and you will get more money, and voting power. With PoS you buy more of the currency with that money instead.

Right, but the rest of us also have to suffer due to the economic repercussions (or being unable to get an affordable graphics card without waiting forever)

Just pay more for the card and you can have one whenever you want. Isn't that what HN thinks employers should "just" do with tech talent because "there is no real shortage"?

Re: Bitmain, the largest mining hardware company, made around $4B last year

#139

Post by aianus »

School-Cotton wrote: post #122
undersuit wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more concerned that it takes something "wasteful" like mining to make people wake up. What about DRM techniques like HDCP? Even with hardware acceleration we've been wasting power for at least a decade to encrypt every single video stream so that we can stop piracy. Piracy still exists. Mining most definitely uses more power than video encryption but only one of them has really produced anything of value.

What of value has bitcoin mining (or for that matter, anything relating to bitcoin) produced? DRM makes it harder to pirate, which is something of value in my opinion.

Bitcoin (well, its descendants now) makes my international money transfers dirt cheap while DRM prevents me from using media that I paid for on my favorite devices.

Re: Bitmain, the largest mining hardware company, made around $4B last year

#140

Post by aianus »

mrep wrote: post #115
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newton's 3rd law: Proof of Work and Proof of Stake both waste tons of energy, and of course, the entire economic system both of them are trying to replace also waste tons of energy. The problem is, Proof of Work is very objective and measurable, which is why most people criticize Bitcoin for its waste of energy since it's so easy to measure. But proof of stake and the legacy economic system both lack such objective m…

> The problem is, Proof of Work is very objective and measurable, which is why most people criticize Bitcoin for its waste of energy since it's so easy to measure. > But proof of stake and the legacy economic system both lack such objective measures, which is why it's hard to compare them. Bitcoin is estimated to cost $2.5 Billion dollars per year [0] to validate about 77 million transactions per year. Visa processed…

Visa may well spend only $0.10 on a $1000 transaction but given that the total cost to me is $30 (either directly, in the case of a foreign ATM withdrawal, or indirectly through merchant fees), there are many use cases where crypto is currently more economical from the consumer's point of view.

If banks and payment processors were more competent (like maybe processing transactions on Sunday) and less greedy, crypto would be a lot more useless.

Post reply on HN