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A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

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Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#391

Post by thesausageking »

justicz wrote: post #336
thesausageking wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the case of the network halting "safety" doesn't help things. To walk through a plausible example: let's say 3 Chinese services control 35% of the stake of Algorand. Without warning or any public announcement, the Chinese government steps in and forces them to turn off their servers. The Algorand network will now stop functioning as it can't reach 2/3rds. Hours go by and no one is able to transact. At this po…

In this case the Chinese government can kill the liveness of the network (preventing it from producing new blocks), but not the safety of the network (they can't fork the chain). Your question has changed into: "doesn't the system break when a malicious party controls 35% of the stake?" To which the answer is yes. If a malicious party can control 35% of the stake, that is very bad. I should add, though, that if you k…

"If a malicious party can control 35% of the stake, that is very bad."

That didn't happen in this case. The Chinese government never took anyone's keys or controlled any stake, which is the point of the example.

The malicious parties don't need control. They don't need to take anyone's keys or access their servers. They just need to be able to bring it offline, which is much easier to do.

Which raises the question I asked and you didn't answer: if 35% of the stake goes offline with no signs of coming back, how do participants reach consensus?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#392

Post by aidanlister »

SilasX wrote: post #381
good-idea wrote: post #242

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those) But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems abov…

No, we don't. Bitcoin is one way to use energy. There are hundreds of thousands of other ways. When you say Bitcoin "hurts the environment", what, concretely do you mean? Presumably, you mean it in a stronger sense than "using energy to produce food hurts the environment" or "using energy to run an ER hurts the environment". That is, you think that relative to the benefit provided , the use of (harmful) energy to run…

Oh come on. Bitcoin uses the same amount of energy that the country of Iraq [1] uses, home to 38 million people.

Bitcoin has about 500k active bitcoin addresses [2], most of which contain less than $100 [3].

So what are we actually getting for all this energy usage, and couldn't we get that same result for a fraction of the energy usage?

[1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

[2] https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses....

[3] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-activeaddresses...

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#393

Post by sparkie »

zanny wrote: post #362
sparkie wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think here's your answer: It isn't just about the tech. This is what most "blockchain" enthusiasts get wrong. They think it is just about technology, and thus, they can come up with "a better bitcoin." They're missing that the predetermined monetary policy is the key innovation of Bitcoin, and that by creating a new "blockchain" which prints new money, they are shooting themselves in the foot, because they can't ev…

> At the end of the day, nobody can change Bitcoin's monetary policy A majority of hashing power in the network could change Bitcoins monetary policy.

No it couldn't.

A majority of hashing power attempting to change monetary policy spins off a forked coin which does not have economic value because it does not have economic users.

If the overwhelming majority of bitcoin users (98%+) wished to do so, they could possibly change the monetary policy. Of course this will never happen, because there are die-hards like myself who will always stick with the non-inflationary bitcoin.

And then, the market decides whether to stick with the non-inflationary coin, or to use an inflationary one.

The worst that a majority of miners could do the the non-inflationary bitcoin is temporary denial of service, or attempted double spending of their own money. It's going to cost them an awful lot in electricity to try either, and they're not going to get that money back unless they're generating coins that are in demand to buy.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#394

Post by ForHackernews »

SilasX wrote: post #381
good-idea wrote: post #242

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those) But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems abov…

No, we don't. Bitcoin is one way to use energy. There are hundreds of thousands of other ways. When you say Bitcoin "hurts the environment", what, concretely do you mean? Presumably, you mean it in a stronger sense than "using energy to produce food hurts the environment" or "using energy to run an ER hurts the environment". That is, you think that relative to the benefit provided , the use of (harmful) energy to run…

Bitcoin is a terrible way to use energy. It's deliberately inefficient, and it's a constant arms race to become even more inefficient. You're literally killing the planet to enable...what? Tax evasion? Selling drugs and child porn?

It's a moral and ecological atrocity. I agree that capping and/or taxing carbon emissions is the right policy approach, but I would seriously question the values of any humans who then decided to spend our limited carbon budget on something like bitcoin.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#395

Post by stale2002 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #274
seanyesmunt wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In that sense, the coin would create an economic incentive to pollute I think if anything it creates an incentive to use renewable energy. If miners are able to pay less for power, they make more money. As the cost of renewables continue to drop, more miners will move to it.

Irrelevant. Renewable energy could be used to replace other sources, instead of peed away on this. A larger demand for energy likely means more polluting forms of energy will come back into service/stay in service to meet the demand.

It is not irrelevant. Crypto mining provides a very nice energy sink for inconsistent renewables to put their energy into, when that energy would have gone completely to waste.

It is a subside to renewables, where they can make money on energy that would have been thrown away. It allows better managements of the peaks and troughs that commonly plague reneweable energy sources.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#396

Post by root_axis »

ttoinou wrote: post #310
good-idea wrote: post #242

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those) But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems abov…

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when comparing crypto and our current banking system. We all want a faster, more efficient, cheaper cryptocurrency, and those features are linked to its ecological efficiency.

There is simply no comparison. The banking system is many many, many orders of magnitude more efficient and to suggest otherwise is frustratingly disingenuous.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#397

Post by tim333 »

ericol wrote: post #74
malloreon wrote: post #16

I have long wondered how cryptocurrency fans would answer the question: ‘Would you be happy if the crypto-utopia you bring up happens in the next 10 years, and all value is stored/transacted through a cryptocurrency, but it was a coin that you do not possess now, nor could you transfer any of you current currencies into it?’ Say tomorrow someone releases the one true coin, but no one notices. All other cryptocurrenci…

I'm into cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, actually) because it solves a very specific problem that might apply only to my country. So, anecdote: I live in Argentina, work for an UK based company. been doing that for the last 10 years. Before I could trade bitcoin in an almost frictionless way (I.e., before I discovered Localbitcoin.com) my routine was to go to the ATM after the payment got into my european bank account, do…

Transferwise does £ to pesos. Fees for £1000, £11.88. Rate 50.06 vs google saying the market rate is 50.07.

By the way if you are buying BTC, Kraken is much cheaper than 2% (more like 0.2%) and I think they take GBP.

It does sound like the banks are iffy.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#398

Post by ForHackernews »

stale2002 wrote: post #395
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irrelevant. Renewable energy could be used to replace other sources, instead of peed away on this. A larger demand for energy likely means more polluting forms of energy will come back into service/stay in service to meet the demand.

It is not irrelevant. Crypto mining provides a very nice energy sink for inconsistent renewables to put their energy into, when that energy would have gone completely to waste. It is a subside to renewables, where they can make money on energy that would have been thrown away. It allows better managements of the peaks and troughs that commonly plague reneweable energy sources.

It's not a subsidy to renewables. Bitcoin miners don't give two shits about whether their energy is green or not.

You want to help level out peaks and troughs of electricty production: Improve battery technology, don't just waste the energy generating sha256 over and over.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#399

Post by orthecreedence »

SilasX wrote: post #381
good-idea wrote: post #242

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those) But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems abov…

No, we don't. Bitcoin is one way to use energy. There are hundreds of thousands of other ways. When you say Bitcoin "hurts the environment", what, concretely do you mean? Presumably, you mean it in a stronger sense than "using energy to produce food hurts the environment" or "using energy to run an ER hurts the environment". That is, you think that relative to the benefit provided , the use of (harmful) energy to run…

An enormous amount of energy used to support a tiny minority of people participating in a highly-manipulated wealth redistribution mechanism is, objectively, a complete fucking waste.

You cannot look at bitcoin by any measure and say that it's a practical success for any of its goals. And given the amount of energy it uses to perpetuate its own failure, it's nearly sinful to keep it going.

That said, I do support some form of decentralized currency. Not because people are ever going to be smart enough to be their own bank or because I think some currency will magically topple governments and financial structures, but mainly so people can transact without overly-censorious middle-men who take a cut while adding nearly no value.

We have the internet, now. Payment networks should have died years ago. I'm glad this problem is being worked on. However, it's possible to solve without using a country's-worth of energy to support a pathetic ~10 transactions per second.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#400

Post by ericol »

akrymski wrote: post #355
ericol wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm into cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, actually) because it solves a very specific problem that might apply only to my country. So, anecdote: I live in Argentina, work for an UK based company. been doing that for the last 10 years. Before I could trade bitcoin in an almost frictionless way (I.e., before I discovered Localbitcoin.com) my routine was to go to the ATM after the payment got into my european bank account, do…

Are you sure Argentina isn't part of SWIFT? That's insane if true. A quick google search suggests otherwise: https://www.theswiftcodes.com/argentina/

Here are 2 other documents form another bank. These are pdf documents, the 2nd page of each document is in english:

Deposit in euros [1] Deposit in dollars [2]

[1] https://www.santanderrio.com.ar/banco/wcm/connect/d475bed5-9...

[2] https://www.santanderrio.com.ar/banco/wcm/connect/08c65dcd-d...

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