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A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

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Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#511

Post by geofft »

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…

> 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 miners doesn't justify its environmental cost.

For myself, that is not what I mean when I use the phrase.

Bitcoin hurts the environment because Bitcoin, by design, wants to use as much power as available to secure it - and conversely is vulnerable to anyone who has significant power available, and so it had to design itself so that the rational thing to do is to commit that power to Bitcoin itself.

Bitcoin automatically adjusts its difficulty based on the computational speed of the network over the past few thousand blocks. There is a target mining speed of one block every ten minutes. If someone throws more computational power at Bitcoin, Bitcoin itself will adjust to the additional available power, so that nothing more gets done, it just uses up the power. This is not a claim that the benefit is too low relative to the additional energy; this is a claim that the benefit is zero, by design, relative to additional energy, and that this property is inherent to Bitcoin.

There is a reason to single out Bitcoin and blame it for environmental problems. No other product, concept, or idea in human history (besides Bitcoin clones) has been designed in a way where it expands gas-like to all the energy available to it (... except perhaps capitalism itself, and funny enough, people are claiming that capitalism too must be stopped to avert irrecoverable climate change).

I'm supportive of other forms of cryptocurrency without this property (weakly supportive, given that I haven't used any of them in detail, but they seem promising). There seems no particular reason to use Bitcoin if alternatives exist without the burn-all-the-available-energy property.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#512

Post by sjeohp »

root_axis wrote: post #460
c22 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is bitcoin sufficiently trustworthy without proof of work? I'm not a bitcoin expert, but my understanding was that this is an integral part of the trust model. If so then we're just back to talking about inefficiencies. I can't imagine the processing being done by my computer right now is all strictly necessary to read and post these comments, and I'd wager this site is more efficient than most these days. Still I ac…

> Is bitcoin sufficiently trustworthy without proof of work? I'm not a bitcoin expert, but my understanding was that this is an integral part of the trust model. If so then we're just back to talking about inefficiencies. Yes, that's exactly the point. Bitcoin is insanely inefficient because PoW is insanely inefficient. Unlike other "inefficiencies" where there is a logical relationship between "energy spent" and "us…

Mining gold gets harder over time. If you want more gold that's the price you pay.

Trust-less consensus may be the same. Nature doesn't care either way.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#513

Post by [deleted] »

porpoisely wrote: post #493
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…

In the greater scheme of things, how much energy use is mining bitcoin responsible for? 0.000000000001% of the world's energy use? I used to be very skeptical of bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but I'm even more skeptical of the recent anti-crypto propaganda all over social media. 3 years ago, crypto was going to save the world. Now, we are talking about environment? What gives? What's with the relentless anti-crypto pro…

[deleted]

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#514

Post by ecwilson »

orthecreedence wrote: post #399
SilasX wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 som…

> You cannot look at bitcoin by any measure and say that it's a practical success for any of its goals.

I can memorize 20 words and cross whatever border I want with $100 million in my brain, and full confidence that that money is mine. That's pretty damn cool.

> 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.

It sounds like you're projecting what you think Bitcoin should be.

> 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.

10 transactions per second on the L1 network (averaging $10k-20k each), and many thousands possible today on L2. Plus a way to securely store the transacted value.

To argue that a small country's worth of energy being used to secure Bitcoin is a poor use of resources, you really have to consider how much energy the worldwide banking system consumes in all its complexity to do the same thing. I don't know how to do that calculation, but my point is there's more to it than you're seeing.

You have to also consider which energy is being used. Dirty energy is certainly part of it. But a lot of the energy used is through geographic renewables arbitrage. For example, there are hydro power facilities in China that were built and never fully utilized or connected to the main grid. You can set up miners nearby those facilities to use the surplus energy, and as long as you are connected to the internet, you're good to go.

It's also a potentially great incentive for governments to start NEW renewables facilities, because they have a way to use the surplus power until their populations grow to use the full capacity of those plants.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#515

Post by doctorpangloss »

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…

The best way to make a service provider care about the environment is if trees can somehow be the customer.

A big part of a decentralized database's design is its protection against DDoSing. Proof of stake is very low environmental cost but you'll discover that the proof of stake networks with low fees can be DDoSed extremely cheaply.

Other networks use the networking architecture to protect against DDoSing.

> amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem

Yes, it is. Although I'd like to say that if bitcoin energy use has a crowding-out effect, like an electric car does, then I'd favor mining bitcoin resulting in more hydropower dams being built than people doing business that can't be centralized like mining can and requiring liquid (dirty) fuels.

Datacenters as a whole can be made really efficient and are, in my opinion, a decent investment that can be repurposed better than e.g. an office building full of people doing traditional banking.

So it's not super straightforward even if on net we don't need cryptocurrency miners and I of course agree that it's bad for the environment.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#516

Post by celticninja »

aidanlister wrote: post #392
SilasX wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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://bitinfochart…

Those figures from digiconomist have been debunked.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#517

Post by bearmcbearsly »

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…

You mention proof of work vs proof of stake, and then two sentences later you claim that nobody is paying to the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining.

The whole point of proof of stake is to avoid the energy waste that proof of work requires to secure a blockchain. It's not just a technical challenge -- it's one potential solution to very problem you're describing.

Is proof of stake actually going to work at scale? I don't know for sure, and I don't think anybody else really does -- but the point is that not only are people talking about the environment, they're actively working on solutions.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#518

Post by throwaway415415 »

thesausageking wrote: post #322
justicz wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work for Algorand) This is false. The BFT protocol that Algorand uses guarantees that each round may have exactly one block (up to our security assumptions with regard to honest stake); this is one of the protocol’s “safety” guarantees. In the case that a large number of participating nodes crash, the network will refuse to produce a block until a sufficient amount of stake begins participating again. Nodes that f…

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…

Yes people can duck with a network by cutting cables. This works with all internet protocols.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#519

Post by jstanley »

jayd16 wrote: post #482
jstanley wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you going to hold any amount of digital money without entrusting another organisation to hold it for you? That's the decentralisation of power that has occurred. You don't have to prove your identity. You don't have to prove anything to anyone. You just download some software and generate a private key. Bitcoin is to money what the internet was to book publishing.

Its not anonymous. Its the opposite, in fact. Every transaction is recorded and traceable.

I didn't say anything about anonymous.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#520

Post by throwaway415415 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #485

Wow, I'm pretty disappointed that the entire MIT website isn't secure. What's going on over there? Meanwhile, my random state school has a fully secure https website. Security is of critical importance to cryptocurrencies, and it's hard to take anyone seriously on that subject if they can't even get the fundamentals of web encryption right.

Wow wow wow
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