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China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

reuters.com

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Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#111

Post by moonbug »

mrb wrote: post #82
kevintb wrote: post #17

Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8

No, Bitcoin won't raise global average temperatures by 2°C. This Nature article was debunked by other researchers. I too was asked to review it (recently, post-publication) and the gist of what they did wrong in their analysis is: * They overestimate (probably by 3x-5x) the present power consumption of miners because they assume the distribution of types of mining machine is homogenous in this table: https://github.c…

[flagged]

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#112

Post by jraedisch »

jayd16 wrote: post #98
jraedisch wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not call it preventing fraud, rather simplifying global money supply and making it more transparent, which in turn could prevent fraud due to smaller attack surface and more eyeballs.

But this is just a pipe dream. You would just have fraud hidden away in Swiss bitcoin accounts and wallets in the Cayman islands. Isn't it just less privacy for the naive user and business as usual for the fraudster?

You are correct in that money can and will still be used for fraudulent activity. But the system itself (so far) could not be corrupted. So there is a class of systemic manipulation, that becomes a lot harder with Bitcoin (e.g. inflating money supply).

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#114

Post by celticninja »

jayd16 wrote: post #95
nostrademons wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's value in competition, though. Bitcoin doesn't eliminate trust, but it does commoditize that function. Commoditization necessarily means "many producers", so there's no way to achieve that without duplication of effort - but I guarantee that one Bitcoin ASIC has a lot less environmental impact than one human.

We already use computers in traditional banking in a much more efficient way than bitcoin.

By that analogy we use plenty of people, buildings and power in traditional banking. I'm guessing that easily outweighs the power and costs of bitcoin mining.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#115

Post by swarnie_ »

chakintosh wrote: post #113

Genuine question. Would it be possible for mining facilities to harness the heat from the miners and use it on steam turbines to generate power that'll be used by the miners?

Not an engineer so maybe someone else will have to chime in but i doubt the radial heat from a GPU is enough to heat an element which in turn can flash water to steam.

Surely you cant get the density needed before the GPU's themselves burst in to flames?

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#116

Post by chakintosh »

swarnie_ wrote: post #115
chakintosh wrote: post #113

Genuine question. Would it be possible for mining facilities to harness the heat from the miners and use it on steam turbines to generate power that'll be used by the miners?

Not an engineer so maybe someone else will have to chime in but i doubt the radial heat from a GPU is enough to heat an element which in turn can flash water to steam. Surely you cant get the density needed before the GPU's themselves burst in to flames?

Yes but we're talking about thousands of GPUs here and each one radiating 70ºC

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#117

Post by mercer »

kaolti wrote: post #108
kevintb wrote: post #17

Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8

Funny and sad to see how, instead of seeing opportunities, the forum with the most open minded tech people will rather go with "SHUT IT DOWN"

Seeing opportunities doesn't mean plucking out and leaving your critical eye at the door.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#118

Post by kaolti »

mercer wrote: post #117
kaolti wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny and sad to see how, instead of seeing opportunities, the forum with the most open minded tech people will rather go with "SHUT IT DOWN"

Seeing opportunities doesn't mean plucking out and leaving your critical eye at the door.

Agree, point still stands though. There's pros and cons to everything. Why focus on the latter?

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#119

Post by soVeryTired »

mrb wrote: post #110
ForHackernews wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're quibbling over details: The point is that bitcoin is deliberately designed to waste as much energy as possible. It's a constant arms race where you have to keep escalating your hash rate, or you risk somebody else being able to execute a 51% attack. It's an absolutely atrocious example of the Red Queen effect ("running just to stand still") and I can't believe that technologists who in other contexts value ele…

" You're quibbling over details " CO2 emissions being wrong by a factor of a thousand is a "detail" to you? ;) My point is that the impact of proof-of-work, although real, is grossly exaggerated and appears to be more manageable than what eye-catching press titles suggest. Another example: journalists like to claim Bitcoin emits as much CO2 as an entire country. But in fact current emissions are comparable to what a…

> I think a more intellectually interesting debate to have is whether or not Bitcoin is useful to society, and whether or not its utility justifies the costs.

I honestly don't think it's an interesting debate. It's been done to death, and neither side will ever make any headway in convincing the other.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#120

Post by soVeryTired »

atrus wrote: post #107
ForHackernews wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're quibbling over details: The point is that bitcoin is deliberately designed to waste as much energy as possible. It's a constant arms race where you have to keep escalating your hash rate, or you risk somebody else being able to execute a 51% attack. It's an absolutely atrocious example of the Red Queen effect ("running just to stand still") and I can't believe that technologists who in other contexts value ele…

Well, you need to spend some sort of resource to ensure the integrity of your money supply. The dollar is backed by a few million troops. Bitcoin is backed by a few million tons of coal.

That's a pretty roundabout way of thinking. Plenty of countries have troops but an unstable currency (e.g. Venezuala). Plenty have a stable currency but no significant troops (e.g. Iceland).
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