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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

#121

Post by kaolti »

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…

Thanks for taking the time to point this out, especially since you're swimming upstream.

> I think a more intellectually interesting debate to have is whether or not Bitcoin is useful to society

Exactly.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#122

Post by DennisP »

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

Luckily, proof of stake research seems to be going really well. We can have decentralized blockchains without the climate impact.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#123

Post by ackbar03 »

drak0n1c wrote: post #96

Commenters are applauding the environmental implications of this policy, but I’m curious why no one is considering the human side of this ban. There are a billion people living under authoritarianism who are stuck with an increasingly devalued Yuan and steadily losing the ability to obtain other currencies. Is that not also a problem that can result in humanitarian disaster? I don’t think we should be comfortable wit…

No it is not a humanitarian disaster. If it was it'd be a economic policy problem and their are much more factors to be considering for that.

Plus your entire premise is wrong, yuan is definitely not increasingly devalued. Even if it was that wouldn't directly mean it's a problem

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#124

Post by m-i-l »

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.

There have been previous threads on HN with some back-of-the-envelope comparisons of Bitcoin's energy consumption vs the global banking systems, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18325430 . If these rough calculations are correct, the global banking system uses ~100TWh/year (including datacentres, branches, heating in offices etc.) while Bitcoin is around one-third of that at ~30TWh/year for a negligible percentage of the total number of transactions, and a single Visa transaction (again factoring in datacentres etc.) is 41Wh per transaction whereas a single Bitcoin trasaction is around 20,000 more at ~826kWh. That was also 5 months ago, so the situation is likely to have got worse for Bitcoin, given the traditional banking system is incentivised to reduce energy consumption whereas Bitcoin is explicitly designed to increase energy consumption over time.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#125

Post by PycptN2MH »

soVeryTired wrote: post #120
atrus wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Militarily robust sovereignty is necessary but not sufficient for the integrity of a fiat currency.

Governments such as Iceland borrow military power through international agreements.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#126

Post by [deleted] »

endless1234 wrote: post #42
superkuh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it still doesn't waste as much energy as the standing armies fiat currencies rely on. And if your country doesn't have a large standing army then your currency is being subsidized by those you ally with who do have standing armies of significance. And the good it brings to the world in being a non-nation state controlled currency is obvious. From enabling continuation of money transfer in failing or restrictive g…

If bitcoin had global adoption, there would be no more armies in the world? That's quite a stretch...

[deleted]

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#127

Post by bamboozled »

tudorizer wrote: post #94
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #79

As a techie and a math lover, I was initially excited with Bitcoin, and did a bit of mining, transactions, etc. But after learning about the environmental impact, I no longer support Bitcoin. It's just not worth the cost, a very beautiful idea but with a serious flaw (which I hope can be fixed in the future). So this sounds quite sensible to me.

As a techie, you should still apprectiate the fact that Bitcoin mining is the first financial system that can be measured in terms of energy impact. Existing systems, banks and all adjacent institutions and companies, are close to impossible to track and measure.

I think the same thing, I'd love to see the Co2 emissions of all financial institutions combined put against bitcoin, that would be interesting.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#128

Post by soVeryTired »

PycptN2MH wrote: post #125
soVeryTired wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Militarily robust sovereignty is necessary but not sufficient for the integrity of a fiat currency. Governments such as Iceland borrow military power through international agreements.

Robust against what?

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#129

Post by joesb »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #60
sygma wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The planet doesn’t care, it will go on. With climate change, humans are at risk, not the planet.

Humans are at risk of resource shortages. Many species are facing extinction. Nothing bad will happen to the dirt, but if 'planet' means 'biosphere' then it's at the most risk.

New species will arise. That's how evolution works.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#130

Post by Fnoord »

soVeryTired wrote: post #119
mrb wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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.

Not sure anything regarding Bitcoin hasn't been discussed to death.

In this case, perhaps because there's no easy yes/no answer to it. I'm an opponent of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. I find the environment important. However, I can attest there are valid use cases for cryptocurrency. I don't think there are valid use cases for me (a European utilizing the EUR who's not interested in tax avoidance or buying illegal utilities) though. So for me cryptocurrencies are not only irrelevant, they're harmful.

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