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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

#141

Post by mrpopo »

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…

* They assume the proportion of CO2 emissions per kWh never improves over the next 100 years (great progress of renewables coming to a sudden stop?)

I mostly agreed with the first two bullet points, but please show me a significant country that managed to reduce their CO2 emissions with renewables.

For instance, in China, where a lot of Bitcoin mining happens, the share of renewables increases in many countries, but not even as fast as the actual consumption by the population, leading them to open more coal power plants as well.

I'll wait until I see it.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#142

Post by Nursie »

keymone wrote: post #138
Nursie wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such utter nonsense. There are a whole class of middlemen! And decentralised currency is not useful or important, unless you've got some sort of decentralisation fetish, which most people don't. This is honestly one of the most inflated, ridiculous claims I've ever seen in the cryptocurrency space. A space which is already riddled with ridiculous, overblown claims!

as you don't provide any elaboration to your claims i'll just disregard them as ungrounded and/or irrelevant. try again.

Exactly as ungrounded and irrelevant as your fantastic claims of usefulness then?

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#143

Post by keymone »

Nursie wrote: post #142
keymone wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as you don't provide any elaboration to your claims i'll just disregard them as ungrounded and/or irrelevant. try again.

Exactly as ungrounded and irrelevant as your fantastic claims of usefulness then?

i provided an elaboration: it's the first time in history we've been able to express and implement monetary value and security thereof in terms of pure energy without any middlemen.

you're welcome to provide actual refutation.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#144

Post by EliRivers »

BubRoss wrote: post #80
rwmj wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you exclude gold and every other physical commodity ever.

Gold can't be used electronically without permission from a third party.

Do not cryptocoin transactions only work through the literal agreement of a large number of third parties?

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#145

Post by ForHackernews »

nnq wrote: post #134
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…

> the Red Queen effect ("running just to stand still") It would be good if it were actually and deliberately properly designed this way to create an arms race of "who can get more general-purpose computing power for less" because it would accelerate technology development with this Red Queen effect... Unfortunately they've missed the "general purpose part" - most mining todays is done by special-purpose hardware made…

Yeah, if it were designed in such a way as to incentivize general purpose computing, or to reward producing the results of some useful scientific or mathematical computation, then I would be less appalled by it.

As it stands, brute-forcing SHA256 on ASICs is just a travesty.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#146

Post by ForHackernews »

wickoff wrote: post #131
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…

It's not quibbling over details. Bitcoin miners often place their mining farms near power plants and consume electricity that would've been wasted otherwise. A lot of it comes from renewable sources. At the present moment network users are collectively paying about $700 000 a day in tx fees, so clearly the network itself creates value.

> consume electricity that would've been wasted otherwise

[citation needed]

But even if that were true, it would be disincentivizing the deployment of grid-scale storage technologies, so still hurting the battle against climate change.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#147

Post by Nursie »

keymone wrote: post #143
Nursie wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly as ungrounded and irrelevant as your fantastic claims of usefulness then?

i provided an elaboration: it's the first time in history we've been able to express and implement monetary value and security thereof in terms of pure energy without any middlemen. you're welcome to provide actual refutation.

You ignored it - there are middlemen and your claims are ridiculous fantasy.

Miners are the middlemen, complete with fees. Bitcoin is not pure energy any more than any other electronic currency. Proof of work is energy already used, not somehow carried in a bitcoin.

The whole "pure energy" thing is just air-headed utopianism AFAICT

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#148

Post by keymone »

EliRivers wrote: post #144
BubRoss wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold can't be used electronically without permission from a third party.

Do not cryptocoin transactions only work through the literal agreement of a large number of third parties?

third parties only observe what's published in a blockchain. they can choose to disagree with blockchain. when all/majority third parties disagree with blockchain - it becomes irrelevant and worthless while some other branch of that blockchain becomes "the real one".

it's really not the same as having limited number of third parties proclaim which version of blockchain is correct.

but more importantly - one doesn't have to ask permission from any third party to publish their transaction either via internet or radio or satellite or morse code. if you still think trading in gold is safer/easier - i don't know what else to say.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#149

Post by PycptN2MH »

soVeryTired wrote: post #128
PycptN2MH wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Threats to national sovereignty such as invasion.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#150

Post by EliRivers »

keymone wrote: post #148
EliRivers wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not cryptocoin transactions only work through the literal agreement of a large number of third parties?

third parties only observe what's published in a blockchain. they can choose to disagree with blockchain. when all/majority third parties disagree with blockchain - it becomes irrelevant and worthless while some other branch of that blockchain becomes "the real one". it's really not the same as having limited number of third parties proclaim which version of blockchain is correct. but more importantly - one doesn't h…

If you think I indicated anything about how safe trading in gold is - I do know what to say, and I've pretty much just said it :)
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