China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining • Hacker News Board

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#171

Post by keymone » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 1:14 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #147

keymone wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> there are middlemen and your slaims are ridiculous fantasy

this is an assertion from your previous message.

> Miners are the middlemen

this is an elaboration for your assertion, that was missing from your previous message.

you don't have to lie, it's fine if you admit your mistake and fix it.

> Miners are the middlemen, complete with fees

this is false. middlemen have control over the process. miners don't control who can transact with whom and transaction fees are still orders of magnitude lower than the actual flat block reward. moreover - miners don't set the fees either, market does. miners only participate in a competitive environment of providing proof of work and getting paid for it. they are "contractors", not middlemen.

> 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.

bitcoin is not pure energy and i never claimed it was. if you go back and try to read carefully you'll see that i was talking about monetary value and security. bitcoin is just a record in a ledger and not different in t hat regard from thousands other cryptocurrencies. what's different is the difficulty number of every block in the bitcoin blockchain - that's where security comes from, that's how hard it is to modify history and that is where big chunk of bitcoin's value is coming from.

> Proof of work is energy already used, not somehow carried in a bitcoin.

again, you're misunderstanding what i'm saying. you can't convert bitcoin back into energy that was used to create the blockchain, however you do have to spend equivalent amount of energy for each block to be able to mutate the history. that's what i mean when i say that bitcoin is security of money backed by pure energy.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#172

Post by ThomPete » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #169

ThomPete wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France who uses nuclear.

Nuclear is not generally seen as a renewable is it? It’s a really efficient extraction based source.

Its plentiful and its greener than both wind and solar. Furthermore i am assuming the point is reduction of co2, if thats the case then does it really matter in this context?

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#173

Post by Retric » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 1:17 PM UTC

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…

> by assuming it grows linearly with the transaction rate

That’s a reasonable approximation. Over time mining is paid for by transaction fees in a competitive market. If you get 2x the fees and the cost to mine stays the same, you get 2x as much mining.

Granted that assumes transaction fees are ~1:1 with transaction count. However, protection from a 51% attack eventually requires 1:1 increase in mining as the value of a 51% attack increase, so the lower bound is there.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#174

Post by sharperguy » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 1:17 PM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #78

127 wrote: post #73

When people realize that Bitcoin mining is a mechanism to prevent fraud, the energy consumption suddenly makes a lot more sense. How much waste in the world is the result of fraud and lack of trust? Quite a lot of it. That said, reducing the energy consumption of Bitcoin should be an absolute priority. Lightning Network and other such technologies help.

It doesn't really prevent fraud that isn't already a solved problem. When was the last time you had to deal with wire transfer fraud? If you buy counterfeit goods with bitcoin there's not much you can do. A credit card protects you from fraud over $50. What exactly is this bitcoin waste getting us?

What it really gets us is a certain level of resistance against political interference. Using a simple electronic cash system is a million times more efficient, but the currency can be inflated and balances frozen by decree. Increasingly powers are being given to law enforcers to perform these actions without oversight.

As the political landscape worsens, bitcoin and similar technologies will begin to be used more, regardless of environmental concerns. The best way to avoid this would be to improve the political landscape with regards to money transmission/storage, which would be no simple task.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#175

Post by jfk13 » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 1:25 PM UTC

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.

And armies. Why doesn't some gang just march into a few of the big hydro-powered ASIC mining centres and take over control, thus enabling them to steal all the bitcoins. What prevents that? The armed power of nation-states to enforce a generally-agreed order on societies.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#176

Post by sharperguy » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 1:26 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #6

killjoywashere wrote: post #2

Because they finally realized everyone is using bitcoin to exfiltrate currency?

More like they are using cheap subsidized Chinese power prices for something that they weren’t intended for. It’s more of an environmental play (since a lot of that electricity is produced by dirty coal burning).

I'd say it's more a consequence of subsidizing a highly versatile good. It must be continually regulated to ensure the subsidies aren't exploited for something that was outside the original intention. Sadly the increased regulation also reduces individual choice in favor of the governments vision of what's best for the nation.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#177

Post by PycptN2MH » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 1:27 PM UTC

soVeryTired wrote: post #164

PycptN2MH wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Threats to national sovereignty such as invasion.

I don't really see how protection against invasion helps you maintain a fiat currency. I don't think an army is either necessary or sufficient. These just seem like two different issues.

Do you have an example of a nation failing to repel an invasion yet maintaining the integrity of its currency?

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#178

Post by lvs » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

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…

You're debating numbers you don't like by making up other numbers. Whatever. The point is that it's a massive waste of energy and emissions, and that's undeniable.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#179

Post by keymone » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

village-idiot wrote: post #157

keymone wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do these calculations take into account energy equivalent of running all the armies in the world, funding their wars and conflicts? because entire banking system exists on a premise that there is an army behind every fiat currency, so it's not really honest to exclude that from communication. bitcoin security on the other hand is backed purely by energy spent by miners.

The idea that bitcoin will magically make armies obsolete is one of the most laughably silly ideas I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s quite the bar to clear. Hint: wars predate fiat currency. You’d still need army without fiat.

why obsolete? i never said that. bitcoin will just decouple money security from state security. which is why when you compare energy consumption, you need to include at least some chunk of resources dedicated to army, defence, etc.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#180

Post by Proven » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 1:35 PM UTC

> the NDRC said should be phased out as they did not adhere to relevant laws and regulations, were unsafe, wasted resources or polluted the environment.

Of course - why do you need to mine it, you can simply trust the Central Bank-regulated cryptos that don't need PoW