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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

#281

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

GenericsMotors wrote: post #243
tudorizer wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's software, it can be optimised much quicker than optimising the politics and dynamics of the existing banking system.

Energy consumption goes up with mining difficulty but its throughput stays the same. This manta keepa being repeated by the bitcoin crowd as if it were a fledgling technology, when its already 10 years old. Is mass adoption just around the corner, do you reckon?

Honestly it's really unlikely that bitcoin will be the place where energy efficient cryptocurrency will be debuted.

There's lots of people working on more energy efficient, yet still secure cryptocurrencies, but IMO we won't see truly energy efficient cryptocurrencies until we shift the trust away from the central chain and into individual actors.

Theoretically you should be able to establish a trust coefficient for an action given the signature of the actor & the gossip on the network about their outstanding debts, their current balance & their non-transferable value.

You'd still need to pay the cost for obtaining the information about the actor and a method for verifying that you haven't been subjected to a sybill attack w.r.t. that information, but that amount of data transfer/computation should be orders of magnitude lower than the current PoW technique that bitcoin uses.

There's no way that the rough system I am talking about would be adopted by bitcoin, and I'm not gonna be working on it, I haven't seen a project that looks similar so I'm guessing it will still be quite some time.

If I was going to go with a cryptocurrency that is energy efficient and currently exists I'd probably take a serious look at https://www.nanode.co/

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#282

Post by zamalek »

clarky07 wrote: post #263
looeee wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin.org is not likely to be an unbiased source when it comes to the negative aspects of Bitcoin.

I'm guessing nature.com is also not likely to be an unbiased source...

Nature has nothing to do with "nature," apart from the fact that science is concerned with the behavior of nature. It originated in 1869, long before climate change or energy waste was a known phenomenon. It's a scientific journal, they would likely accept any paper in support of cryptocurrencies that earned enough reviews.

Additionally, if you are implying that anything "natural" should be biased against cryptocurrencies, you are actually showing support for the root comment. It's admitting that cryptocurrencies are harming nature.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#283

Post by keymone »

jcranmer wrote: post #278
keymone wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let “has fiat currency” be A, and “has a large army” be B. You’re asserting “If A then B; therefore if not A then not B”. those are incorrect presumptions and therefore incorrect conclusion. A is "has fiat currency", B is "needs an army or other means to maintain fiat value". of course army is not the only thing, but it's one of the things in many of the countries. whatever other things other countries have to asse…

> yet another reason why you can't make these energy consumption comparisons without being intellectually dishonest. The intellectually dishonest part is trying to shove as many extra costs onto the fiat currency side of the equation without counting them for cryptocurrency. Comparing the energy cost per transaction is a simple, pairwise comparison. Even if all the world used bitcoin for currency, there is no reason…

> The intellectually dishonest part is trying to shove as many extra costs onto the fiat currency side of the equation without counting them for cryptocurrency

let's meet in the middle then? i don't shove as much as possible but you shove enough for comparison to be honest.

> Comparing the energy cost per transaction is a simple, pairwise comparison

it's simple and wrong. energy-efficient transactions isn't bitcoin's goal. this has already been mentioned, i suggest you re-read the thread.

> there is no reason to expect that things like banks, armies, and the entire financial ecosystem wouldn't also exist

who's expecting that? i'm honestly amazed by amount of strawman-ing happening in this discussion. didn't expect that on HN.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#284

Post by belltaco »

lozaning wrote: post #83
tirpen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin provides substantial utility and value to society Do you have any proof of this dubious statement?

I've been reading through True Names and the various essays that proceed it in it's most recently published edition and I see crypto currencies as the fulfilment of many of the ideas talked about there. Particularly uncensored anonymous value transfers between parties. The idea that you can send "money" to anyone regardless of who you or they are does provide some value. Unlike any other financial transaction system…

Here's a well reasoned essay by Bruce Schneiner about why cryptocurrencies are useless.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/02/blockchain_an...

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#285

Post by arcticbull »

flatfilefan wrote: post #242
arcticbull wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of those will remain. Even if we fully adopted Bitcoin there's no world in which we tell the army and the police to go home and thank them for their service. They do other things . It's not particularly effective to tell ISIS "you can't hurt me -- I've got Bitcoins!" You can't double-spend this energy budget.

It’s a big question to what extent the wars are/aren’t an extension of economics. My understanding it’s a direct relationship. ISIS got their money from selling oil or from sponsors selling oil for dollars or printing dollars. Police is another matter. But as much as crime has to do with cash money or centralized capitalism it may become moot when fiat money and related misuse potential is abolished.

A decentralized (except for China), un-regulated payment system currently being used primarily to break the law with the purchase of illicit narcotics, goods and services is going to prevent the funding of terrorism how exactly? My understanding is these groups are using it already. Here's a writeup on how North Korea is actively using Bitcoin to circumvent fiat sanctions [1] from a pro-crypto news source. Here's one on how Mexican cartels use it [2]. If anything this means we'll need a bigger army. How is abuse going to be abolished through a system literally designed to prevent any form of controls?

[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/north-korea-increasingly-uses...

[2] https://www.ccn.com/how-mexican-cartels-use-chinese-crypto-b...

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#286

Post by arcticbull »

flatfilefan wrote: post #272
arcticbull wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not think there's a meaningful difference between privately-run exchanges fraudulently manipulating the price to enrich themselves (to clear short or long positions off their books, pump the value of their assets, etc) -- and central banks who operate on behalf of the people of their respective countries to ensure a stable and reliable money supply?

I think in the long run there’s none. Look at devaluations in various countries. Or cut of paper money circulation in India. Or the $8Trln “printed” by the US to balance out Chinese foreign reserves (also $8Trln at the time by coincidence)

It appears you need to do some research on the role of central banks and the federal reserve, goals of the money supply, etc. That's not accurate, that's not how it works. The reason we create more money is two-fold.

(1) There are more people now. Not creating money disproportionately benefits the people who were alive before you. If you print no new money, the amount of wealth you have doubles as a proportion of the population when the population doubles. As economic activity increases and becomes more efficient you can do even more with that money. This pressure creates wealth inequality over time -- this is in part what the pilgrims sought to escape as they fled the old world of kings/queens/fiefs/lords.

(2) A predictable rate of inflation incentivizes the allocation of capital to productive endeavors. If your money just became more valuable over time, why on earth would you risk it by investing in something when you can just sit back, chill and be rich? That's why Bitcoin is a god-awful currency. Nobody wants to spend it because they think it will "mewn soon."

The federal reserve doesn't print money, the treasury does. They didn't create money to offset Chinese loans, they sold treasuries (debt obligations) to China, which in turn yielded money. You know what, I won't do as good a job as this article will explaining it to you [1], entitled "Understanding How the Federal Reserve Creates Money."

That all said none of this matters to you, a savvy investor with assets, because you shouldn't hold money. It's not intended to be held, it's meant to be circulated. Go buy things with it, that's what it's for. It can't depreciate in your hands if you've bought something with it. Salaries track inflation, housing tracks inflation, debts don't, so your principal goes down in real-world dollars over time. If you live paycheck-to-paycheck you're totally unaffected.

I'm starting to think the solution to Bitcoin is forcing everyone to attend civics and economics classes.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081415/under...

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#287

Post by belltaco »

modzu wrote: post #197
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…

i thought one of the features of bitcoin was that mining would eventually become too computationally expensive -- because the total number of bitcoins is fixed. so at some point, mining does not produce coins and you're only mining to process transactions. so isn't there a plateau somewhere, relative to the throughput of the network? nb: non-expert here

Based on limited knowledge, once all the coins are mined, I think the miners then compete for transaction fees only.

>mining would eventually become too computationally expensive

I don't think that's true, the difficulty adjusts every two(?) weeks based on the hashrate.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#288

Post by ohiovr »

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.

passing a wad of franklins costs less than a joule

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#289

Post by nosuchthing »

bamboozled wrote: post #127
tudorizer wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Financial institutions offer a vast array of services, safeguards, and functionality and significantly higher transactional infrastructure versus Bitcoin/cryptocoins.

Exchanging cash versus submitting a Bitcoin transaction would be more on par.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#290

Post by kasey_junk »

ThomPete wrote: post #172
kasey_junk wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think it matters only because there is a strong contingent of alternative energy supporters that do not see nuclear as part of the mix when talking about ‘renewables’ and for those folks the math is really hard. Conversely the math is easy with a strong nuclear mix.
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