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Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

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Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#351

Post by ben_w »

trickstra wrote: post #297
danmaz74 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if anyone has better use of that electricity, they are welcome to use it, which will make mining cryptocurrency unprofitable I'm sorry, but you got this backwards. If bitcoin becomes a relevant part of the world economy, then it HAS to use a relevant part of the world energy, because consuming energy for PoW is the only limiting factor against a 51% attack. So, either Bitcoin is irrelevant - and thus its power usag…

From the point of view of the miner, they have a supply of electricity at a certain price and can decide what to do with it. They might run their TV, computer, heating, industrial machinery, datacenter, or a bitcoin miner. They have to compute what profits can each of the options give them. If running bitcoin miners at that electricity cost and at that profit they can get from selling the bitcoins is more profitable…

If bitcoin is the dominant currency, another option exists:

51% attack, double-spend to get free electricity.

This is useful even when it makes an apparent loss by damaging trust in the currency: If you are, say, the USA president and you’re at war with Iraq, and Iraq uses bitcoin, you can outspend on energy until they surrender.

Unless the whole world uses bitcoin, but then the first few nations individually face the same problem, regardless of who else actually uses bitcoin — gotta keep the USA and China happy at the same time! (The EU isn’t integrated enough to do that sort of thing yet, but is a similar sized group).

Right now, 51% needs the cost of one very large power station from when you start until when you win — large nations, the sort with global ambitions, can spare a lot more. In the previous example, that’s close to all the power Iraq produces, but 5.4% of the USA’s output.

Then there’s the fact that most countries like being in charge of their own currencies as the ability to create or destroy units is a useful economic lever.

> The fact that miners are now mining, means it's currently most rational to do that, given what society (users, participants) are willing to pay for the services.

Or it’s speculation, like so many other things before and probably yet to come.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#352

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

me551ah wrote: post #193

The most powerful supercomputer in the world reaches 143 petaflops, bitcoin network in comparison reaches 80704290.84 Petaflops. Granted that a majority of this computing power is in the form of custom ASIC's, but the figure is really staggering. And all of the 80704290.84 Petaflops, consume 73.12 TWh to repeatedly calculate SHA256 ! What could be the world's most powerful network does absolutely nothing but crunch h…

So many times this argument comes up and every time I am amazed at how ignorant it seems to me. But it is very hard to discuss...

Can't we all just agree that what is a valuable use of someones watts or petahashes per second is a subjective choice? That people are free to value their resources as they see fit? You personally might not value securing Bitcoin network, but many other people find it valueable and it is perfectly fine in a free country to allow them do what they please if you are similarly allowed to do what you please (no one forces you to buy Bitcoin miners)?

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#353

Post by krageon »

jacobush wrote: post #332
keymone wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> common for a wannabe Bitcoin millionaires to run mining software on computers and electricity they do not own or pay for Define “common” and provide sources for your claims please.

Monero Javascript miners are common to this day.

They're an easy way to donate to people in places where it is hard to transfer money. What exactly is the argument you are making here? Presumably the people running those things are definitely paying for their power one way or the other.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#354

Post by krageon »

danmaz74 wrote: post #265
mrb wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredible that people on HN, a technical readership, still don't understand why the energetic or computational "waste" of proof-of-work is needed. There is simply no other known way of implementing a decentralized, censorship-resistant, robust digital currency. Without PoW you lose one of these properties. Proof-of-stake doesn't work. It isn't robust. Eg. PoS cryptocurrencies can't resolved which chain is corre…

If the only way to have a decentralized, trustless, robust digital currency is to waste an inordinate amount of energy and increase our global warming and pollution problems, then we'll have to do without that kind of digital currency. It's a matter of priorities.

From a position of power it is easy to do without, because you derive no security or finances from this solution. After all, the status quo is paying you just fine. Why is what you say relevant for most people, who to varying degrees definitely don't have all the things that you apparently take for granted?

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#355

Post by [deleted] »

nrp wrote: post #201
zallarak wrote: post #181

Clarifications (this website perpetuates some common misconceptions): - A single bitcoin "transaction" can actually have thousands of inputs and thousands of outputs. So energy "per transaction" or "transactions per second" is not analogous to a typical monetary transaction. - Bitcoin does not compete with literal credit card transactions (although some use it like that today). I'd compare Bitcoin on-chain transactio…

The linked website attempts to quantify the impact with some stated assumptions. You’ve stated some alternative assumptions, but haven’t quantified the conclusions to determine if they hold. I’ve been long on Bitcoin, but I am exiting my position over concerns about the environment impact. I don’t think it’s plausible that a proof-of-work based blockchain can be anywhere near as efficient as centralized ledgers are.…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#356

Post by _57jb »

lukev wrote: post #132

The energy consumption of Bitcoin isn't new news. What continues to disappoint me, however, is how many people immediately jump to its defense with arguments based on the value it provides, as if that offset its cost. What gets neglected is that the Bitcoin algorithm is inherently wasteful . By its very design, it results in an insane amount of duplicated, pointless computation. The question isn't whether something l…

Hashing solved a problem of limiting supply and spreading the work in a dynamic way to prevent takeovers.

Energy consumption would be dramatically less if ASICs weren't a thing. In hindsight it is obvious they would be built but give me a break.

What they accomplished was a decentralized balancing of power based on economics, crypto, and distributed computing. It is beyond remarkable.

So tell me, what is the carbon footprint of FedNet and all of the banks clearing the 3,000 tx/s demands and their collective datacenters...

What, you thought what we had today was free?

Are you aware that these numbers shared are not even 1% of the worlds consumption of energy or a quarter of what the us alone uses in merely datacenter costs!

I hate these fud charged articles with no balance, basis, or actual science.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#357

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

nrp wrote: post #201
zallarak wrote: post #181

Clarifications (this website perpetuates some common misconceptions): - A single bitcoin "transaction" can actually have thousands of inputs and thousands of outputs. So energy "per transaction" or "transactions per second" is not analogous to a typical monetary transaction. - Bitcoin does not compete with literal credit card transactions (although some use it like that today). I'd compare Bitcoin on-chain transactio…

The linked website attempts to quantify the impact with some stated assumptions. You’ve stated some alternative assumptions, but haven’t quantified the conclusions to determine if they hold. I’ve been long on Bitcoin, but I am exiting my position over concerns about the environment impact. I don’t think it’s plausible that a proof-of-work based blockchain can be anywhere near as efficient as centralized ledgers are.…

> can be anywhere near as efficient as centralized ledgers are

Yeah, no one ever claimed that they would be more efficient. If you have invested assuming the efficiency is the main goal, you have been misled. What they do provide is efficient decentralized ledgers, which is a whole other game completely.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#358

Post by magnamerc »

gruez wrote: post #158
lukev wrote: post #132

The energy consumption of Bitcoin isn't new news. What continues to disappoint me, however, is how many people immediately jump to its defense with arguments based on the value it provides, as if that offset its cost. What gets neglected is that the Bitcoin algorithm is inherently wasteful . By its very design, it results in an insane amount of duplicated, pointless computation. The question isn't whether something l…

>trust-based models (like Stellar) What you're describing is basically Libra with slightly better entities backing it. Transactions can be reversed by those "trusted entities" with no recourse by you and at no cost to them. At least with PoW and PoS (to an extent), attempting to reverse transactions has a cost. Speaking of PoS, were the issues with PoS ever solved? Specifically the "nothing at stake" problem. The Wik…

You can take a look at the eth2.0 specification here https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs. They have solved the nothing at stake problem, and they currently have 8 independent client implementations written in different languages that can 'talk' to each other on a multi-client testnet. They are much further along then people may realize.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#359

Post by ben_w »

trickstra wrote: post #293
aidanlister wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn’t it a waste? You say it like it is a fact ... what’s the logic there?

"Waste" is when there is no benefit. But here the benefit is decentralized, trustless, robust digital currency.

I see no benefit in a trustless currency: If I have no trust in a currency, why should I trust the goods/services?

I see no benefit in a decentralised currency: gold is one (anyone can mine it) and there’s a reason we moved away from it.

I don’t buy that bitcoin is either decentralised (they who control the algorithm steering committee control the currency); trustless (why should I trust irreversible transactions? Why should I trust those who wrote my wallet? Why should I trust those that wrote my mining app?); nor robust (the domain of money is law, not logic, so always subject to government interference; the price is currently highly volatile; and apps always have bugs yet to be discovered).

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#360

Post by lukev »

lacker wrote: post #166
lukev wrote: post #132

The energy consumption of Bitcoin isn't new news. What continues to disappoint me, however, is how many people immediately jump to its defense with arguments based on the value it provides, as if that offset its cost. What gets neglected is that the Bitcoin algorithm is inherently wasteful . By its very design, it results in an insane amount of duplicated, pointless computation. The question isn't whether something l…

I think we aren’t quite there yet with Ethereum and Stellar. Proof of stake is promising, but it hasn’t rolled out yet. It’s possible that the migration leads to unforeseen problems, or fails entirely. The trusted models like Stellar aren’t operating at the same financial scale as Bitcoin. The question there isn’t technically whether they can handle the transactions per second, but socially whether they are as resist…

I think the only reason to hold out for Bitcoin over something like Stellar is an extreme libertarian ideology.

Stellar is attractive to me precisely because it works with society, rather than against it. It uses the trust relationships already built into our social systems and institutions. It's true, I don't trust Chase individually not to screw me over. But I do trust 50 independent organizations (including government, private individuals and corporations) all checking each other's work. You get 98% of the benefit of Bitcoin with thousands of times greater efficiency.

The only scenario where this stops working is in a complete societal breakdown, and frankly that is not a contingency most reasonable people plan for.

Is hypothetical resilience in the face of an anarchist fantasy really worth millions of tonnes of real carbon being pumped into the atmosphere?

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