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Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

digiconomist.net

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Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#421

Post by arcticbull »

keymone wrote: post #416
arcticbull wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because i don't want to trust anyone. XRP is not trustless or decentralized enough. And yet you trust the Internet to get packets to HN. You trust the government to administer the roads, the schools, the army, the police, the firefighters, and so on for days. The FDA to verify your drugs, Agriculture to verify your food. You trust so many people every single day to make it through from breakfast to dinner, and yet…

What you’re saying is basically “things are horrible so why don’t you just bend over and let somebody fuck you in this other aspect as well”. Yes, that’s where I draw the line today. Governments used to challenge our right to free speech and even right to live free - we don’t accept that anymore. In my opinion it’s time to untangle governments and money. You’re free to disagree of course and you’re free to entrust al…

> You’re free to disagree of course and you’re free to entrust all sorts of strangers to make all sorts of decisions in your life, just don’t expect others to do the same.

You already do though. You're just entrusting a different set of un-elected un-accountable strangers with no economics degrees with your monetary policy -- the Bitcoin Core team. And the PRC where over 50% of the hash power is located. They could change the number of Bitcoin on issue, the rate, the block reward rate, anything, with zero recourse on your part. Your government is accountable to you, the core team, to themselves.

If you tell me they wont then you're trusting them not to unless you can point to a math equation preventing them, I guess.

You're describing a libertarian pipedream that can't exist.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#422

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

reportgunner wrote: post #260
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #3

I saw this a couple days ago when @arcticbull mentioned it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21256112 Jaw dropping. Converted to Telsa Model S miles as per https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S Comes out to about 2000 miles or 3200 kilometers for one Bitcoin transaction. Astounding.

It does not really matter if it's 2 miles or 2 million miles per bitcoin transaction. You cannot stop bitcoin. Edit: You would end up burning even more if you tried to stop it.

That’s an interesting opinion.

In the spirit of Hacker News, would you mind expanding on why you believe that to be the case?

We’re generally concerned with comments being progressively more detailed as the discussion gets progressively more decisive.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#423

Post by keymone »

arcticbull wrote: post #421
keymone wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re saying is basically “things are horrible so why don’t you just bend over and let somebody fuck you in this other aspect as well”. Yes, that’s where I draw the line today. Governments used to challenge our right to free speech and even right to live free - we don’t accept that anymore. In my opinion it’s time to untangle governments and money. You’re free to disagree of course and you’re free to entrust al…

> You’re free to disagree of course and you’re free to entrust all sorts of strangers to make all sorts of decisions in your life, just don’t expect others to do the same. You already do though . You're just entrusting a different set of un-elected un-accountable strangers with no economics degrees with your monetary policy -- the Bitcoin Core team. And the PRC where over 50% of the hash power is located. They could…

> You're just entrusting a different set of un-elected un-accountable strangers with no economics degrees with your monetary policy -- the Bitcoin Core team

no i don't. they just happen to maintain the reference implementation.

> And the PRC where over 50% of the hash power is located

no trust involved here either.

> They could change the number of Bitcoin on issue, the rate, the block reward rate, anything, with zero recourse on your part.

no they can't and the fact that you think this means you have zero understanding of how bitcoin works.

> If you tell me they wont

i'm telling you they can't. bitcoin is defined by consensus rules and releasing a binary that breaks those rules or mining blocks that break those rules doesn't change bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#424

Post by andirk »

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…

And USD is guarded by guns, bombs, wars, lies, and so on. None of these currencies have free protection. That said, I do like Prime Coin's use of their energy going to finding prime numbers which (I assume) is useful to mathematicians.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#425

Post by _57jb »

arcticbull wrote: post #409
_57jb wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

> 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... (a) whataboutism is a logical fallacy. (b) If every Visa transaction took 625kWh, it would use 38X the entire world's power generation capacity and 3X the worlds entire rate of e-waste generation. Just Visa, not MC, UnionPay or Amex. Visa is literally 700,000X more efficient, a…

> (a) whataboutism is a logical fallacy.

This isn't whataboutism. There is a system being used. Contrast it with what currently exists.

> Bitcoin becomes more wasteful as technology improves.

You misunderstand hashing difficulty.

This guy is a known troll spreading FUD. Look at all of the links he has posted. It is not science.

Stop embarassing yourself and read a layer deeper into the people writing the articles.

https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-...

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#426

Post by _57jb »

_57jb wrote: post #425
arcticbull wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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... (a) whataboutism is a logical fallacy. (b) If every Visa transaction took 625kWh, it would use 38X the entire world's power generation capacity and 3X the worlds entire rate of e-waste generation. Just Visa, not MC, UnionPay or Amex. Visa is literally 700,000X more efficient, a…

> (a) whataboutism is a logical fallacy. This isn't whataboutism. There is a system being used. Contrast it with what currently exists. > Bitcoin becomes more wasteful as technology improves. You misunderstand hashing difficulty. This guy is a known troll spreading FUD. Look at all of the links he has posted. It is not science. Stop embarassing yourself and read a layer deeper into the people writing the articles. ht…

Here is what a real scientist says:

Koomey says that de Vries’ work is “fundamentally flawed” because it backs into bitcoin’s power consumption by estimating miners’ revenues and expenses. “Any time you do that, you introduce multiple layers of error and uncertainty. It’s a completely unreliable way to do the analysis, and no credible energy analyst would ever do that.”

But of course you prefer this digiconomist spewing FUD as a hobby and winding folks up:

"Digiconomist's index has emerged as something of an authority recently. The index was developed by Alex de Vries, a 28-year-old consultant for PwC with a background in data and risk analysis who now specializes in blockchain, the technology that underpins bitcoin. He founded Digiconomist as a hobby in 2014 and acknowledges he has no previous experience in energy economics"

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/12/21/no-bitcoin-is-likely-not...

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#427

Post by _57jb »

Do your research on the guy who writes these articles.

Alex de Vries (blockchain hobbyist with no scientific / economics background who started digiconomist)

https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-...

Oh yeah, and he invented this energy consumption index...stop letting yourself get trolled.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#428

Post by arcticbull »

keymone wrote: post #423
arcticbull wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re free to disagree of course and you’re free to entrust all sorts of strangers to make all sorts of decisions in your life, just don’t expect others to do the same. You already do though . You're just entrusting a different set of un-elected un-accountable strangers with no economics degrees with your monetary policy -- the Bitcoin Core team. And the PRC where over 50% of the hash power is located. They could…

> You're just entrusting a different set of un-elected un-accountable strangers with no economics degrees with your monetary policy -- the Bitcoin Core team no i don't. they just happen to maintain the reference implementation. > And the PRC where over 50% of the hash power is located no trust involved here either. > They could change the number of Bitcoin on issue, the rate, the block reward rate, anything, with zer…

It’s the politics. If the core team decided to change the parameters of bitcoin at worst everyone would fall in line and at best it’d fork and you’d lose a whole lot of value.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#429

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

ben_w wrote: post #387
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are my christmas lights that I put on during winter also everyone else's problem because they waste energy (that I bought with my own money)? Are you going to get into my business there as well and tell me what I can and cannot spend my resources on, because you claim that they have an "impact on you and you have no interest in them"? I am pretty sure that the best consensus the western world has come up with is that…

> Are my christmas lights that I put on during winter also everyone else's problem because they waste energy (that I bought with my own money)? Yes but too little to bother about . Transportation and inefficient heat management are the only common ones that matter. > they can simply be taxed in like for example a carbon tax On that we agree. I believe car fuel is taxed appropriately in the UK, but in general these ex…

People bought the energy with their own money, it's their own business what to do with it. Ie, not your business.

Also christmas lights do consume huge amounts of electricity comparable to energy budgets of some countries. https://www.igs.com/energy-resource-center/energy-101/how-mu...

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#430

Post by keymone »

arcticbull wrote: post #428
keymone wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're just entrusting a different set of un-elected un-accountable strangers with no economics degrees with your monetary policy -- the Bitcoin Core team no i don't. they just happen to maintain the reference implementation. > And the PRC where over 50% of the hash power is located no trust involved here either. > They could change the number of Bitcoin on issue, the rate, the block reward rate, anything, with zer…

It’s the politics. If the core team decided to change the parameters of bitcoin at worst everyone would fall in line and at best it’d fork and you’d lose a whole lot of value.

It’d be a fork either way and that’s the point. Still no trust involved.
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