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Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

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Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#431

Post by crtasm »

puranjay wrote: post #160
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 don't even know what problem Bitcoin is solving anymore. I haven't seen a single website accepting Bitcoin as a payment in the last whole year.

Here's a list I found earlier: https://www.wheretospendbitcoins.co.uk/search

I might order a raspberry pi from The Pi Hut and a hammock with 50% off for paying with BTC at another site.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#432

Post by arcticbull »

keymone wrote: post #430
arcticbull wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then "faith" that people are going to continue to believe in the Bitcoin that you believe in. I mean it’s not scarce anyone can clone and fire up their own bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#433

Post by konschubert »

keymone wrote: post #377
konschubert wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That analogy does not hold if you think about it

why?

Look, if you bring an anology into an argument then it’s in you to explain why it holds, it’s not on others to refute it.

Ever heard of the bullshit asymmetry principle?

Anyways, to answer your question: High cost of mining in gold is what limits the supply. High cost of mining in a cryptocurrency is not needed to limit supply.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#434

Post by keymone »

arcticbull wrote: post #432
keymone wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Then "faith" that people are going to continue to believe in the Bitcoin that you believe in. I mean it’s not scarce anyone can clone and fire up their own bitcoin.

Please do, because until you actually try you will remain very confused about what is scarcity in context of bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#435

Post by davidgerard »

lifty wrote: post #296
davidgerard wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nah, there's approaches. I meet with politicians and suggest a carbon tax on crypto exchange conversion to fiat - miners have to cash out, after all. You have to tax the clean coins too, otherwise buyers will just exchange dirtycoin for cleancoin before cashing out.

Why not tax or make all energy more expensive? That way all wasteful usage will be curtailed and only the valuable use cases will be left after a while. If we do what you proposed it sounds like we should start taxing other behavior on the internet based on its usefulness to society and electricity usage.

Do you mean instead of taking on bitcoin? Please be clear.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#436

Post by reportgunner »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #422
reportgunner wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let me start with

> You cannot stop bitcoin.

See the way bitcoin works is anyone who wants to run a node on the network can just start without asking anyone for anything, or even letting anyone know they are starting. There is no door you can bang on to stop new users from joining. There is no server you can bring down to prevent people from joining.

> It does not really matter if it's 2 miles or 2 million miles per bitcoin transaction.

This kind of comparison is flawed: Tesla was made for efficient mileage from electricity, but Bitcoin never aimed at transactions that require little electricity. You could compare an electric kettle to a smartphone and say that electric kettles are really bad because you could talk on the phone for 50 years instead of boiling water for some tea. ( If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry. )

> Edit: You would end up burning even more if you tried to stop it.

Based on the above and other properties of bitcoin, it would not be cost free at all to try and stop it. I am convinced that the costs related to attempts to stop bitcoin would be much higher than the costs required to leave it be.

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

Yeah I'd too appreciate if the debate here was more than yeah just tax it bro, they gotta cash out bro

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#437

Post by reportgunner »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #341
reportgunner wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy on it's own is not dirty or clean. You cannot test the wires in the wall to say yep, this energy is clean . You can of course tax the energy producers, but that does not prevent fraud on it's own - see oil tankers converting gas pollutants to water and causing even more harm.

> Energy on it's own is not dirty or clean. You cannot test the wires in the wall to say yep, this energy is clean. Yes. "Clean/dirty energy" is a shorthand for clean/dirty energy sources . > You can of course tax the energy producers, but that does not prevent fraud on it's own Sure. Taxing emissions is a necessary but not sufficient component of a sane energy policy.

> Yes. "Clean/dirty energy" is a shorthand for clean/dirty energy sources.

So how do you make sure you are not getting dirty energy ?

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#438

Post by reportgunner »

arcticbull wrote: post #414
reportgunner wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big number scary. Orange coin bad!

If this is the level of intellectualism I can expect from the Bitcoin community the power consumption is starting to make sense!

Hey hey hey, tune down the constructive criticism!

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#439

Post by reportgunner »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #422
reportgunner wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also the critical thinkers seem to never have even checked the source of this 600KWh / transaction claim.

If you actually cared to check [0] you would see that this claim is coming from estimating mining revenue and then sending 60% of that revenue to mining costs. That calculation is actually:

Mining revenue(in USD) * 0.6 / 0.05 / amount of transactions = KWh per transaction

Embarassing!

[0](https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption#assumpti...)

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#440

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #374
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm I'm not sure I understand, because the answer seems very simple: because they dramatically increase ratio of the number of meaningful transactions describing real economic activity to a MB of valueable block space (and therefore per watt of total global PoW calculation).

If all they do is increase the ratio, that's only constant scaling. So in no way does it compensate for the scaling of PoW energy use with respect to market size.

Why would you assume it would be constant? What equations you are using? How exactly are you projecting the market size to POW increase, and how do you calculate L2 changes? "Increase" the ratio does not mean it will increase by *2, it can be ^2 or whatever other formula might end up being real.
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