11–20 of 158 posts
> There is a solution to this problem. If someone releases a new Bitcoin client (and miners) that run on only 1% of the available processing power, and gets more than 50% of the network to adopt this new client, then total electricity costs drop would drop hugely No, because you can't cryptographically enforce that all compatiable clients use only 1% of their available processing power. If such a client took over the…
Don't the miners provide network services as well? Like how real mines don't just take from the ground, they also co-exist with civilian infrastructure built to keep the miners alive and functioning, and in bitcoin's case, the mining rigs dually enable transactions?
Excellent article. I would only add that we're using a LOT of energy to create a fake (read: virtual) resource. The best part about virtual resources is that they don't use many real resources, but this one is the opposite. Granted, it's a 1-time cost, but as the article notes, it could be created with a much lower 1-time cost.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the-isla...
Mining is securing the bitcoin network in the similar sense, as Fort Knox secures gold.
The author misses the point. The security of the Bitcoin network (at least in terms of double-spending) is tied to the level of work required to generate a block. If everyone decided to use only 1% of their computing power, they'd use less electricity, but the Bitcoin network would then be 100 times less secure. When people talk about "wasting resources", it's an indication they don't understand how Bitcoin works. On…
This is just a "prisoner's dilemma". The alternative is that we trust everyone not to use their full ability to generate blocks. Obviously this would completely defeat the point of bitcoins. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_dilemma
Yeah, that's why the only thing I could think of that would 'fix' this, is to release new miners that use less processing power, and a new client that only allows input from those miners. Even so, such a thing would be equally as difficult to introduce as, for example, a rule that would hand out 200BTC instead of 50BTC.
A large part of human endeavor is not about increasing value in the world, but rather increasing value for oneself, possibly with the side-effect of decreasing value for others. It's just the way we are.
I don't think bitcoin's purpose is to aggravate or ameliorate this pervasive problem. To me, the point of bitcoin is to shift economic power from the circles of people who presume to rule the rest of us with complex economic policies and regulation that ostensibly keep the economy stable and growing.
With or without bitcoin, the 'waste' from competition still going to be there, and I have no reason to think that the adoption of bitcoin is going to increase the total amount of 'waste'.