Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins • Hacker News Board

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#81

Post by BCM43 » Tue, May 31, 2011, 3:25 PM UTC

billybob wrote: post #74

duairc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's not just the way we are, it's the way we are under capitalism. But I agree that the wastefulness of Bitcoin is nothing compared to the waste caused by capitalism as a whole.

"It's not just the way we are, it's the way we are under capitalism." What line of reasoning makes you think that humans are naturally unselfish and are made so only by an external economic system (which is itself created by humans)? Judeo-Christian thought says that humans are naturally sinful and selfish. Evolution says that the fittest survive at the expense of others (though this may involve cooperation with rela…

> What system would you have instead of capitalism? If socialism or the like, can you give an example of when that has ever worked well?

At the risk of getting into a political debate, Spain in the 1930's?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Spanish_Revol...

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#82

Post by jerf » Tue, May 31, 2011, 3:26 PM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #56

masklinn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except for the guarantee of uniqueness. There are a few more actually: gold is one of the least putrescible materials out there (it's one of the least reactive elements available and as one of the royal metals very few acids can attack it), it has a distinctive look, and it has a very high density (most denser metals were only discovered in or after the 19th century, and are generally more valuable) which makes it…

The idea that gold has no real value is bizarre.

The idea of "real value" is bizarre.

The value of something is how much you can get in return for the thing from a purchaser that you can find. Even "value is what we agree it is" isn't really right, it's what you can concretely get for the thing. (For instance, the fact that a certain Magic the Gathering card is listed in some book for $20 is meaningless if you can't find anyone who will give you more than $5.) There is no other definition of value that's actually useful, but there are plenty of others out there that will lead you astray.

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#83

Post by cynicalkane » Tue, May 31, 2011, 3:40 PM UTC

vladd wrote: post #6

Any system of checks and balances will have its price. Look at what we do with gold: we dig it from a hole in Africa, we transport it in other countries, we dug holes or build vaults and throw it there. Like Warren Buffett said, it has no utility, if Martians were to look at the process they would scratch their heads. Except for the guarantee of uniqueness. Which is one of the most powerful invariants against corrupt…

Scarcity of money is not the most desirable end, because the supply and demand for money threatens to change the value of money. Even if all the money in the world were fixed, you would see inflation and deflation, more inflation than you've ever seen on a properly managed fiat money system. This is not mere economic theory, it's a matter of history.

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#84

Post by yrral » Tue, May 31, 2011, 3:42 PM UTC

cheez wrote: post #43

iqster wrote: post #25

The way I understand bitcoins might be flawed but would certainly appreciate clarification ... My problem with bit coins is that early people who start mining have a greater advantage than later ones. While that's not the classic definition of a Ponzi scheme (in the classic definition, payouts at each round are funded by new participants), it is a feature bitcoin shares with them. If someone started mining bitcoin wh…

My solution is to expire the BTC to force circulation.

If what you're suggesting is that coins can only sit in one address for a limited amount of time, then that would not do anything because people would just create new addresses to send the coins to.

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#85

Post by jncraton » Tue, May 31, 2011, 3:52 PM UTC

cynicalkane wrote: post #83

vladd wrote: post #6

Any system of checks and balances will have its price. Look at what we do with gold: we dig it from a hole in Africa, we transport it in other countries, we dug holes or build vaults and throw it there. Like Warren Buffett said, it has no utility, if Martians were to look at the process they would scratch their heads. Except for the guarantee of uniqueness. Which is one of the most powerful invariants against corrupt…

Scarcity of money is not the most desirable end, because the supply and demand for money threatens to change the value of money . Even if all the money in the world were fixed, you would see inflation and deflation, more inflation than you've ever seen on a properly managed fiat money system. This is not mere economic theory, it's a matter of history.

> more inflation than you've ever seen on a properly managed fiat money system

While this may be true, a scarce money system does produce better result than poorly managed fiat money systems. You won't see the kind of hyperinflation that we saw in Zimbabwe with the gold standard.

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#86

Post by richardw » Tue, May 31, 2011, 4:00 PM UTC

Most of the time graphics cards aren't used for anything remotely as socially beneficial as contributing to the bitcoin network. Rather than complain about the waste, find a way to do something more useful with them and set up an equivalent reward system for people to respond to.

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#87

Post by DennisP » Tue, May 31, 2011, 4:03 PM UTC

api wrote: post #49

vladd wrote: post #6

Any system of checks and balances will have its price. Look at what we do with gold: we dig it from a hole in Africa, we transport it in other countries, we dug holes or build vaults and throw it there. Like Warren Buffett said, it has no utility, if Martians were to look at the process they would scratch their heads. Except for the guarantee of uniqueness. Which is one of the most powerful invariants against corrupt…

Bitcoin is not quantum-hard. When quantum computing reaches a certain threshold, bitcoin will lose its uniqueness and collapse. There are post-quantum algorithms that are computable on ordinary computers, but they're still under research and they'd make Bitcoin's data set considerably larger.

Bruce Schneier has written that quantum computers only halve the effective number of bits for symmetric encryption algorithms, which seem more closely analogous to hashing than factoring. That would be a giant leap in mining capability, but perhaps not so much as to cause collapse. Switching to 512-bit hashes would bring us back to where we are now.

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#88

Post by DennisP » Tue, May 31, 2011, 4:06 PM UTC

iqster wrote: post #25

The way I understand bitcoins might be flawed but would certainly appreciate clarification ... My problem with bit coins is that early people who start mining have a greater advantage than later ones. While that's not the classic definition of a Ponzi scheme (in the classic definition, payouts at each round are funded by new participants), it is a feature bitcoin shares with them. If someone started mining bitcoin wh…

I see that as a fairly elegant solution to the chicken-and-egg problem. Seems to be working, too.

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#89

Post by duskwuff » Tue, May 31, 2011, 4:08 PM UTC

rsanheim wrote: post #80

pbreit wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that gold has no real value is bizarre.

The idea that _money_ itself has no real value is also bizarre.

But at least money exists for the purpose of arbitrarily representing "real value". Gold has some real value, it's just quite a bit less than the value we've given it.

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#90

Post by lukeschlather » Tue, May 31, 2011, 4:10 PM UTC

mike_esspe wrote: post #17

The same argument can be applied to gold: resources are being utterly and completely wasted on securing Fort Knox, let's shutdown it and store all gold on a lawn without guarding it. Mining is securing the bitcoin network in the similar sense, as Fort Knox secures gold.

Comparing it to gold doesn't make sense; we've been off the gold standard for a long time. What it should be compared to is minting coins, printing money, and banking. (As far as banking goes, I'm not sure bitcoin really solves any of those security issues.)