Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Green hackers around the world, let’s destroy Bitcoin

franck-leroy.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 266 posts

Re: Green hackers around the world, let’s destroy Bitcoin

#251

Post by kybernetikos »

CryptoUnchained wrote: post #148
tsimionescu wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calling out the BTC network on its energetic inefficiency completely misses the point that the work put into the network is exactly the scarce digital asset, and hence the store of value. Why would that matter? The problem is the huge amount of greenhouse gases getting released because of this store of value. Whether it makes some economic sense or not is irrelevant to the discussion of whether it should be allowed…

2 things are about to happen in the bitcoin space. The size of transistor in the bitcoin miners is hitting a wall. The bitcoin market will either drive alternative energy efficiency in the chase of profits, or it will drive new technologies to lower the node size. Both will be a benefit to mankind.

PoW is voracious. There is no limit to how much energy that the bitcoin network will consume. As you add more computation to the network, the computation requirement to create new blocks grows.

You could invent a dramatically more efficient way to calculate hashes - after a short period of readjustment, the network would go back to consuming just as much power as it does now.

You could find a way of generating power more cheaply. The network will then use much more of it.

Energy requirements continue to grow until an equilibrium is reached. That equilibrium occurs when the energy cost to mine new blocks is commensurate with the value received from doing so.

However, miners who can externalise their energy costs will generally outcompete miners who cannot. Incentives to damage the environment and avoid taking resposnibility are built into the system.

Re: Green hackers around the world, let’s destroy Bitcoin

#252

Post by pseudozach »

grey-area wrote: post #224
yuvadam wrote: post #17

As a Bitcoin proponent who is also concerned about it's long term sustainability, this post is an embarrassing read. The author clearly has a very poor understanding of what value Bitcoin currently has in our current macro-economic situation, and why investors (and corporations) are choosing to allocate larger parts of their portfolios in cryptocurrencies. Calling out the BTC network on its energetic inefficiency com…

Let me relate for you how Bitcoin has been sold to me at various times in the past, because its entire history at this point seems to have been forgotten by bitcoin proponents. First it was a revolutionary currency, which would replace fiat with a deflationary alternative. Then it was a revolutionary payment network which would displace evil incumbents (despite being fundamentally unsuited to this task). Then it was…

Your grasp of bitcoin seems to be similar to a casual newspaper reader commenting on middle east peace without knowing any of the complex cultural differences. No worries it's the norm online. Even tech enthusiasts can be ignorant, after all bitcoin is a complex phenomenon a complex mix of social, economic and technical concepts.

Bitcoin never tried to be law, that's eth and other similar centralized scam blockchains. Being as it's "only" 12 year old money, Bitcoin does evolve and adjust as its users govern it via running their own nodes. Until 2017, major companies (miners/payment processors) tried to fit all kinds of narratives on it (as you mention) but it became clear that they COULD not make bitcoin what they wanted it to do.

Meanwhile users did a soft fork with segwit and kept the blockchain as small as possible while allowing Lightning to be developed on it. This means the decentralized network wanted to keep being sound money, keep being censorship resistant, decentralized and still be scalable.

Lightning Network is a very solid success, used amongst early adopters, major exchanges joining (Bitfinex, Kraken, OKCoin), multiple VISA backed startups building rewards programs and remittance applications on it.

Unlike a typical tech startup Bitcoin does not need to trick everyone to use it and get as many investors as soon as possible and figure out something later. It is what it is. It does not force anyone to join it or spend a single thought on it unless they choose to. It's completely voluntary.

While I understand the skepticism (which just comes across as "salty" as they say) one should consider a simple web search to see how Bitcoin adds value to financially underserved people, allows politically censored organizations to take donations anywhere in the world and protect tens of millions of people from rampant inflation in most of the developing world.

Re: Green hackers around the world, let’s destroy Bitcoin

#253

Post by azernik »

effie wrote: post #105
azernik wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting down A/C usage is , in fact, an important climate change mitigation.

It is not, because 1) it is quite a small part of total electricity consumption (around 1/30 in U.S.), and 2) it is unlikely to be cut down, due to more and more people on the planet and getting higher standard of living. Important actions are those that are realistic and have an impact. For example, cancelling coal/gas power plants, building more CO2-free power plants, getting rid of combustion motors in naval trans…

1) 1/30 of total electricity consumption is a hell of a lot!

2) Yes, developing-economy per capita energy usage is going to go up while they catch up to developed-economy standards of living; that's happening in all categories. Developed economies still need to reduce their energy usage. e.g. we're not stopping our switch to electric cars just because half of India is getting their first gas-powered scooter.

Everyone can have A/C, but we need to keep our usage as low as is feasible.

Re: Green hackers around the world, let’s destroy Bitcoin

#254

Post by Melting_Harps »

ForHackernews wrote: post #26
yuvadam wrote: post #17

As a Bitcoin proponent who is also concerned about it's long term sustainability, this post is an embarrassing read. The author clearly has a very poor understanding of what value Bitcoin currently has in our current macro-economic situation, and why investors (and corporations) are choosing to allocate larger parts of their portfolios in cryptocurrencies. Calling out the BTC network on its energetic inefficiency com…

> the work put into the network is exactly the scarce asset that is being invested in. No! No it isn't! Gah! I'm sorry but it is so frustrating to hear this nonsense repeated over and over. Bitcoin is not valuable just because you wasted shedloads of energy to make a bitcoin! It's valuable because somebody else will exchange something of value for it. It's incredibly maddening how so many crypto-libertarians suddenly…

> It's incredibly maddening how so many crypto-libertarians suddenly turn into believers in some Marxist "labor theory of value"[0] when you press them on bitcoin's incredibly wasteful Red Queen's race[1] of ever-escalating wasted energy.

What's also maddening is how subjective the term 'value' has on it's intended usecase that some can be so completely oblviius to make coax it into a specific farmework: cocoa beans and shells were also equally valuable to it's respective communities, but your forcing of modernity to this matter is equally marred by illogical and quite frankly lazy conclusions.

Bitcoin (lower case b, as in the token) does require a great deal of hashing power, but this model, proof of work, is what is required to ensure Bitcoin's immutability (the network capital B). And that is the cost of such a system which, if you aren't aware, is mainly operating on renewable energy [0].

That is just the cost of entry if you want to incentivize keep everyone honest and play by the rules, the fiat World is littered with countless stories of failed currencies and failed societies and cultures because man's inherit nature: greed and corruption.

0: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/study-74-percent-of-bit...

Re: Green hackers around the world, let’s destroy Bitcoin

#255

Post by effie »

tsimionescu wrote: post #238
effie wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The energy consumption of BTC is minuscule when compared to total electric consumption and its physical/economic effect on power networks is similarly minuscule. Yes, it consumes and contributes to CO2. So do other electric energy consumers, like big companies like Amazon, Google. So do, orders of magnitude more than BTC, consumers of fossil fuels. BTC is just an easy inconsequential scapegoat.

BTC consumes more electricity than many individual countries in the world. It is something like 0.1% of the electrical energy consumption of the entire world. That is not insignificant, it is a huge chunk that could be stopped with virtually 0 impact on the world economy (unlike all your other examples).

0.1% percent is pretty insignificant, it is 1/1000 of the world electric energy production, and that contributes only around 30% to total world C02 production.

Blaming and cancelling insignificant activities leads nowhere. And it's absurd, considering the main CO2 contributors are elsewhere - it is the transport and power plants which need this attention.

If we are talking about affecting CO2 production via electric energy policies, more just way (and more effective way) to introduce "CO2 sanctions" on various activities is to factor the damage in the energy price. That way everybody feels the pain proportionally, not just few random scapegoats like BTC. I agree that price does not need to be the same for everyone. Maybe BTC activities should pay much more for electric energy than a normal (non-BTC oriented) household does.

Re: Green hackers around the world, let’s destroy Bitcoin

#256

Post by effie »

azernik wrote: post #253
effie wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not, because 1) it is quite a small part of total electricity consumption (around 1/30 in U.S.), and 2) it is unlikely to be cut down, due to more and more people on the planet and getting higher standard of living. Important actions are those that are realistic and have an impact. For example, cancelling coal/gas power plants, building more CO2-free power plants, getting rid of combustion motors in naval trans…

1) 1/30 of total electricity consumption is a hell of a lot! 2) Yes, developing-economy per capita energy usage is going to go up while they catch up to developed-economy standards of living; that's happening in all categories. Developed economies still need to reduce their energy usage. e.g. we're not stopping our switch to electric cars just because half of India is getting their first gas-powered scooter. Everyone…

Agreed. But while BTC consumes a lot, so do hundreds of other kinds of activities that are also by themselves insignificant. The pain of CO2 production should be felt by every consumer proportionally to what they consume.

We need to fix overall energy policy, make everyone pay for their consumption just amount, and keep fixing the damn production to get carbon neutral.

Re: Green hackers around the world, let’s destroy Bitcoin

#257

Post by jeofken »

tsimionescu wrote: post #169
jeofken wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power over other people is intoxicating. It attracts those who value it over virtue, and the virtuous reject it. For their wicked thirst for power, some will do anything. In our age there is an unholy alliance between the worlds greatest power ever and its military industrial complex, where the incentives for government leaders is to wage war in strange faraway lands, and to bribe the population at home with dependen…

> This is all funded by printing money - inflating its supply. > By creating Bitcoin, Satoshi took gold to the internet, and we can now trade in a currency which no one can inflate to fund wars, or to in essence steal productivity from every earner. Utter bullshit. The power of the US government doesn't stem from its ability to print money. Rather, it's the other way around essentially: its ability to print money ste…

> Utter bullshit.

HN is such a rare place on the internet. I am writing in good faith - let’s not fall so low as to speak like this.

The power over currency and the power over arms go hand in hand.

The “officially sanctioned” exploitation you speak of - who is the “official” in question? The sins you and I refer to stem from the monopolistic use of violent force by the state. “Wall steeet” is far from a free market, and so if the dollar, euro, pound, and other state currency markets

Re: Green hackers around the world, let’s destroy Bitcoin

#258

Post by azernik »

effie wrote: post #256
azernik wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) 1/30 of total electricity consumption is a hell of a lot! 2) Yes, developing-economy per capita energy usage is going to go up while they catch up to developed-economy standards of living; that's happening in all categories. Developed economies still need to reduce their energy usage. e.g. we're not stopping our switch to electric cars just because half of India is getting their first gas-powered scooter. Everyone…

Agreed. But while BTC consumes a lot, so do hundreds of other kinds of activities that are also by themselves insignificant. The pain of CO2 production should be felt by every consumer proportionally to what they consume. We need to fix overall energy policy, make everyone pay for their consumption just amount, and keep fixing the damn production to get carbon neutral.

BTC is particularly egregious because it produces a lot less social value in exchange for its energy usage than A/C

Re: Green hackers around the world, let’s destroy Bitcoin

#259

Post by CryptoUnchained »

tsimionescu wrote: post #177
inter_netuser wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the most important properties/goals of Bitcoin, in your view? I am genuinely interested in your view. The attitude on this forum towards Bitcoin literally boggles my mind, at most maybe 5% truly understand it.

Fixed supply, algorithmic cryptographic validation of transactions, psuedonimity, no centralized control by a human-like entity. Each of these turns out to be a net-negative in my view: - fixed supply means that people are incentivized to hold bitcoin instead of spending/investing - algorithmic transactions mean that there is no way to reverse a mistaken transaction or a fraud; it also means that losing the key to yo…

Which is why Bitcoin isn't really considered a currency anymore. It's purely a digital asset, something like gold, a store of value and reserve currency used by large institutions. Once Visa/Bakkt/Paypal get on the custody train bitcoin transactions will be reversible, as they will transact paper bitcoin and settle several times a day, etc. I don't expect to actually spend my bitcoin just like I don't expect to spend my gold and silver, but when I'm ready to I know I won't have to pay a broker 10% fees.

Re: Green hackers around the world, let’s destroy Bitcoin

#260

Post by CryptoUnchained »

tsimionescu wrote: post #172
shawnz wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I happen to believe that decentralized coins are a horrible idea in and of themselves, even without proof-of-work Sure, but that is a much different argument than proof-of-stake vs proof-of-work. With the assumption that having a successful proof-of-stake cryptocurrency is a net good, then what I am saying is maybe our usages of proof-of-work up until the future widespread adoption of proof-of-stake actually will c…

My original claim is that new technology is not getting funded by dumping energy into bitcoin mining. Proof-of-stake was proposed as a counter example, but as discussed it may actually predate bitcoin's adoption. It may be true that dumping energy into bitcoin can fund the adoption of a proof-of-stake coin, but that is no longer a new technology, it is simply adoption. So I stand by my original point - the resources…

You are speaking in absolute terms. It goes against all logic that new technology wouldn't be funded by dumping energy into bitcoin mining.

Simple logic.. Billions of dollars in miners are bought by speculators, Bitmain orders new 5nm chips from TSMC... TSMC uses money for R&D.

Either you're being willfully ignorant or you're trolling us.

Post reply on HN