Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index • Hacker News Board

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#91

Post by leesec » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #10

Slightly off topic, but does anyone have any good resources on how alternative consensus protocols work, like proof of stake and proof of importance? I either see really simplistic explanations or ones that assume a lot of domain knowledge. I also recently saw a crypto coin that claims to be energy efficient, and I don’t quite understand how that’s possible without the possibility of a 50.1% attack.

Eth prolly has the best constructed PoS system, just starting to roll out.

https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms...

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#92

Post by ucha » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #23

From what I understand bitcoin currently has a $20+ transaction fee with a transaction time takes 60 minutes+ With these issues in addition to the high power consumption, how will Bitcoin become a usable currency?

Buying US stocks takes 2 days to settle.

Sending simple wires in the US takes hours.

Last time I tried to send significant funds from France to the UK, it took me a whole week of back and forth with the bank to complete all the AML/KYC paperwork.

Let's not even talk about how long it would take to move gold from one part of the world to another cf. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-30/iran-is-h...

You can buy or send bitcoin in seconds if you're not trying to do it on-chain, the same way you can do it with stocks and other assets. But definitive settlement of a bitcoin transaction is faster than pretty much any other asset.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#93

Post by EGreg » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #85

EGreg wrote: post #5

And as Bitcoins get more scarce and get adopted by more and more banks and companies as reserves, the value of mining rewards is only going to continue rising, until Bitcoin will consume more electricity than the rest of the world combined. (Around the time it is worth $1.2 Million a coin.) Change my mind. Bitcoin rewards miners in Bitcoin, which is the ultimate deflationary “store of value”, and has the world mindsh…

> Bitcoin, which is the ultimate deflationary “store of value” Inflating the supply of bitcoins is a value in a config file + buy-in from miners, who are the ones with all the capital to benefit from inflating the supply. Unsure why you think the miners are just going to go home when it’s all mined and sell off their expensive equipment at firesale prices when they can collaborate to increase the amount of Bitcoin?

Miners benefit from deflating the supply. If there were only 50,000 bitcoins and the rest was locked up in sidechains, then every mining reward would be worth far more. They would like more sidechains to Bitcoin.

(Somewhere Joel Spolsky is yelling: “Commoditize your complements!”)

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#94

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

ttt0 wrote: post #42

JustFinishedBSG wrote: post #14

If we could burn bitcoin apologists we would have infinite energy because you are the densest bunch I've ever met https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change

Damn, I knew the governments hated cryptocurrencies and will try to shut it down at some point, but I haven't realized there was such hostility towards it.

It has attention, so it's a sexy thing to snark at.

When the Elon boom bursts, folks will be back to complaining about cow flatuence, birds getting killed by solar panels, or whatever the shiny environmental crisis of the day is.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#95

Post by knuthsat » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

yrral wrote: post #83

This is a rehash of a previous post of mine regarding electricity consumption: Back in the days where all our electricity came from fossil fuels, I completely agree that marginal electricity usage was bad for the environment. However I think that thought has persisted with us even though it is no longer true 100% of the time. With renewables sometimes the marginal cost of electricity to our environment is near 0 or e…

Using fossil fuels for electricity is very nice. Imagine all the forests that stayed intact in remote places of the world that just started burning oil.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#96

Post by thargor90 » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #77

Jonnax wrote: post #23

From what I understand bitcoin currently has a $20+ transaction fee with a transaction time takes 60 minutes+ With these issues in addition to the high power consumption, how will Bitcoin become a usable currency?

It's about $7 at the moment to be included in the next block. A new block is added approximately every 10 minutes. Since bitcoin does not guarantee finality some services require you to wait for a certain amount of extra blocks after yours to reduce the chance of a change reorginaztion happening that doesn't include your transaction. Bitcoin will not function as a currency due to it's high volatility. For a more usab…

The public does not have proof that USDT is collateralized with real life assets. I'm not sure about USDC.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#97

Post by sheeshkebab » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #56

Jonnax wrote: post #23

From what I understand bitcoin currently has a $20+ transaction fee with a transaction time takes 60 minutes+ With these issues in addition to the high power consumption, how will Bitcoin become a usable currency?

IMO it isn't. However, I do see a huge for sending large transactions. In that sense, I don't find it too crazy that Tesla is accepting Bitcoin, because buying a Tesla is a large transaction. IMO a niche use though.

I think accepting Bitcoin as payment was tried before - it never worked since people buying it are either not selling (and using to store cash that keeps on growing), or buying it for speculative purposes via secondary instruments (gbtc, ethe).

Not really sure what’s point is for Tesla but my guess its speculative for them, with an attempt to get some additional value on cash they are starting to swim in now...

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#98

Post by eternauta3k » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #23

From what I understand bitcoin currently has a $20+ transaction fee with a transaction time takes 60 minutes+ With these issues in addition to the high power consumption, how will Bitcoin become a usable currency?

It could become a backbone for large transactions, while side chains (Dash, Eth, etc.) provide faster, smaller transactions.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#99

Post by simonebrunozzi » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 1:56 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #70

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #40

I'm tired of this BS about Bitcoin and pollution. So tired that yesterday I wrote this [0]. Of course you might be in complete disagreement with me, but please read it and let me know what you think. Be kind. I am trying to have a good conversation about it, not to impose my view. [0]: https://simon.medium.com/bitcoin-and-pollution-the-definitiv...

It's not BS. The world in general is trying to find ways to be more energy efficient and up pops bitcoin, now using more power than a country of 44 million people. It's ridiculous. As is your reference on that article - "Most bitcoin mining is using energy at the source that was uneconomical to use for other purposes, because of the loss experienced in transporting the energy to economic centers", which just links to…

What I meant by "BS" is that most discussions about Bitcoin and its polluting effects are very superficial, and ignore some of the facts that I try to highlight in my post.

> just links to one of your own comments on HN!

No, the comment that I reference on HN is not mine, it's by someone else. BTW, I quite agree with it.

> The rest appears to be handwaving

I don't see why. We have used, and are still using, Gold as store of value. Each year gold pollutes tens of times more than Bitcoin. The ones criticizing Bitcoin should have been criticizing Gold all along; and they should criticize Gold way more than Bitcoin even now.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#100

Post by twobitshifter » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 1:56 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #4

Perhaps not all of it is entirely "wasted" though. I've largely been able to avoid heating this winter as a result of crypto mining. A computer pumping ~300W into the air 24/7 is remarkably effective for a small apartment

I’ve actually seen a few startups which install small servers in homes for heating. The idea is to let the cloud heat your home. I think there’s still a cost to the home owner but their heating bill is reduced.