Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index • Hacker News Board

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#341

Post by blhack » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #305

hobofan wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Determining fully decentralized consensus between arbitrary participants (or at least one of the best approximations of that). In Bitcoin that consensus is limited to transactions, in Ethereum with smart contracts it can be used for much more (though that might require additional layers of incentivation to work properly, depending on the use case).

Nobody actually wants fully decentralised irreversible consensus between arbitrary participants on a public ledger because it is slow, costly and doesn’t solve real-word problems of identity verification, trust, reversible transactions, private transactions etc etc. People have tried and failed for years to find a compelling use for it. It’s a very interesting experiment in social engineering but I find it difficult…

>Nobody actually wants fully decentralised irreversible consensus between arbitrary participants on a public ledger because it is slow, costly and doesn’t solve real-word problems of identity verification, trust, reversible transactions, private transactions etc etc.

Are you sure? In fact it seems like quite a few people want that, as evidenced by the entire crypto space.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#342

Post by blondie9x » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

Anyone who buys and takes part in mining this currency is taking part in the proliferation of climate change and the destruction of the planet. Until you can say all mining is done sustainably and all server production doesn’t not use rare earth materials or cause significant e waste, mining and Bitcoin itself should be regulated. Period.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#343

Post by totalZero » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

dieortin wrote: post #322

doctorwho42 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in your boat, when it was first explained to me in a hacker space at college when it was first growing and priced at a few cents per 100++ Bitcoin. All I could see was a waste of energy and resources (time, energy, hardware). It will always be a drain on society, and it scares me that it hasn't failed because we see it draining our GPU industry to the point that market prices have gone insane and availability is…

It’s not draining the GPU industry. No one buys GPUs for mining Bitcoin anymore, they use ASICs.

I'm not sure about that...Search "best GPU mining 2021" on Google and you'll get several hits.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#344

Post by bhupy » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

SamBam wrote: post #164

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…

I think that this is a great big stretch to try and justify BitCoin mining. I don't know if you personally own BitCoin, but I would say that this is a prime example of motivated reasoning. > or even negative I can see no way that consuming more energy can result in an improvement to the environment (unless that energy usage was directly related to improving the environment). There is absolutely no time where you can…

I think that this critique severely mischaracterizes the argument: we're not just talking about the merits of blindly consuming electricity ("leaving the lights on forever"), we're talking about what happens when you attach a financial incentive to consuming electricity structured in such a way that your net profit increases if you spend less on that energy.

For Bitcoin miners, the input is energy, and the output is money. This means that there is now possibly an incentive to make available cheaper sources of energy, and right now that happens to be wind and solar (at least per kWh).

It's worth litigating whether such an incentive actually exists, or if it does exist whether it will actually stimulate green energy development, or whether cheap energy is always going to be clean energy. These are interesting debates. But it's impossible to talk about Bitcoin as long as we mischaracterize the arguments.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#345

Post by peanut_worm » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

k2enemy wrote: post #311

Rallerbabs wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Follow the big money. Michael Saylor from Microstrategies: $1B. Elon Musk from Tesla: $1.5B. GrayScale: not sure how many dollars, but they own >550,000 bitcoins. Big money is of the opinion that bitcoin is an excellent store of value. Only a matter of time before it becomes a medium of exchange. And later on, a unit of account. By that time, you won't be asking yourself what 1 bitcoin is worth anymore. Things will b…

Follow the big money? The total "market value" of bitcoin is a rounding error in the global economy. Many individual companies have a larger market cap.

Bitcoin has a market cap of something like 1 trillion dollars right now I would hardly call that a rounding error

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#346

Post by louwrentius » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

nickpp wrote: post #332

How much energy does watching porn consume? Playing video games? Watching a movie? Browsing Facebook? Using a ski chair? Visiting an amusement park? Going in vacation? Cooking your favorite type of food? Making ice cream? Driving to your friends? Listening to music? Concerts? Having a party? Banking? Casinos? As a species we use energy to meet our goals. Those goals may be situated anywhere in our hierarchy of needs.…

That energy consumption provides a ton of benefits for a very large group of people.

The energy consumption of Bitcoin makes a few thousand people rich and that's about it.

Yes other things consume a lot of energy, maybe even more, but that doesn't justify the energy consumption of Bitcoin.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#347

Post by snarfy » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #33

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 won't and even BTC enthusiasts have given up on that. They narrative is now that BTC is a "store of value".

The irony is we place a lot of value on energy. The current economic system reflects this with oil being a proxy for energy.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#348

Post by blondie9x » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

Climate change progress is being offset by the rise of harvesting digital currencies and the mining and production of parts that go into computers that power the harvesting and production of the currency.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#349

Post by MaheshC » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

sub7 wrote: post #272

Can't wait for the (American/Chinese/Russian) secret 4000 qubit computer to make a mockery of that ledger and all the culty idiots who bought into it. There's a 0.9+ correlation between Tesla and BTC. If we're not near the end of the bubble, we're definitely not more than a few cycles away.

I like your ideas and username

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#350

Post by ThomPete » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

jakupovic wrote: post #326

baxtr wrote: post #265

Ok, I have to admit that I am one of those people who knew about BTC very, very early but never bought any. Now, of course I should have mined at least 100 back in the days, but anyways. The reason I have never mined nor bought into it is that I still, to this day struggle to come up with a real reason to do so. Am I getting too old? Do I not see the "huge potential" what it may become? Don't I want to get freaking r…

The problem that you and others like you have is you don't have any BTC and now are struggling to understand why anyone else would have any. I think it's mostly from the fact you didn't get any when you should have and now there is no reason as it's expensive and again you don't have any. Simple really.

you can just buy satochis, dont think about the price of bitcoin, think about how much money you want to invest.