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Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

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Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#141

Post by kevingadd »

willbudd wrote: post #131
kevingadd wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point to a real production cryptocurrency using proof-of-stake right now. All the big ones are still using PoW and we're what, over a decade in to the history of cryptocurrency? Once even one of the major chains is on Proof of Stake or Proof of Space or something we can talk about how associating cryptocurrency with PoW is unfair. AFAIK the closest we've come is that Ethereum people started experimenting with proof o…

Ripple, Nxt, etc have been around since 2012-ish or earlier. Ancient technology, basically.

Wasn't aware of those ones, thanks. It's a shame they're not even in the top 100 by volume.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#142

Post by hddu »

edgefield0 wrote: post #59

The fact that bitcoin mining on its own is now consuming as much electricity as the country of Argentina with no end in sight, as we are accelerating toward a climate change cliff, is sickening. Given this fact alone it's hard to see cryptocurrency as anything but a selfish crackpot scheme to generate a few dollars at the expense of humanity and our planet.

Every time I hear someone talk about the electricity consumption of argentinia I laugh and think of the soy wojak gif.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#143

Post by blurbleblurble »

edgefield0 wrote: post #59

The fact that bitcoin mining on its own is now consuming as much electricity as the country of Argentina with no end in sight, as we are accelerating toward a climate change cliff, is sickening. Given this fact alone it's hard to see cryptocurrency as anything but a selfish crackpot scheme to generate a few dollars at the expense of humanity and our planet.

It's hard to see it as anything but that because cryptocurrency people don't collectively realize the gravity of the PR disaster they have on their hands. Central banks are looking for reasons to shut down the whole cryptocurrency space and in an ignorant public's eye, bitcoin's absurd energy waste is a perfect reason to do just that.

Where is the coinmarketcap-like tool that indexes cryptocurrency projects' energy (in)efficiencies and e-waste footprints? Where is the tool that's easy to use and shows how efficient cryptocurrency projects are in real time? Without that, the whole space is in serious jeopardy, including those few projects that actually have the potential to benefit people and the planet?

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#144

Post by blurbleblurble »

edgefield0 wrote: post #59

The fact that bitcoin mining on its own is now consuming as much electricity as the country of Argentina with no end in sight, as we are accelerating toward a climate change cliff, is sickening. Given this fact alone it's hard to see cryptocurrency as anything but a selfish crackpot scheme to generate a few dollars at the expense of humanity and our planet.

It's hard to see it as anything but that because cryptocurrency people don't collectively realize the gravity of the PR disaster they have on their hands. Central banks are looking for reasons to shut down the whole cryptocurrency space and in an ignorant public's eye, bitcoin's absurd energy waste is a perfect reason to do just that.

Where is the coinmarketcap-like tool that indexes cryptocurrency projects' energy (in)efficiencies and e-waste footprints? Where is the tool that's easy to use and shows how efficient cryptocurrency projects are in real time? Without that, the whole space is in serious jeopardy, including those few projects that actually have the potential to benefit people and the planet.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#145

Post by fifilura »

mrb wrote: post #124
Symbiote wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the second largest hydroelectric dam is the world. Pick the Netherlands instead for the comparison, which has similar consumption to Argentina.

That is still a single dam. A whole country could be powered by a single dam.

The number of places where you can build a dam is limited, and when you find one it is not unlikely that you have to relocate > 1 million people to build it (Three Gorges Dam). That is on the other side of the scale you are talking about.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#146

Post by hddu »

coolestguy wrote: post #101
willbudd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof-of-work =/= cryptocurrency. There are cryptocurrencies that work without proof-of-work, and those that quantitatively rely on it to a far lesser degree. Honestly, it continues to surprise me how clueless most of HN commenters are on this topic.

It really is pretty bewildering how many top comments here show almost 0 understanding of the technology. How many other topics that get posted here have the same thing happening??

Wow it's almost like the media is all propaganda and lies, people on the internet claim to be smart while they don't really understand what they are talking about, wow who knew. (Yes I include myself in the pulling shit out my ass on the internet group)

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#147

Post by nietzsch3 »

edgefield0 wrote: post #59

The fact that bitcoin mining on its own is now consuming as much electricity as the country of Argentina with no end in sight, as we are accelerating toward a climate change cliff, is sickening. Given this fact alone it's hard to see cryptocurrency as anything but a selfish crackpot scheme to generate a few dollars at the expense of humanity and our planet.

This comment is incredibly ignorant and I'm going to have an aneurysm if it gets brought up again

- bitcoin uses a 1/3rd of the energy used in gold mining

- bitcoin uses 7% of the energy used in the global banking system

- bitcoin energy usage does not scale with adoption, actual payments are meant to be made on the lightning network (faster and cheaper than Visa), and settled eventually on the blockchain

https://www.danheld.com/blog/2019/1/5/pow-is-efficent

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#148

Post by sudosysgen »

shawnz wrote: post #129
sudosysgen wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies generate dollars by first generating things that some people find useful. Just generating dollars by themselves should be done with the smallest possible amount of electricity.

Bitcoin's energy usage is proportional to its market value so you might say it always uses the smallest possible amount of energy (given the current valuation). We have yet to see if alternative systems like proof-of-stake can gain the same trust and replace proof-of-work while actually consuming less energy in practice. I'm hopeful though.

Creating currency by itself does not create any value.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#149

Post by hggh »

rcstank wrote: post #72
edgefield0 wrote: post #59

The fact that bitcoin mining on its own is now consuming as much electricity as the country of Argentina with no end in sight, as we are accelerating toward a climate change cliff, is sickening. Given this fact alone it's hard to see cryptocurrency as anything but a selfish crackpot scheme to generate a few dollars at the expense of humanity and our planet.

How much energy is consumed by online banking? Big Tech in general? These are sincere questions.

The goal of cryptocurrency is not to substitute online banking but the entire banking system. How much energy does that consume?

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#150

Post by yters »

gruez wrote: post #71
yters wrote: post #30

When doing it manually can people find shortcuts that would elude brute force computation?

AFAIK hashing algorithms are specifically designed so that you can't take shortcuts. That said, there was a technique that allowed you do do just that[1], but it has been patched. [1] https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1604/1604.00575.pdf

In general that is true, but is that true for all specific instances?
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