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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)

#161

Post by nietzsch3 »

SamBam wrote: post #158
nietzsch3 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> bitcoin uses a 1/3rd of the energy used in gold mining - bitcoin uses 7% of the energy used in the global banking system Those are both gigantic energy expenditures, and to say that BitCoin uses only a third of the energy that another despicable planet-destroying industry does doesn't speak much in the favor of BitCoin. Nor does saying that something ~50 million people own (0.5% of the Earth's population) is "only"…

Would you rather have us use the bad system that uses more energy or the better system that uses less energy?

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

#162

Post by saltyfamiliar »

kevingadd wrote: post #141
willbudd wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ripple (XRP) has the 5th highest market cap and volume of any cryptocurrency, but it's very unpopular on a cultural level because it's basically centralized.

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

#163

Post by solosoyokaze »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #144
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 (…

Bitcoin is probably the most important social/technological innovation since the internet (which uses how much energy?). Most people realize that moving humanity forward requires energy. There's loud neo-luddite contingent that missed the boat on crypto (it's actually not too late), but I wouldn't take angry anti-crypto HN comments as public sentiment. The public is in desperate need of a finance system not tied to the existing oppressive establishment.

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

#164

Post by djamrozik »

kevingadd wrote: post #118
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.

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…

Eth 2.0 will be fully PoS (released fully in the next year or two, but staking is possible now).

Cardano, Cosmos, Polkadot are a few protocols that are PoS but are still very early in their development.

> "we're what, over a decade in to the history of cryptocurrency"

I would argue that's not long at all. The internet was technically invented in the 1960s (ARPANET) and TCP/IP went global in the early 1980s. Took a while for things to get to where we are now.

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

#165

Post by SamBam »

nietzsch3 wrote: post #161
SamBam wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bitcoin uses a 1/3rd of the energy used in gold mining - bitcoin uses 7% of the energy used in the global banking system Those are both gigantic energy expenditures, and to say that BitCoin uses only a third of the energy that another despicable planet-destroying industry does doesn't speak much in the favor of BitCoin. Nor does saying that something ~50 million people own (0.5% of the Earth's population) is "only"…

Would you rather have us use the bad system that uses more energy or the better system that uses less energy?

...which is which? Since the global financial system clearly uses much, much less energy per person, I'm guessing that you're also calling it the "better system?"

Or are you pretending that if BitCoin were used by every person on Earth that it would still be using the exact same energy?

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

#166

Post by jboog »

bookmarkable wrote: post #159
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.

Sickening? Really? Don't you find it interesting that currency free of nation-state regulators would be attacked as anti-environmental? These same regulators would love to steer policy and public opinion by calling something that reduces their influence bad for the climate, even if such a thing is run on clean energy, solar, etc. That seems suspicious. Beware of what -isms you are repeating and supporting - they are…

I've been hearing for almost a decade how Bitcoin was going to change the world and help humanity and yet...nothing. Other than some speculators and early adopters getting rich.

I've yet to hear of anything "world-changing" BTC could do that isn't already done better by traditional systems.

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

#167

Post by jazzabeanie »

smeyer wrote: post #77
ssss11 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give you the other side: It also uses less than all idle devices plugged in, in the US. Either Argentina doesnt use as much as you’d think or the US wastes a whole lot of power doing nothing. I’d argue thats way worse than mining bitcoin! Anyway its a sensationalist statistic designed to arouse your response. I’d expect theres heaps of things more wasteful.. office building services running 24/7 comes to mind

Yeah, but the rest of us don't have to put up with legions of people excitedly explaining about how idle devices are great and everyone else should idle more devices. Bitcoin consuming massive amounts of electricity is bad. Idle devices consuming massive amounts of electricity is also bad.

Certainly not on a per gram basis...

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

#168

Post by base698 »

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.

Yeah it's definitely more sickening than fiat that allows endless wars and death all over the globe.

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

#169

Post by qeternity »

bookmarkable wrote: post #159
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.

Sickening? Really? Don't you find it interesting that currency free of nation-state regulators would be attacked as anti-environmental? These same regulators would love to steer policy and public opinion by calling something that reduces their influence bad for the climate, even if such a thing is run on clean energy, solar, etc. That seems suspicious. Beware of what -isms you are repeating and supporting - they are…

> Beware of what -isms you are repeating and supporting

> Overall, blockchain currency has the ability to help humanity. If that requires more power, well, so does everything.

You jump immediately into whataboutism: what about all the other things that require power.

Bitcoin is not beyond criticism. It is currently 99.99% used for speculation. Does it have potential? Absolutely. Do a number of competing non-PoW/non-blockchain based solutions also have potential? Yes. Do those competitors potentially use far less energy? Also yes.

In the best case, Bitcoin is using a metric shit-ton of energy before actually hitting critical mass for its social use-cases. In its worst case, its a Tether-backed ponzi that is siphoning a tremendous amount of energy from more productive uses.

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

#170

Post by wtfrmyinitials »

jboog wrote: post #166
bookmarkable wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sickening? Really? Don't you find it interesting that currency free of nation-state regulators would be attacked as anti-environmental? These same regulators would love to steer policy and public opinion by calling something that reduces their influence bad for the climate, even if such a thing is run on clean energy, solar, etc. That seems suspicious. Beware of what -isms you are repeating and supporting - they are…

I've been hearing for almost a decade how Bitcoin was going to change the world and help humanity and yet...nothing. Other than some speculators and early adopters getting rich. I've yet to hear of anything "world-changing" BTC could do that isn't already done better by traditional systems.

If people can print money, they will.
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