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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)

#211

Post by galangalalgol »

cardanome wrote: post #157
kevingadd wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ripple has still the fifth biggest market cap. If you look at the five biggest coins by market cap (excluding USDT which is just digital Dollar) then three of them use proof of stake, Cardano, Polkadato and Ripple. Ethereum is actively transitioning to proof of stake. Bitcoin is the ONLY outlier. Though also the biggest market.

I'm old and clueless. Is proof of stake related to anonymity in any way? I read something about dealers in contraband switching from btc to monero among others for that reason.

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

#212

Post by notjtrig »

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??

That's a very good point. It is sort of demonised in the media but tech people understand encryption and cracking, phreaking, p2p networks, finge topics are our speciality. An intrested mind does not sit in front of a powerful research platform to claim ignorance year after year. People in tech disporportantly ignore crypto and it's a shame.

Why would we want to create another currency system when we feel enslaved to the first one but at the same time aware we are the minority of people, and hold an incredible privilege.

It's easier to pretend you don't understand, or just don't think about it, look the other way and suck on those corporate titties to the tune of 250k USD/year because that's the attitude that got us to the top.

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

#213

Post by Wowfunhappy »

undersuit wrote: post #187
tomxor wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also uses less than all idle devices plugged in, in the US I'd bet that _all_ idle "devices" in in the US are providing far more utility by being ready and available to do ... anything (you did say all), than bitcoin which is _only_ a vehicle for speculating on intrinsic value being used by a tiny minority. Sorry but I'm fed up of these stupid comparisons, if bitcoin uses 0.56% of the worlds electricity, there a…

How much energy does encrypting all our video transmissions cost? I don't care how efficient the hardware running HDCP is, it's still wasteful to do so for every application and it's not even to protect the users nor would it be effective in the current form as such.

HDCP's energy usage is marginal, but yes, it's pointless and I'd very much like to kill it. More critically, I'd also like all mobile phones to receive software support for three times as long as what Apple currently provides, and I'd like to build more wind farms and stop shutting down nuclear plants.

None of this excuses Bitcoin.

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

#214

Post by saltyfamiliar »

dTal wrote: post #79
ptd wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the idea of people using electricity to make money so sickening?

Because money is a collective fiction we can easily "make" using only ideas, while electricity is a real and finite resource, the safe and sustainable generation of which is a primary concern for our future. It feels like a bad trade.

Sure, but if you want it to be _sound_ money, it has to backed by some kind of inherent scarcity or guarantee which implies work and energy expenditure. If you want to be able to store it on a flash drive and transfer it to a different continent with no intermediaries, that too will cost something. If it were 'fictional' enough to be free, it wouldn't be useful.

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

#215

Post by adriancr »

solosoyokaze wrote: post #192
qeternity wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the past 10 years you could have kept your money in a savings account or Bitcoin. The classic false dichotomy by people peddling crypto. Nobody is keeping their money in a savings account. There are productive investments that aren't crypto.

What asset class has returned value like crypto for the past 10 years? None.

Stock market... derivatives...

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

#216

Post by bobviolier »

tomxor wrote: post #206
undersuit wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much energy does encrypting all our video transmissions cost? I don't care how efficient the hardware running HDCP is, it's still wasteful to do so for every application and it's not even to protect the users nor would it be effective in the current form as such.

Encryption of video specifically is a bit narrow, but lets widen it a bit: we watch a lot of video, video is neat right? I wonder how much energy goes into the transmission of _all_ video on the entire planet? end-to-end, the encoding, the hosting, the network transmission, the decoding on billions of devices and lighting up all those LED backlights, (and the extra overhead added by copyright protection crap)... It's…

The digiconomist actually compared watching Youtube with a single bitcoin transaction (don't know the specifics and how accurate), but they said 1 btc transaction is the same as 51.000 hours of watching YouTube:

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

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

#218

Post by fendy3002 »

ssss11 wrote: post #73
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.

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

Rate of growth. For bitcoin to be useful as currency, it needs to be used by many more people, while idle devices may not grow much more.

However idle devices power consumption also needs to be addressed.

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

#219

Post by wmf »

kevingadd wrote: post #122
ajmurmann wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real solution here is not complaining about individual use cases of energy, but effective carbon pricing. Wit cap & trade on a global level, this wouldn't be an issue. Of course there seems no political will nor ability to make this happen any time soon.

In some cases miners literally steal electricity or other resources to mine, so carbon pricing won't affect scenarios like that [1]. Maybe we can treat those as a rounding error... At the point where miners are willing to do things like build a transformer station you're in wild territory way beyond a neighbor tapping into your cable line for free TV. If the money's good, what's stopping a connected miner from bribin…

what's stopping a connected miner from bribing the right people to get a discount on electricity and skip the carbon tax?

International sanctions. Civilize or die.

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