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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)

#221

Post by DeRock »

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.

While not world changing, it did allow for the paying for of illicit drugs over the internet. Silkroad was the peak of bitcoin usability IMO (regardless of my moral perspective on the matter). Ever since, its slowly transitioned into a Ponzi scheme built on the back of future "decentralized finance" promises.

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

#222

Post by wmf »

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…

Avalanche isn't that big yet but it's in production and running DeFi.

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

#223

Post by gruez »

yters wrote: post #150
gruez wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Are you talking about whether you can skip steps for certain inputs to the hashing function? No not really. If you look at the reference implementation[1] the control flow is the same regardless of what the input is. There's no shortcuts you can take, other than just memorizing the results of certain operations, kind of like how you can memorize a multiplication table to multiply faster, compared to multiplying from scratch every time.

[1] scroll to the bottom of https://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/sha256.html

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

#224

Post by fchu »

solosoyokaze wrote: post #172
jboog wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For the past 10 years you could have kept your money in a savings account or Bitcoin. One of those has been decimated by a fiat printing press, the other has been a great investment. Bitcoin has already changed humanity for the better and it's only getting started.

Having great returns and improving humanity are very different things. I'm pretty sure a lot of scams are benefiting their creators very well, and yet...

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

#225

Post by lifty »

reaperducer wrote: post #6
waynesonfire wrote: post #2

You spent two days generating a hash? What a waste of resources. EDIT: harsh crowd today. I could care less how the author spends their time. Am I the only one that saw all the articles talking about how bad BTC is for the environment recently?

His resources. Not yours. You don't get to judge, unless you want to detail what you did over the weekend and let the rest of us strangers decide if what you did was a waste or not.

Unless (s)he used a lot of electricity over the weekend. Then HN gets to judge.

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

#226

Post by dTal »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #200
tomxor wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel it would be hard to over-estimate the value in getting humanity off centrally planned currencies That's not what this is about, Bitcoin has utterly failed at that mission, and nothing about cryptocurrencies necessitates computationally wasteful proof of work. The only reason Bitcoin is still popular is because of people using it for speculating, it's not a viable currency.

The computationally wasteful bit is a temporary problem for which solutions are already being created. The Lightning Network is one such effort. Governments are already taking efforts to fight against crypto. The fact that bitcoin is classified as an "asset" is the government adding friction to using it. Every time you transact in bitcoin you have to put that on your taxes because there's some capital gains/loss. Of…

The computationally wasteful bit is the proof-of-work, which is an inherent part of bitcoin. The Lightning Network is just about scaling transactions.

Your government rant is a non-sequitor - bitcoin doesn't become any more efficient just because The Man doesn't like it.

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

#227

Post by solosoyokaze »

fchu wrote: post #224
solosoyokaze wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the past 10 years you could have kept your money in a savings account or Bitcoin. One of those has been decimated by a fiat printing press, the other has been a great investment. Bitcoin has already changed humanity for the better and it's only getting started.

Having great returns and improving humanity are very different things. I'm pretty sure a lot of scams are benefiting their creators very well, and yet...

Having great returns when the alternative is to let the government wipe out your savings, is actually a benefit to humanity.
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