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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)

#341

Post by throwaway829 »

SantalBlush wrote: post #332
solosoyokaze wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

This is such a vague explanation of bitcoin's usefulness that I'm even more glad to use US dollars after reading it. "Most important social/technological innovation since the internet." "Moving humanity forward." "Not tied to the existing oppressive establishment." These are not real, concrete reasons for anyone to switch to bitcoin. These are statements I would expect to hear from someone who is trying to recruit me…

People who save in FedBucks are no closer to owning a home in California. If you’re saving in FedBucks you’re treading water as the printer goes burrrr. Mostly likely you know saving in FedBucks is a fool’s errand and convert your money to Wall Street assets. Crypto is an alternative store of purchasing power that’s not currently run by New York bankers.

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

#342

Post by xur17 »

trident5000 wrote: post #300
IgorPartola wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is deflationary, isn’t it? How could it ever replace fiat if just by merely holding it you are guaranteed in the long run to increase value? You need mild inflation to get people to actually spend and not hoard. Bitcoin’s supply is fix so there is no point in ever spending it unless you want to cash out.

Yeah because Ill never buy food and housing until I die because my currency is deflationary. That logic is so tired. Also the fact that you can convert US dollars to investments instantly instead of consuming basically extends the same situation, yet we still spend when we need to.

> Also the fact that you can convert US dollars to investments instantly instead of consuming basically extends the same situation, yet we still spend when we need to.

I've actually wondered about this -> why not use the SP500 as a form of currency? It seems like this would fit somewhere in between the US dollar and Bitcoin - store of value, increases in price over time (or at least historically does), pays dividends (so a productive asset). Downsides are no capped supply, and volatility (but so is Bitcoin).

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

#343

Post by xur17 »

kfrzcode wrote: post #123
AaronFriel wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin consumers more power than entire nations' economies while generating so little value that I suspect my home town in Iowa would exceed the transaction rate on a daily basis. A moderately busy food district in a major city would exceed that every day. (I'm thinking roughly 100,000 people getting lunch or dinner in 1 hour ought to generate 13 to 27 times as many transactions/second as the entire Bitcoin network…

The BTC market cap is around $650 billion. I don't understand your logic.

No it isn't.

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

#344

Post by kasparkallas »

justblaze23 wrote: post #97
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.

https://nano.org/ - That's the reply

There are many alternative cryptocurrency projects to solve the environmental, speed and cost issues of Bitcoin. Nano looks like a genuine project but ultimately it’s an experiement with a non-inflatonary currency with high-volatility. This model is bound to fail barring a miracle.

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

#345

Post by xur17 »

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…

Tezos uses proof-of-stake and launched a little over 2 years ago.

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

#346

Post by mannerheim »

xiphias2 wrote: post #13

A very interesting part of Bitcoin is that there’s no reason it couldn’t have been invented 10 years earlier (after having practical public key cryptography). Anyways, better late then never.

It's worth noting that the very first block was created with the following comment: 'The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.'

It seems there was a good reason why it was created when it was.

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

#347

Post by tdrgabi »

vmception wrote: post #23
varjag wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of energy would have been wasted for a lot less mined volume, so it's probably for the better.

the same amount of bitcoin would have been mined. what did you mean?

Less powerful computers, so they would spend more time to find the same amount, I guess

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

#348

Post by needle0 »

After all the years I'm still having trouble comprehending what Bitcoin - and Bitcoin in specific - is useful for aside from speculation. I get that Ethereum and several other cryptocurrencies have the ability to execute code on the blockchain, enabling useful applications, and that stablecoins could be used for everyday payment due to it not fluctuating wildly (at least in theory). As I understand it, Bitcoin has neither of those characteristics. Can someone enlighten me on what it can be used for then?

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

#349

Post by shawnz »

AaronFriel wrote: post #307
shawnz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transaction rate is not the only possible way to judge the value a monetary system. Also: Bitcoin's maximum possible transaction rate could be arbitrarily scaled up without impacting the electricity usage at all (but it would have other trade-offs not related to energy usage, which has made it hard to establish a consensus on the issue).

> Bitcoin's maximum possible transaction rate could be arbitrarily scaled up without impacting the electricity usage at all If it can, why hasn't it?

For example, increasing the block size could have some disadvantages like increasing how quickly the size of the blockchain grows, which will make it harder for new users/miners to join the network and possibly increase centralization.

It's also not clear the market has a strong demand for an increased transaction rate yet. Eventually it will be almost unavoidable, but we might not be there yet. If that's the case then it might be harmful to increase the number of frivolous/unnecessary transactions for no reason.

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

#350

Post by shawnz »

whateveracct wrote: post #338
oraphalous wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a reliable store of value - is itself extremely valuable. At least to me... and to quite a few others apparently, with more and more by the day.

i can't believe this "store of value" hype pivot that BTC pulled actually worked

Alternatively, there was no "hype pivot" and that's simply what the market decided they valued most about Bitcoin (for now).
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