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Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

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Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#41

Post by Aachen »

DennisP wrote: post #27

> The CCAF team surveys the people who manage the Bitcoin network around the world on their energy use and found that about two-thirds of it is from fossil fuels. Nice to see actual data on this. Bitcoin advocates keep claiming it's mostly renewable.

If that were true, we'd be seeing fluctuations in how frequently blocks are being created depending on where the sun shines and where it's windy. Water power is more stable but not enough to explain the TWhs all disappearing into bitcoin every year.

No need to do a lot of work surveying miners to disprove these trolls, also they'll just come up with a new argument like that it's the payment method of the future and they don't want to miss out on that (that's what people threw at me on reddit in a similar thread earlier today)... just admit it, btc investors, you want to use the investment vessel and not feel bad about the enormous amount of pollution you cause in the process...

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#42

Post by AaronFriel »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #32
analog31 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view, "law of unintended consequences" looms large here. On the other hand, "proof of work" reminds me that the equivalence of heat and work was proven more than 150 years ago by Joule.

That equivalence exists in the domain of classical physics. Bitcoin only exists in semiconductor systems: its ineffectiveness stems from the extra logical layer (gates on silicon) which, while based on quantum effects, does not utilize quantum effects directly for calculation.

This sounds like quantum woo.

If we had desktop quantum computers, and a computationally hard algorithm on qubits was used for proof of work instead, we would still end up in the same arms race of ever more expensive, ever more power hungry systems do that work.

What would happen if Bitcoins work function (the hardness) was made 10 times easier, would miners use 1/10th the power budget? No, they'd just 10x their mining rate. Why? Because other miners have every incentive to do the same.

Likewise with a quantum algorithm.

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#43

Post by harlanji »

superkuh wrote: post #25
juanbyrge wrote: post #7

It is quite pathetic that a purported 'future of payments' is so inefficient in so many ways. This is why I will never participate in systems like bitcoin that consume hundreds of TwH (and growing) each year.

You better not particpate in fiat currencies that maintain themselves by spending TwHs to maintain their standing armies (or diplomatic relations with countries that do have standing armies).

Thanks. Had not considered that. An acre of property is enough to get as close as possible, earning as much as needed for taxes and utilities thru death. Few other promises in life. That sounds more defeated than I like. What I mean is that steady state life through generations should look pretty similar, because we all eat and potty and need to be cleaned, etc. Transhumanism could speciate us, no doubt. I was deep into that for a while but can’t grok consciousness downloading yet so I’ve become a lot more wait-and-see. But back to the point, thanks for that angle.

I’ve objected to Bitcoin since at least 2010ish, where I mentioned that I didn’t want to turn the polar bears black on Facebook but maybe that it looks epic and brilliant technically.

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#44

Post by jcranmer »

superkuh wrote: post #25
juanbyrge wrote: post #7

It is quite pathetic that a purported 'future of payments' is so inefficient in so many ways. This is why I will never participate in systems like bitcoin that consume hundreds of TwH (and growing) each year.

You better not particpate in fiat currencies that maintain themselves by spending TwHs to maintain their standing armies (or diplomatic relations with countries that do have standing armies).

That's not how fiat currencies maintain value. I suspect, if you do a thorough analysis of history, the inflation rate is going to be mostly uncorrelated with the percentage of GDP spent on military. Perhaps it might be negatively correlated, as high military spending typically means wars which have historically (especially in pre-modern times) resulted in massive financial crises for those countries heavily involved in them.

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#45

Post by throwawayQuwcy »

DennisP wrote: post #27

> The CCAF team surveys the people who manage the Bitcoin network around the world on their energy use and found that about two-thirds of it is from fossil fuels. Nice to see actual data on this. Bitcoin advocates keep claiming it's mostly renewable.

I don't think actual data is possible, only estimates. Any data would have to be self-reported by miners which can operate 100% anonymously

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#46

Post by UncleOxidant »

amir734jj wrote: post #21
juanbyrge wrote: post #7

It is quite pathetic that a purported 'future of payments' is so inefficient in so many ways. This is why I will never participate in systems like bitcoin that consume hundreds of TwH (and growing) each year.

As an owner of 50 bitcoins that I bought in 2010, I must say I agree with you. I don't see bitcoin as a future of money nor payment.

Congratulations. You can now retire.

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#47

Post by ketamine__ »

iagovar wrote: post #22
JulianMorrison wrote: post #5

Bitcoin needs to get mapped across 1:1 to something that doesn't require vast number crunching energy use, and the old blockchain abandoned

I've very skeptical for cryptos, specially about their regulatory survival, but I've been studying it a bit, and aside some obscure cryptos that are propably genius, I found nano worth mentioning as currency, and Cardano seems on track for a blank sheet replacement of Ethereum.

Cardano doesn't have smart contracts yet. How many years has it been? How can they still be top ranked?

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#49

Post by superkuh »

hashkb wrote: post #34
superkuh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You better not particpate in fiat currencies that maintain themselves by spending TwHs to maintain their standing armies (or diplomatic relations with countries that do have standing armies).

Don't you need the armies to protect the infrastructure that powers bitcoin? And if you get to the point where you don't need armies, do you need a massive global network to verify you can trust the people you're doing business with?

Bitcoin infrastructure is distributed widely across the world. No single country disappearing off the face of the earth entirely would take it down before the internet itself went down.

Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

#50

Post by latchkey »

abledon wrote: post #35
amir734jj wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an owner of 50 bitcoins that I bought in 2010, I must say I agree with you. I don't see bitcoin as a future of money nor payment.

what about Ethereum?

ETH is great, but it has some scaling issues that are going to take years to sort out.

One benefit of ETH over BTC mining is that PoW mechanism (ethash) has, so far, kept most ASICs off the network (1). This has prevented the speed / power race BTC faces. In addition, the fastest GPUs are not necessarily the most ROI efficient, so people aren't EOL'ing their hardware every week. Even better is that GPUs still have life after mining.

(1) Yes, there are ethash asics, but being a memory constrained algo means that at the end of the day, the limiting factor is memory, not asic chips. The other issue is availability... shipping asics out of China is expensive.

Disclosure: very very large ETH miner

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