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Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

bbc.co.uk

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

#91

Post by frankenst1 »

briefcomment wrote: post #48
dale_glass wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is extremely manipulable. Just look at the fact that the modern BTC no longer complies with its original ideals. Remember the pizza? Buying games on Steam? All that ended, because the core group controlling bitcoin decided a tiny block size limit suited their interests. This makes perfect sense for people sitting on a hoard of coins and who want to keep on increasing the contention and driving up the value, b…

It could be bitcoin, it could be something with a bigger block, but it will be the hardest thing to manipulate away.

How ironic that the forks of Bitcoin with bigger block sizes appear to be the coins more likely to be manipulated by "influential leaders" - resulting in numerous and continuous coin splits.

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

#92

Post by briefcomment »

frankenst1 wrote: post #86
briefcomment wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the likelihood of all these things are comparable? The president of the Bilderburg group literally provided the bulk of the funding for Blockstream. That should be considered with some seriousness shouldn't it?

> You think the likelihood of all these things are comparable? Epstein contributed funding to MIT Media Labs which run the Digital Currency Group which provided funding to Bitcoin developers. Boom. Conspiracy confirmed. Conspiracy theories are just like playing a game of six degrees of Kevin Bacon. The reason why you need to introduce large players like MasterCard or AXA or whatever is because the larger they are the…

I believe the claim is that Blockstream supporting smaller block sizes could be a conflict of interest because they sell transaction services. This suggests that Mastercard could be backing them as a hedge for their transaction fee business, meaning the market's call for larger block sizes could be someday be manipulated/disregarded.

Only reason I'm paying attention to this is that if the market one day wants larger block sizes (i.e. hardware gets to a point where more people can run nodes to the point that a reasonable amount of decentralization is possible with larger blocks), Blockstream may hold bitcoin back from transitioning, and something with a larger block size could see a considerable increase in market size. I would think they would accede if there were a reasonable risk of bitcoin losing share because they are keeping blocks too small, but maybe not.

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

#93

Post by frankenst1 »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #14
kierkegaard_s wrote: post #3

The people that write these articles haven't the faintest idea of the protocol and repeat the same tired arguments over and over again. Why does Bitcoin have to justify its energy usage when the legacy financial system does not? Who becomes the arbiter of what tech or sector deserves to draw on the grid?

>>"Why does Bitcoin have to justify its energy usage when the legacy financial system does not?" These questions always strike me as disingenuous / intentionally obtuse. But charitably assuming an honest question for purpose of frank discourse, my simplest answer / understanding is that in general, in the daily transactional system, participants work to reduce energy cost per transaction and over most periods of time…

The increase in hashrate can be interpreted as an increase in security, i.e. it is much more difficult/expensive for an attacker (even nation-level) to harm Bitcoin. This is mandatory for a financial network that aims to operate on global scale.

Bitcoin does not consume energy per transaction but per block. How many transactions the block contains does not change the energy requirement to mine it. If the number of transactions on the Bitcoin network would go to zero tomorrow, energy consumption would not change (same if transactions were doubled).

Bitcoin's energy usage is a function of hashrate which is affected by mining profitability which is affected by block reward (mined coins + tx fees) and energy prices.

Long story short: Just make "dirty" energy more expensive by including the cost it incurs on the climate. This would make Bitcoin's already large share of renewables even bigger and would improve global energy production and consumption as a result.

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

#94

Post by jcranmer »

frankenst1 wrote: post #85
jcranmer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is huge, I agree. But ridiculous in comparison to what? How much energy/CO2 does the traditional financial system consume/produce (incl. buildings, production, transport, security)? I've done the math before, but I've forgotten the precise results I came up with. The results are in the realm of "Bitcoin uses more energy than that which is used to produce all the US [maybe all the world's] currency." Like, it's n…

Impressive, I wouldn't know where to begin. Could you expand on which items you included and how you decided on how they were weighted?

The hardest part is finding the raw data. I only considered the energy costs of actually producing the currency itself (mostly imputed by operations cost, since I couldn't find any reports on the actual energy consumption of the mints or engraving presses). I realize purists will object to not including the amortized cost of the facility, etc., but the number that's being compared against for Bitcoin focuses only on the cost of the proof-of-work and not the similar facility costs.

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

#95

Post by frankenst1 »

briefcomment wrote: post #92
frankenst1 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You think the likelihood of all these things are comparable? Epstein contributed funding to MIT Media Labs which run the Digital Currency Group which provided funding to Bitcoin developers. Boom. Conspiracy confirmed. Conspiracy theories are just like playing a game of six degrees of Kevin Bacon. The reason why you need to introduce large players like MasterCard or AXA or whatever is because the larger they are the…

I believe the claim is that Blockstream supporting smaller block sizes could be a conflict of interest because they sell transaction services. This suggests that Mastercard could be backing them as a hedge for their transaction fee business, meaning the market's call for larger block sizes could be someday be manipulated/disregarded. Only reason I'm paying attention to this is that if the market one day wants larger…

Could you explain how Blockstream could influence the Bitcoin development process to act against the "market's call", e.g. which developers do you have in mind which currently work for Blockstream and have the power to overrule/manipulate other Bitcoin developers against their/the market's will?

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

#96

Post by BobbyJo »

frankenst1 wrote: post #87
BobbyJo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchains would be easy to stop if governments wanted. The power footprint of miners is easy to find, and wallets and transactions are easy to trace. The reality is, if a blockchain ever got large enough and widespread enough to impact a host government's currency, it could be shut down probably overnight.

> The power footprint of miners is easy to find. it could be shut down probably overnight. This only works for single large-scale miners after you raided all factories/households with above average energy consumption. Many small miners would continue to mine from home (with average energy consumption levels) while collaborating in a global mining pool.

Sure, but then you've dramatically reduced the scale at which it can operate, which makes it way less viable than now.

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

#97

Post by briefcomment »

frankenst1 wrote: post #95
briefcomment wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the claim is that Blockstream supporting smaller block sizes could be a conflict of interest because they sell transaction services. This suggests that Mastercard could be backing them as a hedge for their transaction fee business, meaning the market's call for larger block sizes could be someday be manipulated/disregarded. Only reason I'm paying attention to this is that if the market one day wants larger…

Could you explain how Blockstream could influence the Bitcoin development process to act against the "market's call", e.g. which developers do you have in mind which currently work for Blockstream and have the power to overrule/manipulate other Bitcoin developers against their/the market's will?

Idk, that's why I need to read into this further. Many seriously think Adam is Satoshi though, so what he wants could get outsized support, regardless if there is explicit coercion or not.

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

#98

Post by frankenst1 »

BobbyJo wrote: post #96
frankenst1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The power footprint of miners is easy to find. it could be shut down probably overnight. This only works for single large-scale miners after you raided all factories/households with above average energy consumption. Many small miners would continue to mine from home (with average energy consumption levels) while collaborating in a global mining pool.

Sure, but then you've dramatically reduced the scale at which it can operate, which makes it way less viable than now.

There is no reduction, you can't even distinguish a large-scale single miner from a mining pool with thousands of at home miners.

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

#99

Post by frankenst1 »

briefcomment wrote: post #97
frankenst1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain how Blockstream could influence the Bitcoin development process to act against the "market's call", e.g. which developers do you have in mind which currently work for Blockstream and have the power to overrule/manipulate other Bitcoin developers against their/the market's will?

Idk, that's why I need to read into this further. Many seriously think Adam is Satoshi though, so what he wants could get outsized support, regardless if there is explicit coercion or not.

> Idk, that's why I need to read into this further.

So you are spreading conspiracy theories without substance and hide behind "I don't know, I am just asking questions"?

Here is the list of all contributors (even those just fixing typos in the docs) to the latest Bitcoin release: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/release-n...

Can you name just one who is also employed by Blockstream (let alone one with the weight to convince others to act against consensus)?

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

#100

Post by tacc728 »

bko wrote: post #54

The energy cost of mining will always be bid up to approximately the net value of the reward. So as the price of Bitcoin goes up, so does the mining effort. If the price drops, the energy expended would drop as well. It's important to note that the cost of energy its priced to is more or less the global lowest cost of energy. No one mines Bitcoin in Los Angeles during the summer. Bitcoin is a way to convert cheap or…

“Bitcoin is a way to convert cheap or excess energy anywhere in the world into money, much of it renewable or energy that would go to waste.” Do we have such a thing as “excess” energy? I’m not sure what you mean by go to waste.

“In a world where the US money supply can go up 23% in a given year with no end in sight...” And yet real inflation rates have remained low and pretty much on target for decades. Why don’t we see 23% inflation? You can’t take the money supply alone and assume inflation. That’s only 1/4 of the equation that determines prices. Expansionary monetary policy is implemented as a response to otherwise DEFLATIONARY adverse events, to prevent a downward spiral. The end in sight is the end of whatever crisis it was used for. The fed then announces a new interest rate. Etc. A % increase in the money supply alone, without context, doesn’t tell me whether it’s an excessive number and I should be worried.

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