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Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

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Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#171

Post by EL_Loco »

pmlnr wrote: post #135
bonestamp2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a good time to point out that there are energy efficient blockchains that work differently from bitcoin -- not all crypto is as power hungry (some use disk space, or memory, or even just the tokens themselves to replace bitcoin's proof of work model).

So point them out, please. One that is efficient on all levels.

I'll second Algorand. Founded by Silvio Micali, Turing and Gödel Prize winner MIT prof who got a bunch of MIT people and now has probably solved the problems of speed, safety and energy consumption of the old blockchains. Check out their white papers if you're interested. I would also suggest checking out Hedera Hashgraph for a newer approach on distributed ledgers.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#172

Post by asenna »

kaliali wrote: post #101

Use proof of stake coins like Cardano and Polkadot They use 10000 to a million times less energy than bitcoin to process payments!

Genuine question, what do you mean by "use Cardano"? Use it for what? Can I create borrowing/lending decentralized platforms?

Can I launch my NFT marketplace on it (at this moment)? Or perhaps create a DAO for the governance of a Dapp?

I don't understand how Cardano is even a choice right now.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#173

Post by kaba0 »

_heimdall wrote: post #102
emerged wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Modern financial markets are Ponzi schemes, and they are much larger than bitcoin. How did you decide to compare the risk of nuclear holocaust to global warming? Anecdotally, I'd rather see temperatures rise over time and have a chance to adjust for it rather than die in a nuclear blast or issues immediately after.

People really have trouble understanding run-off events. You do realize that global temperature increase will not be linear? A slight increase in temperature melts ice that previously trapped plenty of CO2, which will increase the green house effect, increasing temperatures, and here is your feed back loop.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#175

Post by disruptalot »

pmlnr wrote: post #135
bonestamp2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a good time to point out that there are energy efficient blockchains that work differently from bitcoin -- not all crypto is as power hungry (some use disk space, or memory, or even just the tokens themselves to replace bitcoin's proof of work model).

So point them out, please. One that is efficient on all levels.

The reader will find dozens of suggestion in this thread about how coin X is more "efficient".

Note that efficiency would mean producing the same properties but with less resources. Not merely using less resources. While experimentation is certainly desired, it's a fallacy that any coin has actually reproduced bitcoin in a more efficient way.

To name a couple,

- Bitcoin had what some call an "immaculate conception" where there was no expectation that such a system would work in the first place and where the founder was anonymous. This creates a very different history in comparison with the founder led, pre mined, frothy market launches of today.

- Bitcoin has stood the test of time. With each year in production that passes, there is more confidence that the system and specific implementation is sound.

Once these other coins have stood in the market for 10 years straight and continued to retain the confidence in their protocol, the comparisons can start.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#176

Post by chrischen »

jabbany wrote: post #94
dehrmann wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking too small on the impact--China doesn't need to double spend bitcoins. What they could do is cause a loss of confidence in Bitcoin overnight and collapse the price.

How is that even remotely strategically good for China......? These miners are probably making USD or some other foreign fiat at the end of the day which adds to the supply of foreign reserves without needing to use trade... And if they're siphoning power to get around currency exchange limits moving wealth abroad then a traditional crackdown to confiscate their equipment would be much more effective (you can't exact…

If people are using Bitcoin to exfiltrate cash and skirt monetary controls then they'd definitely want to tank Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#177

Post by csomar »

paulmd wrote: post #50
sillysaurusx wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, the model of BTC as “digital gold” is pretty resilient to 51% attacks: if you don’t touch your coins, no one can take them away from you. (A 51% attack can’t reassign coins.) Of course, the price of BTC might tank in response to the news of a successful 51% attack, but it’ll probably bounce back just like every other event in BTC history.

> if you don’t touch your coins, no one can take them away from you. (A 51% attack can’t reassign coins.) it can't generate new unsigned transactions but it can roll back the network to a state when someone else owned those coins. from a practical perspective there is no difference, you no longer have those coins.

You'll need way more hash power for that. Remember if you have 51% hash power, you'll be able to do the 51% attack roughly half of the time.

To rollback the Bitcoin chain, you'll probably need 90-95% of the hashing rate to eclipse all other miners. That requires that the other 50% becomes 5%; or in other words you multiply your hash rate by 10. Which is not even remotely possible.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#178

Post by argvargc »

pmlnr wrote: post #135
bonestamp2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a good time to point out that there are energy efficient blockchains that work differently from bitcoin -- not all crypto is as power hungry (some use disk space, or memory, or even just the tokens themselves to replace bitcoin's proof of work model).

So point them out, please. One that is efficient on all levels.

XRP and Stellar were the pioneers in this regard. Since about 2013 and 2014 respectively (or thereabouts). Such systems have negligible energy usage.

In general, anything using some flavour of Byzantine Fault Tolerance - of which there are a few - as a method of consensus, consumes very little energy for the payback.

If appropriately deployed (similar issue to PoW, decentralisation needs to be maintained) BFT-type consensus mechanisms also exceed the consensus security offered by PoW or PoS.

BTC and other PoW models are typically constrained by a 51% corruption of the network. BFT systems typically do better than that, as they often require numbers in excess of 50% to reach agreement (I believe I've seen around 80% - but it's been a while). The way the system usually works is it's constantly reassessing malicious nodes so it becomes difficult for a minority to gain a foothold to cause disruption. They also have the possibility to exhibit less destructive effects if breached (temporary network halt rather than network takeover).

Finally, in such systems modifications to the network protocols are voted upon democratically by participants on the network itself, and so far - at least in XRP's case - this appears to have worked well. Ripple has proposed a few changes that have been rejected by the network using this voting process, while others proposed by them or other participants have been approved and become part of the protocol.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#179

Post by rfoo »

oefrha wrote: post #150
rfoo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I'm a native Chinese and from my understanding (read between lines and talking to local friends), the situation is: 1. Coal mine accidents. 2. Someone said "stop mining, make sure all the mine pass security check". Of course they mean coal mining. 3. Government officers confuse "mining coal" and "mining Bitcoin", decided to stop both just because they both have a "mine" word in name. It's quite hilarious how they…

According to the Twitter thread quoted by TFA, https://twitter.com/doveywan/status/1382912887535005701 , non-crypto data centers in the region are down as well, which really doesn’t support this reading between lines.

The Twitter thread you linked said exactly opposite thing.

Take a look at this one: https://twitter.com/DoveyWan/status/1382955030995554304

The Chinese text in this screenshot basically says:

"Some ISP datacenters were required to shut down and prepare for inspection. Others, because of the local government for 'reducing risk', they want to avoid the spotlight, so they shut down themselves. And then wait until inspection team from central government[1] leave, after that they restart"

That "Some ISP datacenters" in the first sentence were shut down because they do hosting for Bitcoin mining.

If you don't trust me, here are the copy-pastable replication of the original text. It is not very machine-translatable because it is spoken Chinese gone through WeChat's speech-to-text. Verify with someone you trust who can understand Chinese.

有些 isp 机房的话是那个他们要求停就配合检查，然后有一些是当地的政府为了规避风险吗？不想出风头，然后的话自己关的，然后的话，等他那个中央巡视巡视组走了之后的话再重新开启啊这样。

[1] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%A4%AE%E5%B7%A1%E8...

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#180

Post by pizzapill »

tarsinge wrote: post #156
pizzapill wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is replacing nuclear/coal with wind/solar energy: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiemix#/media/Datei:Energi... (grey = wind, red = nuclear, black/brown = coal) Both nuclear and coal are shrinking since ~ 2000 and both sources of energy have been replaced by renewables since then. Currently ~40% of power produced in Germany comes from renewables. Wind energy has become #1 source of power from 0 twenty years…

Germany mix is still very dirty compared to some neighbors[0], it’s a fact that they chose politics over CO2 reduction (choosing to close all nuclear power plants overnight as a reaction to fukushima when the renewable capacity was not there and rely on coal until 2038). Wether you are pro nuclear or not it’s an environmental catastrophe. [0] https://www.electricitymap.org/map

> it’s a fact that they chose politics over CO2 reduction

True but the timeline is:

2002 - Ban of construction of new nuclear reactors and limitations on the normal operating life of existing reactors to 32 years. Last shutdown ~ 2021.

2010 - Government wants to increase the limit of some newer reactors to ~2030-2035.

2011 - Fukushima. 77% of Germans are against a increase of the operating life of the remaining reactors, 48% want all turned off immediately. Government (in a election year) goes with the opinion of a vast majority of Germans.

So the current exit was planned since 1990-2000. Municipal power plants have planned for increase in demand and invested billions. The need for renewables increases spending & investment enormously (after our wise government killed of solar in the early aughts and handed technological leadership to China).

With this years election the Green party will probably be the second most powerful party in Germany. A party that was founded with the goal to end German reliance on nuclear power and bombs.

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