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Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

coincarboncap.com

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Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#221

Post by mondoveneziano »

atweiden wrote: post #212
mondoveneziano wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can efficiency increase in a way that decreases energy use? Let's say a new ASIC comes out that mines twice as efficiently, i.e. 2x less energy per calculation. Because miners can now afford to run twice the amount of ASICs on the same energy budget, this means that eventually miners are mining twice as fast. The network however needs to keep the block rate constant (6 blocks per hour in Bitcoin), so it counterac…

You said, quote: > If a proof-of-work cryptocurrency holds its price, its energy usage can only go up But in fact, if BTC holds its price, Bitcoin miners won’t increase their energy usage — unless they’re willing to mine at a loss.

It can spike up when new miners join the game, possibly in remote locations of the world with defunct governments that decide that mining Bitcoin for a select few is a more "important" use of their non-clean energy source. The network will react, miners in other parts of the world where regulations do not allow the same may scale their operation down, but there was a spike, and much more importantly you now incentivized burning resources by whatever means available where regulations do not stand in the way.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#222

Post by wmf »

Taek wrote: post #203
wmf wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately the money comes from people buying in to Bitcoin and many of them are not aware of the power consumption or the fact that it's possible to achieve number go up with virtually no energy.

The people buying Bitcoin don't need to be aware that it costs 6 GW of power, any more than they need to be aware of the electricity costs associated with the manufacture of plastic, electronics, or other goods and services. If we as a society feel like there is too much energy being consumed, we should regulate the production, and let the market come to equilibrium on a fair price for the cost of electricity. If you…

I'm assuming that our society doesn't/can't internalize externalities.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#223

Post by wpietri »

Taek wrote: post #182
wpietri wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A better metric would be "energy use per double-spend that was prevented." Not for a general audience. The purpose of a currency is to enable transactions. Internally, I get why people involved might fuss about the metric. But from the societal perspective it's reasonable to ask, "What does it cost per unit of value created?"

Not all transactions are created equal. Some transactions are more valuable than others, and there is also value in just maintaining a steady state (holding wealth). Something that also seems to get lost in the mix frequently is the fact that bitcoin owners themselves are the ones paying for the electricity. The security benefit comes at a cost - manifested as inflation (not just transaction fees) - and that cost is…

With no transactions, the wealth stored is valueless, like deeds to property on the moon. People store wealth in currencies only because they think they can get it out later. That's in contrast to assets like houses or land, which have use value.

And Bitcoin users are only paying the fraction of the cost paid for energy. But that ignores negative externalities like the pollution that's the subject of the article.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#224

Post by atweiden »

mondoveneziano wrote: post #221
atweiden wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said, quote: > If a proof-of-work cryptocurrency holds its price, its energy usage can only go up But in fact, if BTC holds its price, Bitcoin miners won’t increase their energy usage — unless they’re willing to mine at a loss.

It can spike up when new miners join the game, possibly in remote locations of the world with defunct governments that decide that mining Bitcoin for a select few is a more "important" use of their non-clean energy source. The network will react, miners in other parts of the world where regulations do not allow the same may scale their operation down, but there was a spike, and much more importantly you now incentivi…

That’s not what you said, though. You said, quote:

> If a proof-of-work cryptocurrency holds its price, its energy usage can only go up

“Energy usage can only go up”

Only go up? When price is flat? I’m really sorry, but it seems you’re just grasping at straws, here.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#225

Post by wpietri »

skybrian wrote: post #171
wpietri wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A better metric would be "energy use per double-spend that was prevented." Not for a general audience. The purpose of a currency is to enable transactions. Internally, I get why people involved might fuss about the metric. But from the societal perspective it's reasonable to ask, "What does it cost per unit of value created?"

Okay as far as it goes, but it doesn't explain how to fix the problem. We need to drum up interest for a solution. The way I like to explain it is that Bitcoin is collectively giving away about $1.5 billion a month in prize money to miners. That's the root of the problem. Miners will spend up to $1.5 billion a month on electricity (mainly) and their other expenses. Currently it's about 10x Google's electricity usage.…

Great point! For what it's worth, they could easily spend more than that $1.5 billion. Or at least cause to be spent. There's well known theft of electricity and computation for mining. Give the opaqueness of the industry, it's totally plausible that there are under-the-table deals or power diversions at large scale. Some people will be in the grip of sunk-cost fallacy or irrational optimism about Bitcoin's future gains. And then of course there are the negative externalities from things like pollution.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#226

Post by [deleted] »

atweiden wrote: post #224
mondoveneziano wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can spike up when new miners join the game, possibly in remote locations of the world with defunct governments that decide that mining Bitcoin for a select few is a more "important" use of their non-clean energy source. The network will react, miners in other parts of the world where regulations do not allow the same may scale their operation down, but there was a spike, and much more importantly you now incentivi…

That’s not what you said, though. You said, quote: > If a proof-of-work cryptocurrency holds its price, its energy usage can only go up “Energy usage can only go up” Only go up? When price is flat? I’m really sorry, but it seems you’re just grasping at straws, here.

[deleted]

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#227

Post by wmf »

atweiden wrote: post #201
22c wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in relative terms, the earliest investors are mopping the floor with the later investors, because the earliest investors can stake orders of magnitude more coins. PoS networks are typically not going to be minting coins in perpetuity. Most PoS networks aim to reach a "zero issuance" state where the network can sustain itself on TX fees alone. It's also typically in a networks interest to decentralise TX verific…

> Most PoS networks aim to reach a "zero issuance" state where the network can sustain itself on TX fees alone. Whether ICO investors are stakemining coins issued through inflation or transaction fees doesn’t matter — they’re still mining orders of magnitude more coins , at the end of the day. Their artificially low cost basis translates into them reaping outsized profits which dwarf that of later investors. (And fra…

It seems like that argument could equally apply to PoW or startups.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#228

Post by wmf »

baby wrote: post #184
bogota wrote: post #47

Interesting but I’m not sure of the point. PoW by design is not energy efficient. The incentive is just not in the correct place. Interesting but if the goal is to show more energy efficient coins we need to be looking at different tech such as PoS. Although this might have just been a fun project someone put together in which case nice job.

Exactly, hn is stuck on fossil fuel cryptocurrencies and doesn’t seem to understand that all new tech in the last 5 years hasn’t used proof of work.

Over 50% of the crypto market is PoW. It's not just HN that isn't adopting the new tech.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#229

Post by skybrian »

wmf wrote: post #218
skybrian wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay as far as it goes, but it doesn't explain how to fix the problem. We need to drum up interest for a solution. The way I like to explain it is that Bitcoin is collectively giving away about $1.5 billion a month in prize money to miners. That's the root of the problem. Miners will spend up to $1.5 billion a month on electricity (mainly) and their other expenses. Currently it's about 10x Google's electricity usage.…

In one sense the solution is PoS. But Bitcoin will never ever ever adopt PoS, so we need to somehow convince hodlers and traders to switch to another cryptocurrency in a way that doesn't look like discrimination (e.g. outright banning PoW). A global carbon tax is an obvious yet oh so difficult possibility. Some kind of memetic warfare might be more feasible.

Discriminating against PoW algorithms seems fine? It's like discriminating against fossil fuels.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#230

Post by matheusmoreira »

wpietri wrote: post #145
toomim wrote: post #36

As a Bitcoin miner ( https://toom.im ), while I appreciate the work put into it, this particular metric of "transactions per kW" might not work the way you expect. The main point that you should understand is that a PoW blockchain's energy usage is not proportional to its transactions. I'll say that a different way: the transactions themselves do not use any energy in mining. I'll say this in a third way: it takes ex…

> A better metric would be "energy use per double-spend that was prevented." Not for a general audience. The purpose of a currency is to enable transactions. Internally, I get why people involved might fuss about the metric. But from the societal perspective it's reasonable to ask, "What does it cost per unit of value created?"

> But from the societal perspective it's reasonable to ask, "What does it cost per unit of value created?"

Then you have to define value. I don't think it's transactions. Any random bank can make transactions. People can transact with cash.

Cryptocurrencies create value by providing other properties such as decentralization, trustlessness, privacy. For example, Monero enables private and untraceable transactions and for privacy enthusiasts it has essentially infinite value.

With this definition of value, we can see how bitcoin isn't providing much. By now it's centralized, has no privacy, has high fees... It sucks basically. The only reason it's still the number one currency seems to be inertia. It's the most frustrating thing about this market honestly. Not only is bitcoin still king but it drags down better coins when its value plummets.

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