Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by 22c » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:42 AM UTC

atweiden wrote: post #233

wmf wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> It seems like that argument could equally apply to PoW or startups. It isn’t clear to me what you meant to say here. Early investors tend to be by far the biggest winners in general, crypto or not. However, we were discussing mining revenue, not profits in general. Importantly, early PoW miners had to source new ASIC mining rigs from China year after year, pay to install those ASICs in datacenters, and pay for the…

>However, we were discussing mining revenue, not profits in general.

If you are talking about mining revenue then you are completely wrong about what you have been saying so far, because the rate at which you receive mining rewards is usually around 5-10% pa.

What you're trying to do is have your cake and eat it too. You admit that you are not talking about early adopter profits in general, but you complained above about cost basis of early adopters being low (that's how early adoption typically works).

This is the same as complaining about someone investing in 10 year government bonds and then the underlying currency increasing in buying power.

You could go buy Argentinian or Venezualan bonds right now and hope the peso or bolívar goes up in value. It's no different, all you need is seed money to get started.

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

#242

Post by analog31 » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:44 AM UTC

BluSyn wrote: post #189

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…

"Energy used / total value secured" is a better measurement. "Double-spend prevented" isn't calculable. Important to remember that the energy used on mining both secures current and *PAST* transactions, that's the entire point of the block chain . I think "total value secured" captures this point. I find it frustrating that crypto-currencies are judged by their energy usage, meanwhile traditional fiat currencies are…

>>> meanwhile traditional fiat currencies are secured by massive banking industries, governments, and militaries.

Crypto-currencies are also secured by those things in their present state. So long as crypto remains a small portion of the overall economy, it depends on the mainstream economy for its existence. For instance, it can't exist without an economic infrastructure that can develop and produce computer chips, telecommunications, the electric grid, and so forth.

The energy cost of Crypto is on top of the cost and externalities of the present day economic infrastructure.

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

#243

Post by 22c » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:47 AM UTC

atweiden wrote: post #238

22c wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's typically a fixed number of rewards per block, or the emission rates are on a schedule based on block height. Unless your argument is simply "stonks go up", in which case, sure, I agree. Is that a real problem? If you bought $1000 of AMZN shares 20 years ago you'd have orders of magnitude more voting power than someone who buys $1000 of AMZN shares today.

> If you bought $1000 of AMZN shares 20 years ago you'd have orders of magnitude more voting power than someone who buys $1000 of AMZN shares today. Equities typically aren’t masquerading as global currencies. Fairness does matter, here. It’s absolutely material that the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” had no reasonable expectation of profit at the time of launching Bitcoin c. 2009, for instance. It’s also material that…

I don't think anyone here is saying that PoS is somehow solving world poverty. The people who claim PoS is better than PoW typically do so because it is more power efficient and still capable of running an effective monetary network (at least what we've seen so far). I don't know anyone who says PoS is "more fair" although I would argue that delegated staking is certainly more geographically friendly than PoW (and to an extent, PoS) which will inevitably end up geographically focused in areas with low cost of operation (cold areas with the cheapest power and rent). PoS could be done on a Raspberry Pi plugged into your modem.

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

#244

Post by Taek » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:47 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #223

Taek wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course, you need _some_ amount of transactions. But that could theoretically be 500 a year and still adding just as much value as bitcoin today, so long as the transactions were sufficiently significant.

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

#245

Post by spyder » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:49 AM UTC

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…

Another technologically interesting very low energy coin is NANO but it has his own challenges because with the feeless transactions the spamming costs almost nothing.

But still at one point it confirmed more transactions than BTC + ETH + LTC combined without tx fees and sub-second confirmation time:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/lxbhh5/nano_c...

The spam is becoming a too big problem, but they're trying to mitigate it in the new versions:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/namwzf/v22_hi...

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

#246

Post by lawn » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:56 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #25

Txs / MWh is not a valid metric for most cryptocurrencies since power consumption is proportional to price, not transactions. Also, BSV and BCH are totally insecure so it's not really fair to compare them to secure cryptocurrencies.

It's valid for Bitcoin since it doesn't scale on-chain, thus it cannot raise it's efficiency.

Also, BCH and BSV aren't "totally insecure" as that's far too black and white. If they were, then they would've been attacked and destroyed long ago and no exchanges would touch them.

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

#247

Post by lawn » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:57 AM UTC

anon776 wrote: post #94

Bitcoin cash and SV are low on the carbon emission cause they forked from BTC right? So they re-used bitcoins early work. Or am I totally wrong here?

No, they use less energy because their price is lower, but they're more efficient because they scale better than Bitcoin.

(But BSV scales in an unhealthy manner.)

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

#248

Post by ComodoHacker » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

BluSyn wrote: post #189

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…

"Energy used / total value secured" is a better measurement. "Double-spend prevented" isn't calculable. Important to remember that the energy used on mining both secures current and *PAST* transactions, that's the entire point of the block chain . I think "total value secured" captures this point. I find it frustrating that crypto-currencies are judged by their energy usage, meanwhile traditional fiat currencies are…

>I find it frustrating that crypto-currencies are judged by their energy usage

Carbon footprint is a totally valid measure for anything we create or maintain, including crypto and fiat currencies.

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

#249

Post by mthoms » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:17 AM UTC

mondoveneziano wrote: post #207

atweiden wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total energy costs from PoW mining won’t rise to exceed PoW mining revenues unless miners are willing to mine at a loss. In an efficient market, one where PoW mining profits have been driven down to zero, total energy use should remain constant if market price is held constant. PoW mining energy efficiency may increase, though. The rest of your post could be read as a criticism against incomplete application of hypot…

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…

FWIW - The plant you're referring to in NY is not a coal plant, it's a natural gas plant.

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

#250

Post by baby » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:19 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #228

baby wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is true, but things are changing. If you look at the top coins:

- #2 ethereum is moving to PoS

- #3 binance is PoS (tendermint)

- #4 cardano is PoS (ouroboros)

- #6 tether is a token

- #7 XRP is BFT-based (I think PoA?)

- etc.

Basically there's only Bitcoin, Dogecoin (lol), and Bitcoin Cash in the top 10 that are still proof of work. If you look at the top 50 it's even more biased towards non-proof of work.