Live data from Hacker News

Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

coincarboncap.com

281–290 of 381 posts

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

#281
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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,…

But computer chips, telecommunications, the electric grid, etc., don't require for governments to exist for them to exist and work. I would even argue that they would work better and more efficiently under a free market economy, so governments, in general, are holding back progress.

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

#282

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.…

The way the bitcoin network works, as far as I understand it, is by running a lottery every 10 minutes. The thing is there are many ways of running a lottery that don't involve burning tons of electricity in the process. In fact most lotteries don't burn any energy at all. Why the inventors of bitcoin decided to do it this way is beyond me.

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

#283
It doesn't mention any PoS solution (which are, compared to PoW) extremely energy efficient. They do mention in the FAQ that they're not included since they still depend on some sort of centralization, but as far as I know this is not true for, for example, avalanche (https://avax.network)

It's not really clear who is behind this site and if there's some hidden agenda. Let's assume not (but with crypto you can never be sure) and that they will properly consider PoS blockchains if they are as decentralized (or more) as the listed PoW chains.

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just wrote an entire thread on why BSV is the ONLY system capable of anything... Lol? That's the point toom -- the more TXs in the block, the more efficient the system. That's why Merkel's, that's why small-world... That's why no CTOR or check points. Because SCALING. BSV is O(1), none of the other "projects" are or even come close to O(1) which is what this site is very elegantly showing

THIS, THIS THIS THIS. How does Toom, not understand this. Not only does it scale but then miners get more fee's from more transactions. It baffles me the keyboard gymnastics against BSV, while showing exactly why BSV is the best.

May I ask how much you have invested in BSV, and whether that investment might be coloring your portrayal of BSV's strengths?

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

#286

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?"

> 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…

Economic value is measured by how much people are willing to pay for it. Transactions have economic value, because people are willing to pay a fee in return for having a transaction processed. And cryptocurrencies are transaction processing systems. So it absolutely makes perfect sense to measure how efficient these systems are processing transactions, and the way to measure that is by looking at how much it costs to process a transaction with each of these systems.

If you wanted to know how much people are willing to pay for decentralisation, trustlessness and privacy (most certainly not an infinite amount of money) you could also do that, but that's answering a different question.

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

#288
post #282

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.…

The way the bitcoin network works, as far as I understand it, is by running a lottery every 10 minutes. The thing is there are many ways of running a lottery that don't involve burning tons of electricity in the process. In fact most lotteries don't burn any energy at all. Why the inventors of bitcoin decided to do it this way is beyond me.

> there are many ways of running a lottery that don't involve burning tons of electricity in the process

You need something to be the limiting factor on the amount that you can try to win such a lottery. With proof of work, it's electricity. (assuming everyone is about as efficient as each other) Early on, they talked about it being proportional to cpu-time. That has become more abstract since.

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

#289
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…

Or energy use per transaction based on full throughput capacity (full blocks).

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

#290
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> traditional fiat currencies are secured by massive banking industries, governments, and militaries This argument makes no sense. Bitcoin doesn't obviate the need for militaries, banks, or governments, those things would exist regardless of the type of currency being used. Furthermore, these institutions have functions that go far beyond "securing fiat currency", not to mention the fact that bitcoin's existence reli…

I would like to offer a different perspective.

The end of gold backed currencies in the 70s and replacement by fiat currencies hinged on the middle east oil states agreeing to sell oil in USD, in return for global policing by the US[1]. There is thus an intimate relationship between the current system and fossil fuels and the military, which goes beyond just ‘existing infrastructure’ arguments. This doesn’t mean we should countenance burning coal to mine bitcoin, but we shouldn’t forget history either, and as such the argument of the OP has some merit.

Second point is about transaction volume. Compared to total global money, the transaction volume of fiat is also very small. The recent money printing should make this obvious. The amount of fiat in fixed income markets and derivatives is staggering compared to what you mean by ‘transactions’[2]. Bitcoin has payment solutions in the works, it is likely that transaction volume and unit of exchange utility will increase over time. Additionally, if we take an actual example of a collapsing fiat as occurred in the hyperinflationary period in Brazil in 1994, the Government fixed the problem by inventing a new currency [3]. It is quite possible that in the current era, countries with collapsing fiats would use cryptocurrencies for this purpose, as there are some obvious advantages.

[1] https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/ [2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-money-exi... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Brazil

Post reply on HN