Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge • Hacker News Board

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#281

Post by Nursie » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

disruptalot wrote: post #212

DCKing wrote: post #133

Good. Very good. This may be a radical take, but I think nations should introduce some unprecedented legislation: ban trade of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. Don't ban their trade because they make poor financial products, either because of rampant fraud or criminal activity. That's a different argument and requires different approaches. Ban their trade because global society shouldn't accept rampant incentives to l…

This is one of those "Freakonomics" type ideas. On the surface this sounds like bitcoin's PoW use will simply stop. It's actually the entire opposite. When governments ban it, they go after sizeable, identifiable organizations running these operations, that is their only choice. These operations are optimized in their energy usage, because it's only in their interest to reduce their consumption relative to the value…

But in the mean time the value is likely to have tanked, because if they can't trivially be traded for national currency, the interest in them will wither.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#282

Post by trimbo » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

selfhoster11 wrote: post #201

DCKing wrote: post #133

Good. Very good. This may be a radical take, but I think nations should introduce some unprecedented legislation: ban trade of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. Don't ban their trade because they make poor financial products, either because of rampant fraud or criminal activity. That's a different argument and requires different approaches. Ban their trade because global society shouldn't accept rampant incentives to l…

So burning electricity on running a cryptocurrency is not right, but burning electricity on running servers for Facebook or user tracking is all right? If that's the case, who's the arbiter of what's "too much" power for a use case? If that's not the case, how do you propose to enforce that all use cases use less electricity, and how do you punish those who use too much?

> So burning electricity on running a cryptocurrency is not right, but burning electricity on running servers for Facebook or user tracking is all right?

Spinning up cores to do intensive math for the sake of its difficulty is wasting energy by design. PoW's financial incentive is to waste power.

Facebook spends a massive amount of money on compute, and their profit is only as good as the margin they can make over that compute cost. Therefore they have a financial incentive to save power.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#283

Post by svachalek » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

kodah wrote: post #83

h4kor wrote: post #13

> Several teams of engineers are working overtime to ensure that The Merge arrives as soon as possible, and without compromising on safety. Overworking your engineers will most definitely lead to compromises. But good to see that Ethereum came to their senses and are serious about reducing the environmental impact they have.

> But good to see that Ethereum came to their senses and are serious about reducing the environmental impact they have. Is it not possible there's good reasons they didn't move to proof of stake sooner? "Came to their senses" seems to imply they had no good reasons.

This has been the plan for a long time. But this is like Google deciding to switch to Microsoft Windows, it's not something they can just decide to do one day. There's a process. It's a massive effort and hundreds of billions of dollars are on the line.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#284

Post by artifact_44 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #161

DCKing wrote: post #133

Good. Very good. This may be a radical take, but I think nations should introduce some unprecedented legislation: ban trade of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. Don't ban their trade because they make poor financial products, either because of rampant fraud or criminal activity. That's a different argument and requires different approaches. Ban their trade because global society shouldn't accept rampant incentives to l…

Very bad. Ive got another radical take -- cypherpunks should ban proof of stake cryptocurrencies. They are bad for freedom, bad for decentralization, bad for store of value. Wall street tricks attempting to put the genie back in the bottle. Proof of work is the only thing of value, the only distributed consensus model that is secure and the only way forward for store of value cryptocurrencies.

100%

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#285

Post by lifty » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

beowulfey wrote: post #191

satyrnein wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want less carbon burned, tax carbon. I'm skeptical of cryptocurrency, but the idea that regulators, already captured by banks, should aggressively ban new financial products that may one day threaten the incumbents makes me wary.

A carbon tax would filter down to the electricity consumer cost. I dont know about you, but I dont want to pay more for electricity so other people can burn electricity for virtual money. Unless you are suggesting taxing crypto itself, in which case… sure!

Yes, because that's the negative externality, the carbon that you dump in the atmosphere by consuming electricty. Would you be willing to pay more so that videogaming is not banned as well, or would you ban that too?

Also, you can make the tax progressive so that the high consumers can pay much more.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#286

Post by Nursie » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

satyrnein wrote: post #168

DCKing wrote: post #133

Good. Very good. This may be a radical take, but I think nations should introduce some unprecedented legislation: ban trade of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. Don't ban their trade because they make poor financial products, either because of rampant fraud or criminal activity. That's a different argument and requires different approaches. Ban their trade because global society shouldn't accept rampant incentives to l…

If you want less carbon burned, tax carbon. I'm skeptical of cryptocurrency, but the idea that regulators, already captured by banks, should aggressively ban new financial products that may one day threaten the incumbents makes me wary.

> If you want less carbon burned, tax carbon.

What if we want to decide that we want to minimise carbon, but some use of energy is preferable (for instance consumer/home use) to bootstrapping new financial products?

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#287

Post by disruptalot » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

beowulfey wrote: post #191

satyrnein wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want less carbon burned, tax carbon. I'm skeptical of cryptocurrency, but the idea that regulators, already captured by banks, should aggressively ban new financial products that may one day threaten the incumbents makes me wary.

A carbon tax would filter down to the electricity consumer cost. I dont know about you, but I dont want to pay more for electricity so other people can burn electricity for virtual money. Unless you are suggesting taxing crypto itself, in which case… sure!

Why should anyone pay for your consumption and values when you aren't willing to pay for others?

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#288

Post by lowkey » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #232

BTCOG wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again with this same tired nonsense on Hacker News. Famous for censoring worthwhile comments to death while leaving up misinformed "curious" posts that mislead everyone. Bitcoin is using half of the power as banking systems. Bitcoin is using half of the power, of the gold industry. Might I suggest, if you think you can suggest banning things for using too much carbon, that you first quit working, quit driving your ve…

The amount of energy used is only one aspect of the matter. The other is value derived from that energy. I think it is safe to say that regular banking provides not just twice the value of Bitcoin, but in fact probably two orders of magnitude more. Pretty much everyone uses regular banking, while pretty much nobody uses Bitcoin, and not only they use banking more, they use it many times a week or even a day. The comp…

The regular banking system leaks your purchasing power over time via the mechanism of inflation. The regular banking system relies on the US Dollar which is backed by proof of violence - aka the largest military industrial complex ever created. Externalities are a net negative. It's important to consider the externalities of every system. When compared with the death and destruction and burning oil fields in Iraq, Libya, Syria etc, the cost of proof of work seems trite.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#289

Post by micropresident » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

0xB31B1B wrote: post #174

Aqua wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cringe every time I see such comments. Ban bitcoin or ban beef because it uses too much energy. Humanity will continue to require energy as it advances and banning anything "because it uses too much energy" is a ridiculous advice. How about we ban gold mining, or set quotas on the number of children people may have, that will surely contribute to our CO2 reduction goals. It's also Orwellian and reminiscent of how t…

We have banned a ton of things because they are bad for the environment. It has worked and will continue to work. Things like building design and construction standards are set to a minimum environmental standard, why shouldn't cryptocurrencies.

The government hasn't banned beef, and yet there are now vegetarian and vegan products all over. People vote with their money.

You're advocating for violence against people who do things you don't like. Use your wallet and leave other people alone.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#290

Post by sdenton4 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

disruptalot wrote: post #212

DCKing wrote: post #133

Good. Very good. This may be a radical take, but I think nations should introduce some unprecedented legislation: ban trade of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. Don't ban their trade because they make poor financial products, either because of rampant fraud or criminal activity. That's a different argument and requires different approaches. Ban their trade because global society shouldn't accept rampant incentives to l…

This is one of those "Freakonomics" type ideas. On the surface this sounds like bitcoin's PoW use will simply stop. It's actually the entire opposite. When governments ban it, they go after sizeable, identifiable organizations running these operations, that is their only choice. These operations are optimized in their energy usage, because it's only in their interest to reduce their consumption relative to the value…

The other choke point is conversion to and from USD. With a law, BTC loses any corporate 'investment' (eg, Tesla), and coinbase stops converting to/from USD, making it much more of a pain to work with.