Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?
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Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?
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Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?
#2I think this question is important to whatever emerges as the “survivor” blockchain that emerges out of this as the one we all use (like the internet companies that survived past all the garbage of 99/2000 before the pop).
People need to compute things asynchronously. And they are probably willing to pay. Being able to distribute those out as part of the the mining/validation process would make the energy less “wasted.”
I’m not sure why the grid computing schemes of the 00s didn’t pan out, I suspect aws was just simpler and cheaper than trying to assemble networks of nodes using Globus or whatever.
Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?
#3In Siberia they heat using btc mining: https://archive.curbed.com/2017/11/9/16619032/bitcoin-mining...
Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?
#4Isn't that the entire point of Ethereum and some others?
Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?
#5Setting aside the advantages of Proof-of-Stake in terms of energy consumption, and setting aside the "green energy buyer of last resort" argument that the BTC maximalists often say, and setting aside the theoretical requirements for a valid PoW function, I do think it's tricky to argue which computing is inherently "valuable" or "not valuable".
There is this intuition that guessing a bunch of random numbers doesn't contribute high-leverage information or "work" to society. That there are a bunch of "information processing" tasks that have more inherent value.
But consider SETI@home - is decoding massive amounts of space noise valuable if nothing ever comes of it? Is the computation wasted?
Consider Folding@home - there are now far superior algorithms like AlfaFold that take far less compute. Is the computation wasted?
Consider all the matrices being multiplied on gigantic neural networks. Some of the resulting models will be enormously valuable to society. Most of it will be dead-on-arrival experiments - simply wasted compute. Even worse, the leverage can go the other way - a ML model can cause far more harm than the energy footprint used to train it.
One of the nice properties of the BTC PoW function is that you can be sure that your hash finding algorithm is probably not that sub-optimal.
Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?
#6In Siberia they heat using btc mining: https://archive.curbed.com/2017/11/9/16619032/bitcoin-mining...
For about the zillionth time, space heating with Bitcoin mining is about one-quarter as energy-efficient as using an actual heat pump and so the “we can heat buildings with it!” argument does not actually excuse the massive energy use at all.
Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?
#7Am I correct to assume that this is Bargaining stage of grief?
Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?
#8In Siberia they heat using btc mining: https://archive.curbed.com/2017/11/9/16619032/bitcoin-mining...
Unfortunately it’s still way, way less efficient than other heating systems like heat pumps
This also doesn’t address the wasted materials and labor used to make the chips.
Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?
#9In Siberia they heat using btc mining: https://archive.curbed.com/2017/11/9/16619032/bitcoin-mining...
That seems only marginally better than the not-uncommon mode of heating (gas) and temperature control (windows).
Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?
#10Isn't that the entire point of Ethereum and some others?
Ethereum's current energy intensive Proof of Work is not used to run the smart contracts. It just secures the blockchain, same as Bitcoin. The smart contract execution power requirements are basically non-existant compared to that.