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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?

#61

Post by _Microft »

zMiller wrote: post #50

FWIW there's a lot of half baked arguments going around the space, so a few comments for anyone genuinely interested in evaluating facts: - The usage of electricity in Bitcoin is a feature not a bug. It's designed to use the most democratic and ubiquitous commodity avalible. Any nation/individual can evaluate their electrical opportunity cost and at any point make the decision to dedicate resources to towards re-bala…

How low does the energy price have to be that someone could currently expect to profitably mine Bitcoin on commodity hardware? (I read "without permission" that one cannot expect to have specialized hardware available as import of mining rigs could be regulated).

Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?

#62

Post by ssivark »

There’s the fascinating example of “Nooshare”, which is an interesting proposal for embedding arbitrary Monte-Carlo simulations as the proof challenge! http://web.mit.edu/alex_c/www/nooshare.pdf

It’s an elegant exploitation of the design reasons why the work must involve something like random search (for an easy to validate target).

On squinting, it’s kinda like a smart contract for a compute job, where the compute job itself constitutes proof of work to validate the settlement of the contract!

Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?

#63

Post by pelasaco »

I worked 10 years for a Bank. A lot of the mainframe batch processing were unnecessary. A lot of the mainframes running Cobol could be replaced by some smaller hardware and code written in java and C. There are a lot of people working around bad written system or bad written laws/rules, to make the things work. My point is: Wouldn't be fair to compare the amount energy to run bitcoin vs the amount of energy to run the banking system?

Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?

#64

Post by goodpoint »

beiller wrote: post #35
elil17 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really. Heat pumps can't be used in cold climates due to ice forming on heat fins which breaks the efficiency. It's why we use a lot of baseboard heaters in Canada. Bitcoin mining would be perfect for electric heating of homes here. Plus the added bonus of eliminating green house gas emissions from burning natural gas in a furnace (how my house is heated). The problem with baseboard is that gas heating is far che…

> So could Bitcoin actually be used to make the world greener?

No. The value of a PoW coin is based on the wasted electricity.

If mining does something useful (like heating) for a large fraction of the miners the mining difficulty will go up to adapt to such change, requiring additional mining.

At the end of the amount of wasted electricity will remain the same.

Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?

#65

Post by FredPret »

minitoar wrote: post #53
thesausageking wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inefficient compared with what? Gold requires a ton more energy. As does the existing banking system. Bitcoin uses less electricity than Christmas lights and provides a completely electric, transparent, uncensorable currency.

What other currency are people fanatic about HODL'ing? It's not a currency.

I don’t know about you but the concept of collecting US Dollars et al seems to me to have caught on

Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?

#66

Post by axlee »

rawtxapp wrote: post #43

It is useful if you consider having a non-governmental/internet native currency a useful thing. If you don't see any value in that, it's gonna be hard to justify that computation.

There are far less costly ways for the environment to achieve the same results.

This is simply unjustifiable, when thousands of people are actively running the planet to the ground to make a quick buck in an online casino.

Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?

#67

Post by mogmog99 »

beiller wrote: post #35
elil17 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really. Heat pumps can't be used in cold climates due to ice forming on heat fins which breaks the efficiency. It's why we use a lot of baseboard heaters in Canada. Bitcoin mining would be perfect for electric heating of homes here. Plus the added bonus of eliminating green house gas emissions from burning natural gas in a furnace (how my house is heated). The problem with baseboard is that gas heating is far che…

For those of us living on boats (in the UK, so nothing close to Siberia temperatures) how feasible is solar powered off grid mining, using heat for hot water/heating?

Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?

#68

Post by slightwinder »

danlugo92 wrote: post #24
mkl95 wrote: post #21

Bitcoin is an extremely inefficient computing platform. There's no silver lining to BTC, it's simply a moderately big, potentially huge mistake in the history of modern technology.

Then why did Elon Musk buy 1.5 billion dollars of it?

To sell if for 2 Billion after the jump in price? Or to drop the price and annoy some people? I mean he openly manipulated the price and exited pretty fast. Now it's even lower than before. Longterm he probably made more harm than good.

Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?

#69

Post by formerly_proven »

artifact_44 wrote: post #25
elil17 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually worse than gas due to the inefficiencies inherent in power generation and transmission

nonsense. it's electricity. Gas doesn't have the option of coming from carbon neutral sources.

Electricity generation in Russia is about two thirds gas and coal.

Re: Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?

#70

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 »

pelasaco wrote: post #63

I worked 10 years for a Bank. A lot of the mainframe batch processing were unnecessary. A lot of the mainframes running Cobol could be replaced by some smaller hardware and code written in java and C. There are a lot of people working around bad written system or bad written laws/rules, to make the things work. My point is: Wouldn't be fair to compare the amount energy to run bitcoin vs the amount of energy to run th…

> Wouldn't be fair to compare the amount energy to run bitcoin vs the amount of energy to run the banking system?

Hasn't this comparison been made over and over, and every time it comes out in favor of traditional banking by a mile?

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