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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?

#81

Post by lottin »

wraptile wrote: post #58
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.

Decentralized projects will always be less efficient than centralized ones why are we suddenly so surprised? The value of decentralized system far outweighs the cost of maintaining it especially when it comes to money. Could bitcoin be more efficient? Absolutely, but to call it big mistake of modern technology is just silly.

The fact that most users choose to use centralised exchanges over on-chain transactions suggests the advantages of decentralisation do not outweigh the costs in the opinion of a great majority.

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

#82

Post by beiller »

Analemma_ wrote: post #6
KETpXDDzR wrote: post #3

In 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.

I commented above but from my understanding heat pumps are worse than baseboard electric heaters when the temperature outside is below zero celsius (assume the air is exchanged outside) because the fins start to ice over due to condensation and it's why no heat pumps are used in so many countries that are cold. But I have only researched a bit would appreciate any expert opinions!

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

#83

Post by wraptile »

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.

You don't go your shop with gold bars either. You store them in your bank account and use 2nd-layer currency (fiat used to be tied to gold). Same way you store bitcoin and use 2nd-layer currencies like lightning-network.

I'm not saying it works particularly well yet but the idea is sound.

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

#84

Post by rawtxapp »

lottin wrote: post #81
wraptile wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralized projects will always be less efficient than centralized ones why are we suddenly so surprised? The value of decentralized system far outweighs the cost of maintaining it especially when it comes to money. Could bitcoin be more efficient? Absolutely, but to call it big mistake of modern technology is just silly.

The fact that most users choose to use centralised exchanges over on-chain transactions suggests the advantages of decentralisation do not outweigh the costs in the opinion of a great majority.

We started having decent decentralized exchanges fairly recently and there have already been days where they have processed more volume than centralized ones.

It takes time to build/deploy/grow these exchanges (since they are essentially a 2 sided marketplace).

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

#85

Post by [deleted] »

doggosphere wrote: post #59
trutannus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that blockchain will change the world.

Every week, every month, every year, crypto is alleged to be dead and dying. And still the adoption, usage, and price goes up. It gets hyped, it falters, people stop talking for a while, and the cycle repeats itself.

[deleted]

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

#86

Post by tromp »

>This approach is called Proof-of-Work and involves miners taking transaction data and feeding it into a cryptographic algorithm that generates a string of numbers called a hash.

There is more to Proof-Of-Work than just hashing [1].

[1] https://cryptorials.io/beyond-hashcash-proof-work-theres-min...

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

#87

Post by genghisjahn »

rawtxapp wrote: post #60
genghisjahn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of the crypto currencies is a "non-governmental/internet native currency"? From my POV they all seem like proto-NFTs.

Non fungible tokens are by definition not interchangeable. Whereas things like Bitcoin and Ether are fungible, meaning there's no difference between my 1BTC and your 1BTC.

I said they were "proto" NFTs and one thing they have in common, again from my view point, is that you buy them and hope that someone else will pay you more for it later. Beyond that it's just entries of hope on the block chain.

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

#88

Post by oleganza »

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…

Not quite a fair comparison. Consider how much real estate is used to "park money" in large cities, which in turn leads to artificially higher prices and shortages of housing? What other resources are abused as money substitutes, making corresponding markets less liquid or less predictable? When Bitcoin reaches sufficient capitalization and maturity the landscape of money is going to become simpler while the markets in stocks/real estate/commodities become more fair and efficient. This may have huge implications for overall efficiency in the economies.

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

#89

Post by beiller »

goodpoint wrote: post #64
beiller wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you need to research more. A computer is actually a heater that is 100% efficient. If you actually "waste electricity" to do useless computation, you still get 100% efficient heat output. 1000W of electricity pumped through your cpu is outputting 1000W of heat as well. Maybe imagine if your logic gates in your computer is water powered. You could still drink the water after it did it's computation.

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

#90

Post by chatbot2 »

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…

The solution for the excess supply issue is energy storage, not mining bitcoin. I've worked in clean energy for years, and no energy expert is advocating digital currency mining + increased energy production as a method for meeting demand peaks.
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