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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?

#131

Post by thehappypm »

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…

I always hear this argument that baseboard is "way more expensive" than gas, how much are we talking? 2x? 10x?

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

#132

Post by saalweachter »

beiller wrote: post #95
minitoar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In cold climates you bury the heat exchanger under the frost line.

That sounds really interesting but isn't that useless because at that point you may as well use geothermal. Doesn't the exchanger need air to flow over it hence the fins for it to work? I think geothermal is the biggest win environmentally however so there is that.

In most places, "geothermal" is just a "ground sourced heat pump". Circulate a liquid underground so that it keeps that 50-degree temperature, run a heat exchange with that as the source instead of the air.

(In other places and to a larger extent pop culture, "geothermal" refers to tapping into actual heat sources underground.)

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

#133

Post by thesausageking »

mkl95 wrote: post #113
thesausageking wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your facts are wrong. The global, yearly energy use of Christmas lights is ~2x Bitcoin's energy use. People way overestimate how much energy Bitcoin uses and way underestimate how much simple things like christmas lights, video games, hockey rinks, etc. use.

That means that Christmas lights are more popular than BTC. A BTC transaction consumes as much power as the average household in more than 3 weeks. If there were as many BTC users as Christmas lights users, the consequences wouldn't be pretty.

> If there were as many BTC users as Christmas lights users, the consequences wouldn't be pretty.

Bitcoin doesn't work that way. Energy usage doesn't scale anywhere near linear with the number of users.

Think of it this way: the Bitcoin network is buying security, not transactions, from miners.

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

#134

Post by falcolas »

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…

Heat pumps can be used down to around -15F. This does impose a limit, but it's a lot further north and/or a lot less frequent than most people assume.

They simply periodically pump a bit of heat back out to keep the exchanger free of ice.

You'll periodically need a backup source of heat, but most of the time you'll be fine with the heat pump alone.

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

#135

Post by goodpoint »

beiller wrote: post #118
goodpoint wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you need to research more. A computer is actually a heater that is 100% efficient. I have a degree in EE. The wasted electricity is in additional heat that you don't want in your home and you have to vent. Suppose millions of people could replace resistance heaters with mining rigs that cost exactly the same and consume exactly the same amount of energy every day. Such people would be running the miners eve…

Ah I see what you meant by "work can't be useful", apologies. But I think you did jump to some conclusions for example, increase of difficulty does not require more miners. It is a side effect of miners joining. So the profitability of existing mining infra in server racks will go down due to the difficulty increase. It would most likely incentivize them to also somehow recycle their "waste heat" for profit. My comme…

The value of any PoW coin is based on the sacrifice being made. Something is valuable because you are throwing away something else that was valuable. There's no way around it.

Regarding heating things with electricity, a heat pump is way more efficient than resistance/mining heating because is moving existing heat from one place to another.

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

#136

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 »

pelasaco wrote: post #117
jcranmer wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but for sure you have to take in account the amount of buildings, air-conditioning, commuters, datacenters, branches, ATMs, bad written code, exchanges. You also have to do the same thing for Bitcoin if you want the comparison to remain fair. Bitcoin doesn't magically replace the entire financial industry, so you don't want to accidentally include the costs of the things it doesn't replace (such as the bank manager…

you are right, but this reduction like "bitcoin is useless because it uses more energy than $COUNTRY/$CITY" is IMO just click bait.

https://cbeci.org/cbeci/comparisons/

BTC uses more annual energy than the Netherlands. What did it accomplish when compared to the economic output of the Netherlands?

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

#137

Post by beiller »

imtringued wrote: post #107
beiller wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If running a Bitcoin heater costs half as much as running a regular Bitcoin miner then you can spend the savings on twice as many miners to get more Bitcoin. If everyone does then the effect is net zero. However, your miner can't be a heat pump so in practice it would be net negative.

Yes so now 20 million people (very small amount) install these space heaters, heck install 3. Now they are at equilibrium except the mining difficulty has gone wayyy up (because 20 million ASIC miners will double the global hashrate approximately). Now mining in server racks is no longer profitable because dealing with waste heat is a major expense for them. So not only is hashing now very distributed, but also not 100% wasted.

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

#138

Post by ridethebike »

dang wrote: post #127
ridethebike wrote: post #7

Am I correct to assume that this is Bargaining stage of grief?

" Don't be snarky. " " Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I actually do hugely appreciate and am amazed by technical side of Bitcoin. Yet what Bitcoin became as a whole appalls me.

e.g. one can be amazed by nuclear physics yet dislike nuclear weapons. Or appreciate chemistry by hate meth cooks.

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

#139

Post by falcolas »

thehappypm wrote: post #131
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…

I always hear this argument that baseboard is "way more expensive" than gas, how much are we talking? 2x? 10x?

Somewhere in the 10x range.

The approximation for electrical use in heating is using heaters that can output roughly 10 watts per square foot of your house. 12-13 if your house is poorly insulated.

At full power, that means that a 1,600 sqft house requires 16 kW of electricity. At a cost of 13¢ per kWH, that's about $2.05 for that 16kW of electricity. Of course, no residential house will ever realistically have 16kW available to it, nor would heating ever require a 100% duty cycle. But this is for comparative purposes.

The equivalent amount of gas power would require about 54,000 BTUs from a gas furnace (about 3.4 BTUs per watt). One cubic foot of natural gas provides 1,032 BTUs which means that generating 54,000 BTUs of heat requires about 52 cubic feet of gas (we'll round that up to 65 to account for inefficiencies of a furnace; top end furnaces are in the 80-80% efficiency range). 100 cubic feet of natural gas costs about $0.48, so the cost for natural gas would be around 30¢

Again, neither will (nor could, nor should) run constantly, but it's a sobering comparison.

EDIT: Comparisons were hours vs. seconds; fixed.

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

#140

Post by cinntaile »

arbitrage wrote: post #101
cinntaile wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a piece about the energy usage of cryptocurrencies, possible solutions as well as potential problems with those solutions. What does the bargaining stage of grief have to do with it?

it's a metaphor.

I understood that, but what is it a metaphor for?
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