Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021 • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#221

Post by davewritescode » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:37 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #141

hsavit1 wrote: post #28

We are rapidly depleting our remaining carbon budget. Can a bitcoiner please explain to me why this is a necessary technological development right now?

Sure, if you are serious, the Bitcoin Standard book is a worthy read. But what’s important is that Bitcoin solves the inflation problem, and proof of work is the only system that we have for getting rid of the Cantillon effect of modern banking: the closer people get to the top of the central banks, the richer they get and destroy life for those who don’t have access to the inner layers of central banking. With Bitco…

On a philosophical level, I think the flawed premise you’re presenting here is that inflation is a problem that needs to be solved. Inflation is unpopular because it’s effectively a tax on unproductive wealth. Inflation incentivizes investment because idle wealth will lose it’s value at the rate of inflation.

On a technical level, Bitcoin is worse than a currency because it’s value can fluctuate wildly constantly and transaction fees are high. I don’t know what’s going to happen when we get a “Run on the bank” type of scenario but I suspect it’s not going to be good for the little guy.

The ability of central banks to manage a crisis isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. The trade off is one we’ve made throughout history, we have to give control to other folks who may not have our best interest at heart.

I fundamentally believe Bitcoin will collapse the next time we have a global economic catastrophe and it’ll have no tools to handle it.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#222

Post by hocuspocus » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:37 PM UTC

hetspookjee wrote: post #155

belltaco wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel this is the wrong comparison. PoW intentionally raises the difficulty by making computer do more "work" finding useless hashes as the price of crypto goes up. The "work" isn't used for processing transactions, which is why the number of transactions per second is stuck at a pitiful 7 transactions per second for BTC, and 15 for ETH. Programming languages don't have a mechanism where Ruby, PHP or Python have fea…

I agree that the raising of difficulty is problematic. But is it not that running arbitrary javascript in advertisements, and the ever growing scale of said javascript chunked in, is also growing ever more? You state indeed that it's a mere 7 transactions per second, yet I'm settling transactions over 2nd layer networks like Lightning and Liquid. Javascript advertisements bring me nothing but distraction and a settle…

I'm gonna skip the obvious whataboutism of your argument, but your 2nd layer networks have just re-invented centralization of federated and trusted peers, congrats.

International settlements aren't a technological problem. SWIFT has been commoditizing international transactions for many decades. When there's still friction, it exists by design. International transfers are pretty fast and cheap between countries that agree on the same rules and regulations regarding capital flows.

Sure you can use Bitcoin to avoid these regulations. But most people and businesses aren't actually interested in illegal ways to move money.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#223

Post by cableshaft » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #173

cableshaft wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think that China banning bitcoin means they no longer use those dirty coal power plants? For a country that has such a huge demand for power that it's had blackouts and struggled to keep businesses powered even AFTER they banned all bitcoin mining[1]? Maybe that might even have to do with why they banned it in the first place? It sucks that bitcoin uses so much power, but these countries using fossil fuels…

> You really think that China banning bitcoin means they no longer use those dirty coal power plants? No, but banning the miners meant they didn't have to build a whole pile more. "Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point" - they have the moral high-ground on this issue. > Right now China has only promised to reduce its fossil fuel to 20% of its total energy use by 2060. Sure. And it would hav…

> No, but banning the miners meant they didn't have to build a whole pile more.

I wasn't arguing that it was a bad thing that China banned bitcoin mining, just that banning it didn't reduce fossil fuels at all (maybe slowed down how fast they expanded in the future, sure). And they're still planning to build 43 new ones[1] in addition to what they already have.

So now what? Can't ban bitcoin mining in China twice. How are we going to get them to reduce emissions now?

> "Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point" - they have the moral high-ground on this issue.

You are neither the worst person I know, nor did you make a great point, nor am I heartbroken. Thanks for the snarky reference to a Clickhole article[2] that's just a slight sidestep from an ad hominem attack.

I also don't know who you mean by "they" or what moral high ground you're referring to. I already said it's shitty bitcoin used this much energy this year, and also what percentage was generated by fossil fuels. But it's not the only reason the world is still using so much fossil fuels, and energy demands around the world have been increasing rapidly even if you take out all of bitcoin's usage. Most of that is driven by economic growth in Asian countries[3], not bitcoin. You want those countries to ban economic growth too? How are we going to do that? Hell, how's anyone going to get the political will to do it in the U.S.?

For the record, I'm all for degrowth worldwide to help reduce the looming climate/biodiversity/water catastrophe, I just don't see how it's going to happen. Pretty sure we're doomed to have a major collapse forced upon us by the world in the next 20-30 years.

[1]: https://time.com/6090732/china-coal-power-plants-emissions/

[2]: https://clickhole.com/heartbreaking-the-worst-person-you-kno...

[3]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41433

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#224

Post by sterlind » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

scottiebarnes wrote: post #135

sktrdie wrote: post #7

With a climate crisis the last thing we needed was to make the most effective energy consumption system ever constructed. The whole thing literally works on competing on consuming more energy. No other system works so efficiently towards such goal. What's scary is that the whole thing was designed to be unstoppable. My utopian hope for the future is that we start sending rigs in orbit close to the sun. Since we only…

Energy isn't scarce, its actually abundant. At this particular moment, clean renewable energy capacity is more scarce than fossil fuel, but there is simply far more potential energy in solar, wind, nuclear, etc. Remember, our planet is bombarded by solar rays 24/7 and will continue to receive this energy for billions of years. Human energy consumption has been exponential over time. We started by harvesting crops wit…

y'all need to accept that PoW is a terrible, ghastly thing. I've even heard a theory that Satoshi didn't like it but published Bitcoin as is because he couldn't find a suitable alternative.

if you find a way to make PoS viable and secure, you'll have saved the planet. work on that.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#225

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:39 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #210

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else would you make illegal? High fidelity 3d graphics in gaming? It is clearly wasteful and games are hardly any better because of high polygon count, right?

Why would you want that? There isn’t a cheaper centralized system of rendering 3D graphics that uses 1/1000 the energy. We can handle transactions with quite little energy using traditional means. It’s not pseudonymous or decentralized and it’s not extremely efficient. But compared to Bitcoin it’s a wonder of efficiency. I wouldn’t take anything off the table when it comes to banning energy use. But rendering in part…

Ok, imagine yourself in Belarus. All traditional means are under government control. How do you fund anti-Lukashemko guerrillas? Cash?

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#226

Post by alkonaut » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:39 PM UTC

hihihihi1234 wrote: post #97

hsavit1 wrote: post #28

We are rapidly depleting our remaining carbon budget. Can a bitcoiner please explain to me why this is a necessary technological development right now?

People don't have faith in the mainstream financial system and are fleeing for the exits.

And I don’t mind. So long as they don’t flush the climate down the toilet or affect the mainstream system in any way such as by reducing tax revenue.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#227

Post by hddherman » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:39 PM UTC

diego wrote: post #12

hddherman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be better to instead store that surplus energy using methods like this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit... The value of Bitcoin is purely speculative and varies wildly, at least with stored energy you always have a market that's willing to buy it from you.

Better for whom? The upfront investment is much higher. If the market buys energy from you, they give you money. You can turn bitcoin into money instantly without having to store energy. You don't care about the value of bitcoin fluctuating, you care about the instant profitability of mining vs storing the energy.

From my limited experience as an observer of the cryptocurrency world, my impression is that mining hardware usually has a certain time period after which it starts paying itself off (6-18 months range). You can probably turn it into money relatively quickly assuming that there's enough real money coming into the system, but the cost of the hardware and the fact that all this custom silicon and electrical components present in the ASIC-based mining hardware results in additional cost, especially the environmental kind of cost that has to be taken into account. Those ASIC-s aren't much good for anything else once they've been made obsolete by generational improvements.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#228

Post by pengwing » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

To put this into a context, we must look at the problems faced throughout human history: Major conflicts for resources, starting with a small tribe vs tribe conflict, going up to a full world war.

A globally distributed permission-less system is a great step to decouple force and resource acquisition. The majority of the world energy consumption could be spent on it while still yielding a net positive.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#229

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:41 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #187

geertj wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's scary is that the whole thing was designed to be unstoppable. It’s only unstoppable within the game theoretic model of crypto itself, not within the larger societal context. Once Bitcoin power consumption enters the common discourse, my guess is that politicians will step in and simply outlaw PoW systems. There is no real downside for politicians. The average voter hasn’t yet invested their life savings into…

> Once Bitcoin power consumption enters the common discourse, my guess is that politicians will step in and simply outlaw PoW systems. There is no real downside for politicians. Will we? I am not convinced. In the pandemic, many countries weren't even able to efficiently mandate masks or vaccines, despite the fact the majority supported these measures. The libertarian-anarchy minority is very loud, and will fight the…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#230

Post by alkonaut » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

gimme_treefiddy wrote: post #180

Slightly tangential question: Couldn't Bitcoin be implemented on something other Blockchain, since Blockchain is so computationally intensive. Like why not use a SQL database instead. It's definitely not technically infeasible, and you can reliably achieve all objectives of Bitcoin by doing so. The idea of independent financial system is great, but the inefficiency of it's usage is something I am very doubtful about.

You could use a centralized blockchain to ensure immutability but there is then a central trusted party such as a central bank.

This seems to me like the “proper” way of managing digital currency, but obviously those that like Bitcoin see the independce and decentralization as a feature.