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The Ethereum merge is done

coindesk.com

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Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#881

Post by anonporridge »

oblio wrote: post #817
anonporridge wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire world generates about 25,000 TWh of electricity every year. Finland consumes about 87 TWh of electricity every year. An entire Finland of electricity use thinly distributed over the entire planet disappearing is a negligible rounding error on the grand scheme of things. It's about a ~0.3% change. News media uses word imagery like "an entire Finland of electricity use" because it sounds huge and scary to th…

The thing is, in the wider cacophony of human civilization, Ethereum and cryptocurrencies also don't exist. If I and my grandma and everyone's grandma would use Proof of Work cryptocurrencies to buy peanuts at the supermarket, PoW energy usage would probably rival that of China. Now it's just used for speculation by a bunch of rich folks, crooks and marks. Probably only a few thousand transactions per second, I imagi…

> If I and my grandma and everyone's grandma would use Proof of Work cryptocurrencies to buy peanuts at the supermarket

Beyond your misconception that work scales with users rather than value, it's also a misconception that bitcoin is competing with technologies like Visa and Paypal. It's not supposed to be an alternative payment system.

It's competing with gold and sovereign currencies.

Your grandma won't ever use it directly.

Your government might.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#882

Post by CTDOCodebases »

dang wrote: post #396
CTDOCodebases wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now all we need to do is shutdown the gaming industry. It’s so wasteful to be using electricity when we could all be playing chess or Yazee instead.

Please don't take HN threads on flamewar tangents. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32848104 .

I’m not taking the thread on a flamewar tangent. My comment did not contain any insults nor did I encourage anyone else to do so.

I am pointing out with a sarcastic analogy that pre merge and post merge ethereum are not the same thing. Outwardly looking they are both ethereum but the post merge ethereum lacks the triangular incentive structure that pre merge ethereum had.

I am also pointing out the hypocrisy whereby people will happy accelerate climate change for the sake of leisure but get upset when someone else accelerates climate change for the sake of utility.

I am disappointed with your decision to detach this sub thread and any responses that may lead me to challenge my own perspective.

I do however respect that it was done with the intention of an preventing unproductive dialogue.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#883

Post by colinsane »

fcantournet wrote: post #863
ibeckermayer wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "liberation of people" can only happen by having a working democracy If 51% democratically voted to enslave the other 49%, that would be a working democracy but far from "liberation of people".

No it wouldn't. There is no definition of democracy where 51% of the people enslaving the 49% would constitute a democracy. Except the one you just imagined for the purposes of "winning" an argument on the internet. This is why people who give a shit about Democracy talk about minority rights, and free media, and non-discrimination. These are the core tenets of democracy.

replace “enslave” with gradually weaker words until you find the statement you, personally, agree with.

51% decide that 49% shouldn’t be allowed to drink alcohol. that’s a comparatively minor example of “tyranny of the majority” (which happened within living memory). now explore all battles you’ve been on the losing side of. abortion access? funding of overseas wars? legality of drugs?

i find it incomprehensible that if you look at things honestly you won’t find at least some instance when you’ve felt repressed by the democratic rule of the majority. “enslavement” is simply that repression exaggerated for the purpose of making you see it.

> This is why people who give a shit about Democracy talk about minority rights, and free media, and non-discrimination. These are the core tenets of democracy.

no, these are the core tenets of egalitarianism. democracy is merely one process by which we may approximate egalitarian ends. if you care about egalitarian ideals (or above, “liberation of the people”), you should be open to other processes which achieve them — not just the one you were raised to know.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#884

Post by anonporridge »

kodah wrote: post #860
oblio wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, in the wider cacophony of human civilization, Ethereum and cryptocurrencies also don't exist. If I and my grandma and everyone's grandma would use Proof of Work cryptocurrencies to buy peanuts at the supermarket, PoW energy usage would probably rival that of China. Now it's just used for speculation by a bunch of rich folks, crooks and marks. Probably only a few thousand transactions per second, I imagi…

Question from a non-crypto person. Why did you assert so plainly that Bitcoin scales linearly with transactions? Even I know that's not true. Things I'm curious about: - Where'd you learn this? - Have you read any academic material about Bitcoin? (eg: Bitcoin white paper, etc) - Why did you post five times on a thread about something you know very little about? Edit: it concerns me that people are so passionately pos…

Misinformation, both from proponents and opponents is the name of the game in crypto.

It's incredibly difficult to find the truth from either side, especially if you're a lay person who doesn't have any grasp of how the technology works.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#885

Post by Waterluvian »

giaour wrote: post #564
Waterluvian wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using up a goat load of electricity is like 99% of why this change is great. Let people speculate on their funny money without harming everyone. A lateral move on the other details is rather unsurprising.

Not sure if “goat load” was a typo, but I love it. Although you can put significantly less on a goat than you could on a boat.

It was a typo but I loved it so much that I left it in and instantly adopted it into my lexicon.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#886

Post by ibeckermayer »

fcantournet wrote: post #863
ibeckermayer wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "liberation of people" can only happen by having a working democracy If 51% democratically voted to enslave the other 49%, that would be a working democracy but far from "liberation of people".

No it wouldn't. There is no definition of democracy where 51% of the people enslaving the 49% would constitute a democracy. Except the one you just imagined for the purposes of "winning" an argument on the internet. This is why people who give a shit about Democracy talk about minority rights, and free media, and non-discrimination. These are the core tenets of democracy.

You should look up the definition of “democracy” in a dictionary before accusing others of making up a definition.

Im not just trying to “win an argument”, like you accuse me of, I’m pointing out an inaccuracy of your statement. Through your childish outburst I can see that you’re defining democracy to include other aspects of what you deem to be “good governance” — fine, but that’s confusing given the well known definition which doesn’t necessarily include those things.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#887

Post by evolve2k »

webinvest wrote: post #777
apeace wrote: post #634

> It's like Finland has suddenly shut off its power grid So, have we observed global energy usage go down by about one Finland? Shouldn't that be observable somehow? Shouldn't there be some power stations reducing their output as a reaction to reduced demand? Anyone know how this would be visible, and on what kind of time frame we expect it to become visible? I'm not claiming it hasn't happened. I just feel surprised…

Ethereum miners were using GPUs. AMD, Nvidia, and others. They could switch their GPUs from mining ethereum which is about $1500 per coin to Ethereum classic but that is only about $40 per coin. I’d guess that wouldn’t be worth continuing with since it would be much less than than their electricity bill. They could sell their GPUs on EBay or other secondary markets, switch to protein folding, cloud-based password cra…

I’m guessing it’ll shortly be an excellent time to pick up a second hand graphics card.

Which ones we looking for?

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#888

Post by lostmsu »

colinmhayes wrote: post #855
lostmsu wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla 80 is basically useless at this point. AWS stopped recommending it in 2017. It is nearly 10 times slower than 3090.

And more than 10 times cheaper.

Would you buy Pentium 4 today? Besides, if you are to put any load on it, the electricity price will overtake the card price very quickly.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#889

Post by bhaak »

lambdadmitry wrote: post #316

What boggles my mind is that there is no withdrawal from staking and almost no one talks about it. That is, staking right now is a one way street with a promise to be able to withdraw some time in the future and returning only about 4% gross annually, which is laughably low for something that risky. It's well hidden in Ethereum press releases, the only mention I can quickly find is the FAQ entry titled 'Misconception…

> It's well hidden in Ethereum press releases, the only mention I can quickly find is the FAQ entry titled 'Misconception: "The Merge enabled staking withdrawals."' here [1].

You shouldn't make financial decision based on press releases. It was a well known fact that the withdrawal of staked ETH would not be enabled with the POS hard fork. Every staking tutorial does point that out.

The Beacon Chain has been started in December 2020. That means people have been staking for almost 2 years now, knowing that they won't be able to withdraw any of their staked ETH for years.

You can say what you want that is quite the commitment.

> That is, staking right now is a one way street with a promise to be able to withdraw some time in the future and returning only about 4% gross annually, which is laughably low for something that risky.

You are aware that the POS rewards are calculated taking the amount of staked ETH into account? The more ETH is staked the smaller rewards are? That means that people are totally fine with staking for that kind of return.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#890

Post by clarkmoody »

oblio wrote: post #817
anonporridge wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire world generates about 25,000 TWh of electricity every year. Finland consumes about 87 TWh of electricity every year. An entire Finland of electricity use thinly distributed over the entire planet disappearing is a negligible rounding error on the grand scheme of things. It's about a ~0.3% change. News media uses word imagery like "an entire Finland of electricity use" because it sounds huge and scary to th…

The thing is, in the wider cacophony of human civilization, Ethereum and cryptocurrencies also don't exist. If I and my grandma and everyone's grandma would use Proof of Work cryptocurrencies to buy peanuts at the supermarket, PoW energy usage would probably rival that of China. Now it's just used for speculation by a bunch of rich folks, crooks and marks. Probably only a few thousand transactions per second, I imagi…

> If I and my grandma and everyone's grandma would use Proof of Work cryptocurrencies to buy peanuts at the supermarket, PoW energy usage would probably rival that of China.

You don't understand how any of this works, do you?

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