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Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

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Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#161

Post by themerone »

digging wrote: post #57

I'm not a crypto proponent per se, but I do feel the need to be reasonable about it, and this reads like pure emotional anti-cryptocurrency sentiment. (edit: while I still can, I'm going to jump in and repeat that I'm criticizing this as a bad article which isn't saying anything very meaningful on its own. Thanks everyone for doing the author's work for them and gathering more data. I won't be upset if it's proven th…

The us banking system is multiple orders of magnitude larger than the crypto markets.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#162

Post by almenon »

fromMars wrote: post #86

What happened with Ethereum's proof of stake? Have there been successful alternatives that eliminate the need for mining?

Ethereum switched to proof of stake a while ago. So yes. Hardcore crypto fans don't like it because theoretically it could be subject to the 51% attack. Personally, Ethereum is big enough where

A) I don't think that attack is likely and B) the efficiency gains are worth the risk

Disclaimer: I have Ethereum so i benefit from other people buying it. I do honestly think it's better for the environment.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#163

Post by rglullis »

boc wrote: post #118
digging wrote: post #57

I'm not a crypto proponent per se, but I do feel the need to be reasonable about it, and this reads like pure emotional anti-cryptocurrency sentiment. (edit: while I still can, I'm going to jump in and repeat that I'm criticizing this as a bad article which isn't saying anything very meaningful on its own. Thanks everyone for doing the author's work for them and gathering more data. I won't be upset if it's proven th…

> I'm not a crypto proponent per se Yet you rolled out the standard crypto talking points flawlessly. > Energy consumption is frankly not a phenomenon I give two shits about, as an environmentalist Again, I suspect you aren't an environmentalist either. Please just be straightforward with your motivations here.

The standard talking points from Bitcoin proponents.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#164

Post by digging »

misnome wrote: post #117
digging wrote: post #57

I'm not a crypto proponent per se, but I do feel the need to be reasonable about it, and this reads like pure emotional anti-cryptocurrency sentiment. (edit: while I still can, I'm going to jump in and repeat that I'm criticizing this as a bad article which isn't saying anything very meaningful on its own. Thanks everyone for doing the author's work for them and gathering more data. I won't be upset if it's proven th…

> 1. There is no comparison made to the energy consumption of the traditional banking industry, which I am sure is not a particularly energy-efficient industry. Despite declaring yourself not one, this (and every other one of your points) comes up _every single time_ crypto proponents are trying to seed FUD in any reporting about the energy usage of crypto. This is especially laughable when you then say > ~2% of US p…

> Despite declaring yourself not one, this (and every other one of your points) comes up _every single time_ crypto proponents are trying to seed FUD in any reporting about the energy usage of crypto

You have it backward, it comes up when reporting tries to seed FUD about crypto energy usage. Every point I made is that this article isn't actually saying anything obviously scary, it's just saying some facts in a scary voice.

> By your own argument - unless the traditional banking industry tops out at 100% of US power usage for 115 transactions per second - it is definitely not worse than bitcoin.

That's not my argument. They do different things. Despite its name, most cryptocurrency isn't really used as currency. As you say, it's slow and not very useful for that. I'm just making a comparison because most of the thoughtless FUD discussion assumes that USD is free (in energy terms).

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#166

Post by dr-detroit »

jgilias wrote: post #103

The whole idea that you can sort energy usage into useful for society or not buckets is pretty ridiculous. Ok, Bitcoin bad. What about video games? Netflix? Porn? The very idea of sorting energy use like that is a very slippery slope. We have markets for a reason. They help us determine how the aggregated society values one or another thing without relying on value judgment.

[dead]

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#167

Post by mjburgess »

Throw73747 wrote: post #146
mjburgess wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "security" of btc cryptocurrency is proportional to how much energy it wastes; that's radically different than the banking system. The more billions it costs to run bitcoin, the more it costs to 51% attack it. If you can outwaste energy, you can hijack the system. It would be useful it some state, eg., russia or china, would just cut off networks and forge bitcoin network traffic -- and hence bring the whole thin…

> 51% attack it. If you can outwaste energy, you can hijack the system Out hashing does not give you any extra powers. Maybe you will be able to rollback a few minutes of transactions, that is all.

if you split the network, you can add your own machines, that can rewrite the history arbitrarily from the future of that split.

As for "a few minutes", it depends on which one we're talking about. BTC, yes -- but disrupting the global BTC network requires only a few minutes of time. Just dump everything into unusable addresses, and watch the reaction.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#168

Post by treyd »

digging wrote: post #126
mjburgess wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "security" of btc cryptocurrency is proportional to how much energy it wastes; that's radically different than the banking system. The more billions it costs to run bitcoin, the more it costs to 51% attack it. If you can outwaste energy, you can hijack the system. It would be useful it some state, eg., russia or china, would just cut off networks and forge bitcoin network traffic -- and hence bring the whole thin…

I'm not an expert here but my understanding is that even if a so-called 51% attack were to happen, it would only be meaningful as long as it could be sustained. The simplest case is a single tainted block, after which other miners could roll back by consensus. If a nation wanted to "permanently" take over >50% of the network, I believe the Bitcoin community would see that coming, and it would be a colossal investment…

> The simplest case is a single tainted block, after which other miners could roll back by consensus.

Invalid blocks are rejected trivially by any node as soon as it sees them. You can't "force" an invalid block to be accepted by throwing hashrate at it and miners don't need to do anything to make an invalid block be recognized as such.

The issue is on malicious actors trying to rewrite/replace recent blocks (to double spend, usually) which was the core innovation, but that also includes trying to censor txs or generally DoS the network by refusing to allow txs to be accepted.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#169

Post by robinsonb5 »

digging wrote: post #57

I'm not a crypto proponent per se, but I do feel the need to be reasonable about it, and this reads like pure emotional anti-cryptocurrency sentiment. (edit: while I still can, I'm going to jump in and repeat that I'm criticizing this as a bad article which isn't saying anything very meaningful on its own. Thanks everyone for doing the author's work for them and gathering more data. I won't be upset if it's proven th…

To address two of your points in particular:

1. Even if the energy consumption of the traditional banking industry is comparable or higher, it supports the daily activities of literally 5 or 6 orders of magnitude more entities and people than the 137 outfits mentioned in TFA.

4. The environmental angle is only one aspect - the other is simply that energy costs have never been higher, and crypto mining adds another energy consumer competing against householders, pushing costs up yet further. (Yes, I know, crypto mining can be set up to happen only when there's spare capacity, and I'm sure the miners can be relied upon to act responsibly in that regard...)

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#170

Post by hk__2 »

jgilias wrote: post #103

The whole idea that you can sort energy usage into useful for society or not buckets is pretty ridiculous. Ok, Bitcoin bad. What about video games? Netflix? Porn? The very idea of sorting energy use like that is a very slippery slope. We have markets for a reason. They help us determine how the aggregated society values one or another thing without relying on value judgment.

> The whole idea that you can sort energy usage into useful for society or not buckets is pretty ridiculous. > > Ok, Bitcoin bad. What about video games? Netflix? Porn?

As other have pointed out, Bitcoin relies on a larger and larger usage of energy by design. You could to a more energy-efficient Netflix, but you cannot do a more energy-efficient Bitcoin.

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