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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

#271

Post by wongarsu »

mjburgess wrote: post #145
snapcaster wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would they seal the network in their borders? Why would that bring the whole thing down? Countries that shut down internet don't seem to bring that whole thing down in any sense

Cryptocurrencies are peer-to-peer systems. If you control the network they're on, you can do anything you like. Take the peer-to-peer traffic of the cryptocurrency network of any area, prevent it from getting outside that area (ie., just block it talking to IPs outside some range) -- then to that network , you can trivially control the total hashing power. So split any cryptocurrency network into small segements, the…

You would be able to control the part of the network you cut off, but if anyone smuggles in as much as a microSD card with the outside blockchain state and syncs it to their client, every client in the segment would see this longer chain (since the outside has more hash power than you) and recognize it as legitimate, undoing all your fraudulent transactions (along with a lot of legitimate ones that never reached the outside network)

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

#272

Post by amarant »

digging wrote: post #207
ziddoap wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're brave to even remotely hint that you're in favor of crypto on HN! > Energy consumption is frankly not a phenomenon I give two shits about, as an environmentalist. Despite a few people specifically calling this sentence out as 'ridiculous' or whatever, I think this is a completely valid point. If 100% of the energy powering something comes from renewables, who gives a shit?

I don't even like it, I kind of wish it hadn't been invented, but rationality is vanishingly rare when it's discussed. And I am certain many will say the same of everything I post.

I've just posted a comment criticising one of your other posts about this, but I feel now I need to clarify I don't think your entire post is irrational, just that it contains a few erroneous assumptions, and in at least one place fails to consider what I would deem a noteworthy concern.

I agree that most arguments in this area resembles tribal war more than rational debate, much like any discussion involving either trump or musk, where rationality is also thrown out the window in favour of signalling tribal affiliation

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

#273

Post by kwar13 »

Same old tired argument. The proof of work employed in mostly Bitcoin by now (most cryptos use proof of stake which has drastically lower energy consumption). Let's compare it to:

1- How much it takes to run the banking industry, even a JPM Chase would do. 2- Bot accounts on Instagram or Tiktok. 3- Gas flared on oil rigs.

Nobody slams the above three for "wasting" energy because they are closed systems that cannot be measured. Crypto is mostly an open system so it's easy to just point to a number with a headline "bitcoin used more energy than x country"

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

#274

Post by Andrex »

JoeCortopassi wrote: post #222
throw0101d wrote: post #11

Keep going back to: >> Explain Bitcoin as completely as possible in a single tweet. > It's like if idling your car 24/7 occasionally produced solved Sudoku puzzles that you could then exchange for heroin. * https://twitter.com/VessOnSecurity/status/113524359527398604... Edit: per /u/tgamblin (of Spack fame), this was originally from @Theophite.

Bitcoin is cryptographically secured distributed accounting ledger, that created a novel way to incentivize participation

Thank you HackerNewsGPT.

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

#275

Post by wolf89618 »

JoeCortopassi wrote: post #222
throw0101d wrote: post #11

Keep going back to: >> Explain Bitcoin as completely as possible in a single tweet. > It's like if idling your car 24/7 occasionally produced solved Sudoku puzzles that you could then exchange for heroin. * https://twitter.com/VessOnSecurity/status/113524359527398604... Edit: per /u/tgamblin (of Spack fame), this was originally from @Theophite.

Bitcoin is cryptographically secured distributed accounting ledger, that created a novel way to incentivize participation

[dead]

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

#276

Post by madeofpalk »

JoeCortopassi wrote: post #222
throw0101d wrote: post #11

Keep going back to: >> Explain Bitcoin as completely as possible in a single tweet. > It's like if idling your car 24/7 occasionally produced solved Sudoku puzzles that you could then exchange for heroin. * https://twitter.com/VessOnSecurity/status/113524359527398604... Edit: per /u/tgamblin (of Spack fame), this was originally from @Theophite.

Bitcoin is cryptographically secured distributed accounting ledger, that created a novel way to incentivize participation

Thank you!

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

#277

Post by FabHK »

digging wrote: post #96
MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum, the second biggest coin by market cap and the network that allows for NFTs, completed their transition to proof of stake in 2022. Ethereum’s energy usage is now almost completely negligible. https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms... Since Bitcoin is completely decentralized, there’s no way to change the protocol without everyone just stopping using it, which miners don’t want to do.

> Since Bitcoin is completely decentralized, there’s no way to change the protocol without everyone just stopping using it, which miners don’t want to do. That's completely wrong though. The protocol gets changed by a majority of miners accepting new protocols, as has happened many times before.

Not only that, when once there were 194bn BTC due to a bug, the miners "just stopped using it", rolled back, fixed the bug, and went forward from there. Blockchain is immutable! Code is law! Sure, unless it isn't.

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

#278

Post by tgv »

titzer wrote: post #109
jonathan-adly wrote: post #38

Power usage by itself is meaningless. The real question is the power providing utility or not. Like, no one thinks data centers for AWS are bad. They provide real benefit and utility. But, perhaps power wasted on cloth dryers and Christmas lights are a western frivolity. So, the real argument is Bitcoin useful or not. Which, like most things, is something that probably be left to the free market.

> probably be left to the free market. Ah yes, the mythical free market that no one ever questions, the unassailable arbiter of value in this world. This underpinning assumption needs to be pointed out. Clearly, the free market is not infallible. The question is how do mixed economies make best use of markets, regulation, taxation, and have a functioning justice system so that we don't shovel raw human souls into the…

Indeed, many people seem to think the market solves all problems. In a sense it does, but only in a very specific sense. Like, if we there was some loophole in the law that allowed killing people with a pistol, the market would respond by making bullet-proof vests expensive, and by producing cheap, but bad protection vests. And guns, of course. It wouldn't solve the killing, but it would solve the question "how much can you spend to protect your life"? Perhaps it would make food cheaper. The market is a sick joke.

In this case, the free market can solve the problem: how high can the electricity price go, or how many power outages can there be, until people are sick and tired of this Bitcoin bullshit?

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

#279

Post by rlpb »

Symbiote wrote: post #149
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…

Visa used 189GWh in 2017, worldwide, of which around half was data centres [1]. That handled 111.2 billion transactions, so about 1.7Wh per transaction (half for datacentres). Bitcoin used 844670Wh per transaction [2]. [1] https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/corporate-responsibil... [2] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

Visa's count presumably relates to direct consumer small value transactions though, whereas Bitcoin transactions are typically much larger "clearing" transactions. If Bitcoin is scaled up, that would be the only option - each transaction would be a clearing transaction incorporating many individual consumer transaction movements.

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

#280

Post by Scoundreller »

tibbon wrote: post #172
PretzelPirate wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "security" of any cryptocurrency is proportional to how much energy it wastes This only applies to Proof of Work blockchain.

Which is what Bitcoin uses, and it is one of the largest and most commonly used cryptocurrencies out there.

is it the most transacted? And it's share of transactions has gone down (from being the only choice to lots of choices)

Largest market cap, yes, but also lots of probably lost coin.

One source shows Tether having the most volume, and it's very energy efficient to make coin out of thin air.

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