What category of taxable income would this be in the US?
Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn
61–70 of 428 posts
Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn
#62Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the same reaction. Isn't Bitcoin wasting enough energy as it is?
What if it’s 100% green energy? Is it a waste?
Not unless everyone is using green energy.
California uses green energy, but in doing so increases the mining reward, which increases the mining from countries like china and russia, who do not use green energy.
Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the same reaction. Isn't Bitcoin wasting enough energy as it is?
What if it’s 100% green energy? Is it a waste?
Probably. The energy could have been available to any energy intensive industry, helping them if the resource is too scarce and eventually lowering production prices if it wasn't scarce. You notice it in Germany where energy has become very costly in the last couple of years, where it then makes more sense to limit production or even close all together.
Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why?
Can't we come up with puzzles where at least something of value is created when the puzzle is solved (and a tremendous amount of resources is not wasted)?
That wouldn't be a puzzle, then. It would some kind of engineering challenge. A puzzle starts by knowing the answer and then putting some circuitous path between it and the player, that they have to figure out how to navigate. It's inherently wasteful to construct puzzles.
Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the puzzle idea is that, if you could figure out a weakness in the hash, you could claim it faster than the brute force approach. So each prize that's claimed "on schedule" supports the idea that there aren't any widely known shortcuts. Obviously if you found a shortcut in the hash you might do other things first, but I think that's the idea.
Hmm yeah if I cracked Bitcoin then last thing I'd do is claim a prize that gave away the fact that I'd cracked Bitcoin.
What you would do is claim the prize slightly ahead of schedule and wait to be slightly ahead of schedule for the next one.
Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue that it's still a waste, because that energy could be put to an otherwise better use. Now that energy has to be replaced by a non-green counterpart since it's been spent.
Since energy isn't easily transported, wouldn't that really depend on where the energy was produced?
I'd argue that no other thing, apart from information, is transported as easily as electricity, once the grid exists. Sure, there are capacity limits, but I doubt that shutting down crypto mining would cause problems to the grid.
I recently read that some are thinking about connecting the US with Europe via DC cabling.
Here's a related, old article: "Submarine power cable between Europe and North America: A techno-economic analysis" (2018)
• Developed a 2030 power dispatch model of Europe and North America (NA).
• Identified socio-economic benefits of European-NA electricity trading through a HVDC cable.
• A 4000 MW cable increases social welfare by 177 M€ on an annual basis.
• This benefit for society is sufficient to cover the investment costs.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261...
Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the same reaction. Isn't Bitcoin wasting enough energy as it is?
What if it’s 100% green energy? Is it a waste?
Yes? If the energy could be used for something productive, but is instead used for something unproductive, then it is a waste
While that energy technically serves the purpose of letting a monetary system function, traditional monetary infrastructure requires vastly smaller amounts of energy, thus this is a wasteful use of it
Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why?
Can't we come up with puzzles where at least something of value is created when the puzzle is solved (and a tremendous amount of resources is not wasted)?
The sibling comments are all correct that you're special-pleading the criterion that a puzzle create something of value.
But, as it happens, this one does: it offers economic incentive to develop more efficient attacks on elliptic curves. The curve Bitcoin uses isn't widely used outside of it, but that doesn't mean that an efficient attack on Secp256k1 wouldn't apply elsewhere.
Is this modest as positive externalities go? Probably yes. Could someone with a better attack on the curve just empty wallets? Not necessarily, and probably not: the point of the puzzle is that the entropy has been deliberately reduced to make it crackable with brute force, so, say someone worked out a factor of four improvement: that isn't going to get you into the Genesis Wallet, but it substantially lowers the price of claiming some of the puzzles.
Also, being a cryptographer and being a thief are unrelated professions. Some people might be inclined to both, but I would guess that most are not.
Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn
#70Do they have a buyer for that $400k? If not, it's not worth $400K.
One of the most profoundly dumb comments I have read here. It takes 3 seconds to look up the 24h volume for BTC and it is $9.6 Billion
No matter how dumb it is, in general, it is always better to just respond with the answer and not comment on the comment itself.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes."