Very worrying. The environmental impacts of Bitcoin are absolutely horrendous.
The total computing of the Bitcoin network consumes many orders of magnitude less power than all of the world's computers combined.
Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers
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Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers
#12Now if they would all have been mapping cancer markers and analyzing gravitational wave fluctuations through BOINC ... :( You can only wish..
Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers
#13Breaking news : a single caterpillar excavator has more excavating power than all the toy shovels in the world together.
I still find the approach of the article interesting, but what would be relevant is to compare the power consumption of the bitcoins miners compared to the power consumption of all the personal computers in the world.
Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers
#14Very worrying. The environmental impacts of Bitcoin are absolutely horrendous.
How much energy, resources, etc are required to sustain cash and credit card transactions? Think of all those banks, skyscrapers, ATMs, computers, money printing machines. All of those things exist to power the security of the modern financial industry. If bitcoin powers the post-modern financial industry, the resource savings will be enormous.
And yet the actual functionality of Bitcoin - a simple ledger - could be implemented using much less resources than are used to maintain the Bitcoin network. It's curious, isn't it?
Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers
#15Very worrying. The environmental impacts of Bitcoin are absolutely horrendous.
How much energy, resources, etc are required to sustain cash and credit card transactions? Think of all those banks, skyscrapers, ATMs, computers, money printing machines. All of those things exist to power the security of the modern financial industry. If bitcoin powers the post-modern financial industry, the resource savings will be enormous.
Why do you think banks, skyscrapers, ATMs, computers and money printing machines will go away just because of bitcoin?
They will all still be there, there will just also be lots of machines calculating SHA256 hashes
Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers
#16I was thinking the other day, let's say someone operating the bitcoin network wanted to crack a specific AES256 code - couldn't they try to use the network to insert that into different blocks with different difficulties to try to get the network to crack it for them?
Or it doesn't work quite that way?
Would be interesting fiction (ala Cory Doctorow style) if say the NSA created a crypto-currency to make everyone else crack messages for them.
Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers
#17Not all the worlds computers, all the worlds personal computers. That's a big difference.
Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much energy, resources, etc are required to sustain cash and credit card transactions? Think of all those banks, skyscrapers, ATMs, computers, money printing machines. All of those things exist to power the security of the modern financial industry. If bitcoin powers the post-modern financial industry, the resource savings will be enormous.
And yet the actual functionality of Bitcoin - a simple ledger - could be implemented using much less resources than are used to maintain the Bitcoin network. It's curious, isn't it?
Isn't it the double-spending solution that requires all those resources, not the simple ledger?
Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers
#19It's such a waste of computing power.
Mining is what makes the bitcoin network secure. The higher the hashrate, the more secure the bitcoin network. As I mentioned in another comment, if you compare the resources required to secure the bitcoin network vs the resources required to secure any other financial networks, it's miniscule.
It's only required because of the decentralisation fetish of coiners.
Perfectly secure systems exist that don't require this lunacy.
Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers
#20Well ... except by definition bitcoin is hashing at that rate AND computers are being used for other tasks, so they can't be using 100%. There are also billions of embedded systems that have computing power but can't be used for bitcoin mining. What about CPUs in phones and tablets?
If you define "world's computers" as "desktop PCs" and you exclude GPUs (which my son seems to use to heat his bedroom), then maybe this statement makes some sense ... but it's really a pretty weak milestone.