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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

#31

Post by betterunix »

dasil003 wrote: post #21
Nursie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only required because of the decentralisation fetish of coiners. Perfectly secure systems exist that don't require this lunacy.

First of all, there's no such thing as a perfectly secure system, second of all, you tar people who are interested in decentralization at your own peril. The type of power that is being consolidated in multinational corporations is greater than anything that's ever existed in the history of the world. If we don't want to wake up as serfs one day we should be taking decentralization and other technological democratic…

As opposed to the power Bitcoin exchanges, Bitcoin mining pools, and Bitcoin developers have over Bitcoin? The supposed decentralization in Bitcoin is theoretical at best; in practice, power is concentrated in a few key places.

So really, we could make a better system, one that uses far less power, by just accepting that some things cannot be decentralized and designing a system accordingly.

Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers

#32

Post by GotAnyMegadeth »

TheRubyist wrote: post #5

It's such a waste of computing power.

Seeing as lots of that hashing power probably comes from ASICs and FPGAs, if anything it's more of a waste of Silicon that computing power, as without Bitcoin there probably isn't much use for all that hashing power...

Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers

#33

Post by ninthfrank07 »

OmarIsmail wrote: post #10
TheRubyist wrote: post #5

It'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.

What do you think of Nxt? It's 100% proof of stake. http://www.nxtcrypto.org

Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers

#34

Post by betterunix »

GotAnyMegadeth wrote: post #32
TheRubyist wrote: post #5

It's such a waste of computing power.

Seeing as lots of that hashing power probably comes from ASICs and FPGAs, if anything it's more of a waste of Silicon that computing power, as without Bitcoin there probably isn't much use for all that hashing power...

It is a waste of electrical power.

Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers

#35

Post by inoop »

OmarIsmail wrote: post #10
TheRubyist wrote: post #5

It'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.

> The higher the hashrate, the more secure the bitcoin network.

wat

edit: clarification, the total hash rate has zero bearing on the overall security. The question is about how hard it is to gain majority, in other words, how that hashing power is distributed.

At the time of writing, the two largest pools have 50% of the hashing power: https://blockchain.info/pools. If they decide to work together and perhaps DDOS a smaller third pool, they can have 51% pretty easily.

Inb4 'they wouldn't do that', the largest pool (ghash.io) is known to have attempted double spends before. Besides, surely one wouldn't argue that Bitcoin's security is a matter of confidence in a few pool operators being friendly?

Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers

#37

Post by betterunix »

celticninja wrote: post #30
Nursie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only required because of the decentralisation fetish of coiners. Perfectly secure systems exist that don't require this lunacy.

first of all perfectly secure systems do not exist. but lets say for a minute you mean visa or mastercard are perfectly secure, do you think that the electricity use of the bitcoin network exceeds the electricity use of VISA all over the world? They run their own always on computer network and offices, which need people and computers that require electricity to be able to function properly. Then factor in that this i…

"do you think that the electricity use of the bitcoin network exceeds the electricity use of VISA all over the world?"

That is the wrong comparison. The right comparison is this: does Bitcoin require more electrical energy per transaction than VISA?

If the answer is not "yes" today, it will eventually be "yes." Here is a thought experiment:

Suppose that a new technology is developed that halves the energy required to process a VISA transaction and check for fraud. VISA has every incentive to adopt that technology, and thus reduce its power consumption.

Now suppose that a new technology halves the energy required to process Bitcoin transactions i.e. to compute hashes. Since miners profit by computing more blocks, their incentive is to adopt the new technology, compute hashes at twice the rate, and their net power consumption remains constant.

Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers

#38

Post by betterunix »

sickpig wrote: post #26
Nursie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only required because of the decentralisation fetish of coiners. Perfectly secure systems exist that don't require this lunacy.

Decentralization is needed if you want bitcoin to be censorship-resistant.

Wrong. You can have a central authority that issues money and still have a censorship resistant system -- this is what paper cash is, and this is what is possible with the digital cash systems academic cryptographers have been studying since the 1980s.

Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers

#39

Post by betterunix »

quantumf wrote: post #6
martinald wrote: post #4

Very worrying. The environmental impacts of Bitcoin are absolutely horrendous.

ASIC's consume very little power compared to a PC. One watt per gigahash is a rough value, although most promise quite a bit less. You'd need about 100 PC's, at 300W each, to produce a gigahash, using the assumptions in this article.

Ah but that's the unfortunate twist. If you can get a gigahash for 30000W with PCs, you would have no incentive to go down to consuming only 1W with an ASIC. You would consume 30000W with ASICs and get 30000 gigahashes.

[EDIT: Corrected the numbers to match what you wrote. It is irrelevant, though -- if you get a gigahash for X watts with PCs, you'll use X watts to get X gigahashes with a 1W/gigahash ASIC.]

Re: Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers

#40

Post by dasil003 »

betterunix wrote: post #31
dasil003 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, there's no such thing as a perfectly secure system, second of all, you tar people who are interested in decentralization at your own peril. The type of power that is being consolidated in multinational corporations is greater than anything that's ever existed in the history of the world. If we don't want to wake up as serfs one day we should be taking decentralization and other technological democratic…

As opposed to the power Bitcoin exchanges, Bitcoin mining pools, and Bitcoin developers have over Bitcoin? The supposed decentralization in Bitcoin is theoretical at best; in practice, power is concentrated in a few key places. So really, we could make a better system, one that uses far less power, by just accepting that some things cannot be decentralized and designing a system accordingly.

Right, so because there are emergent power structures of some sort, it's all equivalent and there's nothing actually decentralized about it. I mean, Linux might be "open source", but really Linus is calling the shots, so it's really no different than Windows at the end of the day.
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