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Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

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Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#101

Post by coolestguy »

willbudd wrote: post #92
edgefield0 wrote: post #59

The fact that bitcoin mining on its own is now consuming as much electricity as the country of Argentina with no end in sight, as we are accelerating toward a climate change cliff, is sickening. Given this fact alone it's hard to see cryptocurrency as anything but a selfish crackpot scheme to generate a few dollars at the expense of humanity and our planet.

Proof-of-work =/= cryptocurrency. There are cryptocurrencies that work without proof-of-work, and those that quantitatively rely on it to a far lesser degree. Honestly, it continues to surprise me how clueless most of HN commenters are on this topic.

It really is pretty bewildering how many top comments here show almost 0 understanding of the technology.

How many other topics that get posted here have the same thing happening??

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#102

Post by pontifier »

Gehinnn wrote: post #24
dualvectorfoil wrote: post #5

Unrelated to the algorithm, I’ve found that doing things “by hand” is a surprisingly good way to develop intuition for otherwise opaque concepts. I wonder if it’s a function of doing work more slowly or paying closer attention. Examples include writing code written by others and working through math on paper.

I think this is due to some kind of muscle memory. You only start hearing certain patterns in complex music, e.g. Mahler symphonies, if you listen often enough to it. At some point you recognize stuff unconsciously.

I've noticed something similar in dance and language. I think it has something to do with mirror neurons feeding back into meaning making.

When you hear a word in a language you know, mirror neurons probably fire the patterns that would be required to make those sounds yourself. If you don't have experience making a sound, you're less likely to be able to detect subtle nuance in it, and those patterns tie into your memory of the times you have used that word.

The same with dance. While taking dance classes, I found that watching very good dancers gave a visceral thrill that wasn't there before... Like I could FEEL what they were doing.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#103

Post by AaronFriel »

rcstank wrote: post #80
smeyer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the rest of us don't have to put up with legions of people excitedly explaining about how idle devices are great and everyone else should idle more devices. Bitcoin consuming massive amounts of electricity is bad. Idle devices consuming massive amounts of electricity is also bad.

GP claimed that generating dollars using electricity is bad. Isn't that what the majority of companies are doing? Edit: that's my whole point: mining BTC is generating value by verifying transactions. In turn, the miner gets paid for their work.

Bitcoin consumers more power than entire nations' economies while generating so little value that I suspect my home town in Iowa would exceed the transaction rate on a daily basis. A moderately busy food district in a major city would exceed that every day. (I'm thinking roughly 100,000 people getting lunch or dinner in 1 hour ought to generate 13 to 27 times as many transactions/second as the entire Bitcoin network supports.)

Sure, there's bitcoin cash, lightning network stuff - but uhh, where's the beef? I mean, seriously, where are the users using Bitcoin at volume?

It seems like Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme for people mining (or HODLing) Bitcoin, not a store of value, not a mechanism of currency.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#104

Post by ericflo »

edgefield0 wrote: post #59

The fact that bitcoin mining on its own is now consuming as much electricity as the country of Argentina with no end in sight, as we are accelerating toward a climate change cliff, is sickening. Given this fact alone it's hard to see cryptocurrency as anything but a selfish crackpot scheme to generate a few dollars at the expense of humanity and our planet.

Electricity consumption doesn't equal climate change per se - not all electricity is created equally. I see PoW cryptocurrencies as one of the most promising incentives to move to a sustainable energy future. Given the lack of political will for policy-based incentives for this goal, a market-based incentive is welcomed.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#105

Post by christophilus »

ssss11 wrote: post #73
edgefield0 wrote: post #59

The fact that bitcoin mining on its own is now consuming as much electricity as the country of Argentina with no end in sight, as we are accelerating toward a climate change cliff, is sickening. Given this fact alone it's hard to see cryptocurrency as anything but a selfish crackpot scheme to generate a few dollars at the expense of humanity and our planet.

To give you the other side: It also uses less than all idle devices plugged in, in the US. Either Argentina doesnt use as much as you’d think or the US wastes a whole lot of power doing nothing. I’d argue thats way worse than mining bitcoin! Anyway its a sensationalist statistic designed to arouse your response. I’d expect theres heaps of things more wasteful.. office building services running 24/7 comes to mind

Streetlights/ night time lights which (besides often consuming fossil fuels) have the additional feature of ruining the night sky for stargazers, insects, nocturnal animals, etc.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#106

Post by pcthrowaway »

mFixman wrote: post #55
xiphias2 wrote: post #13

A very interesting part of Bitcoin is that there’s no reason it couldn’t have been invented 10 years earlier (after having practical public key cryptography). Anyways, better late then never.

The rate of information transmission was much higher in 2010 than in 2000. If Bitcoin had been invented in 2000, it wouldn't have been more than a technical curiosity in the hands of a few crypto-nerds in very niche internet forums. Since it was invented in 2010 it easily spread through Facebook, Reddit and other universal social media before making the jump via mainstream news to non-technical people.

> If Bitcoin had been invented in 2000, it wouldn't have been more than a technical curiosity in the hands of a few crypto-nerds in very niche internet forums.

It most certainly was this for at least 2 years. 2-4 years more if you count the time Satoshi was working on it before the public release

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#107

Post by throwaway3699 »

edgefield0 wrote: post #59

The fact that bitcoin mining on its own is now consuming as much electricity as the country of Argentina with no end in sight, as we are accelerating toward a climate change cliff, is sickening. Given this fact alone it's hard to see cryptocurrency as anything but a selfish crackpot scheme to generate a few dollars at the expense of humanity and our planet.

Power consumption is irrelevant if we're using green technologies for mining. The fact that the green lobby is staunchly anti-nuclear makes it very hard for me to care, though.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#108

Post by tomxor »

ssss11 wrote: post #73
edgefield0 wrote: post #59

The fact that bitcoin mining on its own is now consuming as much electricity as the country of Argentina with no end in sight, as we are accelerating toward a climate change cliff, is sickening. Given this fact alone it's hard to see cryptocurrency as anything but a selfish crackpot scheme to generate a few dollars at the expense of humanity and our planet.

To give you the other side: It also uses less than all idle devices plugged in, in the US. Either Argentina doesnt use as much as you’d think or the US wastes a whole lot of power doing nothing. I’d argue thats way worse than mining bitcoin! Anyway its a sensationalist statistic designed to arouse your response. I’d expect theres heaps of things more wasteful.. office building services running 24/7 comes to mind

> It also uses less than all idle devices plugged in, in the US

I'd bet that _all_ idle "devices" in in the US are providing far more utility by being ready and available to do ... anything (you did say all), than bitcoin which is _only_ a vehicle for speculating on intrinsic value being used by a tiny minority.

Sorry but I'm fed up of these stupid comparisons, if bitcoin uses 0.56% of the worlds electricity, there are a maximum of 178 ways to divide up the rest... it's simply not on that scale of usefulness, _and_ it is not comparable to fucking visa because it doesn't serve the worlds transactions, no one buys coffee with bitcoin. It's also not comparable to the USD for the same reason. Everything you compare it to will be of more material value to the world and almost always consume less energy, even if it's icecream.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#109

Post by Antipode »

gruez wrote: post #96
Antipode wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a completely unregulated currency be better in that regard? Aren't the wild swings in bitcoin price essentially hyperinflation/deflation?

It depends entirely on your time horizon. USD might be more stable day-to-day, but has lost 32.3% of its value in the past 20 years. This is just with CPI, if you're comparing to asset prices this is probably much worse.

I was talking more about hyperinflation specifically, rather than the normal ~2% annual inflation targets. I don't understand how lack of monetary policy would prevent hyperinflation.

Re: Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day (2014)

#110

Post by lallysingh »

AaronFriel wrote: post #103
rcstank wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP claimed that generating dollars using electricity is bad. Isn't that what the majority of companies are doing? Edit: that's my whole point: mining BTC is generating value by verifying transactions. In turn, the miner gets paid for their work.

Bitcoin consumers more power than entire nations' economies while generating so little value that I suspect my home town in Iowa would exceed the transaction rate on a daily basis. A moderately busy food district in a major city would exceed that every day. (I'm thinking roughly 100,000 people getting lunch or dinner in 1 hour ought to generate 13 to 27 times as many transactions/second as the entire Bitcoin network…

They're moving money out of their countries past currency export controls.
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