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What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

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Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#171

Post by my123 »

cwyers wrote: post #134
hwbehrens wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what Bitcoin has done to GPUs I understand your argument, but Bitcoin hasn't been mined on GPUs since 2011/2012. Broaden your argument from Bitcoin to "proof of work schemes" more generally, and from GPUs to "profligate (mis)use of resources", and it will land more effectively. If you are against cryptocurrencies more broadly, inclusive of proof of stake and other more recent approaches that aim to address the reso…

I am not against proof of stake, exactly. But proof of stake has been around for a long time, and is a very small part of the crypto market right now. I don't really understand why, but until proof of stake is able to get adoption, I don't think the existence of proof of stake is a very good defense against the accusation that cryptocurrencies are wasting resources.

Proof of stake is even more of a Ponzi, with the rich in a given cryptocurrency getting even richer with time.

At least for miners in a PoW system, there’s a pressure for some liquidity by miners selling to cover the mining costs.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#172

Post by SuchAnonMuchWow »

Glench wrote: post #35

Folks here might be interested in Chia's smart contract language: https://chialisp.com/ Basically the designers saw how easily many Ethereum/Solidity contracts were hacked and saw that stateful side effects were the main culprit so they made their language have no side effects! Pretty cool.

But what you really want for smart contract is a language with integrated formal verification. The ability to formally prove some properties of your smart contract is much valuable than functional vs imperative paradigm.

Functional programming might makes it easier to detect flaws in your programs, but when there is billions at stakes and no recourse in case of a bug, you really want your program to be flawless.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#173

Post by PeterStuer »

photon-torpedo wrote: post #145
PeterStuer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had (have) this here in Belgium with a very real case. Separate collection of plastics and the creation of plastics collection and recycling (organizations)companies were introduced for environmental improvement. Unfortunately, these have turned into the biggest plastic packaging lobby and have caused an explosion in the use of plastic packaging in retail. More plastic use is unfortunately a net benefit to those w…

I would have thought that Belgium had learned from its past [1] to think carefully about providing incentives with potentially (horribly) harmful side effects. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S... -- "... The collection of hands became an end in itself. Force Publique soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber; they even went out to harvest them instead of rubber ... They…

There are many examples of perverse incentives.

As for the reference you provide, note that the atrocities were at the time when private companies using private militias ruled the region that was the property of a private holding of Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld who at the time also was the King of Belgium.

It was the Belgian state learning of these atrocities that prompted Belgian state to annex the region and bring these to a halt.

It could be argued that indeed the public sector should have learned not to trust the murky amalgam of old and new capital

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#174

Post by mike_d »

saurik wrote: post #127
mike_d wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like you can't become a "miner" (sell bandwidth) without becoming a partner. All of which are existing VPN companies - who probably have their abuse handling well ironed out at this point.

(I am the lead developer of Orchid.) Can you tell me where you read that bit about "without becoming a partner"? It is sort of correct--like, I can see how that argument could be made--but not really true in any fundamental sense... it certainly isn't true enough that I would have personally said it to someone, as if you want to provide bandwidth you absolutely can, it is just highly unlikely anyone will buy it, as t…

The only "documentation" I was able to find researching how to mine it was a Reddit thread suggesting that you have to stake a large amount of OTX to in turn be able to sell bandwidth and in turn make OTX. Previously in my hunt for documentation I stumbled upon the partners page with 4 VPN providers featured at the top of the page and the whole thing sort of clicked. I did find a Github mono-repo for what looked like the end user clients (at least from what I was able to find in the docs directory).

If my statement was incorrect (which by your half-acknowledgement I don't believe it was), then I am sorry for misrepresenting your project. A healthy dive into howtos for miners, and unwalling your garden, would clear that up.

But I do quite like the closing jab.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#175

Post by randunel »

cwyers wrote: post #94

I just... do not understand how smart, even _brilliant_ people, the sort of people who know enough to make something like this, can look at Bitcoin... the waste, the way it has utterly failed to achieve what it set out to do[1], everything, and thinks, I know, I want to do that, but instead of blowing up the market for GPUs it'll be SSDs. Why? To get rich? It even seems doubtful to me that the people who developed Ch…

> It even seems doubtful to me that the people who developed Chia are the ones who'll make the money off it, if there is any to make.

Premined, just like Ethereum and all the other shitcoins.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#176

Post by randunel »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #169
baby wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time there are talks about cryptocurrencies it seems like HN is stuck pretending that only Bitcoin exists and tech hasn’t moved since Bitcoin.

Most cryptocurrencies are clones of Bitcoin with the same problems. Ethereum is more interesting, though it still has some of Bitcoin's problems.

Ethereum is also part of the shitcoins given the ridiculous amount of premined, but their marketing is considerably better.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#177

Post by bildung »

ykat7 wrote: post #170
hdhrnnrkrkf wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned about Chia last week by googling "hard drive shortage" to figure out why suddenly hard drives prices are spiking where I live. Definitely not a submarine.

Could you or the parent commenter define "submarine" in this context? I searched and didn't find anything relevant.

It means an advertisement disguised as a news article.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#178

Post by TeMPOraL »

ykat7 wrote: post #170
hdhrnnrkrkf wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned about Chia last week by googling "hard drive shortage" to figure out why suddenly hard drives prices are spiking where I live. Definitely not a submarine.

Could you or the parent commenter define "submarine" in this context? I searched and didn't find anything relevant.

It's a reference to a pg essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

The part introducing the term is at the beginning:

"Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms."

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#180

Post by gverrilla »

gruez wrote: post #17
Hjfrf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can always hope that trading Chia is made illegal, along with proof of work algorithm based currencies in general. Governments so-far failing to regulate existential threats to themselves is honestly odd.

>Governments so-far failing to regulate existential threats to themselves is honestly odd. Is it the job of the government to hang onto power at all costs?

maybe it's not the job, but it's the nature of governments
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