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China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

reuters.com

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Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#191

Post by burgerboy »

Retric wrote: post #173
mrb wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Bitcoin won't raise global average temperatures by 2°C. This Nature article was debunked by other researchers. I too was asked to review it (recently, post-publication) and the gist of what they did wrong in their analysis is: * They overestimate (probably by 3x-5x) the present power consumption of miners because they assume the distribution of types of mining machine is homogenous in this table: https://github.c…

> by assuming it grows linearly with the transaction rate That’s a reasonable approximation. Over time mining is paid for by transaction fees in a competitive market. If you get 2x the fees and the cost to mine stays the same, you get 2x as much mining. Granted that assumes transaction fees are ~1:1 with transaction count. However, protection from a 51% attack eventually requires 1:1 increase in mining as the value o…

Yes I'm sure you know better than the researcher who put more than five minutes into looking into it

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#192

Post by rellui »

jayd16 wrote: post #78
127 wrote: post #73

When people realize that Bitcoin mining is a mechanism to prevent fraud, the energy consumption suddenly makes a lot more sense. How much waste in the world is the result of fraud and lack of trust? Quite a lot of it. That said, reducing the energy consumption of Bitcoin should be an absolute priority. Lightning Network and other such technologies help.

It doesn't really prevent fraud that isn't already a solved problem. When was the last time you had to deal with wire transfer fraud? If you buy counterfeit goods with bitcoin there's not much you can do. A credit card protects you from fraud over $50. What exactly is this bitcoin waste getting us?

I feel like most people think credit cards are free. They are not, which is why visa and MC are billion dollar companies. The cost has just been shifted in such a way that it's not easily identifiable so people ignore it. There's definitely a cost. If the Bitcoin network can offer a lower overall cost, it could provide actual benefits.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#193

Post by jcranmer »

keymone wrote: post #179
village-idiot wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that bitcoin will magically make armies obsolete is one of the most laughably silly ideas I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s quite the bar to clear. Hint: wars predate fiat currency. You’d still need army without fiat.

why obsolete? i never said that. bitcoin will just decouple money security from state security. which is why when you compare energy consumption, you need to include at least some chunk of resources dedicated to army, defence, etc.

You said "do these calculations take into account energy equivalent of running all the armies in the world, funding their wars and conflicts?"

That's not "at least some chunk", that's the entire cost that you're trying to wedge in there.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#194

Post by modzu »

mrb wrote: post #82
kevintb wrote: post #17

Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8

No, Bitcoin won't raise global average temperatures by 2°C. This Nature article was debunked by other researchers. I too was asked to review it (recently, post-publication) and the gist of what they did wrong in their analysis is: * They overestimate (probably by 3x-5x) the present power consumption of miners because they assume the distribution of types of mining machine is homogenous in this table: https://github.c…

can you please cite your source? was the refutation also published in a peer reviewed journal?

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#195

Post by asgionio1234 »

sekai wrote: post #161

Why a Chinese Bitcoin mining ban is good news: * It kills the narrative that China controls Bitcoin. * It severely diminishes the Chinese state's ability to disrupt the Bitcoin network by commandeering hashpower. * The Chinese miners will move their operations overseas, leading to higher geographical/jurisdictional decentralization. * It becomes relatively speaking more profitable for Chinese ASIC manufacturers to di…

>This likely makes overall Bitcoin mining greener, hurting the Bitcoin climate change FUD.

I dislike the fact that Bitcoin fans have commandeered the term "FUD". The term originally referred to coming out of Microsoft, but you are using it to refer to well-intentioned people saying things that are true.

It's the same as what happened to the term "fake news."

Bitcoin has some very serious problems. We all know what they are. If you keep pretending they don't exist, you only hurt your own credibility.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#196

Post by kbody »

DennisP wrote: post #122
kevintb wrote: post #17

Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8

Luckily, proof of stake research seems to be going really well. We can have decentralized blockchains without the climate impact.

Security-wise they haven't been really tested yet, but Ethereum moving to a PoS model will be a good case.

The only reason they are accepted at the moment is that it's free money, especially for the initial coin holders(founders/friend investors etc.).

For some reason people now accept fully pre-distributed coins. At least Ethereum went through a PoW phase to allow for some non-ICO distribution.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#197

Post by modzu »

ForHackernews wrote: post #104
mrb wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Bitcoin won't raise global average temperatures by 2°C. This Nature article was debunked by other researchers. I too was asked to review it (recently, post-publication) and the gist of what they did wrong in their analysis is: * They overestimate (probably by 3x-5x) the present power consumption of miners because they assume the distribution of types of mining machine is homogenous in this table: https://github.c…

You're quibbling over details: The point is that bitcoin is deliberately designed to waste as much energy as possible. It's a constant arms race where you have to keep escalating your hash rate, or you risk somebody else being able to execute a 51% attack. It's an absolutely atrocious example of the Red Queen effect ("running just to stand still") and I can't believe that technologists who in other contexts value ele…

i thought one of the features of bitcoin was that mining would eventually become too computationally expensive -- because the total number of bitcoins is fixed. so at some point, mining does not produce coins and you're only mining to process transactions. so isn't there a plateau somewhere, relative to the throughput of the network? nb: non-expert here

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#198

Post by gruez »

coretx wrote: post #168
kevintb wrote: post #17

Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8

Both gold mining & forex consumes magnitudes more energy than Bitcoin mining. Whatever the chinese rationale is, it ain't about the climate.

>forex consumes magnitudes more energy than Bitcoin mining

Source on this?

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#199

Post by plutonorm »

mrb wrote: post #82
kevintb wrote: post #17

Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8

No, Bitcoin won't raise global average temperatures by 2°C. This Nature article was debunked by other researchers. I too was asked to review it (recently, post-publication) and the gist of what they did wrong in their analysis is: * They overestimate (probably by 3x-5x) the present power consumption of miners because they assume the distribution of types of mining machine is homogenous in this table: https://github.c…

I have half a suspicion that it's the fact that it's burning through lots of fuel that is driving it's adoption. Processes in general seem to be driven by a kind of 'pressure' between low entropy and high entropy regions. This includes life itself. If life has a purpose it is to increase the flow across these low/high entropy regions. I don't think it's too outlandish to suppose some kind of hidden process that drives systems in general to optimise this flow. Bitcoin is just such a system, it's doing this transfer perfectly. Something tells me it's going to be extremely difficult to stamp out and I will be surprised if it does not continue to rise in value and energy consumption at an exponential rate, unless something systematic is done to disrupt it's progression. Buy bitcoin.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#200

Post by looeee »

siwatanejo wrote: post #31
kevintb wrote: post #17

Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8

You're misinformed, please read https://blog.bitcoin.org.hk/bitcoin-mining-and-energy-consum...

Bitcoin.org is not likely to be an unbiased source when it comes to the negative aspects of Bitcoin.
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