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Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

greentechmedia.com

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Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#21

Post by mrb »

bpodgursky wrote: post #3

Perfect! Put a few tons of carbon in the air pointlessly calculating hashes to mine *coins, and then use those e-coins to charge your electric car. This uses Ethereum so when they eventually move to proof-of-stake I'll mostly retract my scorn, but for now I stand by this being counterproductive and dumb.

"Put a few tons of carbon in the air pointlessly calculating hashes to mine coins"

It's not pointless. Have you read the arguments in http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-mining-is-not-wasteful/ ? It's not Ethereum-specific but the same logic applies. I feel I post that link too frequently, but people get too often mentally blocked on one technical detail (hashing) and fail to think about the big picture (renewables, jobs created, real utility of cryptos, etc). If cars with internal combustion engines were introduced today, would HNers complain its a dumb tech because it wastes 97% of the fuel's energy?[1]

[1] 90% wasted moving 1.5 tons of metal and only 150 kg of useful cargo/passengers, and remaining 7% wasted mostly as heat/friction.

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#22

Post by DoctorBit »

cperciva wrote: post #7
stale2002 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bank of America also puts carbon in the air in order to make your debit card work. Those offices cost a lot of money, resources, and carbon in order to keep the lights on and make those databases work. How are crypto-currencies any different than that?

Bank of America processes orders of magnitude more transactions per ton of CO2 emissions.

LOL, that's an interesting new metric for financial transactions - I like it! I sure hope Vitalik et. al. can pull off Casper as advertised.

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#23

Post by stale2002 »

bpodgursky wrote: post #9
stale2002 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bank of America also puts carbon in the air in order to make your debit card work. Those offices cost a lot of money, resources, and carbon in order to keep the lights on and make those databases work. How are crypto-currencies any different than that?

This conversation has been done a million times, and I don't feel like going through the motions again when it's so easy to look up. The fact is it is different (1) fundamentally, because BoA would use 0 electricity if it could, while it will ALWAYS be worthwhile to spend a certain fraction of Bitcoin's transaction volume on electricity in order to capture transaction fees, and that will ALWAYS involve pointless hash…

Crypto currencies would absolutely use zero electricity if they could too.

There are efforts RIGHT NOW to solve this problem. So just like how BOA wastes electricity right now, and is trying to reduce its electricity use, so too are cryptocurrencies.

For example, one way to do it is to power the blockchain via "wasted" electricity from other sources, that was going to do nothing anyway. For example, a heater literally sends electricity through wires, and "wastes" that energy to create heat. One could imagine a heater that uses the electricity/heat from mining for "free".

Or even at a more basic level, imagine a electric dam, that produces so much power during certain times in the day, that it has to sell it for negative prices on the market. Thats Free energy right there!

Another example is Proof of Space algorithms. The way it works is instead of using GPU heavy hashing algorithms, you use "Space" intensive hashing algorithms.

The reason why you do this is because there is a TON of extra hard disk space that is just lying around doing nothing. We could take that extra space for "free" and use it to secure a blockchain (while allowing the user to reclaim the space at any time with no effort), and it would cost very little electricity.

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#24

Post by 0x006A »

jstanley wrote: post #18
spraak wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: I was mistaken

If it's literally just "use cryptocurrency to pay for car charging", I don't think that counts as "blockchain-enabled" any more than, say, accepting Visa payments makes you "database-enabled". (I've read it now) EDIT: Not that the misleading headline makes it a worse project. I actually think "use cryptocurrency to pay for anything " is a good project. But it's not blockchain-enabled. And that's a good thing.

... uses the Share&Charge platform developed by MotionWerk. Share&Charge harnesses the Ethereum blockchain to track the charging transactions and exchange payment between customer and host.

https://shareandcharge.com/

Money can be cashed-in to your Share&Charge wallet by using credit card, PayPal...

In addition to the Blockchain technology we developed our Share&Charge App, which builds the point of intersection between the users and the Blockchain.

https://blog.slock.it/share-charge-launches-its-app-on-board...

At the moment, this token cannot be traded and is reserved for use exclusively within the Share&Charge project, however, an e-money license being sought by the payment provider xtech of the project could see its use extended to it to other fields.

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#25

Post by iMuzz »

jstanley wrote: post #12

Cryptocurrency enthusiast here. This is exactly the sort of nonsense that people are doing that makes other people think the entire cryptocurrency community is a joke. Obviously there is no benefit to having this on a blockchain here. You can just pay the charging station. I made a comment the other day that there is very little overlap between cryptocurrency enthusiasts and people who want to blockchain-all-the-thin…

> Obviously there is no benefit to having this on a blockchain here.

- Minuscule transaction fees as opposed to 3% banking fees.

- Less necessary server infrastructure to manage identity/payments

Would these not be benefits or am I missing something?

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#26

Post by jstanley »

mrb wrote: post #21
bpodgursky wrote: post #3

Perfect! Put a few tons of carbon in the air pointlessly calculating hashes to mine *coins, and then use those e-coins to charge your electric car. This uses Ethereum so when they eventually move to proof-of-stake I'll mostly retract my scorn, but for now I stand by this being counterproductive and dumb.

" Put a few tons of carbon in the air pointlessly calculating hashes to mine coins " It's not pointless. Have you read the arguments in http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-mining-is-not-wasteful/ ? It's not Ethereum-specific but the same logic applies. I feel I post that link too frequently, but people get too often mentally blocked on one technical detail (hashing) and fail to think about the big picture (renewables, jo…

Thanks for writing this. I've been looking for a decent article to send people who argue that mining is a waste of energy, and this is that.

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#27

Post by jstanley »

stale2002 wrote: post #23
bpodgursky wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This conversation has been done a million times, and I don't feel like going through the motions again when it's so easy to look up. The fact is it is different (1) fundamentally, because BoA would use 0 electricity if it could, while it will ALWAYS be worthwhile to spend a certain fraction of Bitcoin's transaction volume on electricity in order to capture transaction fees, and that will ALWAYS involve pointless hash…

Crypto currencies would absolutely use zero electricity if they could too. There are efforts RIGHT NOW to solve this problem. So just like how BOA wastes electricity right now, and is trying to reduce its electricity use, so too are cryptocurrencies. For example, one way to do it is to power the blockchain via "wasted" electricity from other sources, that was going to do nothing anyway. For example, a heater literall…

> For example, a heater literally sends electricity through wires, and "wastes" that energy to create heat. One could imagine a heater that uses the electricity/heat from mining for "free".

Right, but once people do that, mining becomes more efficient. If mining becomes more efficient, more people start mining, then the difficulty adjusts, and then you're back at the beginning.

It's not a bad thing: efficiency gains are good. But they don't reduce the total energy expenditure, because they incentivise increased mining.

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#29

Post by jstanley »

iMuzz wrote: post #25
jstanley wrote: post #12

Cryptocurrency enthusiast here. This is exactly the sort of nonsense that people are doing that makes other people think the entire cryptocurrency community is a joke. Obviously there is no benefit to having this on a blockchain here. You can just pay the charging station. I made a comment the other day that there is very little overlap between cryptocurrency enthusiasts and people who want to blockchain-all-the-thin…

> Obviously there is no benefit to having this on a blockchain here. - Minuscule transaction fees as opposed to 3% banking fees. - Less necessary server infrastructure to manage identity/payments Would these not be benefits or am I missing something?

Those are properties of using cryptocurrency for payment, they're not properties of putting car charging on a blockchain.

I think that's what this project does, and the headline is simply misleading. It's not really "blockchain-enabled", it just uses Ethereum for payment.

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#30

Post by stale2002 »

jstanley wrote: post #27
stale2002 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto currencies would absolutely use zero electricity if they could too. There are efforts RIGHT NOW to solve this problem. So just like how BOA wastes electricity right now, and is trying to reduce its electricity use, so too are cryptocurrencies. For example, one way to do it is to power the blockchain via "wasted" electricity from other sources, that was going to do nothing anyway. For example, a heater literall…

> For example, a heater literally sends electricity through wires, and "wastes" that energy to create heat. One could imagine a heater that uses the electricity/heat from mining for "free". Right, but once people do that, mining becomes more efficient. If mining becomes more efficient, more people start mining, then the difficulty adjusts, and then you're back at the beginning. It's not a bad thing : efficiency gains…

No, mining does not become more efficient. It make it unprofitable for people to mine bitcoin, because they are competing with people who are using free electricity.

The only people who would be mining are the ones who are spending 0$ on electricity, because the electricity would otherwise be wasted.

By heater, I meant literally a heater in someone's house.

The idea is that the only electricity that would be spent on the blockchain is electricity that was going to be sent down the drain anyway.

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