Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ethereum also uses Proof Of Work mining....
it's at least planning to switch over to proof of stake though
How's that going? Been hearing that it's happening "really soon now" for at least 3 years.
Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
21–30 of 209 posts
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you talking about capitalism in general or just some specific activity?
I am talking about Proof-of-Work being attached to an 'asset' of astronomical value. Governments should ban the transaction of PoW cryptocurrencies on environmental grounds, in addition to the misallocation of computer chips.
Bitcoin without PoW has no value. It's the entire reason it works. Without expending a finite resource to produce another, you can't constrain a money supply nor prevent it from attacks.
Governments would be unwise to ban a voluntary system for the same reason they don't ban any other uses of energy that people question the value of (there are plenty). In any case, it will not stop, only move. If not to another massive farm in a favorable jurisdiction (that could be captured) then to smaller sections where it is unidentifiable.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are pretty poor there, and Russia supports them a lot (you can have russian passport if you live there). I assume most infrastructure is supported using russian help. It is logical Russia does not want her money spent by miners, who are probably not even from Abkhazia.
Abkhazia is a Georgian territory occupied by Russia. Russia is the #1 reason for poverty in the region.
Mind to explain? Russia uses electromagnetics do diminish the rate of ideas of the population?
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#24I've never heard of Abkhazia before, so I had to look it up. It's a partially recognized state, part of Georgia [0]. There's even been a war in 1992-1993, after the collapse of the USSR [1]. Sometimes I'm still surprised of my ignorance about important facts that happened during my lifetime. Anyway, the next question for me was: why is electricity so cheap there, and should I assume it's cheap 24/7, and therefore gen…
Funny enough, the name immediately jumped out to me because of video games ;)
The free map coming with the DCS World flight simulator is a large part of the eastern Black Sea and western Caucasus, and there's quite a few missions and campaigns in the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions (some with a heavy Russian narrative, some from Georgian and NATO point of view, so all in all quite balanced I'd say). Having never heard of Abkhazia and Ossetia before either this lead me to read up on their (mostly troubled) history.
Who says video games aren't educational.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#25How does the network protocol of bitcoin work? Would governments be able to block it? Can it be DDoS-ed?
They can't realistically block it. Normally the miners are trivial "structure in, best hash out" functions. The logic of choosing the transactions and preparing new blocks can be completely independent and distribute the work over any number of remote miners. (That's pretty much how mining pools work)
The network transport would be trivial to change, or tunnel over (for example) SSH.
DoS also wouldn't be likely - if you have power to do that and can identify the connection, you're likely to have access to the physical address.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#26I've never heard of Abkhazia before, so I had to look it up. It's a partially recognized state, part of Georgia [0]. There's even been a war in 1992-1993, after the collapse of the USSR [1]. Sometimes I'm still surprised of my ignorance about important facts that happened during my lifetime. Anyway, the next question for me was: why is electricity so cheap there, and should I assume it's cheap 24/7, and therefore gen…
I've been there during my urbex days.
Frozen conflict zone, not unlike Transnistria, South Ossetia or Nagorno Karabakh. The border is militarized, except the Georgian side which doesn't seem to consider Abkhazia a threat. Lots of abandoned infrastructure because the native Georgian population was killed and/or fleed, and hasn't been harnessed for some reason. Abkhaz cross the border daily to buy basic stuff from Georgia. Only approved vehicles can cross, so most people do it walking with "taxi drivers" servicing both sides of the border. Most of the foreigners there are Russians looking for a cheap seaside vacation. There are streets named after Shamil Basayev (!).
Actually I left Abkhazia illegally, since you have to collect the visa inside (as there aren't diplomatic missions anywhere) after crossing the border, and the offices were closed all 3 days that my visa was going to be valid for. So yeah, arguing with soldiers for 4 hours in my rudimentary Russian wasn't great.
Border crossing: https://i.imgur.com/dFMnwsJ.jpg
They made me delete the picture but LPT: keep the SD card aside for the rest of the trip, then run an undelete tool on it.
AMA.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are pretty poor there, and Russia supports them a lot (you can have russian passport if you live there). I assume most infrastructure is supported using russian help. It is logical Russia does not want her money spent by miners, who are probably not even from Abkhazia.
Abkhazia is a Georgian territory occupied by Russia. Russia is the #1 reason for poverty in the region.
I'm in no way supporter of Putins regime and I totally agree that he'll do everything to keep all countries around poor and unstable, but come on. Original war in Abkhazia happened when USSR crashed and it was your usual ethnic conflict. Not some orchestrated hybrid war like in Ukraine, but real civil war. I've been in both Abkhazia and Georgia and people of both countries relise that and count themself the righteous side.
Yeah it's obvious that Russian establishment have all reason sto keep this conflict unresolved as it's prevent Gerogia from joining NATO or EU. But even if regime in Russia gonna change there is no easy solution because ethnic conflict didn't go anywhere.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's at least planning to switch over to proof of stake though
How's that going? Been hearing that it's happening "really soon now" for at least 3 years.
They actually started their path of getting required amount of ETH stacked. But it's can still take several years.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's at least planning to switch over to proof of stake though
How's that going? Been hearing that it's happening "really soon now" for at least 3 years.
I'm running a PoS validator right now. It's been live for months.
Actual transactions will go through this very network in probably a year.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#30So now the developing world will start using their energy to mine BTC instead of manufacturing goods for us to consume.
Will this ultimately cause inflation then? Because demand for goods will not be met?
This crypto experiment keeps yielding more interesting results.