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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?

#201

Post by dopidop »

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.

Most crypto are running on Ethereum at this point. A lots of useless Bitcoin clone indeed.

But a lot is happening still. Heck, I think some of those chains even serve a actual purpose, without the computational issues. Crazy right ?

As for Bitcoin, I hope the money in it trickle down to actual useful things. But, trickling down. Well, we know how it goes .

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

#202

Post by xur17 »

faeyanpiraat wrote: post #140
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 don’t think that is a valid defense. Bitcoin started the whole crypto craze, and etherereum wouldn’t exist without bitcoin. And the eth (and who knows how many other coin) crowd certainly does still mine on gpus.

> And the eth (and who knows how many other coin) crowd certainly does still mine on gpus.

And is actively on the path to proof of stake.

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

#203

Post by realce »

random_kris wrote: post #196
httpsterio wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it literally does mean that. Punk is a rebellion against the system, which is made out of the big guys.

Maybe the rebellion is happening and Bitcoin&friends are slowly winning

Oh - just like punk did?

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

#204

Post by larzang »

Kiro wrote: post #123
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…

I don't understand how a forum called Hacker News is so dismissive of an invention that should be right up a hacker's alley. Innovative, technical, cryptographic and decentralized. Cryptocurrencies feel like something straight out of a cyberpunk novel.

Wasting massive amounts of mostly carbon-producing electricity as the planet dies to do absolutely nothing productive is a pretty cyberpunk evil megacorp thing to do, agreed.

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

#205

Post by amelius »

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…

> I just... do not understand how smart, even _brilliant_ people, the sort of people who know enough to make something like this, (...)

You can say the same about people in adtech.

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

#206

Post by ghkbrew »

sygma wrote: post #192
Igelau wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which begs the question Heh. I think you just unintentionally used this correctly by assuming there even is a new use case.

It was intentional. I am thinking probabilistically here, and the jury is still out on whether “digital gold” is the use case.

"Begging the question"[0] is a logical fallacy where you provide an answer to a question that depends on first assuming the answer is correct. i.e. a circular argument.

That was intentional?

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

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

#207

Post by DebtDeflation »

chade wrote: post #25
surround wrote: post #12

It took me a while to actually understand how proof-of-work mining works because seemingly every article one the subject gives too abstract of an explanation. Turns out it's not that complex if you understand what a cryptographic hash is. Just take a block (a list of recent transactions) and take a SHA-256 hash if it over and over with slight variations until you get a hash that starts with enough consecutive zeroes.…

Proof-of-space is essentially stored Proof-of-work. You are pre-filling your drive with many cryptographic hash's. When a challenge comes in the software will do a quick check to see if any of your plots could possibly have a proof (a hash with sufficient zeros for that challenge). If any of your plots pass this filter then the plot is looked up on the HDD to check if it does indeed contain a proof. The difficulty, t…

I'm probably missing something here. CPU/GPU cycles are irreversible, you can't get them back after you have used them. Storage space is reversible, you can get it back at any time by deleting what has been stored. I'm sure they have a way of detecting and preventing this, but wouldn't that imply that constant network connectivity is required to check that the storage is still allocated?

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

#208

Post by noch »

xhrpost wrote: post #58

To be honest I kind of wish someone would build a proof-of-bandwidth crypto. Miners would overtake data centers with cheap transit, driving the build out of more long-haul network. Some would then move to different neighborhoods just to get FTTH access, enabling more incentive for last-mile build out.

> To be honest I kind of wish someone would build a proof-of-bandwidth crypto.

https://pkt.cash/ exists "built to incentivize the growth of infrastructure," and "PKT Network is designed to decentralize internet access around the world by enabling anyone to become an ISP." [0]

A key component of the PKT Network is cjdns (https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns).

[0]: https://pkt.cash/PKT_Network_v1.0_2021.02.01.pdf

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

#209

Post by philjohn »

amelius wrote: post #205
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…

> I just... do not understand how smart, even _brilliant_ people, the sort of people who know enough to make something like this, (...) You can say the same about people in adtech.

Can you? It seems the adtech makes a lot of money, but also gives businesses, especially small businesses, far greater reach than they could achieve 20-30 years ago. Seems like an apples to oranges comparison IMHO.

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

#210

Post by senbarryobama »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #88
Igelau wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in other words, there's a campaign (centralized or not) to pump Chia on HN? :(

this incredibly viral "chia will cause a shortage of hard drives" meme (true or not) is a huge gift wrapped win for the coin's promoters. every impression of this meme that results in someone's decision to avoid chia (which, had they never heard of the coin in the first place, would have been the outcome anyway) will be offset by a half dozen others who will spot a quick 10x return opportunity for themselves, even if…

Is your username a reference to Bitcoin skepticism?
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