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Bitcoin as a Battery

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Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#281

Post by intotheabyss »

detaro wrote: post #279
intotheabyss wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very disingenuous to include NFTs in the same category as Bitcoin. NFTs live on Ethereum which is in the process of changing its consensus from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.

a) NFTs as a concept aren't tied to a particular blockchain b) if you choose today to put yours on ETH instead of a chain that is today not PoW, you don't get to play the "but soon(TM)" card IMHO

a) Which just further proves my point that you shouldn't lump NFTs with Bitcoin. In practice however, all of the valuable NFTs are on Ethereum (afterall, NFTs are only as valuable as their underlying security)

b) Not sure what your point is. Global climate change is by definition a long-term problem, and yet you're fretting about a couple of years. Right. This sounds more like a personal disagreement with Ethereum than a genuine interest in supporting green cryptos.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#282

Post by intotheabyss »

Roark66 wrote: post #27

The only way PoW crypto is superceded is if someone finally implements PoS. There is a lot of hope in ethereum "moving to" proof of stake, but I think a move will never happen. Miners will not allow it. It'll be a fork. Then, if it has to be forked why not start from scratch with something better? I imagine/hope many people are working on better crypto protocols at the moment.

Even if it forked, that would be working as intended. Anyone can fork Ethereum, but there's currently billions locked in staking on the Beacon Chain, so there's at least a large segment of the community that will support PoS, so there will be a PoS chain, even if there's also a forked PoW chain. I just doubt the PoW chain will remain useful, as the PoS chain will have obvious benefits and would likely remain the dominant Ethereum.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#283

Post by detaro »

intotheabyss wrote: post #281
detaro wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) NFTs as a concept aren't tied to a particular blockchain b) if you choose today to put yours on ETH instead of a chain that is today not PoW, you don't get to play the "but soon(TM)" card IMHO

a) Which just further proves my point that you shouldn't lump NFTs with Bitcoin. In practice however, all of the valuable NFTs are on Ethereum (afterall, NFTs are only as valuable as their underlying security) b) Not sure what your point is. Global climate change is by definition a long-term problem, and yet you're fretting about a couple of years. Right. This sounds more like a personal disagreement with Ethereum th…

NFTs on PoS chains exist today. Some artists explicitly chose those because of that. Everyone else needs a good answer why they didn't, and if "I can't get as rich with those" is a good enough answer. Especially given the push for legitimacy connected to NFTs.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#285

Post by yellowapple »

This would be more compelling if there was a way to turn a cryptocurrency back into energy.

And indeed, energy-backed currency seems to be a staple of science fiction - things like "energy credits". Cryptocurrency gets us halfway there, in the sense that you can transform energy into it, but the reverse ain't really feasible.

Perhaps as (actual) batteries and supercapacitors and such continue to miniaturize we'll see something closer to a true energy credit, with financial transactions taking place through the transfer of stored energy - be it directly (people maintaining batteries as wallets) or indirectly (people exchanging currency entitling the holder to some amount of energy).

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#286

Post by jebeng »

capableweb wrote: post #167
audunw wrote: post #143

What the hell is is with cryptocurrency proponents and trying to redefine words to suit their narrative? First Bitcoin was NOT fiat currency (despite being one of the most fiat currencies by definition), then it was also a store of value (despite it being a horrible store of value, a high-risk high-reward investment is more accurate). Now it's supposed to be a battery? When the energy being put into it is basically p…

> I really do think cryptocurrency and block-chain technology is cool. But the level of hype and double-think is getting insane. I agree with this, the amount of hype makes it hard to find the true innovations in the space, because most of it is honestly shit. > There are plenty of ways to do digital transactions Yes, but Bitcoin was not initially made to just "do digital transactions". It was made to be able to do d…

> Now a couple of years into blockchain technology, we have some alternatives that _might_ work as well as Proof of Work (Proof of Stake for example) but we've yet to see if it actually can work on the scale that Bitcoin operates in. Time will tell.

Proof of Stake as a theory and concept is probably almost 10 years old at this point. And as an actual real-money-in-production blockchain Proof of Stake will actually be 10 years old in the next couple of years or so.

I wish I could confidently remember specific names and dates here, but on bitcointalk I remember SunnyKing coding and launching a real in production a PoS coin almost 10 years ago now...I want to say it was something like "NuCoin" but I could be off on the name there. I do speicifically remember he made Primecoin which was an alternative PoW function based on discovering the world's highest prime numbers(kind of cool, which is why I remember it I guess) after he was done with his initial PoS coin. He(SunnyKing) was also endlessly trolled and mocked due to the theoretical threat PoS posed to those invested in Bitcoin and other PoW coins like Litecoin at the time.

There was also a larger PoS coin called NXT from that era(again, almost 10 years ago, 2013 maybe?) that I suppose never really caught on, perhaps it was technically flawed?

There were lots of legitimate criticisms of PoS regarding whether or not it was a truly viable decentralized consensus mechanism. And I don't claim to after the answer to whether or not it is, or was sufficiently viable. But historically there was also lots of trolling and suppression from people trying to protect their investments.

It apparently may be finally getting its time, given PoS as a technology seems to have only recently become a mainstream topic of interest, despite how old the tech and theories themselves are. Perhaps that's just because the problems were only recently solved?

But regardless, I find it funny how much play PoS gets these days now that mainstream media is reporting on how PoW mining as a whole is using more power than many nation states, as if there was any other path for PoW to scale given its fundamental design.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#287

Post by scotty79 »

xiphias2 wrote: post #258
scotty79 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. That's also great if you can monetize trained ML models so easily that everyone can participate. It's already being done to some very small degree by few companies that locate their ML server farms in places where energy is cheap and renewable. I hope this application will some day compete with crypto for computing power and energy and win but I don't think it will be popularized and commoditized soon enough to…

,,If you could create crypto based on ML training it would be so cool.'' That would actually be a bad thing: the real value in proof of work is that it doesn't have any extra value to the miner, which stops miners from gaining a huge edge over other possible future miners. What's behind all the controversy is that proof of work has to be totally useless work, that's what makes it valuable for the blockchain :)

Could you direct me to more elaborate discussion why work in proof of work must be useless?

Am I wrong thinking that any problem with hard to find, but easily verifiable solution, should be ok? It would be nice if it had easily adjustable difficulty to scale it with processing power of the miners.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#288

Post by toss1 »

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #262
toss1 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it is not the sunk cost of the mining that drives it in your model, but the cost of new mining. (the sunk cost is mere history). Also, it is not clear that having more or fewer miners on the network drives prices - it seems more likely that more miners reduce transaction/confirmation times, improving service levels and increasing value (to the extent that actual transactions drive value or price).

> Also, it is not clear that having more or fewer miners on the network drives prices Of course it is. If it costs a miner $10k in electricity, rent etc to mine 1 BTC, they will need to sell at least $10k worth of BTC to cover their cost. If they stop mining, they will have less pressure to sell. Miners hold over 2mm BTC so hard to see how their actions have no direct impact on price. My point, is that when electrici…

Sure, miners as holders of BTC can affect prices.

But it seems that the cost of electricity can drive down prices, not only up.

You said that price of electricity 'backstops' prices, and that miner spending $10K on electricity will need to sell that much BTC. Seems more like an inverse relationship. They need to sell $10K whether the price is $100/BTC or $100K/BTC, so lower BTC value makes more selling. Similarly, higher elec costs increase ready supply of BTC on sale, more supply lower prices.

On the other side, lower elec costs, mean more hoarding by miners, reducing sell-side pressure/supply

This would seem to make elec costs inversely related to BTC dollar value, not supporting it - so an effect, but in the other direction?

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#289

Post by mr_woozy »

verdverm wrote: post #222
hackernudes wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think bitcoin should be valuable. Your point is fine, but it really doesn't address the article at all! Assuming bitcoin stays valuable, does it make sense to use bitcoin mining to augment some power projects? Like using otherwise wasted energy to mine or to mine in places where it might not be easy to transmit the electricity?

Actual batteries would be a better choice than consuming the energy at the time it is created. Investing in better transmission infrastructure would increase this benefit.

This doesn't hold for places like Iceland (where I live) as there will never be transmission of power to either continent due to distance impedance losses.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#290

Post by danboarder »

ForHackernews wrote: post #152
danboarder wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By purchasing electricity with Bitcoin.

By this logic, dollar bills make a much better "battery".

Perhaps an equally good "battery", this is the principal of fungibility as a currency. Given the built-in halving structure of bitcoin, in the long run bitcoin may "store" or buy more electricity relative to the dollar that has inflationary pressure (USD tends to lose 3%/yr in real value due to inflation).
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