Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coinbase outages

coinbase.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 310 posts

Re: Coinbase outages

#281

Post by neither_color »

dougmwne wrote: post #103

I was shocked the other day on the Ethereum PoS announcement by the energy consumption per transaction metrics. It threw the whole crypto market into a new light for me. BTC is using over a megawatt hour PER transaction! That's almost 5000 miles in a Tesla model 3. BTC is using about 2/3 of the power of every data center on the planet! Many, many people have been imprisoned or executed for creating less societal harm…

> Satoshi Nakamoto may end up being the most destructive person to have ever lived.

I was with you up until this part...this kind of over-dramatization might turn others away. I can think of several genocidal dictators worse than Satoshi Nakamoto. If anything Satoshi is an Alfred Nobel type figure, who invented dynamite. We don't attribute all deaths from explosions to Alfred Nobel, and Satoshi is not guilty of what miners and speculators do.

Re: Coinbase outages

#282

Post by neither_color »

jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote: post #269
vorpalhex wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect Satoshi lacks the intent to be a villian here. The creator of the Keurig, a device which produces amazing amounts of waste, talked about the unintended consequences of his invention and how ashamed he is for the damage his invention has done. https://time.com/3731356/keurig-coffee-k-cup/

> unintended consequences I'm sorry but you have to be very short sighted to call single dose coffee in non-recyclable capsules "unintended" waste.

The Nobel Prize is named after the guy who invented dynamite so I'm not judging a single inventor for not being able to conjure up the infinite number of ways his invention could be misused.

Re: Coinbase outages

#283

Post by throw_away »

neither_color wrote: post #282
jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unintended consequences I'm sorry but you have to be very short sighted to call single dose coffee in non-recyclable capsules "unintended" waste.

The Nobel Prize is named after the guy who invented dynamite so I'm not judging a single inventor for not being able to conjure up the infinite number of ways his invention could be misused.

Nobel created the prize pool to atone for his deficit of imagination (or at least, to improve his posthumous image) upon reading scathing obituaries of himself mistakenly published when his brother died: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel#Nobel_Prize

If Satoshi does something like this with his cold wallets, or Mr. Keurig does the same with his k-cup loot, then we'll think about it.

Re: Coinbase outages

#284

Post by lottin »

_alex_ wrote: post #272
lottin wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't mean it's a dumb metric. Any efficiency metric must measure cost per unit of output and in a crypto-currency that's power per transaction.

why not power per dollar transferred? transactions per 10 minute period is relatively constant over time. The thing that increases the energy usage is the price of bitcoin. It's a dumb metric.

> The thing that increases the energy usage is the price of bitcoin.

This simply tells us that bitcoin has a dumb cost structure. Apparently its inventors didn't think about that either. But that's not our problem. Our problem is measuring efficiency, and for that we need a measure of efficiency. And a measure of efficiency needs to be chosen in terms of how good it is at measuring efficiency, not in terms of how good it is at hiding that a certain payment system has a dumb cost structure.

Re: Coinbase outages

#285

Post by mthoms »

idreyn wrote: post #157
jonrcooper wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope - the author is incorrectly using total energy / total transactions to get this number. Which, is understandable. However, if there were 2x the transactions, the total energy would stay very close to the same. So no. There's a lot of energy to secure the network, but the actual energy usage per transaction itself is a small fraction of that misquoted number.

But it's worth clarifying that the number is correct — Bitcoin is currently using 1 Mwh per transaction.

Energy per transaction is not a very useful metric since each validated block helps secure previous blocks as well.

Put another way - each validated block helps secure every single transaction that came before it.

I'm not going to argue that the energy consumption is worth it (I don't think it's sustainable myself). I'm only pointing out that energy per transaction is a bad metric if you want to have an honest debate. It's much more complicated than that.

Re: Coinbase outages

#286

Post by keymone »

dougmwne wrote: post #103

I was shocked the other day on the Ethereum PoS announcement by the energy consumption per transaction metrics. It threw the whole crypto market into a new light for me. BTC is using over a megawatt hour PER transaction! That's almost 5000 miles in a Tesla model 3. BTC is using about 2/3 of the power of every data center on the planet! Many, many people have been imprisoned or executed for creating less societal harm…

Energy used for PoW per transaction is a dumb metric.

Satoshi actually made the most efficient decentralized money that can ever exist and prevented more externalities in the world than potentially any human ever will.

Re: Coinbase outages

#287

Post by keymone »

Mizza wrote: post #66

Shaaaaady. The NYGA report on Tether is due today. Tether is completely insolvent, and once the rug is pulled, all of the exchanges are going to realize that all of their "stable" reserves are worthless and they can't pay out what they're storing for customers, and the price will tumble all the way down as there's a run on the pseudo-banks that can't payout. Or not, what do I know.

Imagine still repeating the same “tether is about to collapse” fairy tale in 2021

Personally I don’t care - let it collapse if they did anything shady, but this zerohedge-esque “broken clock” strategy is extremely amusing.

Re: Coinbase outages

#288

Post by bb88 »

keymone wrote: post #286
dougmwne wrote: post #103

I was shocked the other day on the Ethereum PoS announcement by the energy consumption per transaction metrics. It threw the whole crypto market into a new light for me. BTC is using over a megawatt hour PER transaction! That's almost 5000 miles in a Tesla model 3. BTC is using about 2/3 of the power of every data center on the planet! Many, many people have been imprisoned or executed for creating less societal harm…

Energy used for PoW per transaction is a dumb metric. Satoshi actually made the most efficient decentralized money that can ever exist and prevented more externalities in the world than potentially any human ever will.

> Energy used for PoW per transaction is a dumb metric.

Cars monitor energy use through MPG. Datacenters monitor it as well. Why should crypto currencies get a pass?

> Satoshi actually made the most efficient decentralized money that can ever exist and prevented more externalities in the world than potentially any human ever will.

[CITATION NEEDED]

Re: Coinbase outages

#289

Post by gfodor »

gfodor wrote: post #263
suprfsat wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the surface of the Earth will eventually become a black body radiator _anyway_, so why should it bother anyone if we want to have a little fun first.

No my point is that eventually the energy burn per transaction in crypto will likely be near zero.

Downvoting is fine but I'd take a gentleman's bet that in 10 years either crypto has Given the entire argument seems lost on readers given the downvotes it's simple: proof of stake and increased use of crypto both drive down energy cost per transaction. The more people use crypto, the cheaper energy use per transaction assuming currency prices stay the same. (This is lost on most commentators, but it's reasonable to expect price stability in the post-speculation phase of crypto adoption.) And proof of stake and side chains stand to drive those costs down by several orders of magnitude.

Re: Coinbase outages

#290

Post by keymone »

bb88 wrote: post #288
keymone wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy used for PoW per transaction is a dumb metric. Satoshi actually made the most efficient decentralized money that can ever exist and prevented more externalities in the world than potentially any human ever will.

> Energy used for PoW per transaction is a dumb metric. Cars monitor energy use through MPG. Datacenters monitor it as well. Why should crypto currencies get a pass? > Satoshi actually made the most efficient decentralized money that can ever exist and prevented more externalities in the world than potentially any human ever will. [CITATION NEEDED]

> Cars monitor energy use through MPG. Datacenters monitor it as well. Why should crypto currencies get a pass?

cars spend energy to move. datacenters spend energy to compute things. bitcoin mining doesn't spend energy to process achieve some TPS, it spends energy to achieve certain level of security, so it's security per energy spent that matters, not energy per transaction.

if transactions or number of them are not an input to a bitcoin miner -- if miner will spand the same energy whether it's for 1 or 1 trillion transactions -- then energy per transaction metric is zero signal.

> [CITATION NEEDED]

no, actually, it's an opinion. current financial system and fiat money cause immense externalities: war, corruption, hunger, crime, etc. bitcoin is an incarnation of money where security is expressed in form of energy spent - you no longer need to involve politics or any other human activities to achieve security and so a large incentive for those simply disappears. bitcoin doesn't solve those externalities, but that specific aspect of money is simply no longer contributing.

Post reply on HN