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The Bitcoin hash rate has increased by 28.2% over the last month

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Re: The Bitcoin hash rate has increased by 28.2% over the last month

#31

Post by CyberDildonics »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #8
schmichael wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More electricity is being burned to do the same amount of work. I know that sounds snarky, but it's how proof-of-work systems like bitcoin work: "miners" all attempt to generate a specific hash which just means lots and lots of computation. The number of transactions per second the bitcoin protocol can handle is essentially capped and completely unrelated to hash rate as the difficulty of producing a correct hash is…

And still no discussion on the value of pissing away our planets energy reserves, just to create imaginary points in a paranoid game. In one view, all the electricity burned to make bitcoins is a crime against the planet.

This is so misguided I can barely think of a place to start. Do you think the current financial system is optimal? The financial industry currently makes up 8% of the entire US economy. Do you realize that bitcoin mining hashes and the number of transactions they can process are not linked?

Re: The Bitcoin hash rate has increased by 28.2% over the last month

#32

Post by VMG »

a_humean wrote: post #22
ethanbond wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a worse crime to say that because you have access to a stable, relatively apolitical currency, that no one else needs one. Bitcoin could be hugely beneficial for fledgling financial systems, and robust financial systems can be hugely beneficial for billions of people. Our energy crisis was not created by, and will not be solved by, Bitcoin. Numerous monetary crises could be addressed in serious ways by i…

I think many people would say that bitcoins aren't apolitical, but a new kind of gold buggery. Making it difficult in principle for a government treasury or a central bank to make certain kinds of decisions about monetary policy is political.

I guess it's political in the same was as encryption is.

Encryption makes it difficult for the government to make certain kinds of decisions as well.

Re: The Bitcoin hash rate has increased by 28.2% over the last month

#33

Post by brighton36 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #8
schmichael wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More electricity is being burned to do the same amount of work. I know that sounds snarky, but it's how proof-of-work systems like bitcoin work: "miners" all attempt to generate a specific hash which just means lots and lots of computation. The number of transactions per second the bitcoin protocol can handle is essentially capped and completely unrelated to hash rate as the difficulty of producing a correct hash is…

And still no discussion on the value of pissing away our planets energy reserves, just to create imaginary points in a paranoid game. In one view, all the electricity burned to make bitcoins is a crime against the planet.

You're correct. The problem is that bitcoin exists due to holes in the regulatory structure. People mine because people need anonymous value transfers. If you allow people to purchase drugs/gamble/capital-flight/etc with credit cards, then this externality cost will go away :)

Re: The Bitcoin hash rate has increased by 28.2% over the last month

#34

Post by VMG »

brighton36 wrote: post #33
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And still no discussion on the value of pissing away our planets energy reserves, just to create imaginary points in a paranoid game. In one view, all the electricity burned to make bitcoins is a crime against the planet.

You're correct. The problem is that bitcoin exists due to holes in the regulatory structure. People mine because people need anonymous value transfers. If you allow people to purchase drugs/gamble/capital-flight/etc with credit cards, then this externality cost will go away :)

Even then, you'd still need a fair way of distributing the initial value. Mining provides censorship-resistance and transparent issuance.

Re: The Bitcoin hash rate has increased by 28.2% over the last month

#35

Post by wlesieutre »

eganist wrote: post #11
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And still no discussion on the value of pissing away our planets energy reserves, just to create imaginary points in a paranoid game. In one view, all the electricity burned to make bitcoins is a crime against the planet.

Well, unless you replace furnaces with bitcoin mining hardware. But then again, I'd rather replace a furnace with a more productive set of hardware anyway.

A couple of things:

1) With electric heat you have to account for the energy production and grid transmission being around 30% efficient. Even though an electric heater or bitcoin miner is converting electricity to heat 100% efficiently, a majority of the thermal energy released in the power plant was already thrown out as waste.

2) Even using electricity, a heat pump beats the electric heaters. They're 2-3x as "efficient" in terms of how much heat it pushes into the house vs how much electricity it takes to do it. Technically this is measured as "coefficient of performance" instead of efficiency, since it's a ratio of heat transferred / energy consumed, rather than energy released / energy consumed (and efficiency >100% wouldn't make much sense).

3) Gas furnaces can be >90% efficient, which also beats the bitcoin miners. Even the lowest efficiency allowed by law (78%) is better than resistive electric.

4) There's more "embodied energy" in building a bitcoin miner than an electric heater, and it has a very short life as a useful miner before it's obseleted by newer chips.

Resistive electric heating only makes sense if you're looking for a low cost solution in a climate with a very minor cold season. And I highly doubt anybody's going to buy a bitcoin miner with the intent to only run it 3 weeks a year when it gets chilly outside.

Bitcoin is basically a giant scheme to extract as much value for the miners by dumping a bunch of externalities on everyone else in the form of fossil fuel subsidies and greenhouse gas production. Not a fan.

Re: The Bitcoin hash rate has increased by 28.2% over the last month

#36

Post by geertj »

Doing some back of the envelope calculations..

Hash rate is about 1,200 PH now. The most efficient ASIC miner today is the AntMiner S7 [1], which does 4.86 TH at 1.21 KW. This gives us a power consumption of the entire Bitcoin network of at least 300 MW. Actual power will easily be double that, given that not everybody is using the latest miner. So let's say total power consumption is about 600 MW. This is the output of a small power plant.

[1] https://www.bitcoinmining.com/bitcoin-mining-hardware/

Re: The Bitcoin hash rate has increased by 28.2% over the last month

#37

Post by eganist »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #20
eganist wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, unless you replace furnaces with bitcoin mining hardware. But then again, I'd rather replace a furnace with a more productive set of hardware anyway.

Heat pump. EDIT: Unless you live somewhere where the ambient temp goes below ~0F, get a heat pump.

Hence furnaces. Unless someone's managed to create servers which become cooler upon load, I'd assume these boxes wouldn't be able to substitute for heat pumps.

But in general, I agree with you. :)

Re: The Bitcoin hash rate has increased by 28.2% over the last month

#38

Post by martindevans »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #20
eganist wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, unless you replace furnaces with bitcoin mining hardware. But then again, I'd rather replace a furnace with a more productive set of hardware anyway.

Heat pump. EDIT: Unless you live somewhere where the ambient temp goes below ~0F, get a heat pump.

What's special about 255K (0F) in relation to heat pumps?

Re: The Bitcoin hash rate has increased by 28.2% over the last month

#39

Post by toomuchtodo »

martindevans wrote: post #38
toomuchtodo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat pump. EDIT: Unless you live somewhere where the ambient temp goes below ~0F, get a heat pump.

What's special about 255K (0F) in relation to heat pumps?

Just a number I picked from domain knowledge. Almost all newer heat pumps can still efficiently pull heat out of that temperature, although some more expensive ones can go all the way down to -20 - -30F ambient air temp.

EDIT: If you're in a colder climate, in-ground coolant loops are preferred over an air transfer heat pump.

Re: The Bitcoin hash rate has increased by 28.2% over the last month

#40

Post by a_humean »

VMG wrote: post #32
a_humean wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people would say that bitcoins aren't apolitical, but a new kind of gold buggery. Making it difficult in principle for a government treasury or a central bank to make certain kinds of decisions about monetary policy is political.

I guess it's political in the same was as encryption is. Encryption makes it difficult for the government to make certain kinds of decisions as well.

Yes, but in the case of encryption we have competing issues relating to commerce, privacy, crime, and national security that have to be considered and weighed - which is a political process. In the case of gold buggery all we have is a political ideology of unrelenting suspicion of government trying to enforce through law or technology ideas about monetary policy that fall well outside of the economic mainstream all in service of depriving government of tools we know to be very effective at influencing the economy.
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