Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#301

Post by doggosphere » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

NoOneNew wrote: post #221

sleavey wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone tried to calculate the energy expenditure of the fiat currency system as a comparison, ideally per "unit worth" (whatever that might be) since fiat still vastly outcapitalises cryptocurrency?

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ They have an extremely detailed explanation and process to determine the footprint of Bitcoin transactions. Anyways, they also have the numbers for Visa based transactions, which can start to give you an idea how efficient the old system of digital transactions are. Its 980,000+ Visa transactions to equate the energy used for 1 bitcoin transaction.

VISA is a layer 2 solution, it makes no sense to compare it to Bitcoin directly.

Compare Bitcoin to the energy usage of federal reserve and resources spent on securing the US Dollar (implicit and explicit), because that's what the Bitcoin network does. It secures immutable property via a decentralized, open source protocol.

If you want to compare layer 2 solutions, compare Coinbase or Paypal's internal settlement of Bitcoin transactions to VISA. Those metrics are much more relevant.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#302

Post by titzer » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

NoOneNew wrote: post #280

mschuster91 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Heat generation really is the stupidest way of doing things. With things like storage, at least you can reuse it after the fact. For what it's worth - something like a house heating unit could easily be done by a coin miner, and there have been such projects presented on Reddit and HN before.

Isnt this kind of like saying we should bring back incandescent light bulbs so people will heat their houses with them? Like, I appreciate trying to dual purpose energy use... but I dont see a specialized computer that pumps heat as practical. I'm pretty sure it's going to be wasted watts too instead of using a real heater. My 800w box doesn't generate anywhere near as many BTUs as a 600w ceramic box heater. Even tho…

800 watts is not actually very much heat. A typical small space heater is 2000W. I have no idea what you intend by implying that 800 watts is not as many BTUs as 600 watts--watts are literally a measure of power, i.e. can be converted to BTUs per hour. And yes, all those 800 watts of power your computer draws do end up as waste heat [1].

> I'm pretty sure it's going to be wasted watts too instead of using a real heater.

That makes no sense. You literally cannot "waste" waste heat, unless you are venting it to outside or something. If your space is not getting warm enough, it's because your computer is not generating enough heat!

[1] only a very miniscule amount of the power consumed by a PC actually permanently flips bits on harddisks or SSDs or transmits bits across the network. These take extremely low amounts of power.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#303

Post by doggosphere » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

NoOneNew wrote: post #235

arebop wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is comparing Visa's use of energy to Bitcoin's. It is not comparing Visa's use of all resources to Bitcoin's. It is like saying hybrid cars are more efficient than electric or gas cars, because they use less electricity than fully-electric cars and less gas than ICEs.

So you're telling me that Bitcoin can make up ground for being almost a million times less efficient on a basic and everyday use case of currency in some other way? Please, go ahead and tell me. That's like saying you have the fastest drive thru hamburger shop even though it takes an hour for someone to get their food. But the burger joint is faster "elsewhere". Where else could Bitcoin make up the energy efficiency…

Does VISA create and secure an asset that is open source, decentralized, censorship resistant, permissionless to participate in?

Apples to oranges. VISA can't do those things, it is a centralized settlement layer for US Dollar transactions. So when we selectively compare the transactions per energy metric, we are conveniently ignoring the fact that VISA is not responsible for securing the stability of the global US Dollar network.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#304

Post by ineedasername » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

arthurcolle wrote: post #202

mxschumacher wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of crypto-delusion I have never understood: why compare Bitcoin with the financial system as a whole to get out of the "it is mostly powered by coal plants in China"-argument? Does Bitcoin assess credit risks of governments, companies and people and then extend+manage credit? What does Bitcoin offer in regards to risk management/hedging for operating businesses? Maybe Bitcoin has some liquidity manageme…

I worked at Goldman Sachs for 3 years in technology and trading roles so I'm fairly confident that I am largely familiar with how a bulge bracket investment bank as well as how most consumer banking firms operate work. It's not misleading at all. It's important to consider that a large group of human operators, using a separately large set of semi automated processes, are a large component of the current energy spend…

But institutions like Goldman Sachs aren't going away if Bitcoin suddenly became the world currency, so including them in such calculations is misleading.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#305

Post by nyolfen » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #283

nyolfen wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or, it was a good first try that needs iteration now that we understand that hyper-deflation is a bad thing for a currency in what sense is bitcoin "hyper-deflation"ary? i think you are thinking of the word "deflation" but i know that doesn't sound as smart >The weird, religious loyalty people have to reinterpreting Bitcoin's flaws as strengths is setting the entire crypto ecosystem back. If you want to appeal to '…

> there is nothing stopping anybody from making something better They already did. Half the crypto ecosystem is already better than Bitcoin if you're trying to build a functional currency. We're talking about a coin that doesn't have any privacy guarantees, it's not exactly hard to improve on that. When I talk about religious loyalty, what I'm getting at is that it turns out the Bitcoin ecosystem doesn't seem to care…

> It turns out that having a fixed number of coins that fluctuate wildly in price is very bad for building a currency, but we have people on here arguing that it's a good thing.

sorry, is that just because you say so? the success of bitcoin is the only thing i need to point to contra every point you make. if it's so bad, why does it work? maybe that won't always be the case, but so far the market has deemed it sufficient. nobody is making anyone use bitcoin, it's just the best schelling point.

btw, wrt privacy -- chaumian coinjoin has made great strides in popularity in the last year. it may not be zcash but it is still quite possible to use bitcoin in a private manner.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#306

Post by ineedasername » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

ypcx wrote: post #189

runeks wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and it’s vastly less than Bitcoin. Simply because it’s centralized, and a centralized system is always more efficient than a decentralized one. It’s a well known trade off. A better comparison would be gold versus Bitcoin, as they’re both similarly decentralized. Just comparing energy consumption between the two probably wouldn’t make sense, though, as gold mining e.g. ruins vast areas of land.

> Yes, and it’s vastly less than Bitcoin. Ponder, for a moment, the way in which governments use the "printing" of fiat money to fund wars (for private sector profit, revolving back into that private sector's lobbying those governments for even more war and military spending). Ponder, for a moment, the amount of energy and Earth's resources expended to materialize these wars and military spending. Bitcoin (or, the pr…

re: wars

This seems like a novel claim: that bitcoin would reduce world conflict.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#307

Post by gruez » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

mrits wrote: post #62

gruez wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty adjustment only happens every 2016 blocks (~2 weeks), so the higher yields wouldn't happen unless they're down for an extended period of time.

That is correct but I don't see why you are pointing it out.

It's a reply at this part of GP's comment:

>So if miners started returning higher yields we would output a larger hash rate

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#308

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

titzer wrote: post #302

NoOneNew wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isnt this kind of like saying we should bring back incandescent light bulbs so people will heat their houses with them? Like, I appreciate trying to dual purpose energy use... but I dont see a specialized computer that pumps heat as practical. I'm pretty sure it's going to be wasted watts too instead of using a real heater. My 800w box doesn't generate anywhere near as many BTUs as a 600w ceramic box heater. Even tho…

800 watts is not actually very much heat. A typical small space heater is 2000W. I have no idea what you intend by implying that 800 watts is not as many BTUs as 600 watts--watts are literally a measure of power, i.e. can be converted to BTUs per hour. And yes, all those 800 watts of power your computer draws do end up as waste heat [1]. > I'm pretty sure it's going to be wasted watts too instead of using a real heat…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#309

Post by lofi_lory » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

VectorLock wrote: post #300

lofi_lory wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat generation really is the stupidest way of doing things. With things like storage, at least you can reuse it after the fact. Tho, all these systems require some ressource scarcity and will inherently maintain/promote scarcity. This is completely unacceptable in the coming years. People don't realize how much we need to cut back on natural ressource extraction and energy expenditure. Out whole world is build on ma…

Thats why the only cryptocurrency that really appeals to me now is Chia with its Proof of Space. Not zero power usage, but better, and I like the design goals and its approach.

I assume you mean storage space. There you run into the same problem if you scale the system. The proof still needs scarcity in whatever storage is made of.

For many natural resources, the local concentration is key to viability. See phosphorus, or helium depletion. Once the reserves are gone, we cannot maintain our scale of production, as alternative extraction usually is too energy intensive to scale. Please consider this on an interdependent scope, where it all comes down to burning through the geological work of millennia as the fundamental ressource. 500 years ago, people were already hitting the limits of ecological sustainability where they settled and back then all of earth was home to something like 500 million people.

Maintaining just the food production for 7 billion humans is gonna be an overbearing challenge the next years. Anarchocapitalist delusions have no future.

Re: Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China

#310

Post by gruez » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

ndr wrote: post #247

gruez wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty adjustment only happens every 2016 blocks (~2 weeks), so the higher yields wouldn't happen unless they're down for an extended period of time.

How much longer than 2 weeks will it take given the sudden drop in miners?

It depends on how long ago the previous retarget is and the current hashrate. The retarget is based on blocks, so if the retarget was 1008 blocks ago, but hashrate dropped by 50%, then it'll take 2 weeks until the next retarget.

There's a chart here with the current estimates: https://fork.lol/pow/retarget