China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining • Hacker News Board

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#321

Post by mrb » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:10 AM UTC

mrpopo wrote: post #301

mrb wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France emits 90% less CO2/kWh than Germany (they didn't even need renewables to achieve that, just nuclear): http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/11/german-e... And according to https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=801297 CO2 emissions per kWh have already decreased 2.58%/year between 2005 and 2016 (-25% over 11 years). That's already far better than the 1.60%/year I assumed (-80% over 100 years), further s…

In the US, that was mostly due to gas replacing coal. France is not using renewables. This is great, but not due to renewables as you initially claimed. Also, I don't think the share of bitcoin mining is significant in these examples. I was asking for a country that managed to reduce their CO2 emissions significantly with renewables. It may happen in the future, and I'm certainly hoping for it, but we don't have a la…

I initially mentioned renewables as just one way to achieve CO2 emissions reductions. Nuclear is another way that works just as well.

"we don't have a large-scale concrete example yet"

China single-handedly added 230 GW of hydropower in 10 years (2006-2016). This could power the entire country of Japan (5th biggest electricity consumer in the world). If this isn't "large-scale" enough for you, I don't know what is ;) China also added a ton of fossil fuel power plants in that same period, but still it shows at least hydro, as a renewable, can work at very large scales.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#322

Post by thisisit » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 8:59 AM UTC

mrb wrote: post #319

thisisit wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am really curious about the points you make in your post. > This Nature article was debunked by other researchers. Who are these other researcher? Care to link to their research on this? > when in fact 60-70% of the mining power comes from a single row in this table: Antminer S9 How do we know that? > It is not unrealistic to imagine the proportion of CO2 per kWh could be in a century 20% of what it is today. Again…

" Who are these other researcher? Care to link to their research on this? " It takes months to write, peer-review, and publish research papers, so given that this Nature Climate Change article is quite recent at the moment there exists absolutely zero peer-reviewed studies or counterstudies following up on it. However here are some researchers who have criticized it in their own informal analysis or press interviews:…

> It takes months to write, peer-review, and publish research papers

So, there are no peer-reviewed, published research on this? Good to know.

> It's common knowledge to anyone in the industry that the Antminer S9 is by far the most popular Bitcoin mining machine.

Most popular can mean 30% or even 70% of hash rate. How do we know it is 60-70% as you claim?

> As I said elsewhere in this thread, according to https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=801297 CO2 emissions per kWh have already decreased -25% over 11 years. Therefore -80% in 100 years seems easily achievable (the trend only has to continue for 60 years, then there can be 40 years of technological stagnation.)

To actually do a comparison, what exactly was the efficiency achieved in last 100 years? Because it looks like you are drawing the same line assumption which the paper does regarding transaction fees and power growth.

> In fact we don't even need any technological breakthrough to achieve -80%. France already emits 90% less CO2 per kWh than the average country, thanks to nuclear power.

And how much of the hash rate does France generate? Or how much of China's energy in the future is going to come from nuclear power (assuming they remain the country with largest hashrate).

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#323

Post by village-idiot » Sun, Apr 14, 2019, 2:09 AM UTC

andirk wrote: post #315

village-idiot wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise of “no fiat, less war” is just asserted without any proof, and is actually quite ahistorical.

I love the idea of "no fiat, less war". I also love the idea of "less war". I don't believe war is a natural human occurrence but instead usually done for gaining fiat. However, I do believe that trading is quite natural and our current fiat implementation often simplifies trade. So maybe a borderless fiat simplifies it even more.

Good luck explaining Rome then. No fiat, lots and lots of war.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#324

Post by davidgerard » Sun, Apr 14, 2019, 11:53 AM UTC

turtlecloud wrote: post #297

davidgerard wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Replacing an oppressive apparatus that is relying on proof of military/police power to establish trust in banking with some form of an algorithm that is relying on proof of work/energy may be energy saving at the end. Bitcoin, 0.1% of all electricity: 7 tps THE ENTIRE REST OF CIVILISATION, 99.9% of all electricity: a whole lot more than 6993 tps.

The best comparison is with the energy used for gold mining which far exceeds bitcoin energy costs. If you look at the giant trucks used in gold mines, you will are the energy savings.

one day someone will tell bitcoiners that (a) gold isn't the basis of the economy any more, and hasn't been for quite a while (b) yes, gold mining is also an ecological disaster that should be stopped

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#325

Post by clarky07 » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 4:28 AM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #309

clarky07 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you are aware, but not all crypto is based on proof of work (mining). There are other algorithms that don't waste tons of energy and still provide the benefits of crypto. Also, they can be useful for things other than tax avoidance and illegal utilities.

Excluding the use cases of tax avoidance and illegal utilities how is it more useful than EUR? They're all more volatile / less stable than EUR.

You can’t generally send EUR anywhere in the world for free in seconds. You can’t pay for things in EUR with 0 fees. There are some crypto’s that can do all of those things.