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

Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

coincarboncap.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 381 posts

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#321

Post by fidelramos »

Nursie wrote: post #308
fidelramos wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But computer chips, telecommunications, the electric grid, etc., don't require for governments to exist for them to exist and work. I would even argue that they would work better and more efficiently under a free market economy, so governments, in general, are holding back progress.

> I would even argue that they would work better and more efficiently under a free market economy That sort of argument would need some extraordinary evidence, given the sort of chaotic, crime-ridden, violent state places without governments tend to devolve into.

I didn't say "no government" or "no laws", I asked for free market. For a free market to work one of the important aspects is open competition with low barriers of entry. I believe most governments today do the opposite: their laws add barriers to competition, leading to inefficiencies that are in detriment of the general public. Examples are all around us, from cities forbidding Uber as a competition to taxi companies to states restricting use of cryptocurrencies as a method of payment. If you compound everything the damage that most governments do to the economy, and therefore to the wellness of humankind, is immense.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#322

Post by fidelramos »

dathinab wrote: post #299
fidelramos wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one of the important points point made by jtoomin in the first post of this thread: the energy consumption of a PoW blockchain if not proportional to the number of transactions. This means we could have everyone, everywhere, using a PoW blockchain with the same percentage of energy consumption as today (although it would probably rise as price would arguably also rise as demand increases, but it would eventua…

This is only the case of you would arbitrarily increase the number of potential transactions per block. But as far as I know the maximal number of transactions is capped in practice. Furthermore the security of PoW is based on it being far more expensive to mess with it then to mine it. But if you push more mommy through the same number of blocks it's at some point breaking apart. Lastly no one says it will ever cons…

> But as far as I know the maximal number of transactions is capped in practice.

What do you mean? There are no hard technical impediments to Bitcoin being able to scale to worldwide usage with basically the same structure as today. It's a matter of optimizing software and having powerful hardware (that is available today, and will be even cheaper in the future). This article by Johannes Vermorel [1] goes over it in detail.

If you have any evidence that goes counter to this I would love to read more about it.

[1] http://blog.vermorel.com/journal/2017/12/17/terabyte-blocks-...

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#323

Post by matheusmoreira »

lottin wrote: post #286
matheusmoreira wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But from the societal perspective it's reasonable to ask, "What does it cost per unit of value created?" Then you have to define value. I don't think it's transactions. Any random bank can make transactions. People can transact with cash. Cryptocurrencies create value by providing other properties such as decentralization, trustlessness, privacy. For example, Monero enables private and untraceable transactions and…

Economic value is measured by how much people are willing to pay for it. Transactions have economic value, because people are willing to pay a fee in return for having a transaction processed. And cryptocurrencies are transaction processing systems. So it absolutely makes perfect sense to measure how efficient these systems are processing transactions, and the way to measure that is by looking at how much it costs to…

> Transactions have economic value, because people are willing to pay a fee in return for having a transaction processed.

Why transact via cryptocurrencies instead of other systems? Because of these other desirable properties. They're the value cryptocurrencies add to the world and the reason why people choose to them despite the inefficiency. People transact in Ethereum because they want to run smart contracts. People transact in Monero because they want privacy.

> So it absolutely makes perfect sense to measure how efficient these systems are processing transactions, and the way to measure that is by looking at how much it costs to process a transaction with each of these systems.

I don't think so. People measure this in order to compare with traditional banking systems which are centralized, require trust in institutions and affords no privacy. This is not a fair comparison.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#324

Post by matheusmoreira »

Slartie wrote: post #262
matheusmoreira wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But from the societal perspective it's reasonable to ask, "What does it cost per unit of value created?" Then you have to define value. I don't think it's transactions. Any random bank can make transactions. People can transact with cash. Cryptocurrencies create value by providing other properties such as decentralization, trustlessness, privacy. For example, Monero enables private and untraceable transactions and…

> I don't think it's transactions. Interesting. > For example, Monero enables private and untraceable transactions [...] So so... > Cryptocurrencies create value by providing other properties such as decentralization, trustlessness, privacy. Let's add "a largely unregulated gambling area where people with too much money can bet their excess money on being among those who pull out before the music eventually stops" to…

> So so...

What I mean is people can transact via traditional systems just fine and they choose cryptocurrency because of other qualities.

> largely unregulated gambling area

The speculation is a separate thing from the coins themselves. People also speculate with fiat currencies, stocks, real estate.

> That's also where your frustration comes from: Bitcoin is perfectly fine for this kind of "value proposition", hence it stays King of the Hill.

Yes. What I don't understand is how it drags the whole market along with it no matter where it goes.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#325

Post by shawnz »

atweiden wrote: post #271
shawnz wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In PoW coins you permanently lose the "stake". So that just means that to achieve the same level of security in a PoS coin, you have to stake a lot more (since you are only losing the time value of the stake).

> In PoW coins you permanently lose the "stake". So that just means that to achieve the same level of security in a PoS coin, you have to stake a lot more (since you are only losing the time value of the stake). PoS network security reduces down to top-down human intervention: because PoS networks are unmined, they lack all hashing power which could otherwise be used to build a quantitative fork ranking protocol. Whe…

I'm not sure what you mean. Isn't the typical fork selection method for proof-of-stake to choose the chain with the most validators?

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#326

Post by root_axis »

Gatsky wrote: post #290
root_axis wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> traditional fiat currencies are secured by massive banking industries, governments, and militaries This argument makes no sense. Bitcoin doesn't obviate the need for militaries, banks, or governments, those things would exist regardless of the type of currency being used. Furthermore, these institutions have functions that go far beyond "securing fiat currency", not to mention the fact that bitcoin's existence reli…

I would like to offer a different perspective. The end of gold backed currencies in the 70s and replacement by fiat currencies hinged on the middle east oil states agreeing to sell oil in USD, in return for global policing by the US[1]. There is thus an intimate relationship between the current system and fossil fuels and the military, which goes beyond just ‘existing infrastructure’ arguments. This doesn’t mean we s…

> There is thus an intimate relationship between the current system and fossil fuels and the military

Even granting this premise, the argument still makes no sense. Governments, banks, and militaries existed for centuries prior to the existence of even the U.S. itself, so the suggestion that these institutions are somehow a product of U.S. monetary policy in the 70s is absurd on its face. I also think it's important not to "forget history" and the history of these institutions far exceeds what that argument grants.

> Compared to total global money, the transaction volume of fiat is also very small.

This is also beside the point. Bitcoin's value is highly dependent on the utility of government issued currency so that people can obtain staple goods and services that have inherent value, bitcoin is simply not able to fill this role.

> Bitcoin has payment solutions in the works, it is likely that transaction volume and unit of exchange utility will increase over time

There is always a myriad number of solutions in the works, but they don't actually mean anything until they solve the problem.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#327

Post by Slartie »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #324
Slartie wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it's transactions. Interesting. > For example, Monero enables private and untraceable transactions [...] So so... > Cryptocurrencies create value by providing other properties such as decentralization, trustlessness, privacy. Let's add "a largely unregulated gambling area where people with too much money can bet their excess money on being among those who pull out before the music eventually stops" to…

> So so... What I mean is people can transact via traditional systems just fine and they choose cryptocurrency because of other qualities. > largely unregulated gambling area The speculation is a separate thing from the coins themselves. People also speculate with fiat currencies, stocks, real estate. > That's also where your frustration comes from: Bitcoin is perfectly fine for this kind of "value proposition", henc…

> The speculation is a separate thing from the coins themselves. People also speculate with fiat currencies, stocks, real estate.

No, speculation is the primary use case for all of these coins right now.

And crypto currency has some advantages over the other speculation options you mentioned:

- more people can participate because of them being unregulated (compare: forex trading, which has much higher barriers of entry)

- it is rather easy to not pay taxes on crypto gains in many countries, especially if you're staying below certain limits

And the most important of them all: the crypto cake is still expanding and has been expanding for over ten years now. That is the crucial difference between classic forex trading and crypto - in forex, the comparative value of different currencies usually stays within a certain range. It goes up and it goes down. In crypto, the crypto just has been getting more and more valuable over the long term. It goes up, and up, and down, and further up than before again, and then some more up.

As long as this continues, any gambler betting on crypto has an edge and will win more than he loses. Of course it can't continue like this forever, but that's easy to ignore when looking at a ten year history of unbelievable gains.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#328

Post by Nursie »

fidelramos wrote: post #321
Nursie wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would even argue that they would work better and more efficiently under a free market economy That sort of argument would need some extraordinary evidence, given the sort of chaotic, crime-ridden, violent state places without governments tend to devolve into.

I didn't say "no government" or "no laws", I asked for free market. For a free market to work one of the important aspects is open competition with low barriers of entry. I believe most governments today do the opposite: their laws add barriers to competition, leading to inefficiencies that are in detriment of the general public. Examples are all around us, from cities forbidding Uber as a competition to taxi compani…

> I believe most governments today do the opposite

You're entitled to your beliefs, OTOH I believe that the free market cannot work unfettered. Monopolistic behaviour of large corporations shows us this again and again and again, as do environmental and Labour abuses and a million and one things people will do to screw each other over for a fast buck.

I think your view is extremely naive.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#329

Post by wpietri »

Taek wrote: post #244
wpietri wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With no transactions, the wealth stored is valueless, like deeds to property on the moon. People store wealth in currencies only because they think they can get it out later. That's in contrast to assets like houses or land, which have use value. And Bitcoin users are only paying the fraction of the cost paid for energy. But that ignores negative externalities like the pollution that's the subject of the article.

Of course, you need _some_ amount of transactions. But that could theoretically be 500 a year and still adding just as much value as bitcoin today, so long as the transactions were sufficiently significant.

Probably not. An important component in value for many assets is liquidity. That's even more true for a currency.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#330

Post by irae »

michaelt wrote: post #298
fidelramos wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one of the important points point made by jtoomin in the first post of this thread: the energy consumption of a PoW blockchain if not proportional to the number of transactions. This means we could have everyone, everywhere, using a PoW blockchain with the same percentage of energy consumption as today (although it would probably rise as price would arguably also rise as demand increases, but it would eventua…

Didn't bitcoin have the chance to double their transactions-per-second for a constant amount of power consumption, in the form of Segwit2x, and decide not to do so? The fact Bitcoin could be more efficient and chooses not to isn't really an improvement over being unable to be more efficient IMHO - in fact arguably it's worse.

Bitcoin strength and value is on decentralization. If you increase the block size, it will be seized by governments or large corporations. This has long being debated, and the reason it is like it is today, is that everyone really vested into it agreed (in a distributed way) to keep it as so.

More on that here: https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/139399717145689293...

And you can even buy books explaining this way better than I (or twitter) can.

Post reply on HN