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BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

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Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#51

Post by paulgb »

durkie wrote: post #45

so this has been an issue that keeps coming up for a while, but i don't really understand the issue. * As others have asked, how much is bitcoin supposed to use? What's the right amount and why? How is that number better/worse than the amount of resources spent on existing financial infrastructure? * We are rapidly progressing towards an era of free (extremely cheap) clean power. Just today ( https://electrek.co/2017…

The problem is that with a competitive mining market, Bitcoin energy use will rise until the cost of mining a block is equal to the reward for that block (i.e. market equilibrium). So if the cost of energy goes down but the price of Bitcoin stays constant, the amount of energy expenditure will be (approximately) equal.

Likewise, if the price of Bitcoin goes up, the amount of energy used will go up accordingly.

The reward amount will decrease over time and mitigate this, but not enough by a long shot IMO.

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#52

Post by notahacker »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #38
kiddico wrote: post #2

One of the only things I dislike about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. With the proof of chia being used in storage, does that imply a lower power cost? I'm not sure what proof of time is either... Does anyone know more about this and can clarify things?

If Bitcoin reached 2 trillion dollars, it would use about 2% of the world's power. It seems tough to argue that a 2 trillion dollar GDP doesn't merit a 2% increase in power output.

Do you mean a 2 trillion dollar market cap? That's not the same as GDP.

I mean, Apple is close to a 1 trillion dollar market cap. I'd argue a 1% increase in world power output simply for Apple to store its money and make transactions would be a remarkably poor use of power.

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#53

Post by kiddico »

toomim wrote: post #47
kiddico wrote: post #2

One of the only things I dislike about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the flagrant use of power that doesn't necessarily compute anything. With the proof of chia being used in storage, does that imply a lower power cost? I'm not sure what proof of time is either... Does anyone know more about this and can clarify things?

Yes, I watched Bram's talk in Berkeley two weeks ago. It indeed runs with much lower power costs. The cost is the power to do a hard-disk seek every long once in a while, rather than to compute sha256 over and over again. It does incentivize a buildup of physical disk drives. And if it becomes successful, it'll likely spur specialized datacenters and hardware (think specialized tape drives) to try to outcompete in sp…

Thanks for the explanation. Does the proof of storage allow that storage to continue to be used?/does the proof use the space on a disk?

Or is it sort of like mining bitcoin where a gpu is wholly used for mining?

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#54

Post by 45h34jh53k4j »

olegkikin wrote: post #11

So it's nothing new. Ethereum and Peercoin and Nxt do proof of stake.

Slight correction, Ethereum may do PoS in future, it currently does not, it is a PoW CryptoCurrency like bitcoin. Because of the state of miners ETH right now, I suspect it may take a long time to migrate, with several contentious forks. I suspect bitcoin will always be PoW.

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#55

Post by sillysaurus3 »

notahacker wrote: post #52
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Bitcoin reached 2 trillion dollars, it would use about 2% of the world's power. It seems tough to argue that a 2 trillion dollar GDP doesn't merit a 2% increase in power output.

Do you mean a 2 trillion dollar market cap? That's not the same as GDP. I mean, Apple is close to a 1 trillion dollar market cap. I'd argue a 1% increase in world power output simply for Apple to store its money and make transactions would be a remarkably poor use of power.

Unfair comparison. Bitcoin benefits all who hold it, not a single corporation.

If anything, my "GDP" comparison was off the mark because GDP typically represents a country's total wealth, and bitcoin can't have a GDP. But it's a useful abstraction that comes pretty close.

Those bitcoin paper millionaires are investing in startups like Pinkapp, and Pinkapp is hiring programmers. All of this is happening outside the legal system. What does that say to you about bitcoin's ability to affect the world?

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#57

Post by yayitswei »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #44
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Bitcoin reached 2 trillion dollars, it would use about 2% of the world's power. It seems tough to argue that a 2 trillion dollar GDP doesn't merit a 2% increase in power output.

Bitcoin's total value being 2 trillion dollars is not the same thing whatsoever as bitcoin being responsible for 2 trillion dollars of GDP. There is no "merit" here. We can have $2 trillion in GDP with paper money, too, and that uses 0% of the world's power.

Not 0% if you count the resources required to enforce that paper money.

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#58

Post by deevolution »

1053r wrote: post #28
bglusman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought so too until I read this http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/#is-a-work-indep... and, maybe there's counter arguments? But it seemed like a pretty good argument to me.

Your linked argument is poorly formed. It's true that any system which periodically emits value will cause people to work towards achieving that value. However, it's not true that the work in question will necessarily be wasted in an arms race. Specifically, a (well constructed) Proof of Stake system will cause people to work to get a piece of the value by having them purchase the coin used for staking. This will cau…

How does proof of stake prevent double spending if there are no miners to validate blocks? I must be missing something here...

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#59

Post by dgacmu »

notahacker wrote: post #52
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Bitcoin reached 2 trillion dollars, it would use about 2% of the world's power. It seems tough to argue that a 2 trillion dollar GDP doesn't merit a 2% increase in power output.

Do you mean a 2 trillion dollar market cap? That's not the same as GDP. I mean, Apple is close to a 1 trillion dollar market cap. I'd argue a 1% increase in world power output simply for Apple to store its money and make transactions would be a remarkably poor use of power.

This is a helpful way to view it. Apple's 2016 revenue of 215B was about 0.2% of gross world product (GWP)... Which means the power draw if extended globally would be 5x our current global use. Of course, it wouldn't actually happen that way, because Bitcoin itself would then cause the price of power to increase.

Edited: fixed mis-use of "world GDP" to GWP as per tantalor's comment below. Thanks!

Re: BitTorrent inventor announces eco-friendly Bitcoin competitor Chia

#60

Post by notahacker »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #55
notahacker wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean a 2 trillion dollar market cap? That's not the same as GDP. I mean, Apple is close to a 1 trillion dollar market cap. I'd argue a 1% increase in world power output simply for Apple to store its money and make transactions would be a remarkably poor use of power.

Unfair comparison. Bitcoin benefits all who hold it, not a single corporation. If anything, my "GDP" comparison was off the mark because GDP typically represents a country's total wealth, and bitcoin can't have a GDP. But it's a useful abstraction that comes pretty close. Those bitcoin paper millionaires are investing in startups like Pinkapp, and Pinkapp is hiring programmers. All of this is happening outside the le…

OK, let's do it the other way. Let's pretend (in BTC's favour) that market cap and GDP are the same thing.

World GDP is around 100 trillion.

So by your own figures, if it were denominated in BTC or equivalent cryptocurrency, we'd require more than 100% of the world's current power output just to store and send people's money.

That's more power output than is currently required for all the world's homes, factories, hospitals, transportation networks and all the world's computing power, everything. Which also benefits everyone who uses it, and creates jobs for a few billion people

Do you now see why people don't think current crypto tech is a particularly optimal use of power?

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