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

China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 94 posts

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#61

Post by watwut »

LV-426 wrote: post #49
olalonde wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a pyramid scheme [Bitcoin], an organization compels individuals who wish to join to make a payment [purchase Bitcoin]. In exchange, the organization promises its new members a share of the money taken from every additional member that they recruit [to the moon]. There is no such thing. In that respect, Bitcoin is no different from real estate, stock or gold investors which do tend to sometimes promote their inve…

> early adopters, which take on more risk I don't want to get into the debate on the definition of a pyramid scheme, but what was anyone risking by mining bitcoins for essentially nothing in 2009-2010?

Because pretty much everything must be framed as risk taking these days.

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#62

Post by makomk »

bandrami wrote: post #28
olalonde wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is what a pyramid scheme is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme Bitcoin is a distributed database that solves the "Two Generals Problem". Please don't spread misinformation on things you do not understand.

Sigh. The only sense in which it "solves" the Two Generals Problem is the sense in which it will, over the course of decades, create a rainbow table for it. None of the work being done is in any way socially useful (a crypto coin based on, say, folding proteins actually produces a social good and so could be equity based). Decentralized proof of a transaction having occurred is in principle valuable, but the token it…

Do you have any idea how rainbow tables actually work and what it would take to "create" one for the SHA-256 hash used by Bitcoin mining? In order to create such a rainbow table, you would have to do about 2^256 SHA-256 computations. All of the Bitcoin mining ever done so far has carried out somewhere in the order of 2^87.

To put this in perspective, the most power-efficient miners available right now require 0.1 J/GH of energy. There are roughly 10^24 stars in the visible universe putting out about 10^27 watts each. If you could use the entire energy output of all those stars to mine Bitcoins with the most efficient mining hardware currently available for the entire lifespan of the universe to the present day, you'd still get less than 2^210 hashes, about 1/10^74th of what you'd need to create a rainbow table for SHA-256. I'm pretty sure that even upgrading this hypothetical universe-wide computational machinery to hypothetical mining hardware that's as efficient as the laws of thermodynamics allow wouldn't get you close.

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#63

Post by miscreanity »

puranjay wrote: post #36
olalonde wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is what a pyramid scheme is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme Bitcoin is a distributed database that solves the "Two Generals Problem". Please don't spread misinformation on things you do not understand.

I'm amazed at how BTC supporters don't even know who invented BTC and the blockchain (Satoshi), yet champion it to no end. If I was to tell you to invest in a company whose founder is 'invisible', yet controls a large chunk of the company's stock, would you do it?

Who invented the internal combustion engine? Does it matter?

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#64

Post by jv22222 »

isoprophlex wrote: post #11
tbabb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Shutting down participation in the planet's largest pyramid scheme doesn't have a lot of downside.

Can't agree more. Also I am getting pretty sick of the impact crypto trading is having on office conversations. All I hear these days are inane conversations about getting rich quick. Everyone is an expert in technical analysis these days. At best, trading these currencies is a zero-sum game where you take money from others without providing any intrinsic worth to humanity. At worst is a pyramid scheme plain and simp…

> where you take money from others without providing any intrinsic worth to humanity

I beg to differ. Not all crypto projects are like that. For example Omise Go is a promising project that stands to make a difference to many people who have no access to banking services.

They have solid financials, already processing over $500m transactions per day with $110m investment.

They are making a completely decentralized open value exchange DEX based on the block chain. Any developer/provider will be able to build apps on top of it.

Any person with a phone will have instant access to essentially a bank account with no need to hand over social security and ID.

So basically giving 2 billion people who have no way to interact with financial systems a way to join in with global commerce.

> It’s not creating any value, any gains are at the expense of someone else.

Except, not in the case of Omise Go. You may earn a dividend simply by possessing the token.

By staking Omise Go tokens you will have the option to validate transactions (proof of stake) for which you will get paid.

Also note, with PoS there is no electricity burden on the system like Proof of Work with mining.

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#65

Post by dang »

tbabb wrote: post #6
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #2

I am personally of the opinion that China swiftly killing off its cryptocurrency mining industry overnight would be to the great benefit of humanity. The sheer amount of electricity it wastes is an environmental disaster.

Agreed. Shutting down participation in the planet's largest pyramid scheme doesn't have a lot of downside.

You started a flamewar with this low-quality dismissal. Although I'm sure you didn't mean to, in effect this is vandalism. Please post more thoughtfully to HN.

Here is a relevant site guideline:

* Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.*

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#66

Post by miscreanity »

astrodust wrote: post #43
bamboozled wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get winging about mining crypto currency and "wasting power", it's not really a waste, it's proof of work. Besides, we humans waste energy on way worse things than mining Bitcoin. What about running Facebook, the tens of thousands of high end servers running globally just to figure out what useless junk to feed people, in a way that is detrimental to their health. I don't hear many people complaining about th…

Facebook buys servers to meet their needs, not to grind away on useless "proof of work" systems. They're also interested in aggressively optimizing how that capacity is used, and where possible work to reduce power consumption, compute requirements, and other such things. They can alter how their software interfaces with their systems, how many requests it makes, what kind of data they return and how often. Facebook…

What's the point of security staff at a bank or military installation? If things are slow, just send guards home. We'd be able to save millions.

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#68

Post by jpatokal »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #2

I am personally of the opinion that China swiftly killing off its cryptocurrency mining industry overnight would be to the great benefit of humanity. The sheer amount of electricity it wastes is an environmental disaster.

As long as there's money to be made, which there undoubtedly is (right now), Bitcoin mining will just move somewhere else.

Also, as the Chinese proverb says, the mountains are high and the emperor is far away. Liberal use of the death penalty hasn't solved China's drug problem, a few Politburo decrees aren't going to stop China's Bitcoin mining.

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#69

Post by ThatPlayer »

littlestymaar wrote: post #52
ThatPlayer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Miners find a block and distribute them to the P2P Bitcoin network. Blocks do not carry IP addresses, and everyone running a Bitcoin node contributes to sharing blocks, so you'd have a hard time finding out who is mining just from the IP. If the Chinese miners are using a public mining pool, you may be able to see who is connected to the pool. If they're pool mining, they do not even have to run a Bitcoin node in the…

> Miners find a block and distribute them to the P2P Bitcoin network. Blocks do not carry IP addresses You just need to become part of the p2p network by yourself, and log the IP of people you communicate with …

Miners also do not need to be part of the p2p network. A mining pool for example will distribute the block for you and send you the bitcoins. There's also a tool to send transactions [1] so you do not even have to be part of the network to send/receive transactions.

[1] https://insight.bitpay.com/tx/send - These still require your signing key, so you can use Bitcoin without ever being on the network. It just requires you to trust all the block explorers that you have actually received payment.

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#70

Post by 0wing »

bamboozled wrote: post #39
mehrdadn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not really a waste, it's proof of work Every kind of waste I can think of is a proof of some kind of work. That doesn't make it a good thing.

The value provide by these systems is trust, which literally requires proof of work to establish. Facebook news feeds don't require proof of work in the same sense.

Proof of Work is better described as Proof of (resource) Waste (for late adopters).

The only thing PoW attempts to do is increase the amount of capital wasted via wasting electricity and computational cycles as time progresses.

Ironically if you actually look at the protocol, miners are rewarded less and less yet have to work harder and harder. The vast majority of the supply sits with less than ~100 of the early miners who put in the least amount of work for the most amount of coins.

Post reply on HN