Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it

#61

Post by mstodd » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:03 AM UTC

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #24

ufo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many bitcoin proponents believe that bitcoin can fully replace the current financial system so whenever the energy consumption problem comes up you should expect to hear someone talking about how much banks spend on air conditioning every year.

Of course banks wouldn't go away with Bitcoin. There are still physical branches despite the ubiquity of online banking and credit/debit cards. People like having humans to interact with. And Bitcoin is trying to add in the Lightning network, which requires large trusted entities where people can store their coins for off-chain transactions, IE banks.

Yes, tech never 100% goes away, you can still find brick and mortar movie rental stores.

Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it

#62

Post by lojack » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:04 AM UTC

jamez1 wrote: post #35

High electricity consumption is the trade bitcoin made in its design for a stable money supply, it's not an inherent problem with cryptocurrency.

It's the tradeoff made for a distributed money supply. Satoshi just as easily could have made a fixed supply of money which is also stable and doesn't rely on proof of work.

That said, at the time, I don't think this was really the tradeoff being made. When bitcoin originally came out, proof of work was the only decentralized consensus mechanism available.

Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it

#63

Post by thisisit » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:14 AM UTC

Lxr wrote: post #56

Is there a reason the proof of work can’t do something more useful, like protein folding?

Because of verification. It is easy to check whether the generated hash is correct or not. How will the verification for protein folding work?

Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it

#64

Post by castratikron » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:15 AM UTC

Isn't the root of the problem that fossil fuels are too cheap? If you tax carbon to include the costs of climate change then this problem will go away.

Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it

#65

Post by thisisit » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:19 AM UTC

This is another of the bitcoin related topic which has been discussed many times already in last couple of months:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15663053

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15873395

I have also written a blog on this:

https://hackernoon.com/dummies-guide-to-bitcoin-energy-use-5...

Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it

#66

Post by wmf » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:21 AM UTC

mesozoic wrote: post #33

The idea is the switch to proof of stake will likely fix this particular problem if it works.

A lot of people seem to be ideologically opposed to proof of stake; they define "works" in a very narrow way that proof of stake can never satisfy.

Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it

#67

Post by lojack » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:22 AM UTC

ohiovr wrote: post #26

How does a nation expand credit with a cryptocurrency? Like as in the case with fractional reserve banking?

The same way we do with cash. When you put your cryptos in a bank they will lend out some portion of it and in return you'll be paid out some interest rate. The incentive to storing your crypto in a bank will be that you receive that interest rate, potentially that its insured, and that its secured. Perhaps the interest rates will need to be higher to encourage someone to deposit their cryptocurrency in a bank, its hard to say.

Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it

#68

Post by philipkglass » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:27 AM UTC

thisisit wrote: post #63

Lxr wrote: post #56

Is there a reason the proof of work can’t do something more useful, like protein folding?

Because of verification. It is easy to check whether the generated hash is correct or not. How will the verification for protein folding work?

It's easy to evaluate if the energy of one structural conformation is lower than another. (You don't need to determine at each step if the submitted conformation approximates the real protein at equilibrium, only that it's a lower-energy conformation than has been seen before.) But I'm not sure that is the only problem.

You want the proof of work to remain difficult for a PoW scheme. We have pretty good assurances that mindless cryptographic hashing is difficult; ASICs accelerate it considerably, but don't lower the Big O complexity of the problem. On the other hand, people keep searching for algorithmically faster ways to simulate protein folding, not just ways to hardware-accelerate existing algorithms. If one group of folders were to discover superior algorithms for searching the potential energy surface, that would be beneficial to science but potentially disastrous for a currency based on protein folding problems. For that matter, the overall incentives might make science worse off if ProteinCoin encouraged superior algorithms to be kept secret, for PoW advantage, instead of publishing advances in the open scientific literature.

Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it

#69

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:32 AM UTC

Lxr wrote: post #56

Is there a reason the proof of work can’t do something more useful, like protein folding?

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it

#70

Post by mr_toad » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:56 AM UTC

ohiovr wrote: post #26

How does a nation expand credit with a cryptocurrency? Like as in the case with fractional reserve banking?

A nation-state (or bank, or a credit company, or an individual) could simply create fiat crypto, the same way they create banknotes, bonds, or IOU's - out of thin air.

I.e.: they take gold or similar valuables, and give you a contract for it, authenticated by a blockchain.

They can expand this 'money' supply by lending: They create new coins and give them to you _without_ getting your gold right away.

In a sense they lend money they don't have. This is basically how fractional reserves operate; everyone hopes that not everyone tries to get the gold back at the same time. And if you think that sounds dodgy, well that's just how banks started out, before paper money was invented, only without the technology to prevent forgery!

Unlike IOU's and other form's of fiat, some sort of crypto should be immune to forgery, if implemented properly. It's just a tradable contract, backed by a blockchain.

However, it still depends on trust and/or legal enforcement (hopefully the later) that the gold will be there to paid out on demand. Like any other fractional reserve banking system, enough bad-debts can cripple it, and it is not immune to collapse if there is ever a 'run' on it.

The next trick (once everyone is accustomed to exchanging crypto) is to have everyone accept that instead of getting their gold back (ever), you'll allow people to use the crypto to offset their tax liability.

Voila - money for nothing!