How does the network protocol of bitcoin work? Would governments be able to block it? Can it be DDoS-ed?
something size of a government could do a %51 attack on the whole network.
Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
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Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#62Bitcoin is so inefficient that it is hilarious that people complaining about the environment also buy bitcoin. If you want to buy into crypto at least go for ethereal
Instead consider PoS blockchains, such as Tezos, Cardano, etc.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#63Idea to solve the crypto energy problem - sell space heaters as dual purpose crypto miners. People need space heaters. They buy them, but they also mine crypto (as a free byproduct of the space heating). The number of crypto mining space heaters out there dilute the value of dedicated mining so much that people don't bother with it anymore. Even buying the space heater to make money from mining crypto doesn't make that much money - due to the fact that so many space heaters are crypto miners. Problem solved?
Edit/Multi-Reply: Heat pumps are efficient, but they don't replace all practical use cases for a space heater.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#64I've never heard of Abkhazia before, so I had to look it up. It's a partially recognized state, part of Georgia [0]. There's even been a war in 1992-1993, after the collapse of the USSR [1]. Sometimes I'm still surprised of my ignorance about important facts that happened during my lifetime. Anyway, the next question for me was: why is electricity so cheap there, and should I assume it's cheap 24/7, and therefore gen…
From a quick glance at the video looks like they're illegally tapping power from the grid, and got shut down.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#65I've never heard of Abkhazia before, so I had to look it up. It's a partially recognized state, part of Georgia [0]. There's even been a war in 1992-1993, after the collapse of the USSR [1]. Sometimes I'm still surprised of my ignorance about important facts that happened during my lifetime. Anyway, the next question for me was: why is electricity so cheap there, and should I assume it's cheap 24/7, and therefore gen…
I've been there during my urbex days. Frozen conflict zone, not unlike Transnistria, South Ossetia or Nagorno Karabakh. The border is militarized, except the Georgian side which doesn't seem to consider Abkhazia a threat. Lots of abandoned infrastructure because the native Georgian population was killed and/or fleed, and hasn't been harnessed for some reason. Abkhaz cross the border daily to buy basic stuff from Geor…
> They made me delete the picture but LPT: keep the SD card aside for the rest of the trip, then run an undelete tool on it.
Undeleting photos from an SD card saved data for me once. Just shut it off once you've noticed you messed up, and don't touch it. Thank goodness for FAT32.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems like the wrong approach. I don't see how closing large-scale mining facilities will suddenly solve the problem. As long as the energy remains cheap, mining will just move underground. I could see miners offering ordinary villagers kickbacks to "host" a few miners on their premises as to conceal the energy consumption behind what appears to be legitimate usage.
You cannot move "underground" when you are sucking that much power. The government did what they should have done, and what all governments should have done a long time ago and shut this nonsense down. It's sucking up resources and only adding to wealth inequality. Bitcoin rewarded a small group of very smart people very very very well. It then rewarded morons... hordes and hordes of morons very very well too. We wil…
> It then rewarded morons... hordes and hordes of morons very very well too.
You can just say you are jealous rather than belittling people like this.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
If bitcoin is so bad why not let the free market tank it eventually?
Because the free market isn't great at finding solutions that incorporate externalities, especially not quickly.
externalities in this case are caused by energy producers, not consumers.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin without PoW has no value. It's the entire reason it works. Without expending a finite resource to produce another, you can't constrain a money supply nor prevent it from attacks. Governments would be unwise to ban a voluntary system for the same reason they don't ban any other uses of energy that people question the value of (there are plenty). In any case, it will not stop, only move. If not to another massi…
> Bitcoin without PoW has no value Exactly. It’s broken by design. Let’s get rid of it ASAP and instead focus on blockchains that may have value without the horrible incentives of PoW. We shouldn’t keep Bitcoin alive just because it was the first successful attempt. That has been tried, it’s now clear it’s not sustainable over the long-term. We should learn the lesson and move on to a better approach.
> It’s broken by design.
it's genius by design. so far nothing other than PoW was shown to work.
> We shouldn’t keep Bitcoin alive just because it was the first successful attempt.
you're not keeping it alive, it exists in a free market and there is demand for it.
> That has been tried, it’s now clear it’s not sustainable over the long-term.
not clear at all. so far looks like it's the most sustainable system of decentralized value storage and transfer compared to all others.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#69Idea to solve the crypto energy problem - sell space heaters as dual purpose crypto miners. People need space heaters. They buy them, but they also mine crypto (as a free byproduct of the space heating). The number of crypto mining space heaters out there dilute the value of dedicated mining so much that people don't bother with it anymore. Even buying the space heater to make money from mining crypto doesn't make th…
people do that, but it's not an efficient way to heat. The most efficient heaters pump heat from somewhere else, even when the source has a lower temperature, like the way a fridge pumps heat from inside the cold fridge to the air in your house. (my apologies for assuming you live in a house if you are actually a 12 dimensional entity that lives on a space whale)
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#70How does the network protocol of bitcoin work? Would governments be able to block it? Can it be DDoS-ed?
They can't realistically block it. Normally the miners are trivial "structure in, best hash out" functions. The logic of choosing the transactions and preparing new blocks can be completely independent and distribute the work over any number of remote miners. (That's pretty much how mining pools work) The network transport would be trivial to change, or tunnel over (for example) SSH. DoS also wouldn't be likely - if…
Find where a lot of power is used. Go in with guns.