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Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally

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Re: Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally

#71

Post by dvh1990 »

asinoastuto wrote: post #58
dvh1990 wrote: post #25

Bitcoin is a good thing. It's a simple financial system with very few rules that can serve as an anti-fragile backbone for much bigger systems on top of it. Instead of looking for ways to curtail it (because that ALWAYS works, right?) we should be looking for cleaner ways to power it like renewables and nuclear.

blockchain is a good thing. bitcoin is just a early adopter that refuses to go away because people keep pumping it up for one reason or another. there are many better alternatives to bitcoin that solve all the issues people here on HN complain about, but all you will read is people calling others "non-coiners", as if thats the reason anyone is against bitcoin.

Maybe, but being a free system everybody is more than welcome to build something better. I'll be the first in line to hop on.

Re: Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally

#72

Post by tracedddd »

It’s getting old seeing the same posts with no new data or analysis day after day.

I get that people feel this is important, or perhaps are excited to share something wrong with Bitcoin, but I’d be surprised if 99% of the regular visitors to this site haven’t heard about Bitcoin’s energy use and perhaps heard some counterarguments already several times.

It really does seem like a grudge more than a genuine care. For example, you can often find some of the same accounts parroting cherry picked takes or intentionally misleading comparisons in the comments.

Re: Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally

#73

Post by gruez »

romski wrote: post #61
gruez wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cough ad-tech cough

ad-tech runs on a fractional of data centers right? So it's already eclipsed by crypto.

if we're talking about resource usage, we also have to factor in the energy/bandwidth in end-user devices, as well has human labor (bitcoin miners aren't hiring tens/hundreds of thousands of SWEs, for instance).

Re: Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally

#74

Post by jrv »

inshadows wrote: post #32
Daishiman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no comment about BTC difficulty. It's a comment about the pernicious impact of BTC on the world with practically no benefit to show for it.

Yeah, and the truth is Bitcoin doesn't have negative impact on the world. Miners do.

But Bitcoin can't exist without miners...

Re: Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally

#76

Post by doggosphere »

xiphias2 wrote: post #42

There are so many frustrated nocoiners here on HN, it’s crazy. It’s interesting that on a tech site people can be more negative towards new technology, than on youtube for example, where I don’t see so much hate....I just don’t understand why.

There is a lack of interest and understanding of central banking and history of money.

Thus most of the analysis is in the framework of systems efficiency (obviously, we're tech nerds afterall).

Crypto is a breakthrough in distributed computing, but utterly under-performs in efficiency against typical computing solutions. This is because of the trade-offs made in order to create a decentralized, permissionless, censorship resistant network.

Re: Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally

#77

Post by hanse00 »

Surely that cannot be? If some relatively large set of Bitcoin related energy consumption happens in datacenters. Then how does it consume more than those datacenters?

This only works out if all non-DC bitcoin related power usage (At home mining), is higher than all non-Bitcoin related DC power usage. Are there really that many people mining at home vs. in some sort of DC?

Re: Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally

#78

Post by dvh1990 »

shitloadofbooks wrote: post #62
xiphias2 wrote: post #42

There are so many frustrated nocoiners here on HN, it’s crazy. It’s interesting that on a tech site people can be more negative towards new technology, than on youtube for example, where I don’t see so much hate....I just don’t understand why.

I think the answer is because it IS a tech site. Members here understand that Bitcoin is a vastly inefficient and ineffective way to achieve the end goal. My view is definitely that Bitcoin solves a problem I don't have, in just about the worst way possible (proof of work).

Of course you don't have the problem because your government is currently not oppressing you and nobody is targeting you. But if that were to change I believe you'll start appreciating Bitcoin more.

Re: Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally

#79

Post by kelp »

uncletammy wrote: post #56
kelp wrote: post #2

Proof of work blockchains should be banned by various governments for this reason alone. At this point BTC is a speculative bubble that benefits a very small group to the detriment of the rest of us. I also have a lot of personal frustration with how mining (more of ETH and others) is impacting the global GPU supply. A whole cottage industry has cropped up of sites, discords, etc that provide notifications when GPUs…

> Proof of work blockchains should be banned by various governments for this reason alone. How does one ban a blockchain? Serious question. Would you only arrest the miners or would you also arrest non-mining full node operators? How could you tell if regular citizens were transacting with POW coins? Would you subpoena telecom companies for records where customers have visited known sites which transact in POW coins?…

You regulate exchanges like Coinbase and Gemini, so there are no legitimate ways to trade your proof of work cryptocurrency for USD (or your local gov backed currency).

Then the demand for the crypto currency plummets.

In 2010-2011, I traded BTC for USD in person, with a laptop on wifi. And via PayPal with someone I met on IRC, where there was a bot that kept track of your reputation so the BTC sellers would know if it was safe to sell to you.

At that time the price of 1 BTC was about $1 USD.

I think we'd see something similar, if there was an outright ban.

Re: Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally

#80

Post by root_axis »

The problem with bitcoin isn't merely that it uses a ton of energy, it's that the amount of energy consumed has practically zero relationship to the utility provided by the network. Yes, Visa uses a lot of energy, it's also a global payment platform servicing hundreds of millions of transactions per day, the amount of energy used correlates with the amount of useful work provided by the network, this is not true of PoW which consumes increasingly more and more energy while facilitating the same rate of transactions. Unlike every other technology in history, when advancements in efficiency are made, bitcoin power consumption actually increases because an increase in efficiency means more miner profit if similar rates of power are consumed, except this also has the side effect of increasing mining difficulty, thus making the entire network more energy hungry overall. Bitcoin is wasteful in a manner that is unique compared to other technology.
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