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

Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 470 posts

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#71

Post by woodruffw »

mwattsun wrote: post #25

The counter argument is that Bitcoin is a battery [1] so that if you live in a place like Iceland with plentiful energy, so much that even exporting it as aluminum leaves extra, then you can turn it into Bitcoin and export it that way. But most Bitcoin mining is not that. I feel like Joni Mitchell in the Big Yellow Taxi: "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" [2] Why are we allowing this to happen? (Well, at…

Bitcoin is a sink, not a battery. You can dump excess power into it, but you can't take it out.

The aluminum analogy is apt, but at least I can cook eggs on aluminum pans and wrap my leftovers in tinfoil, even if I can't turn it back into electricity. Bitcoin and other PoS schemes have no such upside.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#72

Post by superkuh »

svara wrote: post #61

PoW mining (at least), must be made illegal. I have no doubts that it will end by becoming illegal, the question is how and when. It boggles the mind that there is now essentially a worldwide tax on semiconductors, which is used to do... nothing of any value whatsoever. And this thing just keeps growing. The effects will be felt in more and more economic sectors. Something will have to give. So, the only question is:…

Yes. Nationstates very much want to make the proven distributed mechanisms of consensus that allows people to exchange value without their oversite illegal. No significant cryptocurrency has gone proof of stake, and certainly none just starting out. Etherium will never actually switch. Making proof of work illegal would make effective cryptocurrency illegal.

The violent standing armies (and their logistics networks) that protect other international currencies from manipulation and attack use far more energy and do it in very violent, centralized ways.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#73

Post by NickM »

gime_tree_fiddy wrote: post #58

A slightly tangential question, in regards to Bitcoin and Blockchain, that I (surprisingly?) haven't seen answered/asked: Blockchain is computationally intensive, but why does it has to be used for Bitcoin. There could be another solution, which achieves all its objectives, but isn't necessarily as convoluted. What am I missing? Why not just use SQL databases?

There are absolutely other solutions. The problem is they don’t allow existing participants to extract as much money out of newcomers as PoW, so the artificial hype being generated around alternatives is much lower.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#74

Post by notahacker »

smnrchrds wrote: post #53
mwattsun wrote: post #25

The counter argument is that Bitcoin is a battery [1] so that if you live in a place like Iceland with plentiful energy, so much that even exporting it as aluminum leaves extra, then you can turn it into Bitcoin and export it that way. But most Bitcoin mining is not that. I feel like Joni Mitchell in the Big Yellow Taxi: "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" [2] Why are we allowing this to happen? (Well, at…

The thing about battery is that you can take the energy out of it. It stores energy. That's the entire point of a battery. How on earth can you do that with Bitcoin? If you can't, Bitcoin isn't a battery, it's a black hole.

Yep. At best, it's a black hole that pays money to the people lucky enough to have spare renewable capacity.

But the extra money is of no help to the climate. From an Iceland's point of view, the alternative to using excess geothermal to Bitcoin mine is (i) build smaller geothermal power plants which have even smaller carbon footprints to build/maintain or (ii) reduce the carbon footprint of other countries by courting their energy-intensive industries with low cost renewable electricity.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#75

Post by moonchrome »

pcdoodle wrote: post #38

Naturally the market will move this heat to where it's needed. The world needs bitcoin.

I'm usually a market proponent but bitcoin is a clear example of a market pathology.

It also clearly illustrates that government/regulators are incapable of acting quickly and efficiently, especially with interest groups involved, it's been over a year where it's plainly obvious that allowing institutional investments in BTC is a terrible idea.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#76

Post by unicornmama »

Nextgrid wrote: post #56

The only way to beat Bitcoin or other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies is to remove the need for them. Bitcoin and other cryptos have a use-case; it may not be apparent to someone living in a developed country with access to a good banking system or it may be one you don't like and involves criminal activity, but there absolutely is a use-case. The only way to stop this is if the traditional banking system catches up a…

Care to share your evidence for the first paragraph?

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#77

Post by aaomidi »

belltaco wrote: post #68
sktrdie wrote: post #7

With a climate crisis the last thing we needed was to make the most effective energy consumption system ever constructed. The whole thing literally works on competing on consuming more energy. No other system works so efficiently towards such goal. What's scary is that the whole thing was designed to be unstoppable. My utopian hope for the future is that we start sending rigs in orbit close to the sun. Since we only…

> start sending rigs in orbit close to the sun Does heat dissipate well in vacuum? Won't having it so close to the sun result in more heat? I guess the only way to dissipate so much heat would be via radiation. Outer space seems to be really really cold so that might help.

Dark body radiation is slow as shit and generally were gonna need a huge surface area to dissipate energy.

The mechanics of heat sinking in space is amazing and terrifying.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#78

Post by clippablematt »

robomartin wrote: post #40
Nbox9 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole thing literally works on competing on consuming more energy. I know this is pedantic, but the competition is about computational power. Energy is a significant input. Let’s not ignore the benefit that the more computational power that is spent in the competition the more secure the blockchain is from 51% attacks. Maybe 134 TWh is too high of a price for such a limited use technology such as bitcoin. Maybe…

> Blockchain is the single largest threat to banking, and that doesn’t come without a price. That's an interesting statement. The first question that occurred to me was: Why does banking have to be threatened? In other words, is this a solution looking for a problem?

I feel like lots of people forgot about 2007/08 and the impact on so many people around the world. It was truly painful and destructive. And very clearly people responsible got off free, with bonuses and some even ended up with jobs in the treasury.

A lot of people I know working in crypto saw their families hurt badly by that crises and will happily spend their lives trying to build something else (even if the odds are stacked against them). They protested at OWS and saw little political will for change.

Eventually we are left with the question: Do we just sit around voting every few years for another colour to be in charge, or do we try build something else, maybe it’ll work, maybe not, failure is ok we already live in a failed state, maybe all we need to do is threaten the existing political/financial institutions so that they do things differently or risk irrelevance. Who know. Trends and forces.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#79

Post by mwattsun »

smnrchrds wrote: post #53
mwattsun wrote: post #25

The counter argument is that Bitcoin is a battery [1] so that if you live in a place like Iceland with plentiful energy, so much that even exporting it as aluminum leaves extra, then you can turn it into Bitcoin and export it that way. But most Bitcoin mining is not that. I feel like Joni Mitchell in the Big Yellow Taxi: "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" [2] Why are we allowing this to happen? (Well, at…

The thing about battery is that you can take the energy out of it. It stores energy. That's the entire point of a battery. How on earth can you do that with Bitcoin? If you can't, Bitcoin isn't a battery, it's a black hole.

Ideally, you would mine your Bitcoin in Iceland or Chile [1] with geothermal or hydro and buy corn from Iowa with it and the farmers there use it to buy power from the local windmill grid, so it's a battery in that sense.

[1] https://www.hydropower.org/country-profiles/chile

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#80

Post by downWidOutaFite »

Nextgrid wrote: post #56

The only way to beat Bitcoin or other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies is to remove the need for them. Bitcoin and other cryptos have a use-case; it may not be apparent to someone living in a developed country with access to a good banking system or it may be one you don't like and involves criminal activity, but there absolutely is a use-case. The only way to stop this is if the traditional banking system catches up a…

Banning maybe wouldn't eradicate it but it would collapse the price and reduce mining.
Post reply on HN