Oh thank the lord this idiotic waste of (often fossil) energy will find it's end.
Crypto proof of work is such a flawed (proof of) concept in many ways.
China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
81–90 of 325 posts
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#82Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8
No, Bitcoin won't raise global average temperatures by 2°C. This Nature article was debunked by other researchers. I too was asked to review it (recently, post-publication) and the gist of what they did wrong in their analysis is:
* They overestimate (probably by 3x-5x) the present power consumption of miners because they assume the distribution of types of mining machine is homogenous in this table: https://github.com/moracamilo/Bitcoin/blob/master/Randi_Tabl... (when in fact 60-70% of the mining power comes from a single row in this table: Antminer S9). This error causes their calculated average efficiency (J/GH) to be much overestimated as their dataset contains mostly inefficient obsolete ASICs
* They overestimate future power consumption by ~50x by assuming it grows linearly with the transaction rate (in reality it doesn't). Power consumption grows with miners revenues, proportional to {block rewards + transaction fees}. Fees account for currently ~2% of revenues (average of last 60 days). Rewards decline over time, so that fees will eventually account for close to 100% of revenues, which will happen on the authors timeline of 100 years. So if fees per transaction remaimed constant, we could see a 50x tx rate growth with no increase of power consumption.
* They assume the proportion of CO2 emissions per kWh never improves over the next 100 years (great progress of renewables coming to a sudden stop?), and that Bitcoin consumes more fossil fuels than what the entire world currently consumes (infinite fossil fuel reserves?). It is not unrealistic to imagine the proportion of CO2 per kWh could be in a century 20% of what it is today.
Overall, these errors combined mean their scenario overestimates CO2 emissions by a factor of about a thousand: (3 to 5) x 50 ÷ 20% = 750x to 1250x
Edit: simplified bullet point #2
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why don't people rail like this against the aluminum industry? It's just as wasteful. Bitcoin provides substantial utility and value to society, the energy to secure bitcoin is a cost just the same as the energy to smelt aluminum.
> Bitcoin provides substantial utility and value to society Do you have any proof of this dubious statement?
I've been reading through True Names and the various essays that proceed it in it's most recently published edition and I see crypto currencies as the fulfilment of many of the ideas talked about there. Particularly uncensored anonymous value transfers between parties.
The idea that you can send "money" to anyone regardless of who you or they are does provide some value. Unlike any other financial transaction system that proceeded it that I'm aware of, you can't be deplatformed from crypto.
How valuable you find this likely coincides with the value you place in the ideas of crypto (the original definition) anarchy.
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
there are few things on this planet that are less wasteful and more useful/important for our civilization than bitcoin. it's the first time in history we've been able to express and implement monetary value and security thereof in terms of pure energy without any middlemen.
Except for, you know, all the miners wastefully vying for a chance to be the middleman for a given block.
There's value in competition, though. Bitcoin doesn't eliminate trust, but it does commoditize that function. Commoditization necessarily means "many producers", so there's no way to achieve that without duplication of effort - but I guarantee that one Bitcoin ASIC has a lot less environmental impact than one human.
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
there are few things on this planet that are less wasteful and more useful/important for our civilization than bitcoin. it's the first time in history we've been able to express and implement monetary value and security thereof in terms of pure energy without any middlemen.
Except for, you know, all the miners wastefully vying for a chance to be the middleman for a given block.
your understanding of bitcoin is very lacking. miners never waste any energy, they spend it to acquire proof that they spent it. that proof has value and while value of the proof is larger than market value of bitcoin rewarded for the proof - miners will keep mining.
also miners are not middlemen - they don't control transactions, they don't control the peer to peer network. they are there to publish the proof and get their reward.
you really should inform yourself on the topic before debating it.
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#86Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8
Why don't people rail like this against the aluminum industry? It's just as wasteful. Bitcoin provides substantial utility and value to society, the energy to secure bitcoin is a cost just the same as the energy to smelt aluminum.
Aluminium smelting results in aluminium. You can make stuff with aluminium.
Bitcoin mining results in heat, both literal and metaphorical.
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
there are few things on this planet that are less wasteful and more useful/important for our civilization than bitcoin. it's the first time in history we've been able to express and implement monetary value and security thereof in terms of pure energy without any middlemen.
If you exclude gold and every other physical commodity ever.
> in terms of pure energy without any middlemen
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bitcoin provides substantial utility and value to society Do you have any proof of this dubious statement?
I've been reading through True Names and the various essays that proceed it in it's most recently published edition and I see crypto currencies as the fulfilment of many of the ideas talked about there. Particularly uncensored anonymous value transfers between parties. The idea that you can send "money" to anyone regardless of who you or they are does provide some value. Unlike any other financial transaction system…
> I see crypto currencies as the fulfilment of many of the ideas talked about there.
As it stands, crypto currencies are a promise, not a fulfillment. They will become a fulfillment after they actually solve those problems. But it's a long way from theory to practice, even after all the technology is deployed.
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except for, you know, all the miners wastefully vying for a chance to be the middleman for a given block.
There's value in competition, though. Bitcoin doesn't eliminate trust, but it does commoditize that function. Commoditization necessarily means "many producers", so there's no way to achieve that without duplication of effort - but I guarantee that one Bitcoin ASIC has a lot less environmental impact than one human.
Many producers are actually few with specialised hardware(i.e bitmain)
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitmain makes huge margins on selling equipment, not mining. They make shovels in the gold rush.
From what I understand, and, correct me if I'm wrong, but Bitmain _does_ make money by mining, but they do it by using their own next-generation hardware to mine before making it available for sale, which spikes the difficulty and then they sell it off when the profitability drops. Manufacturing mining ASICs and running your own mining operations seems like it has these big inherent conflicts of interest to me.
which looks like the most efficient way. China will likely make it the State miner initiative in the middle of all those legal changes.