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"Bigger than the 500 largest supercomputers" ... to process 144 blocks a day? (self.Buttcoin)

shortbitcoin が 投稿

I don't know how accurate it is, but I've heard that the bitcoin network has more computing power than the 500 largest supercomputers on earth.

Then I was thinking that in terms about blocks, which take about 10 minutes each, so that works out to ~144 blocks per day. 500 supercomputers to solve 144 blocks.

That means it would take one of these "largest supercomputers" about 3.4 days of nonstop processing to process one block. To give you an appreciation of the magnitude of that, if you need to rent a supercomputer you'll end up paying thousands of dollars per hour.

Question: how can anybody in their right mind defend a system so flagrantly inefficient?

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[–]jstolfi 4ポイント5ポイント  (1子コメント)

how can anybody in their right mind defend a system so flagrantly inefficient?

Hear it explained by Antonopoulos 2.0TM

[–]shortbitcoin[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Great link (I probably watched far more than you intended) — and it underscores my point. He brags about how much computing power it consumes, as if that's a good thing.

[–]theskepticalheretic 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

how can anybody in their right mind defend a system so flagrantly inefficient?

Ideological imperative. To be more precise, the users of bitcoin view the inefficiencies in a few ways:

  • It's new so it'll get better over time

or

  • The inefficiency is worth the cost to have a decentralized currency over the existing centralized systems.

One could argue that the efficiency would get better, but that's kind of silly considering cryptography is a somewhat known element in terms of processing costs for output. The decentralization argument looks pretty dumb considering all the centralized exchanges the community depends on.

[–]ButtcoinLongForm 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

They might technically be right but they're also omitting the most important point by far which is that the Bitcoin network is capable of doing one thing and one thing only:

y = SHA256(SHA256(x))

This is literally the only function their shitty network can process. This algorithm is fucking worthless to anyone but (maybe) a password cracker. It is in no way even close to a general purpose computer like everyone associate with modern computing.

[–]GoxPopuli 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

144 blocks a day ought to be enough for anybody.