249
250

Bitcoin Could Consume as Much Electricity as Denmark by 2020 (motherboard.vice.com)

stefeyboy が 投稿

全 186 件のコメント
並べ替え:
ベスト
トップ新着論争中古い順Q&A

[–]_Dave 47ポイント48ポイント  (119子コメント)

Articles like this are attacking a symptom, not the underlying problem. It doesn't matter how much energy something consumes to do work. What matters is what generates that power in the first place, and the systems that store it and transport it so it can be used.

Our long term strategy can't be "save energy because it gets generated in environmentally harmful ways". This is a defeatist mindset. We all need to use MUCH MORE energy, so we can create new industries and do things that weren't possible before. The problem is that the energy we get today is produced in these environmentally harmful ways. That doesn't mean it always will be, nor should it.

We live in a world where anyone, anywhere, can write some code and start a project with the potential to consume as much power as Denmark. That isn't going away. Chances are, it will become more common. We can't stop that, but we can stop the spread of environmentally destructive energy generation, storage, and transport.

[–]neoform 62ポイント63ポイント  (98子コメント)

You're ignoring the obvious: Bitcoin is wasteful by design. The only reason BTC uses so much energy is because its designed to be wasteful. Efficiency is impossible with BTC.

[–]AtomicKoala [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

It's a stupid waste of energy. As long as we are generating electricity with fossil fuels to a large degree something so energy intensive that has no value to society (such as entertainment wise) should be taxed to the hilt.

[–]Not_Pictured 9ポイント10ポイント  (52子コメント)

What you call "waste" other people call the ability to PROVE intent objectively between total strangers, and decentralized. There exists no other method of doing so.

That is POWERFUL.

It's like calling the fuel used to move across the country a waste. Real work is done, real value is created.

[–]neoform 28ポイント29ポイント  (36子コメント)

Calculating a hash that has a specific number of zeros? Yeah, that's purposefully wasteful and was chosen specifically BECAUSE it's wasteful, not because it enhances security. There are so many other methods that could have been chosen, but the wasteful way was picked to increase scarcity as a means to entice people to "be part of the network", except no one wants to be part of the network any more because doing so is wasteful as fuck.

[–]AAAdamKK [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

The purpose of proof of work is to be energy intensive not wasteful.

The reason it must be that way is so that in order to cheat the system and reverse transactions, you would have to expend a huge amount of energy (and money) to perform the amount of hashes per second necessary to out-compete honest players.

It could be argued that given the amount of transactions that Bitcoin facilitates on a daily basis as of today, the amount of energy per transaction isn't justified. The thing is, if total transactions were to increase 1000x this very moment (neglecting the fact that it isn't ready for that yet) the system wouldn't necessarily need to use any more energy to remain secure.

Then think about all the energy the current financial system uses. All the people, buildings, electricity and infrastructure all over the world. If Bitcoin scaled globally then we might one day consider the legacy system wasteful.

[–]vakeraj [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

The thing is, if total transactions were to increase 1000x this very moment (neglecting the fact that it isn't ready for that yet) the system wouldn't necessarily need to use any more energy to remain secure.

The Lightning Network can one day potentially make this possible.

[–]manbearpig84 3ポイント4ポイント  (15子コメント)

It's not wasteful when it's a desired attribute in the creation of a product. Effort is increased by design to create scarcity. Scarcity is a desired aspect of the product. Just because you don't value the product, doesn't mean that it's wasteful to create. Different people want different things. What you see as waste, others see as value.

[–]zamzam73 [スコア非表示]  (3子コメント)

Whether you like it or not, money is only valuable because people decide it is. It doesn't matter how much resources you spend making that money, unless you can get those resources by extracting them from money (gold, silver coins).

You can't get energy from bitcoin back in any way, therefore it is wasted. You could do that with gold coins. If I create a piece of paper and spend $100 on creating that piece of paper, unless you can get someone else to agree on it, that piece of paper is not worth $100 and nobody is going to give a shit how much resources I put into it.

Scarcity isn't enough; my farts are a scarce, I don't see anyone bending over backwards to pay me to fart in their direction. Which leads us to my original point that money is only worth something if people believe it; it's based on trust unless you're using real goods to trade (which is what gold, silver basically is).

[–]vakeraj [スコア非表示]  (2子コメント)

Bitcoin provides fungible value; energy does not.

[–]Not_Pictured [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

People who don't like bitcoin assert it's worthless to prove that the money spent maintaining bitcoin is a waste.

[–]SchoolboyKyubey [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

What can you buy with it? Illegal drugs and child pornography? Fantastic!

[–]stevesy17 [スコア非表示]  (9子コメント)

You could have done an equal amount of work and gotten an equal amount of value, but instead of hashing meaningless numbers you could have contributed that computing power to something that is ALSO valuable. The way Gridcoin does. So it becomes a question of opportunity cost.

It's impossible for you to argue that all of the energy spent on mining bitcoins couldn't also have accomplished something else, and therefore, was, in part, wasted.

[–]Exlizard [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Gridcoin does not require as much work as bitcoin. Gridcoin is proof of stake. The scientific work in gridcoin is totally ancillary, there is no redirection of work into something valuable. Instead, the need for the work was removed, then added back for a contingent purpose.

[–]manbearpig84 [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

The value comes from the desirability. People desire bitcoins, so the value is high. The opportunity cost is greater if you make something people don't desire instead of something they do. Think about it, if the products value is low, and you use all that energy to mass produce it, the value plumets even more and you just used all that energy and your investment is now worthless. I know you want people to make things you specifically want, but we all have our own desires and it's not wasted effort to create products that people actually want to buy.

[–]Not_Pictured [スコア非表示]  (6子コメント)

If I destroyed Gridcoin would my gridcoin mining hardware still have value? Bitcoin's wouldn't.

I trust people wont destroy their capital investment.

[–]stevesy17 [スコア非表示]  (5子コメント)

I'm not sure I'm following you. Both coins use computers to mine, no?

[–]Not_Pictured [スコア非表示]  (4子コメント)

Hardware that can mine while doing some other useful task is still of value if that coin no longer exists.

Bitcoin hardware being of no other value means bitcoin is safer because destroying bitcoin destroys that capital investment.

Bitcoin does not use universal computers to mine. It uses ASICs, which amount to nothing more than the physical non-reprogrammable layout of transistors in a very particular placement. Glorified wires.

[–]stevesy17 [スコア非表示]  (3子コメント)

Admittedly I've been out of the bitcoin loop for the last year or so... what is bitcoin only hardware? Is it not just computer hardware?

[–]Not_Pictured [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

People are having a seriously hard time differentiating 'what I find valuable' with 'what is objectively of value'. The answer to 'whom?' does not start and stop with "me".

[–]JeffTXD -5ポイント-4ポイント  (14子コメント)

I always laugh at the people who claim bitcoin is wasteful. If bitcoin was truly wasteful it wouldn't be trading at the rates it is currently trading at. Obviously there is worth there.

[–]lbebber 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Beanie Babies were expensive too once.

(my point being that current prices don't prove anything, not that bitcoin is necessarily worthless)

[–]Not_Pictured 1ポイント2ポイント  (12子コメント)

They mean wasteful in the environmental sense.

Or more bluntly "I don't like it therefore you shouldn't do it".

[–]JeffTXD -4ポイント-3ポイント  (11子コメント)

If that is the case why don't we chastise Las Vegas or any business that uses excessive lighting to attract attention?

[–]Not_Pictured 2ポイント3ポイント  (10子コメント)

It would be an identical argument. (forgetting that this is a novel invention for the moment) But Vegas doesn't threaten to change the status quo.

[–]Crassusinyourasses 1ポイント2ポイント  (7子コメント)

Vegas creates real value which is something bitcoin cannot do.

[–]Not_Pictured 1ポイント2ポイント  (6子コメント)

Define "real value". I'll prove bitcoin fits the bill.

[–]Crassusinyourasses -1ポイント0ポイント  (5子コメント)

Material goods that possess value past what a community agrees upon.

[–]JeffTXD -3ポイント-2ポイント  (1子コメント)

So now we're actually worried that bitcoin is going to change the status quo?

[–]Not_Pictured 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Proof of Work will absolutely change the status quo. Bitcoin might if it plays its cards right.

[–]Classical_Liberale 1ポイント2ポイント  (5子コメント)

Having a central server manage one's money is better design?

[–]neoform 14ポイント15ポイント  (2子コメント)

Since it isn't specifically designed to be wasteful, yes.

[–]killerstorm 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Well, it is more energy-efficient, but much less secure.

[–]AAAdamKK [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Having a single point of failure that corrupt bankers/ politicians or hackers can exploit is not a better design, and the fact that the overwhelming majority of mining equipment is powered by hydro-electric/ renewable energy sources makes the wasteful argument a moot point.

[–]X7spyWqcRY -1ポイント0ポイント  (1子コメント)

I'm not sure how it's doing at the moment, but Peercoin is a cryptocurrency that's much more efficient than Bitcoin.

[–]Classical_Liberale 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Well I'm not convinced of their proof-of-stake mining methodology which reduces their proof-of-work effort. Proof-of-stake sounds like a terrible idea that will lead to wealth concentration, not by actual economic productivity, but just by holding onto peercoin. It is directly giving more control to money production to those who already own more money than who is actually working.

In addition to that, I also believe that long-term inflation is unnecessary when you have exceptional liquidity and fungibility built into the crypto-currency protocol. And that deflationary spiral is over-hyped and not terrible in reality.

[–]vakeraj -4ポイント-3ポイント  (33子コメント)

The Lightning Network will allow many many transactions per commit to the blockchain, so that changes the cost calculus significantly.

[–]neoform 10ポイント11ポイント  (25子コメント)

It still doesn't change the underlying design of BTC. When I say it's designed the be wasteful, the hashing algorithm wasn't picked because it's very secure or anything, it was picked because it's slow and progressively gets harder, thereby requiring more and more powerful machines to run...

[–]rawrnnn 5ポイント6ポイント  (2子コメント)

I'm not sure if you have a technically sophisticated criticism of BTC or if you don't understand that this is a design feature. If coins were mined at a fixed rate, the currency wouldn't work, as the value of the coin would be pegged to some maximum value. As it stands, there is a dynamic equilibrium where miners have to decide if it's worth mining or not.

[–]neoform 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

that this is a design feature.

When I said, it's designed the be wasteful, what part of that statement makes it unclear that I understand that this bug is actually a "feature" (it's not, it's a bug). Features make something better; being inefficient and wasteful with no real fringe-benefits, is a bug.

If coins were mined at a fixed rate, the currency wouldn't work

Because it's attempting (poorly) to solve the problem of income disparity, which is still a main failure of BTC, since early adopters have massive stockpiles of BTC.

[–]haakon [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Bitcoin is not trying to solve income disparity. It is trying to solve central control of the issuence and transaction of money.

[–]vakeraj 1ポイント2ポイント  (21子コメント)

If X amount of energy is used to process 1 transaction, that could be wasteful. If that same amount of energy now processes 10,000 transactions, it is several order of magnitude more efficient.

Besides, even characterizing burning all this energy as wasteful misses the point: it secures the Blockchain against attack.

[–]gc3 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

Is bitcoin less energy efficient than paper money? It would seem yes: paper money doesn't get more expensive over time, the costs are constant based on the number of bills in circulation.

[–]vakeraj -3ポイント-2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Paper money does not offer or require the censorship resistance that Bitcoin provides.

[–]JimGusa 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

Would more transactions per block require more energy?

[–]vakeraj 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

No, Lightning Network allows for an unlimited number of transactions until a payment channel is closed.

[–]JimGusa 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

But is that actually up and running? Or is it still in the works, if so, when are they releasing it?

[–]neoform 1ポイント2ポイント  (13子コメント)

If that same amount of energy now processes 10,000 transactions, it is several order of magnitude more efficient.

And yet it's still significantly less efficient compared to the system that was not designed to be wasteful.

it secures the Blockchain against attack.

And it could have been designed to be efficient, but it wasn't. It was designed to be wasteful.

[–]vakeraj 1ポイント2ポイント  (12子コメント)

You're so hung up on declaring Bitcoin "wasteful" that you don't seem to get why it exists: to provide censorship-resistance to a category of transactions that simply are not possible by other means. Your argument is completely irrelevant.

[–]neoform -1ポイント0ポイント  (11子コメント)

to provide censorship-resistance to a category of transactions that simply are not possible by other means.

Bitcoin doesn't do anything that can't be done with cash. Your argument is completely irrelevant.

[–]vakeraj 3ポイント4ポイント  (10子コメント)

Can you buy drugs over the internet with cash? Can you donate to Wikileaks with cash? Can you hide 40 million dollars easily with cash? If you're an escort, can you buy ads on Backpage with cash? Can you transfer money to offshore gambling and betting sites with cash?

Also, banks/governments are cracking down on cash, limiting how much you can withdraw at any given time.

And that's not even getting into the whole micropayments/programmable money use cases of Bitcoin.

[–]neoform 5ポイント6ポイント  (9子コメント)

So basically you're saying BTC is for buying drugs, hookers, gambling and money laundering.

I can't imagine why anyone would think BTC was stupid...

[–]Exlizard 0ポイント1ポイント  (6子コメント)

I have a question about lightning network after reading http://lightning.network/how-it-works/

When a smart contract is created, what information exactly is added to the blockchain?

[–]vakeraj 0ポイント1ポイント  (5子コメント)

No information is added to the blockchain until the payment channel is closed. The two parties are merely exchanging smart contracts (a potentially infinite number) that guarantee them bitcoins. If at any point one of them wants to end the relationship, they can close the channel and record the summation of all transactions to the blockchain.

[–]Exlizard 0ポイント1ポイント  (4子コメント)

So how are the smart contracts enforced? Say we have a smart contract where I sold you a hat for 1 coin. I've delivered the hat. How do I know I will be able to trigger the settlement of your payment on the blockchain? I understand, like with any trade, you have to do something (click a button, swipe a card, etc.) to confirm you are choosing to pay - I'm not asking about this. I mean how does the blockchain know to recognize a given smart contract (which has already been mutually effected) as valid at the moment someone chooses to close the contract? How does the blockchain know to accept the instructions of a smart contract and reject fraudulent ones?

[–]vakeraj 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

Because the smart contract contains a cryptographically-verified signature by the sending party, and uses Check Sequence Verify to hold the payment channel open indefinitely.

[–]Exlizard 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Ok and is that signature identified with the payer's wallet? Also, where is this signature information stored? On both parties' computer? Anywhere else?

So say A owes B one coin under a smart contract. Now B incurs a 1 coin debt to C. If I understand, lightning's role is to, off chain, erase A's debt to B and B's debt to C, and then create a smart contract between A and C, where A now owes C the 1 coin. This correct?

What happens if we have a smart contract where you owe me one coin. Then I go to close the contract and move the coin on the chain itself, only to find out that you already spent all your coins, on chain, and can't settle? Can't this only really help with transactions where the seller accepts some credit risk from the buyer?

[–]vakeraj 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

The coins have to be locked into the channel beforehand, to make sure that no one runs off with the funds. Say I want to pay you some amount. I sign a transaction for, say, $1000 with you, which is recorded on and locks those funds on the blockchain. I can now pay you up to, but not over, $1000. If you want to send me $5 later, then a new smart contract is drafted that reduces the amount I already sent you by $5.

Now let's suppose A has a channel open with B, and B has a channel open with C. A wants to pay C $5. Then he sends $5 via his payment channel to B and B send $5 to C (plus some fee).

[–]Exlizard [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Ok so back to my original question, there is in fact information recorded on chain when the contract is made, specifically the channel, which is just a bond/escrow account..

Suppose I want onto lightning, but I have nobody I have a reason to post a bond to? Will I open a channel with a centralized hub entity who basically provides access to lightning or will I be given a random partner to open a channel with? The former seems to lead to centralization, the latter creates risk that some trades can't find a route.

[–]shim__ -1ポイント0ポイント  (1子コメント)

It's not like BTC is the only cryptocurrency around https://peercoin.net/

[–]neoform -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

They all follow the same basic principle.

[–]jeanduluoz [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Bitcoin consumes a lot of energy, nominally. But it accomplishes the same tasks as the Federal Reserve, the banking industry, remittance services, etc. at fractions of that cost.

[–]corycorycory09 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

What? That is rediculous. Of course it matters how much energy we use.

Climate change is happening NOW, and not in some hypothetical utopia where energy production is free and has zero environmental impact.

[–]Werezwolf 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

great comment that fully captures my thoughts on the subject over the past few years, have an upvote and an ascii gold medal >O

[–]Exlizard 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

The issue is still that energy is currently generated in harmful ways, so, right now how much should be spent on preserving the integrity of a cryptocurrency? You wouldn't argue that it is worth causing pollution to constantly shine a searchlight into outer space, right? Some people say bitcoin is roughly as stupid.

The efficiency question here is if bitcoin hashing is really more energy intensive than the various security, storage, minting, disposing, and transaction costs for traditional currency. But as an extra activity added on to modern society, bitcoin mining is a waste of energy, especially when you contemplate the huge deadweight loss of mining races.

The second issue is bitcoin mining needs to be profitable for the system to survive. Things fall apart if the energy demand of mining exceeds the reward.

[–]bartink 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

The problem doesn't have to be one or the other. Its a bit like personal debt. Want to get out of it? Earn more and spend less. It matters if the energy spent is really wasteful.

[–]ObservationalHumor 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

Yeah it is at least partially a matter of how much energy something uses to do work. Economics is pretty much predicated on the idea of scarcity and to outright ignore it is pretty dumb. It's nice to get swept up in some hypothetical argument about how this wouldn't matter if energy was both abundant and had next to no environmental impact for its generation, but that's ultimately not the world we live in.

To label a mindset as defeatist because it takes efficiency into account is simply choosing to ignore one dimension of technological improvement in favor of another. Especially when it comes to something like Bitcoin where there's clearer lower energy alternatives available and the actual utility/value provided by it is somewhat dubious to begin with.

[–]HippopotamicLandMass -1ポイント0ポイント  (2子コメント)

A true economist laughs at your "scarcity"! By burning our finite fuels and polluting our finite atmosphere, we will create the demand for innovative replacements! Remember Julian Simon's "when copper became scarcer because of the need for wiring, we invented fiber-optic cable!"

We all need to use MUCH MORE energy, so we can create new industries and do things that weren't possible before.

Step 1: consume MUCH MORE energy.

Step 2: ?

Step 3: innovative non-polluting energy industries PROFIT!

[–]martong93 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

When we started running out of old growth forest for fueling our homes, we were saved by moving over to hunting whales to near extinction. And when that happened, we moved over to fossil fuels. Let's see what'll happen when we run out of fossil fuels, or just "earth" while we are at it. Point is, just assume that it's always been innovation rather than destruction that's "saved us" in the past, and we can continue on in our merry ways.

I think ethically it's just easier and more honest to agree that we owe future generations absolutely nothing. If that's people's reasoning then I actually agree a whole lot more.

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

I think that worldview, about innovation-as-savior, is exactly what /u/_dave is advocating.

I'm waiting for the day that a rational person who finds his family irreversibly drowning will innovate a way to breathe water; such are the power of economic incentives.

[–]rhino369 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Efficiency is a huge issue. Especially since "green" energy is somewhat limited in supply. In fact, increased efficiency is the most cost effective way to battle climate change.

Maybe at some point when energy used didn't directly equal greenhouse gas we could stop thinking that way.

But right now, energy used does necessarily release greenhouse gas. That's because almost all marginal energy sources are peaker natural gas plants. The difference between using energy or not using energy means a natural gas plant has to click on or off. At least during the daytime near peak load. During baseload time the extra energy is hard to track to a source, but in America it's probably an old coal burning plant that would be the first retired if we reduced baseload.

All energy consumption needs to undergo a cost/benefit analysis regarding the environmental impacts.

Or we could just price in the externalities into energy pricing.

[–]Uptight_Kraut 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Absolutely agreed. In addition, new technologies do more with less energy, so demand does not climb as steeply as often projected. Computers are much more energy efficient than in the past. Going by today's energy efficiency and projecting is an arbitrary starting point. If they calculated the energy that the earliest supercomputers would have needed to process bitcoin transactions in 2020, I imagine the article would have said we need more than all the worlds energy production.

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

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / Contact)

[–]obsidianop 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Waste is still waste, and it makes achieving a high fraction renewable energy that much harder because you need that much more of it.

We're energy intensive enough. Why defend waste?

[–]martong93 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I feel like giving up on cutting down on wastefully produced energy is what is actual defeatist. Also hoping for greater growth today for the sake of greater environmental sustainability in the future is incredibly short sighted. People have infinite wants, they'll use any excuses to produce today at the expense of the future if even marginally allowed to, and every single step in trying to go for that utopian future where our problems will be magically solved by greater consumption and production will also dig us deeper into our environmental hole. It'll never be the right time where the global economy is "advanced enough" to start seriously turning to environmental issues. There's more than enough food in the world to feed the world population as it will be decades from now, so it's a distribution problem not a shortage problem and it's not more growth we need for that.

Economics is the study of the use of resources, not the glorification of greed. We'd honestly better off if we were invaded by advanced benevolent extraterrestrial dictators than further the mindset that it's greater global consumption that is really missing from tackling the current problems of humanity.

Ironic how this came up on a conversation about a "commodity" that requires resources to produce but has no primary use whatsoever than to representation of value.

[–]shwinnebego 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I have a quibble with that: we do not all need to use MUCH MORE energy - but on average, humanity does need to use more energy. The "good life" as it's generally defined isn't currently available at the global average per capita power generation of 2kW - generating more is part of the mix, as is finding ways to redesign lived environments to make an awesome standard of living reasonably available at lower levels of energy consumption.

[–]cp5184 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

So it's not that by 2020 bitcoin will consume as much energy as denmark does, it's that the 14 gigawatts it will consume will produce 14 gigawatts of pollution from coal, or natural gas, or oil used to create that energy.

[–]leemo_12 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

So, what do you propose?

[–]FANGO -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

No, this is insanity. If energy use didn't matter, then efficiency gains wouldn't matter. Obviously efficiency gains matter. We should be using less energy to do more, not more energy to do more.

[–]Zifnab25 -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

Our long term strategy can't be "save energy because it gets generated in environmentally harmful ways". This is a defeatist mindset. We all need to use MUCH MORE energy, so we can create new industries and do things that weren't possible before.

Wat. That doesn't make any sense at all.

One of the leading drivers in modern clean energy was sky-high expensive fossil fuels. But the expense was high - in large part - because the cost of extraction was going up. Shale oil wasn't coming out of the ground for less than $40/bbl. Deepwater Horizon wasn't financially viable without similar expected returns.

So high consumption and high prices drove both greater investment in clean technology and messier/riskier investment in dirty technology.

Now we're seeing prices crash as production costs drop (frakking makes old wells viable and provides natural gas as an alternative fuel, eating into the margins of products like coal and solar). Why? Because we invested tons of money in new technologies quite a bit of which was concentrated in the fossil fuel industry. Technology didn't bring us only cleaner solutions, it brought us a wider menu at a new set of price points.

Now we've got new horrible ways of fucking up our environment at prices comparable to solar and wind. Hooray!

We live in a world where anyone, anywhere, can write some code and start a project

Pull the cybernetic dongle out of your food port. Software doesn't make basic engineering problems go away.

[–]rawrnnn 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Can't the issue of waste be largely addressed by running the miners somewhere that waste heat is desirable?

For example, where people are already heating their homes; heating is 100% efficient whether or not you are using a dumb metal coil or solving a hash on a computer.

[–]Not_Pictured [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Financial incentives will push mining to do what you describe. We are in the ASIC epoch of bitcoin mining, we will slowly transition into the unprofitable (for the miner) 'if it makes heat on purpose it will mine bitcoin' epoch.

Making heat on purpose is why I mine in the winter at home on old (was free) hardware. I lose money in bitcoin terms, but it's subsidized heat regardless.

[–]aminok 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

Bitcoin mining machines can double as space heaters. Advanced integrated circuits, like Bitcoin's ASICs, are more efficient than heating elements at converting electricity to heat.

What this means is that all electricity currently used for heating can double as an energy source for Bitcoin mining. The end result should be that Bitcoin mining becomes close to energy neutral.

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

Advanced integrated circuits, like Bitcoin's ASICs, are more efficient than heating elements at converting electricity to heat.

Do you happen to have a source for this?

[–]moptic 4ポイント5ポイント  (12子コメント)

Haven't 'proof of stake' protocols been around for 3-4 years? Can anyone better informed than me explain why they haven't supplanted 'proof of work'?

[–]humans_nature_1 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Last I heard, PoS still relies on centralized checkpoint nodes which basically make it non-decentralized defeating the entire purpose of bitcoin.

[–]sockpuppet2001 [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Proof of stake suffers from a "nothing at stake" problem where it costs nothing to mine on every branch that might survive instead of having to pick the best one. The purpose of a blockchain is to establish a consensus history (singular), and that convergence is undermined when people can bet on every horse.

There are many different "solutions" proposed to the Nothing at Stake problem, usually involving a punishment for mining on more than one branch, but to punish someone you need to catch them, and to catch them you need a history where they've been bad, and to get a history that everyone agrees upon you need a... blockchain. So those solutions tend to just shift the location of the problem around, and people have come to accept that PoS requires checkpoints. Bitcoiners don't like checkpoints because they are a form of central control, and the purpose of Bitcoin is to be decentralised and outside of human interference, but Bitcoin's system isn't perfect either so it comes down to what you value. For many, proof of stake is "good enough".

[–]Classical_Liberale 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake#Criticism

I believe the danger of people creating alternative chains relatively easily than proof-of-work currencies, is very much a possibility given the way Stake-holders can hide their true share of the network.

[–]Not_Pictured 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Proof of work is based on the reality humanity has been operating off of for... well ever. It's an easy system to understand, and any loopholes have long since been discovered. (Like before history existed)

It's why peacocks have life threatening tails. The women know he couldn't have cheated. He's alive because he's a bad ass. Edit: a fabulous bad ass.

Proof of stake is unproven, has a miriade of know potential weaknesses and god knows how many unknown. If it works, great. There exist coins trying it out, and Etherium plans on making the switch afaik.

As a stakeholder of bitcoin I much prefer PoW.

[–]sfultong 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

The simplest reason is that bitcoin has the most hype.

Ethereum has the second-most hype, and plans to switch to PoS eventually, so it could supplant bitcoin.

Many bitcoin advocates never took other cryptocurrencies seriously (especially because you had to buy into most of the PoS ones, making them seem more scammy), and figured that any technological improvements could simply be ported to bitcoin.

Someone could certainly release a new PoS cryptocurrency that uses a snapshot of bitcoin's ledger, and thus provides an "upgrade". As for why that hasn't be done, well, I guess most developers who could do that would prefer to make their own cryptocurrency start with a premine that they owned, so that they could possibly get rich.

[–]Slapbox [スコア非表示]  (3子コメント)

GridCoin strikes me as the best. Proof of stake + Proof of work BUT the proof of work is for meaningful scientific advancement, not just wasting energy.

[–]Exlizard [スコア非表示]  (2子コメント)

Gridcoin's proof of work component has no nexus to the integrity of the network, as far as I know. The scientific work doesn't establish the ledger. They face all the normal PoS issues.

[–]Slapbox [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Can you elaborate?

[–]Exlizard [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

So lets say bitcoin uses 100 units of energy to write a block. And it awards 5 coins for each block written.

In grid coin, you only need maybe 10 units of energy to write blocks and they award 2 coins for each block writer. This is because gridcoin uses proof of stake, not proof of work. Proof of stake is less costly to implement, but may or not be truly viable and safe.

But let's assume it is viable, as gridcoin does. The logic of gridcoin is as follows: since bitcoin is the benchmark competition, and we found a way to save 90 units of energy compared to bitcoin, we should create a program to still spend that energy, but in a useful way. So, as a community, let's agree to issue an extra 3 coins to people who spend that energy in ways we agree are good.

However, various people seem to think gridcoin requires still 100 units of energy, and just found a protocol to make all of it beneficial. This is not true. All the useful work in gridcoin is totally contingent. The coin would work exactly as well if all of it was eliminated.

[–]-Hegemon- 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

The cynic in me says the miners would oppose.

[–]2Punx2Furious 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Does anyone actually "control" bitcoin? Isn't it decentralized?

[–]Not_Pictured [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

It's not controlled but it can be changed if enough people agree. As measured by the price of bitcoin and 'voted' (essentially) on by those with a provable stake in bitcoin.

Decisions that increase the value of bitcoin will happen, those that decrease the value will either not happen or be reversed. We know this because people who are paid in bitcoin but who have expenses in other currencies are making the decisions.

[–]tcoop6231 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

And how much energy is consumed manufacturing and processing metal coinage and paper notes?

Denmark uses about 35 TWh of electricity per year.

At 10 cents per KWh, that's $3.5 billion.

Is that a lot of money? Depends on the value added by Bitcoin.

What's the value add of Bitcoin? Evidently more than that.

[–]apacheco10 6ポイント7ポイント  (3子コメント)

What about all the energy the finance industry currently uses? All the brick and mortar locations that could be replaced with blockchain technology?

I bet if you did the math it's save far more energy overall.

[–]deadalnix [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

True. But I'm sure they do handle more than 3 tps.

[–]jeanduluoz [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Absolutely. People see a big nominal value, but they fail to recognize that the alternative is the tremendoussly costly waste of central banks, remittance services, and many banking services and all the people they employ who could be doing other productive work.

[–]lead999x [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

As an econ student this definitely sounds feasible to me. Though I'd want to see some numbers before we start replacing all the banks.

[–]killerstorm 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I think it would make more sense to analyze it from another angle:

The fundamental equation here is that the sum of rewards miners collect go into a number of things:

  • electricity costs
  • hardware and maintenance costs
  • capital costs
  • profits

Thus electricity costs will never exceed block rewards (assuming that miners won't mine at loss). Starting from July 2016, Bitcoin miners will generate 657000 bitcoins per year. (There are also transaction fees they get but they are negligible now.)

At the current exchange rate of $420 dollars per Bitcoin, miners will pay up to $275M per year for electricity they consume. Assuming wholesale rate of 3 cents per kWh, they will consumer up to 9.2 billion * kWh per year, or around 1 gigawatt.

That's the maximum. Realistically, hardware and maintenance cost are significant at this point, and miners want some profits now, so 350 MW quoted in article is quite realistic.

However, the important thing is that this number won't go up unless Bitcoin price increases!

14600 MW scenario is possible only after 1500% Bitcoin price increase.

It's also worth noting that we'll have another reward halving in 2020, which will half the number of generated bitcoins, and thus miners' revenues, and thus their ability to pay for electricity.

[–]Hakuna_Potato 2ポイント3ポイント  (13子コメント)

Does not computation get more efficient over time and regularly decrease energy consumption?

[–]Not_Pictured 6ポイント7ポイント  (1子コメント)

Yes, but bitcoin only cares about how much you spent functionally.

Proof of Work (why bitcoin uses electricity at all) is simply a method to prove financial incentives because it proves you spent cold hard cash. The quantity of cash spent is the measuring stick functionally. The quantity of processing power created for every dollar spent is rather meaningless assuming equal footing for all bitcoin miners. (which isn't the case since places like China subsidize electricity).

Edit:

That said, bitcoin is CHEAP compared to what it does. This anti-bitcoin power stuff is just ignorant people being ignorant like environmentalists who protest nuclear power.

[–]dbthegimp 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Thank you for your understanding of the issue

[–]intellos 8ポイント9ポイント  (7子コメント)

Moore's law is dead unless we can get off silicon. We only have 1 or 2 more die shrinkages until we hit the Quantum Tunneling limit, at which point we can't really make processors using silicon transistors any more energy efficient.

[–]Hakuna_Potato 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

we can't really make processors using silicon transistors any more energy efficient

That's true. There are other mechanisms for computation other than silicon transistors tho. The transistor is something like the 5th paradigm, right?

[–]hardsoft 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

From the perspective of speed and eventually density, though that won't stop the design of ever higher transistor count chips with massive parallization. Chips can keep getting bigger

[–]Logoscyth 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

To a point. You also have problems of pumping enough power through the chips while cooling them enough to keep them from melting. There is an upper limit to parallelization.

[–]bobskizzle 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Chips can keep getting bigger

Market forces drive them to get smaller. More chips on a wafer = more money per second, less cost per chip, etc etc etc.

[–]fnordfnordfnordfnord 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Bitcoin mining ASICs have a long way to go before they hit that brick wall.

[–]usrn 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

14nm hardware is being rolled out now.

It took bitcoin 3 years to catch up with the latest die shrink.

[–]fnordfnordfnordfnord 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Damn, that escalated quickly. As I was making the comment I was afraid that might be the case. Should've checked first. Thanks.

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

...allowing you to do more computations with the energy you were already consuming. And when prices drop, it allows you to buy more devices that consume power.

[–]Hakuna_Potato 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

allows you to buy more devices

Sure. So assuming everyone involved continues to buy back in to mine bitcoin, yes, electricity consumption would increase.

[–]rawrnnn 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

There is a physical lower bound on the cost of computation, but not on the amount of CPU cycles miners would be willing to use if the value of BTC is high enough.

[–]el_pinata 4ポイント5ポイント  (15子コメント)

Weren't we just playing a funerary dirge for Bitcoin a few months ago? I thought it was irrevocably broken.

[–]sakebomb69 9ポイント10ポイント  (4子コメント)

That’s because bitcoin is incredibly energy intensive: at the time of Malmo’s piece, he calculated that a single bitcoin transaction requires as much electricity as the daily consumption of 1.6 American households, and that number has increased since then.

Or maybe Denmark doesn't use that much power and the energy consumption rate for a Bitcoin transaction is exceedingly high?

[–]el_pinata 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

I think they said the mining equipment uses something like 350MW, which is...a lot. But regardless, I thought the system itself was on the decline, but they're writing about it as though it's going to stay stable or grow in the coming years.

[–]sakebomb69 4ポイント5ポイント  (1子コメント)

I think it was based on if the network continues to grow at the projected rate. But people/combines will only mine if it's profitable enough to do so and the volatility of Bitcoin makes it difficult to predict.

[–]el_pinata 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yeah, that makes sense. Would have been a more interesting piece a few years ago, I guess.

[–]mcr55 [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Right now the fee per transaction is 7c... Although most miners make their money from rewards, worst case scenario the cost is 70c per transaction, still doubt a house spends 70c per day on energy

https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction

[–]SoundOfOneHand 5ポイント6ポイント  (8子コメント)

People keep using it, so it must not be totally broken. Its inefiicienties are partly due to deliberate redundancies fundamental to the protocol and consensus enforcement, and partly due to an inability for the developers, miners, and community to expand the capacity of each block, resulting in an artificially inflated cost (electricity and fees) to process each transaction due to the limited number that can fit in a 1MB block. The bandwidth problem may at some point be resolved, at which point the storage requirements are likely to skyrocket, exacerbating the redundancy problem, like Ouroboros eating its own tail.

Presumably, any decentralized system like bitcoin has some global maximum of resource consumption before the cost becomes prohibitive and more centralized, trust-based models come into play. There is talk of - with some engineering efforts ongoing - moving most transactions off-chain and having Bitcoin become something of a settlement layer, keeping some fixed capacity limit in place.

[–]laustcozz 4ポイント5ポイント  (5子コメント)

All the block size drama was/is political. It is a debate in the community with pros and cons on both sides. Larger blocks mean greater available throughput, but also slower propagation in areas of the world with bandwidth limitations and rapidly increasing size for anyone who keeps the whole blockchain. Eventually at least part of this problem will be solved by pruning, where not every node will need to keep a record of every transaction in history. The 1 MB limit is changeable, and eventually consensus will be reached to make it larger.

Bitcoin isn't broken. Right now transactions cost a little more than they used to to get them processed quickly. Some people think they cost too much. I personally am not freaking out that I might pay 4¢ per transaction. Compare that to a credit card's rate (I'm not up to date on this but a company I used to work for paid 35¢ +3%) and it looks pretty damn cheap.

[–]SoundOfOneHand 0ポイント1ポイント  (4子コメント)

A few important differences. Credit card fees are predictable, they are paid by the merchant not the customer, and as a result the credit card provider is never going to hold your transaction hostage for miscalculating the fee. Some transactions have been floating through the mempools of nodes for months, with the issuer unable to reclaim their funds or complete the transaction.

Saying bitcoin is broken is misleading at best - it serves some utility to some people, and if you are a careful technical user you will likely not face major problems. Its advancement certainly faces a never-ending supply of large technical and social hurdles.

[–]laustcozz 2ポイント3ポイント  (3子コメント)

If you are a consumer using consumer tools, such as a blockchain.info wallet (not a plug, just what I personally use for small everyday transactions) you won't have problems. The people that get transactions tied up are people being very careless with their money or else using tools they don't understand. Both very foolish things to do.

The "be your own bank" aspect of bitcoin is very real. That does open up the possibility of committing errors that people are used to being insulated from. However, pointing out the random individual who did something they didn't understand and tied their money up in limbo is no more damning to bitcoin than the user who does a wire transfer to a Nigerian scammer is damning to the dollar and the traditional banking system.

[–]SoundOfOneHand 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

blockchain.info

I seriously hope you're not keeping more than spending money in there at any time - they have a history of very poor security practices. IIRC they were the ones generating new addresses with insufficient entropy - and kept doing it again after they lost a lot of customer funds. I've heard lots of other bad stories about them on /r/bitcoin.

To be your own bank is almost mandatory with bitcoin - why would you bother to use it if you were just going to trust your money with someone else? When you hand someone your private key (or make a deposit to theirs on your behalf), you lose all the control of your money. They can deny access to your funds; operate on fractional reserve; cover up insolvency; etc. Blockchain and other service providers do in fact cut off people's access on a regular basis now due to the regulatory climate in the US. If you want to use bitcoin seriously, you are best off keeping funds in cold storage and moving small amounts into a hot wallet as needed - preferably one to which you control the keys.

It is not for the faint of heart, and likely never will be. Falling for a 419 scam is an error in judgment, and just as likely to happen with bitcoin as with fiat. Using a buggy piece of software (many calculate fees incorrectly), or making a mistake with a more robust piece of software, is a different category of error, and one we are all likely to make from time to time. The state of wallet software is generally deplorable, but it is a really hard problem to solve and there are frankly not that many resources dedicated to it.

I think bitcoin is a cool tech project with some interesting applications. They just happen not to be very mainstream or in many cases legal applications. Much of the touted uses of the blockchain for things like smart contracts, or overtaking Visa or some fiat currency, I personally find laughable. It is a big experiment that often looks like a solution in search of a problem.

[–]laustcozz 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

You are right about nearly everything you say. But a couple things in response:

Blockchain.info's problems are specifically why I made sure not to endorse them....though I do find them convenient as a "pocketbook."

Regarding miscalculated fees, if you stick to standard software (say electrum) and just go with the defaults, there is no problem. People that accidentally pay a $10,000 fee by accident are always fools who are either manually sending transactions or testing custom software with a wallet full of money.

Regarding replacing Visa or Fiat....certainly not in the near future, or total replacement. But bitcoin isn't a solution in search of a problem at all. It does its root function (being internet money) very well. There are other clunky solutions (credit cards, paypal, etc) but bitcoin really is better, quicker , and more convenient.

Is it an ideal way to pay for a shipment from some unknown company in the Balkans? Hell no. is it a reasonable way to buy a computer from Dell? Sure, why not. Is it a good way to buy 99¢ rythm loops from a beat library or a couple podcasts straight from the author? There is nothing better.

So does visa have to worry? No. Paypal and Western Union should though.

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

Paypal really is ass. My wife was banned years ago for unknown reasons, to this day cannot use their service, and sometimes (infrequently but still) it's all that people accept online. If bitcoin's legal status were strictly that of a currency, I'd be inclined to use it much more.

Cheers to being able to have an actual conversation about bitcoin, the topical subreddits are all echo-chambers to one extreme or the other.

[–]op135 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

they're using it in the hopes that their precious "bitcoins" will inflate in value once bitcoin becomes mainstream. they don't use/hold bitcoin because they value it, they do it because they're speculators.

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

Too true, and most of the people actually using it - making real transactions - are buying illegal goods from darknet markets, and gambling/trading.

[–]elr0nd_hubbard 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Doesn't this article support the chief complaint against Bitcoin? Namely that it's become too cumbersome for day-to-day transactions because of the cost of mining and the length of the blockchain? I'm just a casual observer of BTC, but this article doesn't really sound like a damper on the dirge.

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

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / Contact)

[–]Ashquith -2ポイント-1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Gridcoin = cryptocurrency & energy spent on something useful.

Join us in /r/gridcoin

[–]Exlizard 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Don't confuse gridcoin for a solution to the bitcoin energy problem. Gridcoin exploits an existing solution and then separately tacks on a separate pro-social initiative. The useful works in gridcoin are unrelated to the bitcoin energy issue.

Unlike bitcoin, the energy in gridcoin isn't needed for the coin market to function because gridcoin is really proof of stake, rather than pure proof of work. There is no redirected energy with gridcoin vs bitcoin. There are instead huge energy savings from the implementation of a different protocol, which are then partially cancelled out by the community issuing gridcoin in exchange for computing power given to approved projects.

[–]usrn 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Securing a payment network is very useful.

[–]Satrell -2ポイント-1ポイント  (4子コメント)

Bitcoin is just another (crypto) currency that uses proof of stake, but unlike gold or copper for instance it has no utility value beyond that.

And that second part is what is going to eventually do it and its knockoffs in, after the hype and the need for a black market currency disappear (or are replaced).

Crypto currency is flawed by design.

[–]sfultong 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

When is the need for a black market currency going to disappear?

[–]Satrell [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

when either the need for a black market does, or a better alternative currency takes its place, like a deliberately non tracked banana dollar, like the kruger rand... in digital form

[–]mcr55 [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Bitcoin is not proof of stake it proof of work, thus the article.

Gold has no where near the utility of its price. 90% of the reason and price is people use it is a store of value.

[–]Satrell [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Bitcoin mining IS proof of stake. You (uselessly) burn processing power to generate bitcoin.

But the bitcoin itself has no intrinsic value and the processing power used to generate it served no external purpose.

Gold is vastly overpriced, but it still has intrinsic utility.

[–]-Hegemon- -2ポイント-1ポイント  (0子コメント)

3 words: proof of stake

[–]JimGusa -2ポイント-1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I feel like no ones thinking about how this may be due to Bitcoin mining farms. AntPool and F2Pool take up about 45% of mining power. These large farms consume a ton of energy. The blockchain is then consuming at only 4 or 5 different energy costs. It could be possible that if the mining was broken up between all participants it could bring energy costs down.