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Perfect! Put a few tons of carbon in the air pointlessly calculating hashes to mine *coins, and then use those e-coins to charge your electric car. This uses

Perfect! Put a few tons of carbon in the air pointlessly calculating hashes to mine *coins, and then use those e-coins to charge your electric car. This uses Ethereum so when they eventually move to proof-of-stake I'll mostly retract my scorn, but for now I stand by this being counterproductive and dumb.

mrb 9y ago
"Put a few tons of carbon in the air pointlessly calculating hashes to mine coins" It's not pointless. Have you read the arguments in http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-mining-is-not-wasteful/ http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-mining-is-not-wasteful/ ? It's not Ethereum-specific but the same logic applies. I feel I post that link too frequently, but people get too often mentally blocked on one technical detail (hashing) and fail to think about the big picture (renewables, jobs created, real utility of cryptos, etc). If cars with internal combustion engines were introduced today, would HNers complain its a dumb tech because it wastes 97% of the fuel's energy?[1] [1] 90% wasted moving 1.5 tons of metal and only 150 kg of useful cargo/passengers, and remaining 7% wasted mostly as heat/friction.
- jstanley 9y ago
  Thanks for writing this. I've been looking for a decent article to send people who argue that mining is a waste of energy, and this is that.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  I'd like to ask more about Proof of Stake's flaws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake#Criticism These problems seem fairly significant and unresolved. Thoughts? Statistical simulations have shown that simultaneous forging on several chains is possible, even profitable. But Proof of Stake advocates believe most described attack scenarios are impossible or so unpredictable that they are only theoretical. Any system that will eventually attain a $1T market cap probably can't have theoretical issues like this.
  - RoboTeddy 9y ago
    AFAIK Ethereum plans to resolve this "nothing at stake" issue by using security deposits. If someone submits a proof that a miner was staking on multiple chains, the miner loses their security deposit. https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ That said, this all looks hard to get right...
- davidgerard 9y ago
  > Venture capitalists invested more than $1 billion into at least 729 Bitcoin companies which created thousands of jobs. ... for return to date of zero. This is literally broken-windows economics.
  - mrb 9y ago
    Returns are irrelevant in the context of this argument. Jobs that provide real utility (not "breaking windows and repairing them") were created, and that's enough to justify the energy spent mining. Furthermore, an average investment takes years to generate returns. It's too early to call such investments worthless.
honestlyreally 9y ago
Measuring the actual carbon produced by butcoin mining is hard, miners inevitably co-located with cheap sources of power where renewable power is oversupplied. Compare that to say air travel
stale2002 9y ago
Bank of America also puts carbon in the air in order to make your debit card work. Those offices cost a lot of money, resources, and carbon in order to keep the lights on and make those databases work. How are crypto-currencies any different than that?
- cperciva 9y ago
  Bank of America processes orders of magnitude more transactions per ton of CO2 emissions.
  - DoctorBit 9y ago
    LOL, that's an interesting new metric for financial transactions - I like it! I sure hope Vitalik et. al. can pull off Casper as advertised.
- bpodgursky 9y ago
  This conversation has been done a million times, and I don't feel like going through the motions again when it's so easy to look up. The fact is it is different (1) fundamentally, because BoA would use 0 electricity if it could, while it will ALWAYS be worthwhile to spend a certain fraction of Bitcoin's transaction volume on electricity in order to capture transaction fees, and that will ALWAYS involve pointless hashes. GPU /ASIC efficiency gains will only drive more miners to mine. (2) obviously, just look at the comment chains on previous posts for numbers (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751971); https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751971); bitcoin burns a stupid amount of electricity to process a minute fraction of BoA's volume
  - stale2002 9y ago
    Crypto currencies would absolutely use zero electricity if they could too. There are efforts RIGHT NOW to solve this problem. So just like how BOA wastes electricity right now, and is trying to reduce its electricity use, so too are cryptocurrencies. For example, one way to do it is to power the blockchain via "wasted" electricity from other sources, that was going to do nothing anyway. For example, a heater literally sends electricity through wires, and "wastes" that energy to create heat. One could imagine a heater that uses the electricity/heat from mining for "free". Or even at a more basic level, imagine a electric dam, that produces so much power during certain times in the day, that it has to sell it for negative prices on the market. Thats Free energy right there! Another example is Proof of Space algorithms. The way it works is instead of using GPU heavy hashing algorithms, you use "Space" intensive hashing algorithms. The reason why you do this is because there is a TON of extra hard disk space that is just lying around doing nothing. We could take that extra space for "free" and use it to secure a blockchain (while allowing the user to reclaim the space at any time with no effort), and it would cost very little electricity.
ohazi 9y ago
It's like the exact opposite of a carbon credit!

mrb 9y ago

"Put a few tons of carbon in the air pointlessly calculating hashes to mine coins" It's not pointless. Have you read the arguments in http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-mining-is-not-wasteful/ http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-mining-is-not-wasteful/ ? It's not Ethereum-specific but the same logic applies. I feel I post that link too frequently, but people get too often mentally blocked on one technical detail (hashing) and fail to think about the big picture (renewables, jobs created, real utility of cryptos, etc). If cars with internal combustion engines were introduced today, would HNers complain its a dumb tech because it wastes 97% of the fuel's energy?[1] [1] 90% wasted moving 1.5 tons of metal and only 150 kg of useful cargo/passengers, and remaining 7% wasted mostly as heat/friction.

jstanley 9y ago
Thanks for writing this. I've been looking for a decent article to send people who argue that mining is a waste of energy, and this is that.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
I'd like to ask more about Proof of Stake's flaws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake#Criticism These problems seem fairly significant and unresolved. Thoughts? Statistical simulations have shown that simultaneous forging on several chains is possible, even profitable. But Proof of Stake advocates believe most described attack scenarios are impossible or so unpredictable that they are only theoretical. Any system that will eventually attain a $1T market cap probably can't have theoretical issues like this.
- RoboTeddy 9y ago
  AFAIK Ethereum plans to resolve this "nothing at stake" issue by using security deposits. If someone submits a proof that a miner was staking on multiple chains, the miner loses their security deposit. https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ That said, this all looks hard to get right...
davidgerard 9y ago
> Venture capitalists invested more than $1 billion into at least 729 Bitcoin companies which created thousands of jobs. ... for return to date of zero. This is literally broken-windows economics.
- mrb 9y ago
  Returns are irrelevant in the context of this argument. Jobs that provide real utility (not "breaking windows and repairing them") were created, and that's enough to justify the energy spent mining. Furthermore, an average investment takes years to generate returns. It's too early to call such investments worthless.

honestlyreally 9y ago

Measuring the actual carbon produced by butcoin mining is hard, miners inevitably co-located with cheap sources of power where renewable power is oversupplied. Compare that to say air travel

stale2002 9y ago

Bank of America also puts carbon in the air in order to make your debit card work. Those offices cost a lot of money, resources, and carbon in order to keep the lights on and make those databases work. How are crypto-currencies any different than that?

cperciva 9y ago
Bank of America processes orders of magnitude more transactions per ton of CO2 emissions.
- DoctorBit 9y ago
  LOL, that's an interesting new metric for financial transactions - I like it! I sure hope Vitalik et. al. can pull off Casper as advertised.
bpodgursky 9y ago
This conversation has been done a million times, and I don't feel like going through the motions again when it's so easy to look up. The fact is it is different (1) fundamentally, because BoA would use 0 electricity if it could, while it will ALWAYS be worthwhile to spend a certain fraction of Bitcoin's transaction volume on electricity in order to capture transaction fees, and that will ALWAYS involve pointless hashes. GPU /ASIC efficiency gains will only drive more miners to mine. (2) obviously, just look at the comment chains on previous posts for numbers (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751971); https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751971); bitcoin burns a stupid amount of electricity to process a minute fraction of BoA's volume
- stale2002 9y ago
  Crypto currencies would absolutely use zero electricity if they could too. There are efforts RIGHT NOW to solve this problem. So just like how BOA wastes electricity right now, and is trying to reduce its electricity use, so too are cryptocurrencies. For example, one way to do it is to power the blockchain via "wasted" electricity from other sources, that was going to do nothing anyway. For example, a heater literally sends electricity through wires, and "wastes" that energy to create heat. One could imagine a heater that uses the electricity/heat from mining for "free". Or even at a more basic level, imagine a electric dam, that produces so much power during certain times in the day, that it has to sell it for negative prices on the market. Thats Free energy right there! Another example is Proof of Space algorithms. The way it works is instead of using GPU heavy hashing algorithms, you use "Space" intensive hashing algorithms. The reason why you do this is because there is a TON of extra hard disk space that is just lying around doing nothing. We could take that extra space for "free" and use it to secure a blockchain (while allowing the user to reclaim the space at any time with no effort), and it would cost very little electricity.

ohazi 9y ago

It's like the exact opposite of a carbon credit!