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I admit I don't know much of anything about cryptocurrency, but is there something fundamental about the need for "mining" (in whatever form) for currency? It s
by crispyambulance 8y ago
I admit I don't know much of anything about cryptocurrency, but is there something fundamental about the need for "mining" (in whatever form) for currency? It seems like the intent behind bitcoin mining was to mimic the scarcity of mining for gold or other precious metals by substituting hefty computations. But isn't that just a means of getting the currency bootstrapped in some way which ensures that it becomes scarce? Aren't there other, less energy intensive ways to do that?
I mean, could there not be a cryptocurrency which bootstrapped off of the exchange with "real currency"? Or perhaps by direct exchange of goods and services?
- lytedev 8y agoUnfortunately I believe one of the core concepts is the "proof-of-work" and Bitcoin cannot work on the decentralized and distributed manner it achieves without it.
- brohee 8y agoWe should really rename "proof-of-work" as proof-of-waste, as it is what it is, frankly...
- wanderfowl 8y agoI understand that a central respository of work and the need to make the busywork scale cleanly and linearly makes it tough to be decentralized, but I regularly wish that a dominant cryptocurrency could find a way to do proof of (real) work with these cycles. There are so many projects which just lack for computing power (e.g. folding, prime hunting, etc), so it feels like even more of a waste to turning real power into arbitrary hashes.
- wyldfire 8y agoWhat does the word 'waste' mean to you? Why would you use this word to describe what is done by the proof of work? If you think cryptocoins have no utility, then it stands to reason that the proof of work is wasteful. And beyond: the time and money spent by developers, corporations, exchanges, etc: all waste. But if you think that cryptocoins do have some utility, then it seems unfair to call it a "proof-of-waste". The PoW is the only way to equitably mint new currency.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago"What does the word 'waste' mean to you? Why would you use this word to describe what is done by the proof of work?" Because it's a waste. It's not worth what it costs to do, and it's making our world worse by eating up more resources.
- wyldfire 8y ago> It's not worth what it costs to do If you concede that it has utility at all, then all you're saying is "I wouldn't be willing to pay that much". But clearly the market will bear a higher price than you're willing to pay. Other things that are proof of waste: 1k USD iPhones, Cartoons on TV, all-you-care-to-eat restaurants, dabbing, hoverboards.
- s73v3r_ 8y agoI'm seeing a whole lot of "whataboutism", but I'm not seeing anything relevant to the current conversation.
- ehrtt 8y agoNot worth it to you. Just like your trip to Thailand is a waste of finite resources as far as I'm concerned. Who gets to decide, these things are subjective. That's why we use markets to allocate resources.
- crispyambulance 8y ago> The PoW is the only way to equitably mint new currency. I think this statement needs some proof. Why can't exchange of goods or services substitute for proof of work? Why does proof of work _have_ to be power-hungry number crunching?
- sp332 8y agoThere's more to mining than this, but one aspect is that it protects the network from attack. If there's a disagreement about whether a transaction was made, the side with more computing power wins. There's no central authority to arbitrate disputes, so they continuously have to prove which transactions are acknowledged by the majority. If they turned down the hash power to a reasonable level, someone with more hash power could come along and start rewriting transaction history.