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Using electricity as a proof of investment is still a waste of electricity. Proof of work is to establish that money is being spent. A less wasteful system wou

Using electricity as a proof of investment is still a waste of electricity. Proof of work is to establish that money is being spent. A less wasteful system wouldn't convert money into electricity to feed into computations to prove that. Proving that you lit heaps of cash on fire would be less wasteful. Just because a process is wasteful doesn't mean it isn't valuable. Air freight is wasteful but is also valuable.

keymone 8y ago
> Proof of work is to establish that money is being spent nope. it's a proof that energy was consumed. money is human concept, energy is universal absolute. > Just because a process is wasteful doesn't mean it isn't valuable energy consumption is inherently wasteful activity (as in there is some amount of "waste" in the world produced for the energy to become consumable). by this definition literally everything is wasteful and the label loses it's meaning. but labels are useful and i (and the official definition) prefer using the term wasteful for something that is intentionally or unnecessarily inefficient. bitcoin is neither - every joule spent mining bitcoins is necessary to provide the level of security demanded by the market. you can't spend less energy to provide same level of security, because in bitcoin they are pretty much the same.