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Nothing is strictly true except truisms, but I still disagree. Unless bitcoin consensus rules necessitated energy source that is harmful for environment, it is

Nothing is strictly true except truisms, but I still disagree. Unless bitcoin consensus rules necessitated energy source that is harmful for environment, it is not fair to blame energy consumer for environment impact. Energy producer is the villain and spineless politicians that won’t enforce punishment for harmful energy sources.

EGreg 8y ago
I disagree, just as in the food example. Consumers are also to blame. If you know that your induced demand will be filled in the same way that current demand is being filled, then creating more demand is irresponsible, if it can be avoided. What benefit does wasting so much energy have? At least Siberian homes using mining to heat their house in the winter have a good side effect.
- keymone 8y ago
  > If you know that your induced demand will be filled in the same way that current demand is being filled, then creating more demand is irresponsible, if it can be avoided. What benefit does wasting so much energy have? I think you misunderstand PoW. Energy is not wasted, energy is spent to provide the security level that is demanded by the market. Nobody will spend a joule mining bitcoin unless it is profitable. > At least Siberian homes using mining to heat their house in the winter have a good side effect This is actually a bad thing, because it means mining is inefficient. Primary purpose of mining is to convert energy into PoW, if you get heat doing that - you’re not getting as much PoW as you could’ve got.
  - EGreg 8y ago
    You always create heat. That’s where the energy goes. Google “reversible computing” for theoretical approaches for computations that release zero heat. Look, I can come up with a terrible sorting algorithm and get everyone using it as a requirement to participate a network protocol that will never change and then say look, it’s useful, it’s sorting stuff. People have long invented far better things than PoW to secure distributed BFT systems. The transcations they can handle even scale with the number of machines, which is the case with the vast majority of applications on the Internet. If there was no alternative then MAYBE it wouldn’t be a waste (I think it would still be a bad trade-off). But you can literally just have a coin on another protocol which doesn’t use PoW arms race.
    - keymone 8y ago
      You always create heat but at different efficiency levels. If you create enough heat with your miner to keep your siberian home warm it’s fair to say you’re not being very efficient at computing. I don’t know if a single system where mutually untrusting parties can find consensus in distributed ledger other than PoW or it’s energy (but not complexity) equivalent PoS. If you do - make a money out of it and be a trillionaire, nobody is stopping you. So far the only thing that probably works is PoW.
      - EGreg 8y ago
        Tell me again what’s wrong with Ripple or Stellar? How are they centralized?
        topmonk 8y ago
        Ripple and Stellar are completely centralized. It's simply a web of trust. If one of your peers that have given you “trust”, such as a bank in which you have an account, decides they want to freeze your funds and prevent you from spending your money on the Ripple network, they can do so. With Bitcoin, this can't be done.
        EGreg 8y ago
        That’s totally false though. Only if the majority of your peers colludes, then you don’t make progress, but then you just change your peers and make progress.
        topmonk 8y ago
        I haven't looked at ripple in awhile, but I thought the idea was that if Alice agrees that she can float Bob $5 and Bob agrees that he can float Charles $5 then as long as you trust Alice with a $5 debt, you can trust Charles with a $5 debt, even though you don't know Charles. And in practice it's usually that Alice and Bob are banks, and Charles is just a customer of Bob's bank. So, Bob can freeze Charles' money. What you're talking about sounds more like EOS, Cardano, Ethereum Proof of Stake, etc.

EGreg 8y ago

I disagree, just as in the food example. Consumers are also to blame. If you know that your induced demand will be filled in the same way that current demand is being filled, then creating more demand is irresponsible, if it can be avoided. What benefit does wasting so much energy have? At least Siberian homes using mining to heat their house in the winter have a good side effect.

keymone 8y ago
> If you know that your induced demand will be filled in the same way that current demand is being filled, then creating more demand is irresponsible, if it can be avoided. What benefit does wasting so much energy have? I think you misunderstand PoW. Energy is not wasted, energy is spent to provide the security level that is demanded by the market. Nobody will spend a joule mining bitcoin unless it is profitable. > At least Siberian homes using mining to heat their house in the winter have a good side effect This is actually a bad thing, because it means mining is inefficient. Primary purpose of mining is to convert energy into PoW, if you get heat doing that - you’re not getting as much PoW as you could’ve got.
- EGreg 8y ago
  You always create heat. That’s where the energy goes. Google “reversible computing” for theoretical approaches for computations that release zero heat. Look, I can come up with a terrible sorting algorithm and get everyone using it as a requirement to participate a network protocol that will never change and then say look, it’s useful, it’s sorting stuff. People have long invented far better things than PoW to secure distributed BFT systems. The transcations they can handle even scale with the number of machines, which is the case with the vast majority of applications on the Internet. If there was no alternative then MAYBE it wouldn’t be a waste (I think it would still be a bad trade-off). But you can literally just have a coin on another protocol which doesn’t use PoW arms race.
  - keymone 8y ago
    You always create heat but at different efficiency levels. If you create enough heat with your miner to keep your siberian home warm it’s fair to say you’re not being very efficient at computing. I don’t know if a single system where mutually untrusting parties can find consensus in distributed ledger other than PoW or it’s energy (but not complexity) equivalent PoS. If you do - make a money out of it and be a trillionaire, nobody is stopping you. So far the only thing that probably works is PoW.
    - EGreg 8y ago
      Tell me again what’s wrong with Ripple or Stellar? How are they centralized?
      - topmonk 8y ago
        Ripple and Stellar are completely centralized. It's simply a web of trust. If one of your peers that have given you “trust”, such as a bank in which you have an account, decides they want to freeze your funds and prevent you from spending your money on the Ripple network, they can do so. With Bitcoin, this can't be done.
        EGreg 8y ago
        That’s totally false though. Only if the majority of your peers colludes, then you don’t make progress, but then you just change your peers and make progress.
        topmonk 8y ago
        I haven't looked at ripple in awhile, but I thought the idea was that if Alice agrees that she can float Bob $5 and Bob agrees that he can float Charles $5 then as long as you trust Alice with a $5 debt, you can trust Charles with a $5 debt, even though you don't know Charles. And in practice it's usually that Alice and Bob are banks, and Charles is just a customer of Bob's bank. So, Bob can freeze Charles' money. What you're talking about sounds more like EOS, Cardano, Ethereum Proof of Stake, etc.