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Oh come on. Bitcoin uses the same amount of energy that the country of Iraq [1] uses, home to 38 million people. Bitcoin has about 500k active bitcoin addresse

Oh come on. Bitcoin uses the same amount of energy that the country of Iraq [1] uses, home to 38 million people. Bitcoin has about 500k active bitcoin addresses [2], most of which contain less than $100 [3]. So what are we actually getting for all this energy usage, and couldn't we get that same result for a fraction of the energy usage? [1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption [2] https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.... [3] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-activeaddresses.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-activeaddresses...

c22 8y ago
You think bitcoin is bad? https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1s8219SGDIjMnkzdFI2QjhwNm8/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1s8219SGDIjMnkzdFI2QjhwNm8... My gut instinct is that the vast majority of all computing cycles used by humanity are completely wasted on irrelevant tasks and inefficiencies.
- root_axis 8y ago
  Bitcoin is wasteful because of its energy profile not because of an arbitrary value judgement regarding how energy should be used. Rendering images is useful work. Processing transactions is useful work. With gaming computers, increasing energy costs means increasing detail and complexity in the images that can be processed. Bitcoin is wasteful because the increasing energy costs does not increase the total number of transactions that can be processed.
  - c22 8y ago
    No, it increases the trust of the system. Is it the best solution? Perhaps not, but it is not without utility.
    - root_axis 8y ago
      "Increasing trust" doesn't add value if the system is already sufficiently trustworthy for the task of processing transactions. Based on that reasoning the cost should ('should' meaning: it is beneficial) increase forever because an infinite amount of energy burned is infinitely trustworthy.
      - c22 8y ago
        Is bitcoin sufficiently trustworthy without proof of work? I'm not a bitcoin expert, but my understanding was that this is an integral part of the trust model. If so then we're just back to talking about inefficiencies. I can't imagine the processing being done by my computer right now is all strictly necessary to read and post these comments, and I'd wager this site is more efficient than most these days. Still I accept reality and pay these costs in order to talk with you on the internet because this is the world we live in. It looks like these nice people at MIT are working on some of the inefficiencies of cryptocurrencies, so let's rejoice.
        root_axis 8y ago
        > Is bitcoin sufficiently trustworthy without proof of work? I'm not a bitcoin expert, but my understanding was that this is an integral part of the trust model. If so then we're just back to talking about inefficiencies. Yes, that's exactly the point. Bitcoin is insanely inefficient because PoW is insanely inefficient. Unlike other "inefficiencies" where there is a logical relationship between "energy spent" and "useful work accomplished", with PoW there is no such relationship since the energy isn't spent doing useful work (i.e. processing transactions). Yes, more power into the network makes it "more secure" by making it "more expensive" to perform a 51% attack. The increased expense is distributed across the network in the form of increased difficulty. If a 51% attack was already implausible (which most bitcoin enthusiasts would say is true), then making it even more expensive doesn't actually do anything useful.
        sjeohp 8y ago
        Mining gold gets harder over time. If you want more gold that's the price you pay. Trust-less consensus may be the same. Nature doesn't care either way.
  - DINKDINK 8y ago
    >Bitcoin is wasteful because the increasing energy costs does not increase the total number of transactions that can be processed. Are you saying the number of transactions the market will demand of a system is independent of the trust of the system? If I need to move $250,000[1] in one hour with ~100% certainty are you saying an IOU from a bank janitor is equivalent in value to a bitcoin transaction? An increase in attack costs increases the types of transactions that can occur safely on L1. The number of L2 updates are unbounded by L1 transaction capacity, increase attack costs gives the market confidence L2 updates cannot be erased. A high cost to signal which money you're willing to use filters out fraud attempts. Which should I trust more, Malory Money who double-pinky swears to run her Malory Money servers 5 years from now but is signaling with no costs or Bobby Bitcoiner who signals by billions of dollars in single-use capex (ASICS) [1] 12.5 BTC/block * 3850 $/BTC * 6 Blocks/hour < tx.value()
    - root_axis 8y ago
      > Are you saying the number of transactions the market will demand of a system is independent of the trust of the system No. I'm saying that if a 51% attack is practically impossible today, the increasing amount of energy consumed to secure the same amount of transactions is wasted. It's also a sign that the system is broken because the amount of energy consumed has no practical impact on security. Reasoning otherwise would suggest it is justified to consume infinite energy because that would be infinitely secure.
      - DINKDINK 8y ago
        >a 51% attack is practically impossible today It appears you think a 51% attack is when an external agent attempts to out hash the network. This is only one type of 51% attack. A 51% attack means there is a almost equal amount of hash rate being applied to two divergent, consensus equivalent chains. This can happen in above scenario or when existing miners attempt to reorg blocks (See ETC 51% attack) There is nothing stopping this behavior from occurring at any point in time. The only check on this behavior is the cost to rewrite history, decrease this cost, and you increase the profitability of such attacks.
  - hndamien 8y ago
    Is the American military wasteful because it provides too much security? How much should it be reduced to provide sufficient security? This is a legitimate question/ I don't have an opinion either way - but it seems to be a fair corollary.
    - ggggtez 8y ago
      Unlike bitcoin, every person in the US has an (more or less) equal vote to help decide that. Congress's job is literally to decide whether to spend more money on military, among other things. And also unlike bitcoin, when you pay the salary of 450k+ soldiers, among other jobs and such created, that's likely a lot better for the economy than random people converting electricity into crypto tokens. What does bitcoin provide in terms of add-on benefits like jobs? The ability for power companies to maximize profits by having their supply used more fully? Edit: Additionally, you can argue that the US army does not provide too much security, because it doesn't take someone more than a few seconds to look at the world and see the world is not 100% safe. There are numerous areas such that, if money was not a concern, could be made safer and more profitable by adding more security. Creating infinite trust in bitcoin would... do what exactly? Let nerds buy drugs on the internet?
      - hndamien 8y ago
        Some would argue that it fixes the economic system so that we won't have booms and busts anymore and can start seeing capitalism in action proper. That seems to be a worthwhile investment, and may even help prevent wars (which are often financed by currency debasement).
      - ric2b 8y ago
        > And also unlike bitcoin, when you pay the salary of 450k+ soldiers, among other jobs and such created, that's likely a lot better for the economy than random people converting electricity into crypto tokens. Jobs are only useful if they waste people's time? Mining is a job. Mining can also become green much faster than constantly moving around millions of tons of vehicles can. > Additionally, you can argue that the US army does not provide too much security, because it doesn't take someone more than a few seconds to look at the world and see the world is not 100% safe. I would argue it decreases security, with all the wars and disruption it caused in the last decades.
- goodmachine 8y ago
  Good spot. Can I add photo-realistic GANs to the list of totally fucking useless computing tasks?
- plankers 8y ago
  You could generalize that to "the vast majority of all waking time used by humanity is completely wasted on irrelevant tasks and inefficiencies."
4bpp 8y ago
In what way does this address the parent post's argument that to the extent Bitcoin produces more negative externalities than positive effects, it is because the price of electricity is not set correctly by governments?
celticninja 8y ago
Those figures from digiconomist have been debunked.
chc4 8y ago
Digiconomist's figures are entirely fake. They've been debunked but the author (and hapless news outlets) continue to promote them. https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7 https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-...
- nosuchthing 8y ago
  The author of your paper appears to be attacking another author and yet has nothing to back up their claims other than "Trust me I'm an expert and I know a guy in Hong Kong who tells me what's happening in China!" The argument summary of your article is hand waving, claims that the sum usage of software designed to be increasingly energy wasteful (Satoshi's random nonce lottery as a means of increasing CAPEX and decreasing production output) https://digiconomist.net/verify-dont-trust/ https://digiconomist.net/verify-dont-trust/

c22 8y ago

You think bitcoin is bad? https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1s8219SGDIjMnkzdFI2QjhwNm8/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1s8219SGDIjMnkzdFI2QjhwNm8... My gut instinct is that the vast majority of all computing cycles used by humanity are completely wasted on irrelevant tasks and inefficiencies.

root_axis 8y ago
Bitcoin is wasteful because of its energy profile not because of an arbitrary value judgement regarding how energy should be used. Rendering images is useful work. Processing transactions is useful work. With gaming computers, increasing energy costs means increasing detail and complexity in the images that can be processed. Bitcoin is wasteful because the increasing energy costs does not increase the total number of transactions that can be processed.
- c22 8y ago
  No, it increases the trust of the system. Is it the best solution? Perhaps not, but it is not without utility.
  - root_axis 8y ago
    "Increasing trust" doesn't add value if the system is already sufficiently trustworthy for the task of processing transactions. Based on that reasoning the cost should ('should' meaning: it is beneficial) increase forever because an infinite amount of energy burned is infinitely trustworthy.
    - c22 8y ago
      Is bitcoin sufficiently trustworthy without proof of work? I'm not a bitcoin expert, but my understanding was that this is an integral part of the trust model. If so then we're just back to talking about inefficiencies. I can't imagine the processing being done by my computer right now is all strictly necessary to read and post these comments, and I'd wager this site is more efficient than most these days. Still I accept reality and pay these costs in order to talk with you on the internet because this is the world we live in. It looks like these nice people at MIT are working on some of the inefficiencies of cryptocurrencies, so let's rejoice.
      - root_axis 8y ago
        > Is bitcoin sufficiently trustworthy without proof of work? I'm not a bitcoin expert, but my understanding was that this is an integral part of the trust model. If so then we're just back to talking about inefficiencies. Yes, that's exactly the point. Bitcoin is insanely inefficient because PoW is insanely inefficient. Unlike other "inefficiencies" where there is a logical relationship between "energy spent" and "useful work accomplished", with PoW there is no such relationship since the energy isn't spent doing useful work (i.e. processing transactions). Yes, more power into the network makes it "more secure" by making it "more expensive" to perform a 51% attack. The increased expense is distributed across the network in the form of increased difficulty. If a 51% attack was already implausible (which most bitcoin enthusiasts would say is true), then making it even more expensive doesn't actually do anything useful.
        sjeohp 8y ago
        Mining gold gets harder over time. If you want more gold that's the price you pay. Trust-less consensus may be the same. Nature doesn't care either way.
- DINKDINK 8y ago
  >Bitcoin is wasteful because the increasing energy costs does not increase the total number of transactions that can be processed. Are you saying the number of transactions the market will demand of a system is independent of the trust of the system? If I need to move $250,000[1] in one hour with ~100% certainty are you saying an IOU from a bank janitor is equivalent in value to a bitcoin transaction? An increase in attack costs increases the types of transactions that can occur safely on L1. The number of L2 updates are unbounded by L1 transaction capacity, increase attack costs gives the market confidence L2 updates cannot be erased. A high cost to signal which money you're willing to use filters out fraud attempts. Which should I trust more, Malory Money who double-pinky swears to run her Malory Money servers 5 years from now but is signaling with no costs or Bobby Bitcoiner who signals by billions of dollars in single-use capex (ASICS) [1] 12.5 BTC/block * 3850 $/BTC * 6 Blocks/hour < tx.value()
  - root_axis 8y ago
    > Are you saying the number of transactions the market will demand of a system is independent of the trust of the system No. I'm saying that if a 51% attack is practically impossible today, the increasing amount of energy consumed to secure the same amount of transactions is wasted. It's also a sign that the system is broken because the amount of energy consumed has no practical impact on security. Reasoning otherwise would suggest it is justified to consume infinite energy because that would be infinitely secure.
    - DINKDINK 8y ago
      >a 51% attack is practically impossible today It appears you think a 51% attack is when an external agent attempts to out hash the network. This is only one type of 51% attack. A 51% attack means there is a almost equal amount of hash rate being applied to two divergent, consensus equivalent chains. This can happen in above scenario or when existing miners attempt to reorg blocks (See ETC 51% attack) There is nothing stopping this behavior from occurring at any point in time. The only check on this behavior is the cost to rewrite history, decrease this cost, and you increase the profitability of such attacks.
- hndamien 8y ago
  Is the American military wasteful because it provides too much security? How much should it be reduced to provide sufficient security? This is a legitimate question/ I don't have an opinion either way - but it seems to be a fair corollary.
  - ggggtez 8y ago
    Unlike bitcoin, every person in the US has an (more or less) equal vote to help decide that. Congress's job is literally to decide whether to spend more money on military, among other things. And also unlike bitcoin, when you pay the salary of 450k+ soldiers, among other jobs and such created, that's likely a lot better for the economy than random people converting electricity into crypto tokens. What does bitcoin provide in terms of add-on benefits like jobs? The ability for power companies to maximize profits by having their supply used more fully? Edit: Additionally, you can argue that the US army does not provide too much security, because it doesn't take someone more than a few seconds to look at the world and see the world is not 100% safe. There are numerous areas such that, if money was not a concern, could be made safer and more profitable by adding more security. Creating infinite trust in bitcoin would... do what exactly? Let nerds buy drugs on the internet?
    - hndamien 8y ago
      Some would argue that it fixes the economic system so that we won't have booms and busts anymore and can start seeing capitalism in action proper. That seems to be a worthwhile investment, and may even help prevent wars (which are often financed by currency debasement).
    - ric2b 8y ago
      > And also unlike bitcoin, when you pay the salary of 450k+ soldiers, among other jobs and such created, that's likely a lot better for the economy than random people converting electricity into crypto tokens. Jobs are only useful if they waste people's time? Mining is a job. Mining can also become green much faster than constantly moving around millions of tons of vehicles can. > Additionally, you can argue that the US army does not provide too much security, because it doesn't take someone more than a few seconds to look at the world and see the world is not 100% safe. I would argue it decreases security, with all the wars and disruption it caused in the last decades.
goodmachine 8y ago
Good spot. Can I add photo-realistic GANs to the list of totally fucking useless computing tasks?
plankers 8y ago
You could generalize that to "the vast majority of all waking time used by humanity is completely wasted on irrelevant tasks and inefficiencies."

4bpp 8y ago

In what way does this address the parent post's argument that to the extent Bitcoin produces more negative externalities than positive effects, it is because the price of electricity is not set correctly by governments?

celticninja 8y ago

Those figures from digiconomist have been debunked.

chc4 8y ago

Digiconomist's figures are entirely fake. They've been debunked but the author (and hapless news outlets) continue to promote them. https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7 https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-...

nosuchthing 8y ago
The author of your paper appears to be attacking another author and yet has nothing to back up their claims other than "Trust me I'm an expert and I know a guy in Hong Kong who tells me what's happening in China!" The argument summary of your article is hand waving, claims that the sum usage of software designed to be increasingly energy wasteful (Satoshi's random nonce lottery as a means of increasing CAPEX and decreasing production output) https://digiconomist.net/verify-dont-trust/ https://digiconomist.net/verify-dont-trust/