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I am really surprised that Bitcoin (or cryptocurrencies in general) hasn't solved its energy use yet and is still legal. I thought the world would switch to pr

by Iv 7y ago

I am really surprised that Bitcoin (or cryptocurrencies in general) hasn't solved its energy use yet and is still legal. I thought the world would switch to proof-of-stake coins and gradually make bitcoins harder to use.

exit 7y ago
> I thought the world would switch to proof-of-stake coins and gradually make bitcoins harder to use. if proof of stake were implemented with the same security guarantees as proof of work, the bitcoin utxo set would be migrated over to it.
newguy1234 7y ago
Bitcoin is pure free market. People keep it because of its history - same as how people buy gold coins.
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  Except I'd put far more stock into gold coins (or gold in general) as a store of value. But that's just me.
  - celticninja 7y ago
    And there are enough people that take the converse position, that allows bitcoin to grow
    - CaptainZapp 7y ago
      Comparing this chart[1] with the chart found on this page[2] I very much doubt that assessment, specifically in terms of volatility. Note the very, very different scale of those charts. [1] https://goldprice.org/de/gold-price-history.html https://goldprice.org/de/gold-price-history.html [2] https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Bitcoin_history https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Bitcoin_history edit: clarification
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      Don't forget the blatant price manipulation from exchanges and scammers! Search numbers show fewer people care now than ever and yet the price is pretty high. You should be surprised by that because the block reward requires $5.25B in new money to enter the market to maintain the price, and yet...
paulmd 7y ago
vlad whatever was full of shit 4 years ago when he said that he thought proof of work would be eliminated within 6 months. I bought hardware on the basis that he was wrong and it paid out. I dunno why anyone still has faith in eth as a concept, it's a garbage programming model, it's a garbage developer, who has failed for an inordinate period of time as measured by the crypto community. he's just trying to pump up his holdings. (many of these deficiencies would have resulted in monetary losses for the developer himself, had he not used his central authority to roll back the blockchain. Literally anti-"crypto as a philosophy". So much for "code is law" and all that.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14691212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14691212 He's 2 years beyond his 2 year worst case scenario and he has zero progress. And in the crypto community 4 years is a ridiculous period of time to be behind schedule. It's time to state the obvious: he fixed the broken script model that Bitcoin refused to fix, but he is incapable of adding anything significantly novel. 4 years of failed promises? With at least one rollback from a central authority? time to look elsewhere. Otherwise, the obvious question: where is the Proof of Stake that he promised literally 4 years ago? How many more years out is it right now? (nor is the "never increase past X amount of currency" even a good model. real currencies need to match issuance the amount of demand for currency... potentially even negative at times. And someone needs to do that. Otherwise, the currency will be subject to a wild amount of inflation/deflation... just like all previous hard currencies.) Gosh, we could call that a "central bank". And electing an unresponsive 17-year-old as central banker is just about as dumb as it gets. He is already making central banking decisions... just ones that the majority of the community (ridiculously) agrees with (throttling the amount of currency issued) because the community is centered around deflationary gold-bugs rather than actual maximalists.
- noxer 7y ago
  Regarding the supply problem: The supply could be inflated and deflated with crypto backed stablecoins to adjust for whatever the market needs See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se2CDsmMqvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se2CDsmMqvE
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  You mean the guy who the machine elves made him do it? https://coinjazeera.news/vlad-zamfir-looking-for-new-drugs-to-help-with-sharding-ideas/ https://coinjazeera.news/vlad-zamfir-looking-for-new-drugs-t...
keymone 7y ago
Bitcoin’s energy use is its most valuable feature. If you think it’s an issue - you don’t understand what’s valuable in Bitcoin.
- rux 7y ago
  You've made this comment twice yet haven't enlightened me. I have no ideological bias - what is the value of the energy use?
  - keymone 7y ago
    Proof of work is the only objective datapoint that can’t be faked. It has value in itself proportional to how much energy went into the proof, so it’s wrong to say something was wasted - all the energy went into producing something of value. With proof of stake if you get out of the bunker and are presented with multiple competing chains - you can’t decide which one is genuine and which is a malicious fork. With proof of work it’s trivial and that’s where value comes from.
    - noxer 7y ago
      Why compare PoW with PoS if there is consensus https://xrpl.org/intro-to-consensus.html https://xrpl.org/intro-to-consensus.html which already solved the problems of both before PoS even existed. Consensus will never have 2 chains unless someone creates one on purpose. For all others it's always clear witch chain is the correct because everyone can check for correctness. in case the consensus fails (for example serious global network problems) the consensus would halt which is not ideal but better than uncertain chains.
      - keymone 7y ago
        > Each participant in the network chooses a set of validators, servers specifically configured to participate actively in consensus, run by different parties who are expected to behave honestly most of the time. maybe you're fine with that, i'm not and everybody who values bitcoin aren't either. it's the kind of thing that PoW solves and PoS doesn't. every PoS system i've seen just obfuscates this glaring hole instead of admitting that there's no way around it - you can't know which chain is genuine without trusting third party. in Bitcoin you can, or at least it is trivial to detect when something malicious is happening. and i'm not talking about correctness here, correctness is trivial, you don't even need to bring it up.
Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
Should Christmas lights be illegal too because they are "wasting energy"? Shouldn't consumers be allowed to choose what they will do with the energy that they pay for? Or is this soviet Russia?
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Should it be illegal to dump toxic chemicals into streams because they're "killing us all?" Shouldn't consumers be allowed to choose where they dump the cleaning products they paid for? Or is this soviet Russia? Ok bad example because the soviets weren't known for their environmentalism, but you get my point. Once a problem becomes big enough scale that it affects us all regulation is justified.
  - Empact 7y ago
    Using energy is not emitting toxic chemicals. Burning coal is. Running your gasoline automobile is. The disconnect in people's mind on this question seems to be motivated by either their ignorance or their biases.

by Iv 7y ago

exit 7y ago

> I thought the world would switch to proof-of-stake coins and gradually make bitcoins harder to use. if proof of stake were implemented with the same security guarantees as proof of work, the bitcoin utxo set would be migrated over to it.

newguy1234 7y ago

Bitcoin is pure free market. People keep it because of its history - same as how people buy gold coins.

CaptainZapp 7y ago
Except I'd put far more stock into gold coins (or gold in general) as a store of value. But that's just me.
- celticninja 7y ago
  And there are enough people that take the converse position, that allows bitcoin to grow
  - CaptainZapp 7y ago
    Comparing this chart[1] with the chart found on this page[2] I very much doubt that assessment, specifically in terms of volatility. Note the very, very different scale of those charts. [1] https://goldprice.org/de/gold-price-history.html https://goldprice.org/de/gold-price-history.html [2] https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Bitcoin_history https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Bitcoin_history edit: clarification
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Don't forget the blatant price manipulation from exchanges and scammers! Search numbers show fewer people care now than ever and yet the price is pretty high. You should be surprised by that because the block reward requires $5.25B in new money to enter the market to maintain the price, and yet...

paulmd 7y ago

vlad whatever was full of shit 4 years ago when he said that he thought proof of work would be eliminated within 6 months. I bought hardware on the basis that he was wrong and it paid out. I dunno why anyone still has faith in eth as a concept, it's a garbage programming model, it's a garbage developer, who has failed for an inordinate period of time as measured by the crypto community. he's just trying to pump up his holdings. (many of these deficiencies would have resulted in monetary losses for the developer himself, had he not used his central authority to roll back the blockchain. Literally anti-"crypto as a philosophy". So much for "code is law" and all that.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14691212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14691212 He's 2 years beyond his 2 year worst case scenario and he has zero progress. And in the crypto community 4 years is a ridiculous period of time to be behind schedule. It's time to state the obvious: he fixed the broken script model that Bitcoin refused to fix, but he is incapable of adding anything significantly novel. 4 years of failed promises? With at least one rollback from a central authority? time to look elsewhere. Otherwise, the obvious question: where is the Proof of Stake that he promised literally 4 years ago? How many more years out is it right now? (nor is the "never increase past X amount of currency" even a good model. real currencies need to match issuance the amount of demand for currency... potentially even negative at times. And someone needs to do that. Otherwise, the currency will be subject to a wild amount of inflation/deflation... just like all previous hard currencies.) Gosh, we could call that a "central bank". And electing an unresponsive 17-year-old as central banker is just about as dumb as it gets. He is already making central banking decisions... just ones that the majority of the community (ridiculously) agrees with (throttling the amount of currency issued) because the community is centered around deflationary gold-bugs rather than actual maximalists.

noxer 7y ago
Regarding the supply problem: The supply could be inflated and deflated with crypto backed stablecoins to adjust for whatever the market needs See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se2CDsmMqvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se2CDsmMqvE
DonHopkins 7y ago
You mean the guy who the machine elves made him do it? https://coinjazeera.news/vlad-zamfir-looking-for-new-drugs-to-help-with-sharding-ideas/ https://coinjazeera.news/vlad-zamfir-looking-for-new-drugs-t...

keymone 7y ago

Bitcoin’s energy use is its most valuable feature. If you think it’s an issue - you don’t understand what’s valuable in Bitcoin.

rux 7y ago
You've made this comment twice yet haven't enlightened me. I have no ideological bias - what is the value of the energy use?
- keymone 7y ago
  Proof of work is the only objective datapoint that can’t be faked. It has value in itself proportional to how much energy went into the proof, so it’s wrong to say something was wasted - all the energy went into producing something of value. With proof of stake if you get out of the bunker and are presented with multiple competing chains - you can’t decide which one is genuine and which is a malicious fork. With proof of work it’s trivial and that’s where value comes from.
  - noxer 7y ago
    Why compare PoW with PoS if there is consensus https://xrpl.org/intro-to-consensus.html https://xrpl.org/intro-to-consensus.html which already solved the problems of both before PoS even existed. Consensus will never have 2 chains unless someone creates one on purpose. For all others it's always clear witch chain is the correct because everyone can check for correctness. in case the consensus fails (for example serious global network problems) the consensus would halt which is not ideal but better than uncertain chains.
    - keymone 7y ago
      > Each participant in the network chooses a set of validators, servers specifically configured to participate actively in consensus, run by different parties who are expected to behave honestly most of the time. maybe you're fine with that, i'm not and everybody who values bitcoin aren't either. it's the kind of thing that PoW solves and PoS doesn't. every PoS system i've seen just obfuscates this glaring hole instead of admitting that there's no way around it - you can't know which chain is genuine without trusting third party. in Bitcoin you can, or at least it is trivial to detect when something malicious is happening. and i'm not talking about correctness here, correctness is trivial, you don't even need to bring it up.

Erlich_Bachman 7y ago

Should Christmas lights be illegal too because they are "wasting energy"? Shouldn't consumers be allowed to choose what they will do with the energy that they pay for? Or is this soviet Russia?

arcticbull 7y ago
Should it be illegal to dump toxic chemicals into streams because they're "killing us all?" Shouldn't consumers be allowed to choose where they dump the cleaning products they paid for? Or is this soviet Russia? Ok bad example because the soviets weren't known for their environmentalism, but you get my point. Once a problem becomes big enough scale that it affects us all regulation is justified.
- Empact 7y ago
  Using energy is not emitting toxic chemicals. Burning coal is. Running your gasoline automobile is. The disconnect in people's mind on this question seems to be motivated by either their ignorance or their biases.