6 ms·

That argument is similar to saying a nuclear power plant is ridiculously expensive because it started operating last week and is currently only connected to a s

by ric2b 6y ago

That argument is similar to saying a nuclear power plant is ridiculously expensive because it started operating last week and is currently only connected to a single factory. The energy usage of Bitcoin doesn't meaningfully go up with more transactions, so pretending that each transaction uses some specific amount of energy is just misleading.

ForHackernews 6y ago
> The energy usage of Bitcoin doesn't meaningfully go up with more transactions, No it just always always goes up regardless of transaction volume as the block-difficulty increases infinitely. You've built a system that by design can literally only become less efficient. It's actually even worse and stupider than if it were a per-transaction energy usage.
- noch 6y ago
  > No it just always always goes up regardless of transaction volume as the block-difficulty increases infinitely. [sigh] The difficulty adjustment is so a block is issued on average every 10 minutes. It therefore does not increase infinitely but both increases and decreases depending on the amount of hashpower in the network. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    Has it ever decreased? > What is the maximum difficulty? > There is no minimum target. The maximum difficulty is roughly: maximum_target / 1 (since 0 would result in infinity), which is a ridiculously huge number (about 2^224).
    - noch 6y ago
      > Has it ever decreased? Obviously. https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-large-drop https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-large-dro...
Grustaf 6y ago
Not really, a nuclear power plant will generate energy for decades, bitcoin will just keep wasting energy. And if the maximum daily number of transactions is more or less fixed, and the total energy spend is also relatively stable, then it’s very easy to calculate the energy cost per transaction.
- noch 6y ago
  > And if the maximum daily number of transactions is more or less fixed, and the total energy spend is also relatively stable, then it’s very easy to calculate the energy cost per transaction. You don't understand how transactions work. A transaction can have arbitrary value, an arbitrary number of inputs, and an arbitrary number of outputs. Therefore Bitcoin has infinite throughout and 1 hour confirmation/finality latency. An example: My company has 100 engineers each paid USD10k in bitcoin per month. We generate 1 transaction worth USD1M with 100 outputs. Similarly when paying numerous suppliers for hardware, machinery, logistics, transportation, catering. 1 transaction of high value with numerous heterogeneous outputs. Transaction count is not the correct way to measure the throughout of the Bitcoin network at a given block height or over several retargets.[0] [0]: https://medium.com/@hasufly/an-analysis-of-batching-in-bitcoin-9bdf81a394e0 https://medium.com/@hasufly/an-analysis-of-batching-in-bitco...
  - Grustaf 6y ago
    It still seems like a valid metric, you just need to multiply the number of bitcoin transactions with some factor for the average number of outputs. That number will be pretty low and quite stable over time.
    - noch 6y ago
      > It still seems like a valid metric, you just need to multiply the number of bitcoin transactions with some factor for the average number of outputs Nah. You don't need to double and triple down on wrong ideas and metrics that are scientifically spurious. You know calculus so you know multiplying by averages won't tell you what you want to know. Transaction count relative to energy usage doesn't tell you what's valuable about the observed system and its energy consumption, which is its decentralisation, censorship resistance, assurances, and trustlessness. Assuming you care about logic, simply update your broken mental model. Because batching will increase as Bitcoin grows, and has practically infinite throughput, its efficiency improves exponentially by securing more value relative to energy consumption.To secure ever more value using the Bitcoin network, humans are incentivised to find and build more efficient energy sources. Further, an arbitrary number of transactions can occur securely offchain and get aggregated and finalised on-chain i.e the settlement layer. In fact this is how the future will be. See Lightning, Liquid, other L2 designs. The order of operations is first to have a bulletproof settlement layer. Bitcoin was designed to be the single planetary currency. Spend time studying it and you'll realise that Satoshi was smarter than all his current critics who all imagine they've brilliantly and uniquely perceived some fatal flaw in Bitcoin's engineering, game theory or economics. Remember, if Bitcoin were a company, it would currently have a market cap of >USD800B. Few programmers can build anything that valuable let alone critique it meaningfully. Let go of useless, poorly reasoned concepts. Humble yourself and study Bitcoin. It's a wonderful optimistic scientific discovery on par with fire, antibiotics, and electricity. http://lopp.net/bitcoin-information.html http://lopp.net/bitcoin-information.html

by ric2b 6y ago

ForHackernews 6y ago

> The energy usage of Bitcoin doesn't meaningfully go up with more transactions, No it just always always goes up regardless of transaction volume as the block-difficulty increases infinitely. You've built a system that by design can literally only become less efficient. It's actually even worse and stupider than if it were a per-transaction energy usage.

noch 6y ago
> No it just always always goes up regardless of transaction volume as the block-difficulty increases infinitely. [sigh] The difficulty adjustment is so a block is issued on average every 10 minutes. It therefore does not increase infinitely but both increases and decreases depending on the amount of hashpower in the network. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Has it ever decreased? > What is the maximum difficulty? > There is no minimum target. The maximum difficulty is roughly: maximum_target / 1 (since 0 would result in infinity), which is a ridiculously huge number (about 2^224).
  - noch 6y ago
    > Has it ever decreased? Obviously. https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-large-drop https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-large-dro...

Grustaf 6y ago

Not really, a nuclear power plant will generate energy for decades, bitcoin will just keep wasting energy. And if the maximum daily number of transactions is more or less fixed, and the total energy spend is also relatively stable, then it’s very easy to calculate the energy cost per transaction.

noch 6y ago
> And if the maximum daily number of transactions is more or less fixed, and the total energy spend is also relatively stable, then it’s very easy to calculate the energy cost per transaction. You don't understand how transactions work. A transaction can have arbitrary value, an arbitrary number of inputs, and an arbitrary number of outputs. Therefore Bitcoin has infinite throughout and 1 hour confirmation/finality latency. An example: My company has 100 engineers each paid USD10k in bitcoin per month. We generate 1 transaction worth USD1M with 100 outputs. Similarly when paying numerous suppliers for hardware, machinery, logistics, transportation, catering. 1 transaction of high value with numerous heterogeneous outputs. Transaction count is not the correct way to measure the throughout of the Bitcoin network at a given block height or over several retargets.[0] [0]: https://medium.com/@hasufly/an-analysis-of-batching-in-bitcoin-9bdf81a394e0 https://medium.com/@hasufly/an-analysis-of-batching-in-bitco...
- Grustaf 6y ago
  It still seems like a valid metric, you just need to multiply the number of bitcoin transactions with some factor for the average number of outputs. That number will be pretty low and quite stable over time.
  - noch 6y ago
    > It still seems like a valid metric, you just need to multiply the number of bitcoin transactions with some factor for the average number of outputs Nah. You don't need to double and triple down on wrong ideas and metrics that are scientifically spurious. You know calculus so you know multiplying by averages won't tell you what you want to know. Transaction count relative to energy usage doesn't tell you what's valuable about the observed system and its energy consumption, which is its decentralisation, censorship resistance, assurances, and trustlessness. Assuming you care about logic, simply update your broken mental model. Because batching will increase as Bitcoin grows, and has practically infinite throughput, its efficiency improves exponentially by securing more value relative to energy consumption.To secure ever more value using the Bitcoin network, humans are incentivised to find and build more efficient energy sources. Further, an arbitrary number of transactions can occur securely offchain and get aggregated and finalised on-chain i.e the settlement layer. In fact this is how the future will be. See Lightning, Liquid, other L2 designs. The order of operations is first to have a bulletproof settlement layer. Bitcoin was designed to be the single planetary currency. Spend time studying it and you'll realise that Satoshi was smarter than all his current critics who all imagine they've brilliantly and uniquely perceived some fatal flaw in Bitcoin's engineering, game theory or economics. Remember, if Bitcoin were a company, it would currently have a market cap of >USD800B. Few programmers can build anything that valuable let alone critique it meaningfully. Let go of useless, poorly reasoned concepts. Humble yourself and study Bitcoin. It's a wonderful optimistic scientific discovery on par with fire, antibiotics, and electricity. http://lopp.net/bitcoin-information.html http://lopp.net/bitcoin-information.html