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The environmental issues are concerning to me. The amount of electricity being burned through for what is essentially a skeuomorphism of gold mining, pretty muc
by ljm 6y ago
The environmental issues are concerning to me. The amount of electricity being burned through for what is essentially a skeuomorphism of gold mining, pretty much primarily for speculation now, is beyond belief. It's a completely artificial, and artificially scarce, product.
Whatever original hopeful goals the creator(s) of Bitcoin had with this idea, and decentralised currency...if there was any victory at all it is a pyrrhic one when you look at the externalities.
If you can call a digital gold rush a victory, anyway. The physical one in the US was pretty bad for a lot of people.
- infogulch 6y ago> skeuomorphism of gold mining I'm gonna steal that one, thanks. :D
- emteycz 6y agoDon't, it's not accurate at all. "Mining" in the context of Ethereum is what powers it, not some abstract useless calculations.
- ljm 6y agoSomeone's out there digging ethereum out of the wall of a cave? Panning for it in a river delta? No? Then it's a calculation. Or an abstract and useless one in your terms.
- emteycz 6y agoIt's a calculation, but not a useless one done just to simulate gold mining, unlike Bitcoin. Look deeper into what Ethereum actually is, it's not just a cryptocoin, it's also a computing platform.
- HDMI_Cable 6y ago> Look deeper into what Ethereum actually is, I don’t have an opinion on this but if you’re making a point, you should be the one providing evidence, not telling others to look it up.
- emteycz 6y agoI'm sure everyone on this site is capable of opening Ethereum homepage by themselves.
- infogulch 6y agoSince we've gone meta anyways... Why do so few people value simply linking to and quoting directly from primary sources? From random internet comment #37846399, to sms chats, to user stories on a scrum board, and even news articles these days, nobody cares to drop a link to or actually quote the thing they're referring to. Docs, articles, code, journals... Yes, it's work to back up your claims with direct links to a source. But maybe that's a reasonable minimum bar to hurdle to stand behind ones statements.
- emteycz 6y agoI am not the first one who made a claim in this thread - your reply would be better placed under that comment talking about gold. Surely opening the homepage is reasonable minimum before posting a negative comment.
- jawzz 6y agoThey’re not really making a point that needs evidence. If you have no idea what Ethereum is, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that you take a quick look at their website before participating in an web forum discussion about it. This is different than people blithely spouting “it’s not my job to educate you” when asked to give some support for their controversial, unsubstantiated claim.
- infogulch 6y agoI agree that the analogy does not extend past the surface look, but that's the point of calling it a skeumorphism: a new thing that tries to perform the function of an old thing, under a facade that mimics the old thing in a shallow way to ease transitioning.
- leshow 6y agoAFAIK Ethereum is still proof of work, meaning miners are not doing useful calculations. Miners are not just running smart contracts.
- short 6y agothis is correct, I think solidity doesn't even run on a gpu at all The energy usage of ethereum comes from the proof-of-work DAG, not the solidity execution. You can easily see this by running a (non mining) ethereum node, any decent CPU will churn through the transactions in blocks in a matter of milliseconds (~200 ms per block), not the 13 seconds it takes to generate that block
- MereInterest 6y agoThat's putting it in the best possible light. Mining gold leaves the world with physical blocks of gold, which has no continuous upkeep cost. "Mining" cryptocurrency leaves the world with an asset that requires continual upkeep (further "mining") in order to maintain that asset. Any significant drop in the network's hashrate opens it up to attacks. The upkeep cost for Bitcoin is, and by necessity must be, proportional to the value represented by Bitcoin.
- tikwidd 6y agoBut the upkeep cost of protecting the gold is continuous in the same way as bitcoin mining. If you want to own some gold you need to protect it (usually with the state apparatus of violence, which has massive externalities). In other words, if you just mine a physical gold block, you don't really have an asset without the state's (or your own) continual upkeep that keeps it protected from attacks.
- 23iofj 6y ago> But the upkeep cost of protecting the gold is continuous in the same way as bitcoin mining. This completely misses the point, which was one of magnitude: >> The upkeep cost for Bitcoin is, and by necessity must be, PROPORTIOANAL TO THE VALUE REPRESENTED by Bitcoin. Also, that upkeep cost is 100.00% to protect the value of existing bitcoin. C.f., gold: > If you want to own some gold you need to protect it (usually with the state apparatus of violence, which has massive externalities). I don't need continuous mining of bitcoin to protect my non-bitcoin stuff. However, I do need the "state apparatus of violence" to protect my non-gold stuff, including things like my house and my body, and oh yeah, my fucking mining rig! If all gold disappeared tomorrow, would anything about the "state apparatus of violence" change? No, of course not. That is absurd.
- ineedasername 6y agoI never understood the "violence" argument against government. In that sense of the word "violence", there is no alternative that does not at some level also come down to the threat of force. The "state apparatus of violence" won't look so bad after you've dismantled the state in favor of something approaching anarcho-capitalism and are then close to Hobbe's state of nature: nasty, british, and short.
- ufmemo 6y agoAlready used it 5 times today in meetings
- elinear 6y agoModern day California, and by extension Silicon Valley, would not look the way it is today without the California Gold Rush [1], as horrible as its externalities were. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush#Longer-term_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush#Longer-te...
- ljm 6y agoGreat prosperity often comes at, or with, a great cost. California today doesn't make a great picture when you look at the homelessness and inequality, and the exorbitant cost of living anywhere near where the action is.
- throwaway0901 6y agoDoes all mining apply here? I saw some videos where people were setting up solar panels and minig using that power. If you have a system of solar panels + mining cards, is there more harm compared to no such system (not taking producing solar panels and cards into account).
- csharptwdec19 6y agoThere's still the environmental costs related with creation of the panels and cards. Making Circuit boards and Silicon is a costly endeavor in and of itself from an energy and waste standpoint.
- BobbyJo 6y agoYou have to look at the planet as a set of resources. Resources grow and shrink, but are definite and limited in any given moment all the same. Generally, spending them on less productive tasks is bad. It's cool they are using solar power vs burning gas/coal, but it doesn't change the fact that those same resources would benefit the planet much more if used in a different capacity. If a billionaire hoarded manufacturing plants and kept them shut down, people would probably be mad, since resources were being wasted, even if it was a net positive on greenhouse gas output.
- px43 6y agoEach hour 430 quintillion Joules (430 exajoules) of energy from the sun hits the Earth.[1] It is almost exclusively reflected back out into space, and wasted. We have nearly no incentive to capture it, so the energy is being wasted at a mind boggling scale. I've been mining cryptocurrencies with solar power for about 6 years or so. The great thing about crypto mining is that it creates a price floor for energy usage. This gives people real incentive to build the tools we need to harness the energy on our planet. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-the-potential-of-solar-power-2015-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-the-potential-of-sol...
- AlotOfReading 6y ago
- Krasnol 6y agoIs there any reliable data on the actual environmental harm? I've heard so many times that it's renewable energy being used because it's so cheap. There was something about mining near dams.
- codebje 6y agoThe upper bound on environmental harm is the damage that would be done by the most harmful energy production method used: any renewable energy spent on mining could be used instead to replace that harmful production. (It's only an upper bound because energy isn't perfectly fungible.) Renewable energy is also better than fossil energy in terms of environmental damage, but it's not free from damage. A dam is a massive localised environmental impact, and a huge amount of concrete. A solar farm requires (holes-in-ground) mining and significant industrial processing to build. The lower bound on environmental harm is the cost of building renewable energy sources that are used for something so unproductive.
- Krasnol 6y agoSure but that dam is already there. So why not use the spare energy on something? Or is there energy being "stolen" from other uses? As I wrote: is there any reliable data?
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago> I've heard so many times that it's renewable energy being used because it's so cheap. It's a myth from the pro-cryptocurrency crowd. With recent price spikes, mining is profitable even if you have to pay relative high prices for electricity. You don't need to have cheap energy. Also, it's another myth that we have an abundance of hydroelectric power that would otherwise go to waste if not for Bitcoin. With modern power transmission it's trivial to send power through the grid to other locations, and nobody is building power plants in the middle of nowhere without a way to send that electricity somewhere else. Finally, Bitcoin's power consumption is additive. Energy that goes into Bitcoin mining is energy that isn't being used to power cities and other infrastructure, which must still get its power from somewhere. Don't believe the whitewashing campaigns to downplay Bitcoin's energy usage. It's very bad.
- xtian 6y agoDo you apply the same level of concern to the US military? It produces a lot more CO2 emissions than Bitcoin. I don’t think it produces more benefits for normal people either.
- patmcc 6y agoBoth the US military and bitcoin can be hugely wasteful, it's not xor.
- TechnoTimeStop 6y agoWhat is this? Hacker news or china propaganda?
- neoromantique 6y agos/us military/Chinese military/g Happy?
- 29athrowaway 6y agoThey do help. The national guard is deployed during natural disasters, the coast guard does a lot of useful work.
- Doji 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- reissbaker 6y agoVisa seems like a better comparison than the US military when talking about digital money.
- cwhiz 6y agoI don’t even agree with the scarcity argument. Every Bitcoin represents 100,000,000 traceable assets. The “supply” of an entire Bitcoin may be artificially limited, but practically speaking there are infinite Bitcoin satoshi to trade.
- skyzadev 6y agoElectricity usage will forever be a human need and people need to realize and accept that. Taking down bitcoin because it's software that runs on computers that uses electricity is not the answer here - renewable and sustainable energy is the answer. Everybody is just echoing the same headline they read on some news article about bitcoin using a lot of energy without thinking it through properly.
- auggierose 6y agoI think you are the one not thinking it through properly. Yes, humanity will use energy. But it is kind of by design that bitcoin uses more and more energy, and that just doesn't make sense. Sorry. Bitcoin is not humanity using energy. It is humanity flushing energy down the drain.
- skyzadev 6y agoOur sun is shooting out so much energy that is not getting used at all. That is flushing (sustainable) energy down the drain!
- aspaceman 6y ago"Bitcoin is wasteful" "But look at the sun man! That's the real waste" Are you high?
- skyzadev 6y agoI was indirectly referring back to my original post above if you did not notice. And no I'm not high, just having a conversation about Bitcoin energy usage in relation to renewable and sustainable energy technology.
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- birdyrooster 6y ago
- taurath 6y agoBitcoin is magic cards without the game, that takes the power output of a medium sized country to maintain.
- ianai 6y agoI realized recently it feels like pogs did. Really hot for a minute and then poofed out of relevancy. People also had high value on certain pogs over others ala the hoarding seen in Bitcoin.
- GauntletWizard 6y agoI’m firmly of the belief that Bitcoin (and it’s ilk) should be illegal. There’s many reasons for it - Sometimes because it’s an unregistered security, sometimes because it falls afoul of laws against paying people in scrip, sometimes because it’s outright fraud. There’s real uses for Merkel trees in finance - Cryptographically secure history is valuable. I’ve yet to see any problems that blockchains solve that merkel trees do not[1]. Finance and interchange works just fine with just Git - Interchange done via simple published balancesheets with countersignatures by both parties, then merged into “head” on the regular by any form of rollup. It doesn’t have the (well overstated) pseudonymity advantages of bitcoin, and that’s a feature in a well regulated financial market. [1] With one ridiculous exception: In Iain Bank’s “Excession”, a mothballed war-fleet is resurrected by a traitor who presents enough cryptographic signatures of coconspirators to burn the keys of the real C+C chain. Blockchain would make this much harder - But not necessarily enough harder, even if they had to effectively recreate the military history of an entire total-peace (through superior firepower) civilization.