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> Let me see if I can help you. Nobody here is impressed by you, the condescension sounds ridiculous. > the expenditure on mining will also be 10x or 100x lar

> Let me see if I can help you. Nobody here is impressed by you, the condescension sounds ridiculous. > the expenditure on mining will also be 10x or 100x larger This is correct, but the assumption that energy will continue to represent a very large part of that expenditure is faulty. There is a huge incentive for miners to mine more efficiently, especially in this hypothetical universe where Bitcoin is driving up energy prices.. That expenditure could easily be disproportionately spent on more efficient hardware / algorithms. Alternatively Bitcoin might not be using proof of work in this hypothetical future. It's not immutable.

tlb 6y ago
We've had several generations of more efficient hardware, and it just causes the hash rate to increase while energy usage stays at the energy-cost equilibrium described above. I can't imagine an algorithmic or hardware improvement that would stop a proof of work system scaling with energy input.
- thebean11 6y ago
  Energy is still somewhat cheap relative to the value of the hardware, so there's been no incentive to optimize for energy usage. This won't change until there's mass production and the hardware is ubiquitous. You might be right though, but like I said I don't think PoW is necessarily the final state.
rspeele 6y ago
Sorry, I didn't intend to sound condescending, though I see how I did. I was responding to your "I do not follow...". I suspect mining expenditure would still be mostly spent on energy usage, not finding more efficient hardware/algorithms, since mining is an arms race -- when miner A finds a more efficient algorithm, it's only a matter of time before miner B finds it too, and then they're back on level ground competing over energy. But even if this is not the case, I don't particularly care whether the mining expenditure is spent on energy, or developing and manufacturing new mining hardware, or sacrificing goats to a hash-finding deity. Since the amount of mining the network does is set by a price tag (the block reward), and its intent is to make 51%ing prohibitively costly, by definition it must use up some valuable resource. Whether that's energy or human ingenuity or semiconductor production is just an implementation detail but it'll always be a waste. If Bitcoin switches away from proof of work, I'll stop criticizing it for the inefficiency of proof of work.

tlb 6y ago

We've had several generations of more efficient hardware, and it just causes the hash rate to increase while energy usage stays at the energy-cost equilibrium described above. I can't imagine an algorithmic or hardware improvement that would stop a proof of work system scaling with energy input.

thebean11 6y ago
Energy is still somewhat cheap relative to the value of the hardware, so there's been no incentive to optimize for energy usage. This won't change until there's mass production and the hardware is ubiquitous. You might be right though, but like I said I don't think PoW is necessarily the final state.

rspeele 6y ago

Sorry, I didn't intend to sound condescending, though I see how I did. I was responding to your "I do not follow...". I suspect mining expenditure would still be mostly spent on energy usage, not finding more efficient hardware/algorithms, since mining is an arms race -- when miner A finds a more efficient algorithm, it's only a matter of time before miner B finds it too, and then they're back on level ground competing over energy. But even if this is not the case, I don't particularly care whether the mining expenditure is spent on energy, or developing and manufacturing new mining hardware, or sacrificing goats to a hash-finding deity. Since the amount of mining the network does is set by a price tag (the block reward), and its intent is to make 51%ing prohibitively costly, by definition it must use up some valuable resource. Whether that's energy or human ingenuity or semiconductor production is just an implementation detail but it'll always be a waste. If Bitcoin switches away from proof of work, I'll stop criticizing it for the inefficiency of proof of work.