5 ms·

What’s the bandwidth from a probe close to the sun with a Bitcoin miner on it? Beam back the coin, we can wait. Or, mine it near the sun and then bring it back.

What’s the bandwidth from a probe close to the sun with a Bitcoin miner on it? Beam back the coin, we can wait. Or, mine it near the sun and then bring it back. Could take 20 years, but the returns should be better than the SPY. We’d need a spaceship I guess with the largest solar panels ever. Park it near the sun, mine Bitcoin, come back to earth.

neolog 6y ago
GPUs get faster over time.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  But it’s not free energy. I’m looking at it like fusion, the output needs to exceed the input (well I guess that’s how everyone is looking at it).
amenghra 6y ago
Mining is a race. If you have X seconds latency because you are millions of miles away, you’ll loose $Y over the long run. You can figure out the function which ties X and Y together.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  If you drop beacon towers along the way to maintain bandwidth, why wouldn’t this work?
  - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
    latency and bandwidth are two different things... speed of light is a constant.
    - mrits 6y ago
      these beacons are in worm holes, obviously
  - jerrysievert 6y ago
    the speed of light (or radio waves) doesn't become any faster with beacons. it's latency that's the problem.
- chii 6y ago
  if you have more mining machines because it's powered by a "free" source of energy, the latency will be beaten easily by just increasing the amount of tries you get to do.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    If you spend 8 minutes getting the next chunk of information to your machine, and then another 8 minutes returning the result, it does not matter how fast your machines are or how many of them you have. You're still going to lose to the machines on earth, because the Bitcoin network on earth can already mine blocks faster than 16 minutes. Think of it this way. Say we're running a mile long race by foot, and it takes me an average of 10 minutes to run that mile. You want to bring a car onto the track that will be able to go a mile in 15 seconds, but it's going to take you 20 minutes to get the car to the starting line. That's how latency works. It doesn't matter how fast your machines are, by the time you've sent the information to them, by the time you've told them what they need to do, everyone else has already finished with their work and moved on to the next problem.
    - chii 6y ago
      but with bitcoin hashing, you're testing out random hashes to see if it works, and there's an equal chance of finding one for all parties. But if you spend more computational power, you have a higher chance of find one (because you got more tries). Now, a satellite orbiting the sun has 8 mins of latency. Imagine if there was only 1 computer on earth, and 1 computer orbiting, and both "submit", it's the earth computer that's going to succeed first, if both finds a valid hash. Suppose we keep the speed of the individual computers are the same - but now you double the amount of computers orbiting the sun. Now you are twice as likely to find a valid hash - even tho it still takes you 8 minutes to transfer the valid hash message to the earth network. In that 8 minutes, if somebody else on earth finds a valid hash, they will beat you. But they only have 1 machine, and so their chance of finding a valid hash _must_ be half. So on average, the orbiting machines will get _some_ hashes through, because they get more tries. Some of their successful tries would just fail due to latency. At some point, there would be a tipping point where a large number of machines would be able to, due to sheer chance, always generate a correct hash! Now, of course, the latency will still be there, so the earth machines would have to rely on their luck to beat the 8 minute latency (which they will sometimes). What that tippig point is - might be a very large number - is unknown to me of course...and if that tipping point is greater than 50% of the available hashing power, then you might as well just forge instead of doing it for real...
- maxerickson 6y ago
  You'd have to figure out the balance between distance from the sun impacting power generation and distance from Earth impacting the reward interval. There should be an optimal distance for a given combination of solar panel + mining rig.
- varajelle 6y ago
  It depends how many of these minors are near the sun. If the minors near the sun start mining on top of blocks discovered near the sun, then they have the head start again. This means there would me many more chain re-organisation, and that a 50.1% attack would be easier, so the network less secure.
dcow 6y ago
You have to sign blocks every 10 min. Since it takes 8 min for light from the sun, the mining station there would have 2 minutes to land a hash. You’d need to move most of the network to the sun station for this to be effective, I think.
caf 6y ago
You'd be far better off building floating wind turbines in the deep ocean, say in the roaring 40s.
dragonelite 6y ago
You already have the bitcoin blockchain on a satellite beaming back the state of the blockchain. It might work somewhere in the future if the tech is ready. You don't have day night cycles in space so solar could work 24/7 you do need to find something about the radiation.

neolog 6y ago

GPUs get faster over time.

runawaybottle 6y ago
But it’s not free energy. I’m looking at it like fusion, the output needs to exceed the input (well I guess that’s how everyone is looking at it).

amenghra 6y ago

Mining is a race. If you have X seconds latency because you are millions of miles away, you’ll loose $Y over the long run. You can figure out the function which ties X and Y together.

runawaybottle 6y ago
If you drop beacon towers along the way to maintain bandwidth, why wouldn’t this work?
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  latency and bandwidth are two different things... speed of light is a constant.
  - mrits 6y ago
    these beacons are in worm holes, obviously
- jerrysievert 6y ago
  the speed of light (or radio waves) doesn't become any faster with beacons. it's latency that's the problem.
chii 6y ago
if you have more mining machines because it's powered by a "free" source of energy, the latency will be beaten easily by just increasing the amount of tries you get to do.
- danShumway 6y ago
  If you spend 8 minutes getting the next chunk of information to your machine, and then another 8 minutes returning the result, it does not matter how fast your machines are or how many of them you have. You're still going to lose to the machines on earth, because the Bitcoin network on earth can already mine blocks faster than 16 minutes. Think of it this way. Say we're running a mile long race by foot, and it takes me an average of 10 minutes to run that mile. You want to bring a car onto the track that will be able to go a mile in 15 seconds, but it's going to take you 20 minutes to get the car to the starting line. That's how latency works. It doesn't matter how fast your machines are, by the time you've sent the information to them, by the time you've told them what they need to do, everyone else has already finished with their work and moved on to the next problem.
  - chii 6y ago
    but with bitcoin hashing, you're testing out random hashes to see if it works, and there's an equal chance of finding one for all parties. But if you spend more computational power, you have a higher chance of find one (because you got more tries). Now, a satellite orbiting the sun has 8 mins of latency. Imagine if there was only 1 computer on earth, and 1 computer orbiting, and both "submit", it's the earth computer that's going to succeed first, if both finds a valid hash. Suppose we keep the speed of the individual computers are the same - but now you double the amount of computers orbiting the sun. Now you are twice as likely to find a valid hash - even tho it still takes you 8 minutes to transfer the valid hash message to the earth network. In that 8 minutes, if somebody else on earth finds a valid hash, they will beat you. But they only have 1 machine, and so their chance of finding a valid hash _must_ be half. So on average, the orbiting machines will get _some_ hashes through, because they get more tries. Some of their successful tries would just fail due to latency. At some point, there would be a tipping point where a large number of machines would be able to, due to sheer chance, always generate a correct hash! Now, of course, the latency will still be there, so the earth machines would have to rely on their luck to beat the 8 minute latency (which they will sometimes). What that tippig point is - might be a very large number - is unknown to me of course...and if that tipping point is greater than 50% of the available hashing power, then you might as well just forge instead of doing it for real...
maxerickson 6y ago
You'd have to figure out the balance between distance from the sun impacting power generation and distance from Earth impacting the reward interval. There should be an optimal distance for a given combination of solar panel + mining rig.
varajelle 6y ago
It depends how many of these minors are near the sun. If the minors near the sun start mining on top of blocks discovered near the sun, then they have the head start again. This means there would me many more chain re-organisation, and that a 50.1% attack would be easier, so the network less secure.

dcow 6y ago

You have to sign blocks every 10 min. Since it takes 8 min for light from the sun, the mining station there would have 2 minutes to land a hash. You’d need to move most of the network to the sun station for this to be effective, I think.

caf 6y ago

You'd be far better off building floating wind turbines in the deep ocean, say in the roaring 40s.

dragonelite 6y ago

You already have the bitcoin blockchain on a satellite beaming back the state of the blockchain. It might work somewhere in the future if the tech is ready. You don't have day night cycles in space so solar could work 24/7 you do need to find something about the radiation.