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Exactly, it is taxing our environment and will so ever more. Sooner or later it will become unbearable and will need to be regulated, simply due to its contribu

by mitjam 5y ago

Exactly, it is taxing our environment and will so ever more. Sooner or later it will become unbearable and will need to be regulated, simply due to its contribution to climate change. Let's hope that it can be regulated, even. It is by design not sustainable and we have just one planet.

suspecteleven 5y ago
“We have just one planet” I hope you’re vegan
capableweb 5y ago
> It is by design not sustainable I've only read the Bitcoin whitepaper a few times, so I might not have a 100% understanding but I've missed this point in every single reading. Could you point out the section where this "Bitcoin should not be sustainable" is outlined in the original paper?
- mitjam 5y ago
  It’s in the Proof of Work. The „..difficulty is determined by a moving average targeting an average number of blocks per hour.“ The more nodes, the faster the hash rate the higher the difficulty. Here is a nice (exponential) graph showing difficulty over time since 2010 http://bitcoin.sipa.be http://bitcoin.sipa.be And „The average work required is exponential in the number of zero bits required and can be verified by executing a single hash.“ The difficulty of a unit of work can be practically limitless, the difficulty to verify a unit of work is practically nil. As long as work needs to be performed and as long as the network keeps growing, both the total amount of work and the amount of work per unit of work increase. The required energy of the network increases with them as long as the machines do not get efficient faster, which is highly unlikely. Currently, the energy footprint of one BTC transaction is estimated to be 612 kWh and the estimated electricity demand increased over 10.000 % between 2015 and 2021. Digital currencies reportedly account for 112 TWh energy consumption per year in the top 10 countries. That is in the ballpark of the total electrical energy consumption of all 41,500,000 German households. (https://www.institutionalassetmanager.co.uk/2021/01/20/294669/global-bitcoin-transactions-cost-usd25m-day-electricity-process https://www.institutionalassetmanager.co.uk/2021/01/20/29466..., https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ and https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... and https://www.statista.com/statistics/464187/households-by-size-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/464187/households-by-siz... ). Blockchain currencies with alternative consensus algorithms are better in this regard.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    No, I don't think GP is referring to Proof of Work here. Proof of Work is designed to be difficult and to enable securing of a network. Nowhere in the design of Proof of Work is it said that it has to not be sustainable, which was the main argument. So GP must have meant something else.
    - mitjam 5y ago
      You are right, I also do not think that it is intentional, but just incidental insustainable. It is still an inherent and central part of its design.

by mitjam 5y ago

suspecteleven 5y ago

“We have just one planet” I hope you’re vegan

capableweb 5y ago

> It is by design not sustainable I've only read the Bitcoin whitepaper a few times, so I might not have a 100% understanding but I've missed this point in every single reading. Could you point out the section where this "Bitcoin should not be sustainable" is outlined in the original paper?

mitjam 5y ago
It’s in the Proof of Work. The „..difficulty is determined by a moving average targeting an average number of blocks per hour.“ The more nodes, the faster the hash rate the higher the difficulty. Here is a nice (exponential) graph showing difficulty over time since 2010 http://bitcoin.sipa.be http://bitcoin.sipa.be And „The average work required is exponential in the number of zero bits required and can be verified by executing a single hash.“ The difficulty of a unit of work can be practically limitless, the difficulty to verify a unit of work is practically nil. As long as work needs to be performed and as long as the network keeps growing, both the total amount of work and the amount of work per unit of work increase. The required energy of the network increases with them as long as the machines do not get efficient faster, which is highly unlikely. Currently, the energy footprint of one BTC transaction is estimated to be 612 kWh and the estimated electricity demand increased over 10.000 % between 2015 and 2021. Digital currencies reportedly account for 112 TWh energy consumption per year in the top 10 countries. That is in the ballpark of the total electrical energy consumption of all 41,500,000 German households. (https://www.institutionalassetmanager.co.uk/2021/01/20/294669/global-bitcoin-transactions-cost-usd25m-day-electricity-process https://www.institutionalassetmanager.co.uk/2021/01/20/29466..., https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ and https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... and https://www.statista.com/statistics/464187/households-by-size-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/464187/households-by-siz... ). Blockchain currencies with alternative consensus algorithms are better in this regard.
- capableweb 5y ago
  No, I don't think GP is referring to Proof of Work here. Proof of Work is designed to be difficult and to enable securing of a network. Nowhere in the design of Proof of Work is it said that it has to not be sustainable, which was the main argument. So GP must have meant something else.
  - mitjam 5y ago
    You are right, I also do not think that it is intentional, but just incidental insustainable. It is still an inherent and central part of its design.