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On your website that you linked says "We conduct our business in a way that protects ... our planet's climate against warming." Can you elaborate how providing

On your website that you linked says "We conduct our business in a way that protects ... our planet's climate against warming." Can you elaborate how providing infra to mine Bitcoin is helping the planet against global warming? Aren't you doing the exact opposite? If you are using 100% green energy, that energy can be used for something productive not providing PoW. Note Bitcoin alone currently consumes 0.55% of world's TOTAL electricity production and this is going to get even worse with more adoption. Reference: https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...

rawtxapp 5y ago
> that energy can be used for something productive A decentralized/borderless/censorship-resistant/virtual currency is one of the most productive things we can use energy for. It might not be as apparent in the US or the developed world, but Bitcoin is a life-saver for many people in countries with crumbling currencies. We waste a lot of energy on things that are far more more useless (like christmas lights for example[1]). We should just put carbon tax on everything with environmental side effects and let the market decides what's a productive use case vs one that isn't. 1: https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-mining-energy-consumption-us-christmas-lights/ https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-mining-energy-consumption-us-...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mondoveneziano 5y ago
  You could regulate inefficient christmas lights, but consumers will likely choose more efficient options anyway when they become available to them. How do you enforce carbon taxes on miners under a defunct government in a remote location of the world?
- codelord 5y ago
  I don't believe mining Bitcoin quite falls into the category of "most productive things we can use energy for". Drug discovery, carbon capture, agriculture, construction, etc. etc. come to mind as slightly more useful. Financial transactions in traditional banking systems which Bitcoin mining is more comparable with consume far far far less energy. Also Bitcoin is designed to adjust PoW difficulty based on network's average mining performance. In other words, the more compute power you provide the less efficient it becomes.
neither_color 5y ago
>If you are using 100% green energy, that energy can be used for something productive not providing PoW You can say the same thing about ANY activity that isn't an arbitrarily defined form of altruism. Sports? Concerts? Video games? All vast wastes of time, money, and energy that could be spent fighting poverty or feeding the poor. This betrays the intention of criticizing bitcoin's energy usage because it moves the goal post of "...but but it's not using renewable energy" to "...but but that renewable energy is not being used for what I want it to be used for".
- mondoveneziano 5y ago
  But almost any other activity only benefits from getting more efficient. Compare today's efficient LED lighting technology with what was available a few decades ago. With proof-of-work on the other hand, efficiency is actively counteracted. If a proof-of-work cryptocurrency holds its price, its energy usage can only go up. You are also assuming that only renewable energy will be used for mining in the first place. I don't think that is a given: As long as it stays profitable no matter how, miners will exploit any resource that is available to them, literally burning resources for money in their wallet. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized by design, so while the US for example can stop the use or import of inefficient stadium lighting technologies, there is no way to apply a carbon tax or stop the "import" of cryptocurrency mined through "dirty" means.
  - neither_color 5y ago
    I'll admit that based on my limited knowledge of PoW I was unaware of this disincentive against efficiency. I'll have to study more about how PoW works.
    - mondoveneziano 5y ago
      That's perfectly understandable, I think relatively few people looked at proof-of-work in detail. I can give you a quick overview of how proof-of-work works (I understand it well enough to actually be able to do it by hand on paper), but nevertheless doing your own research always helps: To "mine" a block, a miner attaches a random number to the content of the block (the content mostly being the actual transactions), performs a difficult calculation on the entirety (i.e. block and random number), and checks whether the result of that calculation matches a prescribed goal. The goal is to have at least a certain amount of leading zeroes in the resulting number, and it is (to everyone's best knowledge) impossible to know how many leading zeroes there will be without performing the calculation. That is the literal goal, not an analogy. In the massively overwhelming majority of tries, this goal is not reached. The calculation was useless, and the miner tries again with a different random number attached to the block. There is no other value to the calculation than to reach the arbitrary goal. If the goal is reached, the miner has won the lottery: All participating nodes in the network accept the result (the calculation is easy to verify) and the miner may claim the rewards for themselves. The amount of leading zeroes to achieve is directly tied to the mutually agreed upon "difficulty". If mining becomes easier and the lottery is won too quickly (say because new faster ASICs flood the market, or more miners participate), the network adjusts the difficulty up, meaning more leading zeroes, so that the overall chances of winning the lottery within a given time frame stays stable.

rawtxapp 5y ago

> that energy can be used for something productive A decentralized/borderless/censorship-resistant/virtual currency is one of the most productive things we can use energy for. It might not be as apparent in the US or the developed world, but Bitcoin is a life-saver for many people in countries with crumbling currencies. We waste a lot of energy on things that are far more more useless (like christmas lights for example[1]). We should just put carbon tax on everything with environmental side effects and let the market decides what's a productive use case vs one that isn't. 1: https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-mining-energy-consumption-us-christmas-lights/ https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-mining-energy-consumption-us-...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mondoveneziano 5y ago
You could regulate inefficient christmas lights, but consumers will likely choose more efficient options anyway when they become available to them. How do you enforce carbon taxes on miners under a defunct government in a remote location of the world?
codelord 5y ago
I don't believe mining Bitcoin quite falls into the category of "most productive things we can use energy for". Drug discovery, carbon capture, agriculture, construction, etc. etc. come to mind as slightly more useful. Financial transactions in traditional banking systems which Bitcoin mining is more comparable with consume far far far less energy. Also Bitcoin is designed to adjust PoW difficulty based on network's average mining performance. In other words, the more compute power you provide the less efficient it becomes.

neither_color 5y ago

>If you are using 100% green energy, that energy can be used for something productive not providing PoW You can say the same thing about ANY activity that isn't an arbitrarily defined form of altruism. Sports? Concerts? Video games? All vast wastes of time, money, and energy that could be spent fighting poverty or feeding the poor. This betrays the intention of criticizing bitcoin's energy usage because it moves the goal post of "...but but it's not using renewable energy" to "...but but that renewable energy is not being used for what I want it to be used for".

mondoveneziano 5y ago
But almost any other activity only benefits from getting more efficient. Compare today's efficient LED lighting technology with what was available a few decades ago. With proof-of-work on the other hand, efficiency is actively counteracted. If a proof-of-work cryptocurrency holds its price, its energy usage can only go up. You are also assuming that only renewable energy will be used for mining in the first place. I don't think that is a given: As long as it stays profitable no matter how, miners will exploit any resource that is available to them, literally burning resources for money in their wallet. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized by design, so while the US for example can stop the use or import of inefficient stadium lighting technologies, there is no way to apply a carbon tax or stop the "import" of cryptocurrency mined through "dirty" means.
- neither_color 5y ago
  I'll admit that based on my limited knowledge of PoW I was unaware of this disincentive against efficiency. I'll have to study more about how PoW works.
  - mondoveneziano 5y ago
    That's perfectly understandable, I think relatively few people looked at proof-of-work in detail. I can give you a quick overview of how proof-of-work works (I understand it well enough to actually be able to do it by hand on paper), but nevertheless doing your own research always helps: To "mine" a block, a miner attaches a random number to the content of the block (the content mostly being the actual transactions), performs a difficult calculation on the entirety (i.e. block and random number), and checks whether the result of that calculation matches a prescribed goal. The goal is to have at least a certain amount of leading zeroes in the resulting number, and it is (to everyone's best knowledge) impossible to know how many leading zeroes there will be without performing the calculation. That is the literal goal, not an analogy. In the massively overwhelming majority of tries, this goal is not reached. The calculation was useless, and the miner tries again with a different random number attached to the block. There is no other value to the calculation than to reach the arbitrary goal. If the goal is reached, the miner has won the lottery: All participating nodes in the network accept the result (the calculation is easy to verify) and the miner may claim the rewards for themselves. The amount of leading zeroes to achieve is directly tied to the mutually agreed upon "difficulty". If mining becomes easier and the lottery is won too quickly (say because new faster ASICs flood the market, or more miners participate), the network adjusts the difficulty up, meaning more leading zeroes, so that the overall chances of winning the lottery within a given time frame stays stable.