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Yup, this would ensure the benefits of bitcoin mining would not outweigh the costs, and it would make most of it unprofitable. One great thing about crypto mini

by swiley 5y ago

Yup, this would ensure the benefits of bitcoin mining would not outweigh the costs, and it would make most of it unprofitable. One great thing about crypto mining is that it makes unsustainable subsidies very obvious.

DennisP 5y ago
The difficulty adjustment would just make it a little easier to mine bitcoins, so miners would spend the same money. But at least they'd be using clean energy if the carbon tax were high enough.
ixacto 5y ago
This would give an advantage to Bitcoin miners in 3rd world countries where carbon credits and other fanciful notions are optional. We [the developed world] would be outsourcing our Bitcoin pollution to these 3rd world countries and also contributing to “environmental racism” or whatever the left is calling it these days.
- kogo55 5y ago
  Exactly. We need to ban, and aggressively prosecute the use of crypto to prevent this. Useful side-effect: reduction of ransomware attacks.
  - cyphertruck 5y ago
    That has worked terrible with the war in drugs. How do you think its going to work when no smuggling us required and anyone with a solar panel and a satellite dish can mine?
  - swiley 5y ago
    You're going to have to find a different way to deal with that. Without completely changing the way the US government and justice system works I don't think that's possible.
  - vladmk 5y ago
    I don’t know about banning crypto to stop ransomware attacks, if we followed that train of thought we shouldn’t even have an internet where people can steal personal information.
  - KMnO4 5y ago
    Is this sarcasm/hyperbole? There’s nothing wrong with cryptography.
- doggosphere 5y ago
  You can't control everything. The west already scrutinizes many commodities it imports: diamonds, gold, shoes, phones. There's no reason to suggest bitcoin mining sources can't be discriminated against. So at scale, damage is mitigated. In the long run, renewable energy from wind and solar are already the cheapest forms of energy anyway. https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2020/01/21/renewable-energy-prices-hit-record-lows-how-can-utilities-benefit-from-unstoppable-solar-and-wind/?sh=6d40a3e72c84 https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2020/01/21/ren... https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
  - ixacto 5y ago
    Ok so you now have only single-origin bitcoins available that are legal to purchase though a government dealer? What if it is a worldwide mining pool that is paying out worldwide, like most coin mining pools currently do? That would result in income earned in many different tax jurisdictions paid to many more tax jurisdictions, kinda impractical as the pool is contributing compute but the winnings are shared among all the miners. And would we just use the honor system for Monero mined in China/India/Africa/Indonesia/wherever? There is no incentive apart from these hypothetical miners import agreement being revoked to not mix the coins up. This might sound a little crass, but while I do agree that wind, solar, and nuclear are the future of power generation I also believe that cap and trade and its resultant currency of offset credits are morally equivalent to the indulgence system that the catholic church had set up in the medieval thorough early modern era. So basically when Bill Gates is trying to offset his carbon credits he's basically paying the priests of his new religion to be able to fly all over the world without a guilty conscience, whilst the poors are agonizing over bagging their groceries with plastic bags because the red states don't want to ban them.
    - doggosphere 5y ago
      It doesn't have to be so comprehensive. You can incentivize green coin without making it the baseline standard. Ex: You sold some coin on an exchange for USD? If you can show the coin's origin, you get capital gain credit or something. And vice versa.
jpmattia 5y ago
> Yup, this would ensure the benefits of bitcoin mining would not outweigh the costs, and it would make most of it unprofitable. How did you conclude that the price or difficulty factor would not adapt to make it profitable?
- gizmo686 5y ago
  The difficulty goes down as a direct result of less mining being done. Long term, blocks will be generated at the same rate, but each block would have less work behind it.
PurpleFoxy 5y ago
The reward for Bitcoin mining is fixed. The work required is variable. If electricity costs globally shot up, there would be far smaller mining operations but the payout would be the same because the Bitcoin network adjusts its difficulty. PoW is a beast that consumes everything it can.
- swiley 5y ago
  Sure but the issue is the power consumption (which would go down) not the payout.
- gruez 5y ago
  >PoW is a beast that consumes everything it can. It doesn't really "consume everything it can" like a paperclip optimizer would. Like you said the reward for mining is fixed, so the amount of money/resources it can consume is limited to (mining reward * bitcoin price).

by swiley 5y ago

DennisP 5y ago

The difficulty adjustment would just make it a little easier to mine bitcoins, so miners would spend the same money. But at least they'd be using clean energy if the carbon tax were high enough.

ixacto 5y ago

This would give an advantage to Bitcoin miners in 3rd world countries where carbon credits and other fanciful notions are optional. We [the developed world] would be outsourcing our Bitcoin pollution to these 3rd world countries and also contributing to “environmental racism” or whatever the left is calling it these days.

kogo55 5y ago
Exactly. We need to ban, and aggressively prosecute the use of crypto to prevent this. Useful side-effect: reduction of ransomware attacks.
- cyphertruck 5y ago
  That has worked terrible with the war in drugs. How do you think its going to work when no smuggling us required and anyone with a solar panel and a satellite dish can mine?
- swiley 5y ago
  You're going to have to find a different way to deal with that. Without completely changing the way the US government and justice system works I don't think that's possible.
- vladmk 5y ago
  I don’t know about banning crypto to stop ransomware attacks, if we followed that train of thought we shouldn’t even have an internet where people can steal personal information.
- KMnO4 5y ago
  Is this sarcasm/hyperbole? There’s nothing wrong with cryptography.
doggosphere 5y ago
You can't control everything. The west already scrutinizes many commodities it imports: diamonds, gold, shoes, phones. There's no reason to suggest bitcoin mining sources can't be discriminated against. So at scale, damage is mitigated. In the long run, renewable energy from wind and solar are already the cheapest forms of energy anyway. https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2020/01/21/renewable-energy-prices-hit-record-lows-how-can-utilities-benefit-from-unstoppable-solar-and-wind/?sh=6d40a3e72c84 https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2020/01/21/ren... https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
- ixacto 5y ago
  Ok so you now have only single-origin bitcoins available that are legal to purchase though a government dealer? What if it is a worldwide mining pool that is paying out worldwide, like most coin mining pools currently do? That would result in income earned in many different tax jurisdictions paid to many more tax jurisdictions, kinda impractical as the pool is contributing compute but the winnings are shared among all the miners. And would we just use the honor system for Monero mined in China/India/Africa/Indonesia/wherever? There is no incentive apart from these hypothetical miners import agreement being revoked to not mix the coins up. This might sound a little crass, but while I do agree that wind, solar, and nuclear are the future of power generation I also believe that cap and trade and its resultant currency of offset credits are morally equivalent to the indulgence system that the catholic church had set up in the medieval thorough early modern era. So basically when Bill Gates is trying to offset his carbon credits he's basically paying the priests of his new religion to be able to fly all over the world without a guilty conscience, whilst the poors are agonizing over bagging their groceries with plastic bags because the red states don't want to ban them.
  - doggosphere 5y ago
    It doesn't have to be so comprehensive. You can incentivize green coin without making it the baseline standard. Ex: You sold some coin on an exchange for USD? If you can show the coin's origin, you get capital gain credit or something. And vice versa.

jpmattia 5y ago

> Yup, this would ensure the benefits of bitcoin mining would not outweigh the costs, and it would make most of it unprofitable. How did you conclude that the price or difficulty factor would not adapt to make it profitable?

gizmo686 5y ago
The difficulty goes down as a direct result of less mining being done. Long term, blocks will be generated at the same rate, but each block would have less work behind it.

PurpleFoxy 5y ago

The reward for Bitcoin mining is fixed. The work required is variable. If electricity costs globally shot up, there would be far smaller mining operations but the payout would be the same because the Bitcoin network adjusts its difficulty. PoW is a beast that consumes everything it can.

swiley 5y ago
Sure but the issue is the power consumption (which would go down) not the payout.
gruez 5y ago
>PoW is a beast that consumes everything it can. It doesn't really "consume everything it can" like a paperclip optimizer would. Like you said the reward for mining is fixed, so the amount of money/resources it can consume is limited to (mining reward * bitcoin price).