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Whenever Bitcoin collapses, whether it be next week or 5 years, we will look back in history and wonder what the fuck we wasted all that energy on.
by richwater 5y ago
Whenever Bitcoin collapses, whether it be next week or 5 years, we will look back in history and wonder what the fuck we wasted all that energy on.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoShifting people's relative positions in the status hierarchy.
- nullsmack 5y agoIt can't happen soon enough.
- randomhodler84 5y agoKeep waiting. You have until 2140 until the mining stops. What you see today ain’t nothing yet, and after 12 years you ain’t seeing it, please look harder.
- tylersmith 5y agoMining doesn't stop in 2140. Mining stops if and only if Bitcoin dies.
- latchkey 5y agoMining is the process of validating transactions and miners are rewarded for doing so with emissions + fees from transactions. Mining bitcoin won't stop. Emissions will stop.
- ekster 5y agoIt’s too bad we didn’t go the scifi route of having money be energy credits and instead went the route of proof of energy wasted.
- echelon 5y ago> proof of energy wasted I really like this term.
- daenz 5y agoPoW - Proof of Waste
- anonporridge 5y agoProof of excess energy production may be better. It is wasted in terms of burning fossil fuels though, since that is stored energy that took millions of years to charge up.
- maven29 5y agoEnergy arbitrage already exists IRL in the form of aluminium smelting.
- latchkey 5y agoA very large bitcoin mining facility [0] in upstate NY is in an old Alcoa smelter and is powered by a hydropower dam. [1] The original factory was built to take advantage of the power from the dam. The dam needs a constant draw of power in order to maintain it and smelting potlines were perfect for this. Today, transmitting the electricity further would be too cost prohibitive due to the remote location. In this case, bitcoin is less polluting energy arbitrage than aluminum smelting. [0] https://www.coinmint.one/ https://www.coinmint.one/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses-Saunders_Power_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses-Saunders_Power_Dam
- Retric 5y ago> In this case, bitcoin is less polluting energy arbitrage than aluminum smelting. Only if 100% of global aluminum smelting occurred from green sources. As that’s not the case the world would be better off if they had kept smelting aluminum as long as the reductions occurred in less green locations.
- Bayart 5y agoIt's only waste insofar as you don't ascribe value to Bitcoin. It's not fundamentally different from any computing task.
- quickthrower2 5y agoTautological. This is essentially: “It’s only waste in so far as you consider it waste” However the real point about bitcoin is it’s efficiency decreases as adoption or speculation increases, whereas another use of computation such as say Google search this is not the case and they are actively trying to make it more efficient.
- ekster 5y agoWell it’s waste in the sense that you are spending lots of energy to calculate magic numbers, which don’t have any other value except to prove you own bitcoin. It is or is very near a tautology. In contrast to energy credits in scifi which is something like a promise to deliver a fixed amount of energy, like how a dollar used to have an equivalence in gold. Like, do you imagine some future spacefaring civilization going around and blowing up stars in order to calculate hashes for their currency? I can, but really only as something that an evil civilization or runaway automation would do. Why not build a dyson sphere and sell contracts on the energy instead, to people who will use it to be productive? Why is it better to burn all stored energy you can find off as quickly as possible to generate numbers you don’t otherwise need?
- lifty 5y agoAs long as humanity is divided and has factions that are in conflict, something like proof of work can be useful, because it allows those that are in conflict or don’t trust each other, to maintain a shared view of an accounting system (Bitcoin). When we pass that stage of bickering apes we won’t need Bitcoin anymore.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago> because it allows those that are in conflict or don’t trust each other, People use this argument a lot, and I don't get it. You're trusting that miners don't perform a 51% attack; you're trusting that the underlying crypto doesn't have shortcuts; you're trusting the wallet software. Some of these things are unverifiable, leaving you only with trust.
- knuthsat 5y agoWell, from my perspective, a bunch of us are playing some very weirdly human constructed game of wasting life years on work and passive content consumption. If we ever make it to a cashless utopia, I'm pretty sure someone's going to look at us and see how much untapped human potential was wasted on years of watching a screen and experiencing dopamine release.
- kortilla 5y agoWhat is the point of human potential if you aren’t working for the ability to enjoy life?
- oliwarner 5y agoI think the suggestion there is hacking this artificial happiness through gamification of banal activities is a waste of our existence. If we ever make it to post-scarcity, we need to still be producing something. Or we may as well be batteries plugged into the Matrix.
- reaperducer 5y agoWhat makes you conflate "cashless" with "utopia?"
- knuthsat 5y agoI was thinking more in the lines of Star Trek / The Orville where material wealth is no longer a thing.
- crossroadsguy 5y agoYou know there’s always an auto counter argument for an argument like yours. What else would have done? Hiked and played sports? Or let me mention the cool/hip things — “build shit” “ship things” “be productive”? For what? Some other chemical release? This will keep going in a loop.
- knuthsat 5y ago
- DJBunnies 5y agoWhat would you have spent that energy on instead?
- speedgoose 5y agoYou could not produce this energy. It's better for the environment. If the energy is there anyway, maybe aluminium or equivalent. Not magic numbers.
- DJBunnies 5y agoNothing is stopping you from setting up shop somewhere with the same wasted electrical surplus, finding the machinery needed, an adequate staff to run it, figuring out your international supply chain, and hoping you turn out profitable.
- speedgoose 5y agoYou are right, bruteforcing checksums is easier.
- DJBunnies 5y agoThe market would agree.
- coralreef 5y agoDoes magic numbers mean a decentralized network that is permissionless to participate in, is censorship resistant, virtually unstoppable, and global?
- speedgoose 5y agoNot necessarily.
- phasnox 5y agoThis is the top comment. Really? So naive to think Bitcoin will "collapse" in 5 years. So ignorant to say securing the network is energy wasted. HN used to be a cradle of ideas and originality. It has become a cradle of sheep.
- dcolkitt 5y agoProof-of-work blockchains were necessary to bootstrap proof-of-stake chains. Proof-of-stake is necessary to scale blockchains. It’s a relatively small, temporary price to birth a revolutionary technology.
- wyager 5y agoProof of stake lacks the security properties of proof of work. They are not comparable. PoS is markedly inferior in many respects. Look up e.g. the “grinding” family of attacks.
- dcolkitt 5y agoThe proof is in the pudding. The Ethereum beacon chain text s currently securing $14 billion in value and has been running for nearly a year without incident. I can understand the claim that PoS was impractical even a year ago. But given Ethereum 2’s massive success, it’s an untenable claim. If you really think PoS in insecure, don’t bother at arguing it. Just go hack some of your share of that $14 billion.
- wyager 5y agoBitcoin is subject to the Lindy effect. Neither of those timelines are very good bets. It’s already been around for 12 years. If you see a lot of people doing something intentionally and you think they’re wasting resources, you probably just don’t understand what they’re spending resources on.