4 ms·

I'm curious why we don't find a similar backlash to people who put their energy into a hot tub or to cool a 5x sized home.. as these cases don't even purportedl

by elif 5y ago

I'm curious why we don't find a similar backlash to people who put their energy into a hot tub or to cool a 5x sized home.. as these cases don't even purportedly support a valuable economic mechanism. For instance. I don't cool my home with AC. does it bother you that I mine bitcoin overnight when the grid has surplus energy?

jupp0r 5y ago
I'd be more onboard if you heated your home by mining in the winter.
Clubber 5y ago
A lot of people are in the habit of complaining about what other people do that might possibly but not likely indirectly affect them somehow. Of course the powers that be are fine with this (and probably promote it) because as long as the populace is pointing fingers at each other's lifestyle, they are ignoring the massive use of fossil energy (among other things) used to make a few rich people richer. "Penny wise and pound foolsh." Another example of this is plastic bottles. See it's your responsibility to recycle, not the company's responsibility to not use plastic. People nanny each other's recycling habits but don't say shit about Coca-Cola bottlers. Bottler's are too busy laughing their ass off on the way to the bank. Recycle, reduce, reuse.
gnramires 5y ago
In the case of cryptocurrency, there is a clear better alternative that is Proof of Stake. It's caused by techological, economical and educational inertia. Cryptocurrency is driven by community consensus, and that's what we're doing here... discussing an outdated consensus (PoW supremacy) in the hope of changing it.
- nanidin 5y ago
  Proof of stake changes the game and raises the bar for entry. It essentially creates a "rich get richer" scenario where the only way to increase the amount of coin you have is to either already have enough to participate in proof of stake, or to buy the coin from someone else. In that light, I wouldn't necessarily say that proof of stake is clearly better than proof of work. As an example, the proposed proof of stake mechanism for Ethereum requires 32 ETH, which is around $100k USD today. So established parties with capital will be able to stake, but your average person will not. I'm not sure I like that aspect of it.
  - gnramires 5y ago
    It seems there will be pool staking in ETH, although I agree ideally staking threshold should be low. Consider the case with Proof of Work (ASIC-based): you need to purchase specialized hardware for several $k (apparently at least $2k), spend more on specialized infrastructure (power supply, cooling, servers) and live somewhere with almost free energy. Otherwise it's just not economical to mine. This leaves out the vast majority of people as well, and incentivizes (1) massive economies of scale of farms, (2) shady or corrupt deals for free energy, through local government or simply illegal connections to the network.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
People do complain about excessive comforts too. It's one of the main complains those less well off make about those more well off. That said, there's a couple of differences between hot tubs and AC, and crypto mining: - Creature comforts don't consume the energy equivalent of a small developed country. - In what they do consume, most of the use is around basic human needs; excessive use happens rarely. - Most importantly, for almost[0] everything other than crypto, whether it's hot tubs or ACs or fiat banking system, energy use is considered waste to be minimized. Simply because energy is not free, the market is incentivized to reduce marginal energy consumption involved across the board[1]. In contrast, PoW considers waste a feature. Cryptocurrencies are their own special thing - the perfect machine for consuming any surplus energy available. That's why they deserve their own special kind of backlash. -- [0] - I can't really think of any thing other than PoW cryptocurrencies, where energy waste would be beneficial to the thing by design. [1] - That, of course, doesn't mean we're using less energy overall - because both population and economic growth outpace efficiency improvements. But on the margin, it holds true.
- tass 5y ago
  To add, this isn’t really “surplus” energy that’s being consumed. There are fossil burning power plants running only to produce PoW, and unless mining operations shut down to allow a generator to operate at minimum load, they are forcing shared generators to run and dams to drain.
  - paulmd 5y ago
    you know that generator fuel consumption and dam water consumption is dependent on the load on the generator, right? it's not like a generator burns 2gal/hr no matter the load. This is easily observable even (perhaps especially) on home generators - if you run it idle it might run for 12 hours and if you load it to maximum capacity it might be out of fuel in 2 hours. look at a product page for a generator and will probably be specified at a particular load level (50% load for example). also if you keep pushing water through a dam at maximum rate even when the dam is under a light load, you'll overspeed the generator and blow it up. You have to have control gates to control the water flow. basically, "how difficult" it is to spin the generator is determined by the electrical load (coupled through the magnetic field of the motor) and obviously you need more physical power to spin against a stronger field, which translates into more power/fuel.

by elif 5y ago

jupp0r 5y ago

I'd be more onboard if you heated your home by mining in the winter.

Clubber 5y ago

A lot of people are in the habit of complaining about what other people do that might possibly but not likely indirectly affect them somehow. Of course the powers that be are fine with this (and probably promote it) because as long as the populace is pointing fingers at each other's lifestyle, they are ignoring the massive use of fossil energy (among other things) used to make a few rich people richer. "Penny wise and pound foolsh." Another example of this is plastic bottles. See it's your responsibility to recycle, not the company's responsibility to not use plastic. People nanny each other's recycling habits but don't say shit about Coca-Cola bottlers. Bottler's are too busy laughing their ass off on the way to the bank. Recycle, reduce, reuse.

gnramires 5y ago

In the case of cryptocurrency, there is a clear better alternative that is Proof of Stake. It's caused by techological, economical and educational inertia. Cryptocurrency is driven by community consensus, and that's what we're doing here... discussing an outdated consensus (PoW supremacy) in the hope of changing it.

nanidin 5y ago
Proof of stake changes the game and raises the bar for entry. It essentially creates a "rich get richer" scenario where the only way to increase the amount of coin you have is to either already have enough to participate in proof of stake, or to buy the coin from someone else. In that light, I wouldn't necessarily say that proof of stake is clearly better than proof of work. As an example, the proposed proof of stake mechanism for Ethereum requires 32 ETH, which is around $100k USD today. So established parties with capital will be able to stake, but your average person will not. I'm not sure I like that aspect of it.
- gnramires 5y ago
  It seems there will be pool staking in ETH, although I agree ideally staking threshold should be low. Consider the case with Proof of Work (ASIC-based): you need to purchase specialized hardware for several $k (apparently at least $2k), spend more on specialized infrastructure (power supply, cooling, servers) and live somewhere with almost free energy. Otherwise it's just not economical to mine. This leaves out the vast majority of people as well, and incentivizes (1) massive economies of scale of farms, (2) shady or corrupt deals for free energy, through local government or simply illegal connections to the network.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

People do complain about excessive comforts too. It's one of the main complains those less well off make about those more well off. That said, there's a couple of differences between hot tubs and AC, and crypto mining: - Creature comforts don't consume the energy equivalent of a small developed country. - In what they do consume, most of the use is around basic human needs; excessive use happens rarely. - Most importantly, for almost[0] everything other than crypto, whether it's hot tubs or ACs or fiat banking system, energy use is considered waste to be minimized. Simply because energy is not free, the market is incentivized to reduce marginal energy consumption involved across the board[1]. In contrast, PoW considers waste a feature. Cryptocurrencies are their own special thing - the perfect machine for consuming any surplus energy available. That's why they deserve their own special kind of backlash. -- [0] - I can't really think of any thing other than PoW cryptocurrencies, where energy waste would be beneficial to the thing by design. [1] - That, of course, doesn't mean we're using less energy overall - because both population and economic growth outpace efficiency improvements. But on the margin, it holds true.

tass 5y ago
To add, this isn’t really “surplus” energy that’s being consumed. There are fossil burning power plants running only to produce PoW, and unless mining operations shut down to allow a generator to operate at minimum load, they are forcing shared generators to run and dams to drain.
- paulmd 5y ago
  you know that generator fuel consumption and dam water consumption is dependent on the load on the generator, right? it's not like a generator burns 2gal/hr no matter the load. This is easily observable even (perhaps especially) on home generators - if you run it idle it might run for 12 hours and if you load it to maximum capacity it might be out of fuel in 2 hours. look at a product page for a generator and will probably be specified at a particular load level (50% load for example). also if you keep pushing water through a dam at maximum rate even when the dam is under a light load, you'll overspeed the generator and blow it up. You have to have control gates to control the water flow. basically, "how difficult" it is to spin the generator is determined by the electrical load (coupled through the magnetic field of the motor) and obviously you need more physical power to spin against a stronger field, which translates into more power/fuel.