5 ms·

Excellent news for the climate.

by adrianN 5y ago

phist_mcgee 5y ago
And what about non energy intensive crypto currencies that rely on PoS or PoH?
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Don’t worry they are scams, only proof of work is actually secure.
  - drdeca 5y ago
    Not convinced of this. (Your handle doesn’t make it a more convincing claim.) I’m not saying I’m totally convinced that PoS can be really secure, but I am reasonably confident that some developing such systems sincerely believe it can be, and have no deceptive intent. This in my mind seems to contradict it being “a scam”, which to my mind requires deception. In fact, I do suspect that it can be secure, for some reasonable sense of “secure”, though I am not especially confident in this.
- fouric 5y ago
  Depends on what you mean by "PoS". If you mean "proof of stake" - I've never heard anyone describe any environmental issues with them, so I assume that they either don't exist or are far smaller in impact than PoW. If you mean "proof of storage/space" - it seems like that tends to produce very high write volumes, which in turn burns SSDs out very quickly[1] - and you can argue that that's bad for the environment. How bad, and whether it's worse than the energy consumption of PoW, I'm not sure. From one perspective, it's worse, because you could theoretically power PoW mining using exclusively green energy, but you can't pull the raw materials for SSDs out of thin air. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001848
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
Most mining has already shifted out of China, and Bitcoin mining is a very small percentage of electricity usage on the scale of "all electricity usage" - there are plenty of bigger fish (the argument then turns, validly, to the usefulness of said bigger fish in comparison to bitcoin).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > there are plenty of bigger fish Sure, but in most cases people would, at best, be seriously inconvenienced if they were immediately banned. At worst, people would die. If bitcoin was banned worldwide tomorrow, it would be an interesting story in the news and the internet would be furious for a while; there would be no significant real-life impact. It would probably be the most slam-dunk "obviously we should do this" environmental regulation in history; even things like "we should not put mercury in lakes" had significant downsides compared to banning bitcoin.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    Of course, there would be plenty of positive impact in the mid to long term. More capacity for semiconductor production available would help with semiconductor shortages, ransomware would become pretty much unprofitable, and of course a huge drop in environmental destruction.
- cma 5y ago
  > to the usefulness of said bigger fish in comparison to bitcoin So far bitcoin has negative utility even aside from environmental disaster (ransomware).
- dangerface 5y ago
  Here come the comments of people who see no value in crypto calming it has no value. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. A few years ago people laughed at me for buying bitcoin, it's good to see bitcoin adoption moving along nicely.
coralreef 5y ago
It's a thunderous dunk while your team is down 40 in the 4th. A loud, but small, short term win. "Excellent news" would be the halting of state subsidies for coal mining, and introduction of a carbon tax.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Fwiw China is ramping up a carbon tax scheme for coal and gas : https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2021/03/02/toothless-at-first-chinas-carbon-market-could-be-fearsome/?sh=36a100ea2af1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2021/03/02/tooth... They will probably never stop subsidizing coal mining though. Otherwise they will get even more reliant on foreign coal which gives a hypothetical US blockade much more clout.
Torwald 5y ago
The idea that crypto mining is bad for the climate is short-sighted. It is based on the wrong assumption of a static universe. But this world is not static. Let's say for example, all goverments would become more strict in taxing energy consumption. (Presumably to help save the climate.) Now at some point there is a market incentive to develop mining techniques that optimize for less energy consumption above all else. This would lead to better technologies and thus environment friendly mining techniques. So this would mean that two factors in this world have changed. Namely taxation on energy and energy consumption while mining crypto. But this goes further. What if the usage of crypto enables reduction in carbon imprint in other sectors? This could be a possible development. And so on. The world is always changing.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  Nonsense. Bitcoin mining's main cost is energy usage. It already fully optimises for less energy consumption. But because the way bitcoin is designed, any gains in energy consumption will cause mining difficulty to go up, and with it energy consumption. Bitcoin is designed to be anti-efficient. All improvement in efficiency of mining are immediately cancelled out by difficulty adjustments. That is the economic model of bitcoin: It will always use as much energy as you can buy with the mining rewards.
- Jyaif 5y ago
  > Now at some point there is a market incentive to develop mining techniques that optimize for less energy consumption above all else. There is already a market incentive for that (electricity is not free), and there is already a solution to this (proof of stake). Please stop advocating and using proof of work shitcoins.
  - thesz 5y ago
    Proof of stake leads to "rich gets richer" situation [1]. Proof of work is much more fair, it appears. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.14713.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.14713.pdf This particular paper shows that every proof-of-stake variant is fallible into the "rich get richer". That means these PoS schemes do look like shitcoins, not the other way around. Given that and given that I do not like Biticoin in any of its capacities (PoW is not even the most wrong thing with btc), I would like to advise everyone to hate all cryptocurrencies equally strong.
gfodor 5y ago
Crypto eats the world now if you like it or not. The climate will be fine, because newer systems don’t burn excessive energy. But the CCP fighting the tide is great news, since communist regimes usually fall by trying to clamp down on things beyond their control.
- hh3k0 5y ago
  China is not a communist country, their economic system has been state capitalism ever since the official introduction of the 中国特色社会主义 theory in 1987.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    Haha. https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinping-aims-to-rein-in-chinese-capitalism-hew-to-maos-socialist-vision-11632150725?redirect=amp#click=https://t.co/ofxPHC3Lc8 https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinping-aims-to-rein-in-chin...
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    These terms for economic theory are, for all intents and purposes, completely useless. Has there ever been a communist country that lasted 5 minutes without a form of capital? Was the American economy ever a "free market"? While I agree that China isn't communist in the term's strictest sense, it ultimately doesn't matter. Systems that can't adapt eventually collapse, which is why no one word can really describe economic systems or their nations. I've been told on HN that what I'm saying is a "no true scotsman" fallacy, yet when people insist that America has "free market capitalism" or that China is communist because CCP has "communist" in the name, they're essentially making an only-true scotsman fallacy. Personal freedoms aside, it all comes down to is how involved a government is with its private sector how much value it extracts (overtly or covertly). Everything else is fluff. Nobody really cares about personal freedom or "owning the means of production". It's all about the level of centralized control (the input) and where the energy of that system goes (the output). To say that anything is "communist" or "capitalist" is a dismissal of the inevitable nuance.
- c0nducktr 5y ago
president 5y ago
A narrow-minded argument. If something has a net positive for society, the increased energy consumption would be worth it.
- adrianN 5y ago
  My argument that it's a net negative for society because of carbon emissions (among other externalized costs).

Excellent news for the climate.

phist_mcgee 5y ago

And what about non energy intensive crypto currencies that rely on PoS or PoH?

randomhodler84 5y ago
Don’t worry they are scams, only proof of work is actually secure.
- drdeca 5y ago
  Not convinced of this. (Your handle doesn’t make it a more convincing claim.) I’m not saying I’m totally convinced that PoS can be really secure, but I am reasonably confident that some developing such systems sincerely believe it can be, and have no deceptive intent. This in my mind seems to contradict it being “a scam”, which to my mind requires deception. In fact, I do suspect that it can be secure, for some reasonable sense of “secure”, though I am not especially confident in this.
fouric 5y ago
Depends on what you mean by "PoS". If you mean "proof of stake" - I've never heard anyone describe any environmental issues with them, so I assume that they either don't exist or are far smaller in impact than PoW. If you mean "proof of storage/space" - it seems like that tends to produce very high write volumes, which in turn burns SSDs out very quickly[1] - and you can argue that that's bad for the environment. How bad, and whether it's worse than the energy consumption of PoW, I'm not sure. From one perspective, it's worse, because you could theoretically power PoW mining using exclusively green energy, but you can't pull the raw materials for SSDs out of thin air. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001848

BLKNSLVR 5y ago

Most mining has already shifted out of China, and Bitcoin mining is a very small percentage of electricity usage on the scale of "all electricity usage" - there are plenty of bigger fish (the argument then turns, validly, to the usefulness of said bigger fish in comparison to bitcoin).

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rsynnott 5y ago
> there are plenty of bigger fish Sure, but in most cases people would, at best, be seriously inconvenienced if they were immediately banned. At worst, people would die. If bitcoin was banned worldwide tomorrow, it would be an interesting story in the news and the internet would be furious for a while; there would be no significant real-life impact. It would probably be the most slam-dunk "obviously we should do this" environmental regulation in history; even things like "we should not put mercury in lakes" had significant downsides compared to banning bitcoin.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  Of course, there would be plenty of positive impact in the mid to long term. More capacity for semiconductor production available would help with semiconductor shortages, ransomware would become pretty much unprofitable, and of course a huge drop in environmental destruction.
cma 5y ago
> to the usefulness of said bigger fish in comparison to bitcoin So far bitcoin has negative utility even aside from environmental disaster (ransomware).
dangerface 5y ago
Here come the comments of people who see no value in crypto calming it has no value. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. A few years ago people laughed at me for buying bitcoin, it's good to see bitcoin adoption moving along nicely.

coralreef 5y ago

It's a thunderous dunk while your team is down 40 in the 4th. A loud, but small, short term win. "Excellent news" would be the halting of state subsidies for coal mining, and introduction of a carbon tax.

sudosysgen 5y ago
Fwiw China is ramping up a carbon tax scheme for coal and gas : https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2021/03/02/toothless-at-first-chinas-carbon-market-could-be-fearsome/?sh=36a100ea2af1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2021/03/02/tooth... They will probably never stop subsidizing coal mining though. Otherwise they will get even more reliant on foreign coal which gives a hypothetical US blockade much more clout.

Torwald 5y ago

The idea that crypto mining is bad for the climate is short-sighted. It is based on the wrong assumption of a static universe. But this world is not static. Let's say for example, all goverments would become more strict in taxing energy consumption. (Presumably to help save the climate.) Now at some point there is a market incentive to develop mining techniques that optimize for less energy consumption above all else. This would lead to better technologies and thus environment friendly mining techniques. So this would mean that two factors in this world have changed. Namely taxation on energy and energy consumption while mining crypto. But this goes further. What if the usage of crypto enables reduction in carbon imprint in other sectors? This could be a possible development. And so on. The world is always changing.

user-the-name 5y ago
Nonsense. Bitcoin mining's main cost is energy usage. It already fully optimises for less energy consumption. But because the way bitcoin is designed, any gains in energy consumption will cause mining difficulty to go up, and with it energy consumption. Bitcoin is designed to be anti-efficient. All improvement in efficiency of mining are immediately cancelled out by difficulty adjustments. That is the economic model of bitcoin: It will always use as much energy as you can buy with the mining rewards.
Jyaif 5y ago
> Now at some point there is a market incentive to develop mining techniques that optimize for less energy consumption above all else. There is already a market incentive for that (electricity is not free), and there is already a solution to this (proof of stake). Please stop advocating and using proof of work shitcoins.
- thesz 5y ago
  Proof of stake leads to "rich gets richer" situation [1]. Proof of work is much more fair, it appears. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.14713.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.14713.pdf This particular paper shows that every proof-of-stake variant is fallible into the "rich get richer". That means these PoS schemes do look like shitcoins, not the other way around. Given that and given that I do not like Biticoin in any of its capacities (PoW is not even the most wrong thing with btc), I would like to advise everyone to hate all cryptocurrencies equally strong.

gfodor 5y ago

Crypto eats the world now if you like it or not. The climate will be fine, because newer systems don’t burn excessive energy. But the CCP fighting the tide is great news, since communist regimes usually fall by trying to clamp down on things beyond their control.

hh3k0 5y ago
China is not a communist country, their economic system has been state capitalism ever since the official introduction of the 中国特色社会主义 theory in 1987.
- gfodor 5y ago
  Haha. https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinping-aims-to-rein-in-chinese-capitalism-hew-to-maos-socialist-vision-11632150725?redirect=amp#click=https://t.co/ofxPHC3Lc8 https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinping-aims-to-rein-in-chin...
- ravenstine 5y ago
  These terms for economic theory are, for all intents and purposes, completely useless. Has there ever been a communist country that lasted 5 minutes without a form of capital? Was the American economy ever a "free market"? While I agree that China isn't communist in the term's strictest sense, it ultimately doesn't matter. Systems that can't adapt eventually collapse, which is why no one word can really describe economic systems or their nations. I've been told on HN that what I'm saying is a "no true scotsman" fallacy, yet when people insist that America has "free market capitalism" or that China is communist because CCP has "communist" in the name, they're essentially making an only-true scotsman fallacy. Personal freedoms aside, it all comes down to is how involved a government is with its private sector how much value it extracts (overtly or covertly). Everything else is fluff. Nobody really cares about personal freedom or "owning the means of production". It's all about the level of centralized control (the input) and where the energy of that system goes (the output). To say that anything is "communist" or "capitalist" is a dismissal of the inevitable nuance.
c0nducktr 5y ago

president 5y ago

A narrow-minded argument. If something has a net positive for society, the increased energy consumption would be worth it.

adrianN 5y ago
My argument that it's a net negative for society because of carbon emissions (among other externalized costs).