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This is why I don’t buy the Bitcoin “mined with free energy” narrative. Put a fertilizer plant near that hydro dam instead of doing proof of work calculations.

This is why I don’t buy the Bitcoin “mined with free energy” narrative. Put a fertilizer plant near that hydro dam instead of doing proof of work calculations. Ethereum 2.0 (uses proof of stake- doesn’t do energy intensive mining) can’t come soon enough for me.

throwaway3b03 5y ago
I don't think Ethereum PoS is ever coming anymore, or at least it will not displace the PoW version. It's been coming (TM) for a few years now.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  I get this comment every time I post about it also. It’s the only ammo they have left. The difficulty bomb and merge is set for June 2022. Could it be delayed? Sure I guess but Bitcoin has absolutely no plans to fix its energy consumption.
- nostrademons 5y ago
  Ethereum PoS is live now through the beacon chain. Merge just hasn't happened yet. It's sharding that's probably never coming.
  - JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
    Why do you think sharding is never coming? Don't tell me that haha!
    - nostrademons 5y ago
      L2s like Polygon and Arbitrum are doing a decent job solving the scaling problem and don't require changes to the core protocol.
      - JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
        Well I own Polygon too, so guess I'm covered both ways.
iSnow 5y ago
I agree but this seems bigger than finding arbitrary hash values - after all, China shut down crypto mining months ago I think and yet they had to shut down a phosphate factory in December.
pulsarmx 5y ago
> uses proof of stake- doesn’t do energy intensive mining I have an honest question that I haven't seen answered anywhere, and I'm not smart enough to answer it for myself by reading papers and whatnot. Assume whatevercoin currently uses PoW and takes X energy to mine a single coin, but would take X/100 energy to mine it under PoS. What stops people from simply throwing the 99/100 leftover energy from X into more mining operations, rather than just being content with the one and the leftover energy? Or put another way, if mining a single coin suddenly costs 1/100 of what it used to, why would I not just mine 100 coins now? It just all sounds to me like what happens when there's an increase in computational power/speed/capacity/whatever in PCs. When you can process a thing ten times as fast, you don't just do one thing ten times faster; you do ten things at once.
- jccooper 5y ago
  Non proof-of-work "mining" typically requires another resource. Proof-of-stake rewards you based on your holdings, so additional mining compute power doesn't help.
- aqme28 5y ago
  Because it's not really an efficiency upgrade like you've envisioned. The current PoW system turns energy directly into miner rewards. A PoS system does not do that. You can't just throw more energy at the problem to get more rewards.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 5y ago
  Mining economics depend on the mining reward. It doesn't get bigger if more people mine. The rewards just get spread out over more/larger participants until profits are tiny via difficulty adjustments. The mining effort depends simply on the reward, and the reward is calibrated to the security needed. Bitcoin is highly secure, but the security model is essentially 1:1; if the network is secured with a billion dollars of mining effort, it will cost on the order of a billion to attack it. So it's expensive. PoS can have a better security model, maybe 1:100 against network attackers. So you can reduce mining rewards and maintain a given security level.
- renewiltord 5y ago
SilasX 5y ago
I agree with your general point (that crypto mining does come at the cost of energy for other purposes) but I'm not sure that's a good example -- I thought the energy input to fertilizer plants was from all the oil they take in which is chemically necessary; the major input isn't electricity per se, so being near a hydro dam wouldn't help.
kragen 5y ago
As you see, even in a price spike, urea only costs US$1/kg. That really makes it hard to produce urea in the middle of the Sahara; shipping it to the ocean would cost more than the price it would fetch. Consequently there are lots of places where producing energy is economical if used for Bitcoin but not for fertilizer and other low-value-density products.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  This is why Namibia is looking at making hydrogen (and presumably ammonia): the desert there comes right down to the ocean. There are desert sand dunes right at the shore.

throwaway3b03 5y ago

I don't think Ethereum PoS is ever coming anymore, or at least it will not displace the PoW version. It's been coming (TM) for a few years now.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
I get this comment every time I post about it also. It’s the only ammo they have left. The difficulty bomb and merge is set for June 2022. Could it be delayed? Sure I guess but Bitcoin has absolutely no plans to fix its energy consumption.
nostrademons 5y ago
Ethereum PoS is live now through the beacon chain. Merge just hasn't happened yet. It's sharding that's probably never coming.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  Why do you think sharding is never coming? Don't tell me that haha!
  - nostrademons 5y ago
    L2s like Polygon and Arbitrum are doing a decent job solving the scaling problem and don't require changes to the core protocol.
    - JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
      Well I own Polygon too, so guess I'm covered both ways.

iSnow 5y ago

I agree but this seems bigger than finding arbitrary hash values - after all, China shut down crypto mining months ago I think and yet they had to shut down a phosphate factory in December.

pulsarmx 5y ago

> uses proof of stake- doesn’t do energy intensive mining I have an honest question that I haven't seen answered anywhere, and I'm not smart enough to answer it for myself by reading papers and whatnot. Assume whatevercoin currently uses PoW and takes X energy to mine a single coin, but would take X/100 energy to mine it under PoS. What stops people from simply throwing the 99/100 leftover energy from X into more mining operations, rather than just being content with the one and the leftover energy? Or put another way, if mining a single coin suddenly costs 1/100 of what it used to, why would I not just mine 100 coins now? It just all sounds to me like what happens when there's an increase in computational power/speed/capacity/whatever in PCs. When you can process a thing ten times as fast, you don't just do one thing ten times faster; you do ten things at once.

jccooper 5y ago
Non proof-of-work "mining" typically requires another resource. Proof-of-stake rewards you based on your holdings, so additional mining compute power doesn't help.
aqme28 5y ago
Because it's not really an efficiency upgrade like you've envisioned. The current PoW system turns energy directly into miner rewards. A PoS system does not do that. You can't just throw more energy at the problem to get more rewards.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 5y ago
Mining economics depend on the mining reward. It doesn't get bigger if more people mine. The rewards just get spread out over more/larger participants until profits are tiny via difficulty adjustments. The mining effort depends simply on the reward, and the reward is calibrated to the security needed. Bitcoin is highly secure, but the security model is essentially 1:1; if the network is secured with a billion dollars of mining effort, it will cost on the order of a billion to attack it. So it's expensive. PoS can have a better security model, maybe 1:100 against network attackers. So you can reduce mining rewards and maintain a given security level.
renewiltord 5y ago

SilasX 5y ago

I agree with your general point (that crypto mining does come at the cost of energy for other purposes) but I'm not sure that's a good example -- I thought the energy input to fertilizer plants was from all the oil they take in which is chemically necessary; the major input isn't electricity per se, so being near a hydro dam wouldn't help.

kragen 5y ago

As you see, even in a price spike, urea only costs US$1/kg. That really makes it hard to produce urea in the middle of the Sahara; shipping it to the ocean would cost more than the price it would fetch. Consequently there are lots of places where producing energy is economical if used for Bitcoin but not for fertilizer and other low-value-density products.

pfdietz 5y ago
This is why Namibia is looking at making hydrogen (and presumably ammonia): the desert there comes right down to the ocean. There are desert sand dunes right at the shore.