5 ms·

More or less. To be pedantic about it, the block time is kept roughly constant by increasing or decreasing the required difficulty. In effect as more efficient

by raylad 5y ago

More or less. To be pedantic about it, the block time is kept roughly constant by increasing or decreasing the required difficulty. In effect as more efficient hashing becomes possible and comes on line, the hash rate required to win the block also increases, canceling any efficiency gains.

randomhodler84 5y ago
Right, by design we desire a fixed emission of coin, regardless of the energy input. Rather than the extra energy going into making more coins (bad thing) it goes into increasing the security of the network — making it very difficult to undo or rewind blocks, delete or reorder transactions or produce empty blocks blocking future transactions. This is a good thing. Bitcoin is the most secure money on the planet. Efficiency is expressed as hashes/energy, not as coins/energy. As efficiency increases, security increases too.
- rkagerer 5y ago
  Well there's also transactions/energy and unfortunately that metric doesn't scale as effectively.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    There is also the pirate/ninja metric, which is just as sensible as tx/energy, because those are unrelated quantities. More energy doesn’t mean more or less txs. The sensible metric is security, and we can measure it in total hash rate and extrapolate that in watts.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  Not really. Does Bitcoin's security increase when this mining council increases its mining power? They already have 46% so increasing it only makes it less secure. Increasing the hashes only increases energy consumption then. Also, this formulation of "security" is very misleading. For the layperson, security means the probability of not losing my money. For the cryptographer it means the amount of random guessing you would need to break encryption. So every system that uses the same kind of encryption is equally secure.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Yes Bitcoin security increases when the mining council uses more energy! This is not a proof of stake scheme where more of a single validator decreases security. If the honest miners put more energy in, dishonest miners must outspend them. It increases network security.
    - cuteboy19 5y ago
      If we accepted that the Mining council miners are honest then why do we even need Proof of Waste? If we know that they are dishonest then them having 50% hashrate is very bad
- aspyct 5y ago
  Bitcoin is the most _wasteful_ money on the planet.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    The most wasteful is the one that is inflated to nothing by the printing press. Happened several places last year, and will happen again this year too. Bitcoin is an alternative. It is precious and worth every Joule.
    - aspyct 5y ago
      "Precious"? Bitcoin is nothing more than bits on a storage and wasted energy. Just like fiat money is nothing more (nowadays anyway) than metal coins, in the best case. I see how bitcoin can help countries with rampaging inflation, but saying it's "precious", that's overreaching.
  - kevinak 5y ago
    Another argument is that it actually encourages the development of new power generation plants by subsidising the cost for producers: https://www.newsweek.com/bitcoin-mining-americas-most-misunderstood-industry-opinion-1669892 https://www.newsweek.com/bitcoin-mining-americas-most-misund...
    - cuteboy19 5y ago
      It's not really an argument. It's wishful thinking unsupported by actual evidence or even common sense, and it directly goes against actual evidence of Bitcoin miners starting up old fossil fuel plants. Bitcoin holders are greatly incentivized to make up theories about Bitcoin being environmentally friendly.
      - scottiebarnes 5y ago
        You're writing on a technology forum. How is it you probably have very good context in terms of adoption curves, cost curves, and generally the ability to see the future better than the average person, but when it comes to Bitcoin/energy creation, there is no effort? Of course mining is going to use the cheapest energy available right now. We subsidize fossil fuel industry and we don't utilize carbon taxes. But solar power, wind power, renewables, are now the cheapest sources of energy in the world, and in all of history and will presumably only get cheaper (https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth). Capacity gets built out when demand exceeds supply. Capacity is also a larger upfront cost. Low hanging fruit gets picked first. So project 10 years, 25 years, and 50 years out from now. The first Tesla Roadster came out in 2008, 13 years ago. In 2008 people laughed at the idea of electric cars, now its abundantly clear that electric cars will be the only cars of the future. It took time for manufacturing capacity and technical improvements for the right scale to occur. You're living in 2008 saying "what evidence is there for an electric car market? That goes against the current evidence of all these ICE auto sales we currently have."
- Imnimo 5y ago
  I don't agree with this analysis. If mining becomes 100x more efficient, and the difficulty goes up 100x, you have not gained any security. The security comes from the amount of money spent on energy to mine the current chain, and the fact that someone seeking to mine a parallel chain to double-spend (or whatever else) would need to spend a greater amount of money to mine even faster. So if miner's collectively spend $X on energy to mine the next block, it doesn't matter whether that buys them one hash or a trillion hashes - someone looking to mine a parallel chain would just have to spend $(X+1) at the same hashes/energy efficiency.

by raylad 5y ago

randomhodler84 5y ago

Right, by design we desire a fixed emission of coin, regardless of the energy input. Rather than the extra energy going into making more coins (bad thing) it goes into increasing the security of the network — making it very difficult to undo or rewind blocks, delete or reorder transactions or produce empty blocks blocking future transactions. This is a good thing. Bitcoin is the most secure money on the planet. Efficiency is expressed as hashes/energy, not as coins/energy. As efficiency increases, security increases too.

rkagerer 5y ago
Well there's also transactions/energy and unfortunately that metric doesn't scale as effectively.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  There is also the pirate/ninja metric, which is just as sensible as tx/energy, because those are unrelated quantities. More energy doesn’t mean more or less txs. The sensible metric is security, and we can measure it in total hash rate and extrapolate that in watts.
cuteboy19 5y ago
Not really. Does Bitcoin's security increase when this mining council increases its mining power? They already have 46% so increasing it only makes it less secure. Increasing the hashes only increases energy consumption then. Also, this formulation of "security" is very misleading. For the layperson, security means the probability of not losing my money. For the cryptographer it means the amount of random guessing you would need to break encryption. So every system that uses the same kind of encryption is equally secure.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Yes Bitcoin security increases when the mining council uses more energy! This is not a proof of stake scheme where more of a single validator decreases security. If the honest miners put more energy in, dishonest miners must outspend them. It increases network security.
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    If we accepted that the Mining council miners are honest then why do we even need Proof of Waste? If we know that they are dishonest then them having 50% hashrate is very bad
aspyct 5y ago
Bitcoin is the most _wasteful_ money on the planet.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  The most wasteful is the one that is inflated to nothing by the printing press. Happened several places last year, and will happen again this year too. Bitcoin is an alternative. It is precious and worth every Joule.
  - aspyct 5y ago
    "Precious"? Bitcoin is nothing more than bits on a storage and wasted energy. Just like fiat money is nothing more (nowadays anyway) than metal coins, in the best case. I see how bitcoin can help countries with rampaging inflation, but saying it's "precious", that's overreaching.
- kevinak 5y ago
  Another argument is that it actually encourages the development of new power generation plants by subsidising the cost for producers: https://www.newsweek.com/bitcoin-mining-americas-most-misunderstood-industry-opinion-1669892 https://www.newsweek.com/bitcoin-mining-americas-most-misund...
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    It's not really an argument. It's wishful thinking unsupported by actual evidence or even common sense, and it directly goes against actual evidence of Bitcoin miners starting up old fossil fuel plants. Bitcoin holders are greatly incentivized to make up theories about Bitcoin being environmentally friendly.
    - scottiebarnes 5y ago
      You're writing on a technology forum. How is it you probably have very good context in terms of adoption curves, cost curves, and generally the ability to see the future better than the average person, but when it comes to Bitcoin/energy creation, there is no effort? Of course mining is going to use the cheapest energy available right now. We subsidize fossil fuel industry and we don't utilize carbon taxes. But solar power, wind power, renewables, are now the cheapest sources of energy in the world, and in all of history and will presumably only get cheaper (https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth). Capacity gets built out when demand exceeds supply. Capacity is also a larger upfront cost. Low hanging fruit gets picked first. So project 10 years, 25 years, and 50 years out from now. The first Tesla Roadster came out in 2008, 13 years ago. In 2008 people laughed at the idea of electric cars, now its abundantly clear that electric cars will be the only cars of the future. It took time for manufacturing capacity and technical improvements for the right scale to occur. You're living in 2008 saying "what evidence is there for an electric car market? That goes against the current evidence of all these ICE auto sales we currently have."
Imnimo 5y ago
I don't agree with this analysis. If mining becomes 100x more efficient, and the difficulty goes up 100x, you have not gained any security. The security comes from the amount of money spent on energy to mine the current chain, and the fact that someone seeking to mine a parallel chain to double-spend (or whatever else) would need to spend a greater amount of money to mine even faster. So if miner's collectively spend $X on energy to mine the next block, it doesn't matter whether that buys them one hash or a trillion hashes - someone looking to mine a parallel chain would just have to spend $(X+1) at the same hashes/energy efficiency.