8 ms·

I can't believe we keep on sending tons of CO2 in the atmosphere just to find special numbers...

by fguerraz 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jansen555 5y ago
EvanWinget 5y ago
Please spend a few minutes reading more on this topic, as you may change your view after learning where Bitcoin’s electricity usage fits into the broader picture. Some good starting points may be: https://www.newsweek.com/bitcoin-mining-americas-most-misunderstood-industry-opinion-1669892 https://www.newsweek.com/bitcoin-mining-americas-most-misund... https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/03/05/the-frustrating-maddening-all-consuming-bitcoin-energy-debate/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/03/05/the-frustrating...
- UweSchmidt 5y ago
  The articles you cited could do a better job putting the real numbers front and center and present the real, and anticipated (if Bitcoin takes off) ecological impact on the planet. The coindesk article in particular cites really alarming claims about energy usage but doesn't do any real math to disprove it, and only vaguely hints at possible mitigating arguments. Appeals to emotion, citing ideal visions of Satoshi and using "domestic tumble dryers" (newsweek) as comparisons for energy usage further weaken the point these articles should be making.
aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
We talking about sudoku apps?, Dora the Explorer broadcasts?, or are you referring to some other waste (y'know, to someone) of electricity/CO²?
- tapoxi 5y ago
  "All things use electricity!" isn't a great critique of "Bitcoin is an inefficient use of electricity". Bitcoin is designed to be inefficient and get worse over time.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > Bitcoin is designed to be inefficient and get worse over time. OTOH, we may be able to use it to heat Mars into a tropical paradise.
  - jkhdigital 5y ago
    It's not as if Bitcoin does something inefficiently that is accomplished in some other, more efficient way. "Commodity" money which has no counterparty is going to be valued at the marginal cost of production, period. It's not Visa, it's not FedWire, it's hard money. The critique is actually spot on, because when you peel back the non sequiturs about efficiency the underlying criticism is that Bitcoin itself is pointless. Maybe so, maybe not. But that's a different argument.
  - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
    You'd better start working on a more efficient Layer 2 if you truly care about this issue, because this shit isn't going back in the box. Governments are piling in, nobody meaningful is going to ban it, because they cannot.
danuker 5y ago
Can you come up with a better solution? Political ones have failed, since with national currencies we end up with inflation and spending the resources of the future (i.e. debt). The decision to "suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold" has lasted indefinitely. This means the government can print its own money with no accountability, until it acquires everything and everyone. Have you looked into proof of stake? It is a pretty good contender, but is vulnerable to Sybil attacks in case of a network partition. With no objective way to tell legitimacy (like "work" that was wasted in proof-of-work), a network partition can not be resolved.
- escaper 5y ago
  Good god did someone drink the kool-aid... please explain succinctly what "problem" is being solved by a handful of wealthy individuals using all of the world's GPU power to mine numbers for mostly unusable currency...
  - tasha0663 5y ago
    The "vanity receipts for badly drawn apes problem"
  - danuker 5y ago
    > mostly unusable currency I suppose that's why it has grown in price in spite of its supply slowly increasing. Because it's unusable! (sarcasm) > "problem" being solved In essence, it takes scarcity to make scarcity. So, to get digital scarcity, you have to fork over scarce resources. But I agree with you that the computing cost is excessive, and the reward function was not well calibrated. On the other hand, the rate of the explosion in price could not have been foreseen.
    - megapolitics 5y ago
      >I suppose that's why it has grown in price in spite of its supply slowly increasing. Because it's unusable! The fact that the price is consistently increasing is what makes it an unusable currency. A deflationary currency is a useless medium of exchange as any rational actor will not spend it due to the potential future increase in price. I hold multiple crypto assets but I think you have to be kidding yourself if you think that Bitcoin and the like are usable currencies.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Unfortunately I find it very easy to believe, just exceptionally disappointing.
bannedbybros 5y ago
rbanffy 5y ago
You can use these as electric heaters. Since there is no mechanical work, all energy input is radiated as heat. In this scenario, capex aside, the hashes come out for free and can offset a little of the electricity bill. If they can be encased in passive radiators and run at 60+ Celsius, that'd be awesome for a home boiler. Lower temperatures would be really nice for keeping heated pools hot.
- gaze 5y ago
  This is the only justification for mining I’ve ever been able to come up with.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    You already need the heat, might as well help launder some money ;-)
    - gaze 5y ago
      More or less. I guess there’s incentive issues too. Maybe now people keep their houses unnecessarily warm to mine more —- but again, this is the closest thing to any kind of justification I’ve ever heard.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        Now all we need is a way to make that boiler lined up with top-process silicon costing thousands of dollars per square inch cheaper than the one that uses an electric resistance. And do that for the environment!
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    It's not even correct. It's much more efficient to use a heat pump.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      Heat pumps may be more efficient, but they can't be employed everywhere an electric resistance is used. To be fair, miners can't either, but are much easier to deploy. We don't need to think solely of miners - crypto-mining is just one form of monetizing computing. If we could have something like a reverse Amazon Mechanical Turk, we could put computing resources available to receive and process packaged workloads cheaper than, say, an EC2 Spot Instance could, provided the client can cope with the added latency. As for incorrect answers, it could use some consensus where you send the payload to two independent parties and, if they don't match, you send it to additional parties until your consensus is ready.

I can't believe we keep on sending tons of CO2 in the atmosphere just to find special numbers...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jansen555 5y ago

EvanWinget 5y ago

Please spend a few minutes reading more on this topic, as you may change your view after learning where Bitcoin’s electricity usage fits into the broader picture. Some good starting points may be: https://www.newsweek.com/bitcoin-mining-americas-most-misunderstood-industry-opinion-1669892 https://www.newsweek.com/bitcoin-mining-americas-most-misund... https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/03/05/the-frustrating-maddening-all-consuming-bitcoin-energy-debate/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/03/05/the-frustrating...

UweSchmidt 5y ago
The articles you cited could do a better job putting the real numbers front and center and present the real, and anticipated (if Bitcoin takes off) ecological impact on the planet. The coindesk article in particular cites really alarming claims about energy usage but doesn't do any real math to disprove it, and only vaguely hints at possible mitigating arguments. Appeals to emotion, citing ideal visions of Satoshi and using "domestic tumble dryers" (newsweek) as comparisons for energy usage further weaken the point these articles should be making.

aaaaaaaaata 5y ago

We talking about sudoku apps?, Dora the Explorer broadcasts?, or are you referring to some other waste (y'know, to someone) of electricity/CO²?

tapoxi 5y ago
"All things use electricity!" isn't a great critique of "Bitcoin is an inefficient use of electricity". Bitcoin is designed to be inefficient and get worse over time.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > Bitcoin is designed to be inefficient and get worse over time. OTOH, we may be able to use it to heat Mars into a tropical paradise.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  It's not as if Bitcoin does something inefficiently that is accomplished in some other, more efficient way. "Commodity" money which has no counterparty is going to be valued at the marginal cost of production, period. It's not Visa, it's not FedWire, it's hard money. The critique is actually spot on, because when you peel back the non sequiturs about efficiency the underlying criticism is that Bitcoin itself is pointless. Maybe so, maybe not. But that's a different argument.
- aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
  You'd better start working on a more efficient Layer 2 if you truly care about this issue, because this shit isn't going back in the box. Governments are piling in, nobody meaningful is going to ban it, because they cannot.

danuker 5y ago

Can you come up with a better solution? Political ones have failed, since with national currencies we end up with inflation and spending the resources of the future (i.e. debt). The decision to "suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold" has lasted indefinitely. This means the government can print its own money with no accountability, until it acquires everything and everyone. Have you looked into proof of stake? It is a pretty good contender, but is vulnerable to Sybil attacks in case of a network partition. With no objective way to tell legitimacy (like "work" that was wasted in proof-of-work), a network partition can not be resolved.

escaper 5y ago
Good god did someone drink the kool-aid... please explain succinctly what "problem" is being solved by a handful of wealthy individuals using all of the world's GPU power to mine numbers for mostly unusable currency...
- tasha0663 5y ago
  The "vanity receipts for badly drawn apes problem"
- danuker 5y ago
  > mostly unusable currency I suppose that's why it has grown in price in spite of its supply slowly increasing. Because it's unusable! (sarcasm) > "problem" being solved In essence, it takes scarcity to make scarcity. So, to get digital scarcity, you have to fork over scarce resources. But I agree with you that the computing cost is excessive, and the reward function was not well calibrated. On the other hand, the rate of the explosion in price could not have been foreseen.
  - megapolitics 5y ago
    >I suppose that's why it has grown in price in spite of its supply slowly increasing. Because it's unusable! The fact that the price is consistently increasing is what makes it an unusable currency. A deflationary currency is a useless medium of exchange as any rational actor will not spend it due to the potential future increase in price. I hold multiple crypto assets but I think you have to be kidding yourself if you think that Bitcoin and the like are usable currencies.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

Unfortunately I find it very easy to believe, just exceptionally disappointing.

bannedbybros 5y ago

rbanffy 5y ago

You can use these as electric heaters. Since there is no mechanical work, all energy input is radiated as heat. In this scenario, capex aside, the hashes come out for free and can offset a little of the electricity bill. If they can be encased in passive radiators and run at 60+ Celsius, that'd be awesome for a home boiler. Lower temperatures would be really nice for keeping heated pools hot.

gaze 5y ago
This is the only justification for mining I’ve ever been able to come up with.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  You already need the heat, might as well help launder some money ;-)
  - gaze 5y ago
    More or less. I guess there’s incentive issues too. Maybe now people keep their houses unnecessarily warm to mine more —- but again, this is the closest thing to any kind of justification I’ve ever heard.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      Now all we need is a way to make that boiler lined up with top-process silicon costing thousands of dollars per square inch cheaper than the one that uses an electric resistance. And do that for the environment!
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  It's not even correct. It's much more efficient to use a heat pump.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    Heat pumps may be more efficient, but they can't be employed everywhere an electric resistance is used. To be fair, miners can't either, but are much easier to deploy. We don't need to think solely of miners - crypto-mining is just one form of monetizing computing. If we could have something like a reverse Amazon Mechanical Turk, we could put computing resources available to receive and process packaged workloads cheaper than, say, an EC2 Spot Instance could, provided the client can cope with the added latency. As for incorrect answers, it could use some consensus where you send the payload to two independent parties and, if they don't match, you send it to additional parties until your consensus is ready.