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,, Establishes a moratorium on cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof-of-work authentication methods to validate blockchain transactions’’ Proof of wo

,, Establishes a moratorium on cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof-of-work authentication methods to validate blockchain transactions’’ Proof of work is not used for validation of transactions at all. It is used for ordering transactions / solving the double spending problem. The people creating this law clearly don’t understand the problem space and what the algorithm solves.

DonHopkins 4y ago
You're totally missing the point and pointlessly nit picking at irrelevant technicalities in the language, according to your own biased interpretation. People burning massive amounts coal and gas for fraudulent get-rich-quick pyramid schemes, rug pulls, pump-and-dump schemes, money laundering, fraud, ransomeware, ugly ape jpegs, insider trading, getting around international sanctions in response to unprovoked military attacks and war crimes against humanity, and other criminal enterprises clearly don't understand (or care about) the problem space of climate change, and what lowering carbon emission and regulating crime and fraud solve.
- carom 4y ago
  Technicalities of the language matter with respect to laws. To the second point, that sounds like a failure of the government to provide clean energy. In Los Angeles, we get 16% of our energy from coal and 28% from natural gas. I do not blame Bitcoin miners for this. It is a failure of the government to meet the energy needs of its people with clean sources. Write legislation that mandates building new nuclear power plants or wind farms off the coast.
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    Not the subjective definitions and technicalities he's nit-picking about. Words have many different meanings in different contexts, and he's cherry picking one particular interpretation that's completely irrelevant and out of context. And governments can do multiple things at once to solve problems. The fact that they could build more nuclear power plants and wind farms doesn't mean they shouldn't also regulate burning coal to defraud people, commit crimes, and get around banking regulation and international sanctions.
  - spinchange 4y ago
    Government cannot create a bottomless supply of renewable energy by pen stroke. Proof of work mining is taking exponentially more resources out of the universe that anything facilitated by it is giving back to the economy or anything. It's terrible trade-off for humanity. This is precisely what mandates are for to stop harmful action not to wish into existence some magical thinking solution so that people can do bad things with negative consequences forever
  - doctor_eval 4y ago
    That’s crazy. Why should a government spend taxpayer money to build energy supplies to support the “energy needs” of crypto scams? Its a terrible idea, if for no other reason than that a vanishingly small percentage of the population would benefit.
    - saalweachter 4y ago
      This is also one of the ways a government attempts to promote clean energy: by banning, in part or in whole, a source of dirty energy, people can either do without... or switch to a clean-energy source. Instead of electric vehicle tax credits, which cost the government in question an increasing amount of money as more people use them, you could apply a similar force with an ICE tax on purchasing new ICE vehicles, which raises a decreasing amount of revenue as people stop buying ICEs in response.
  - labster 4y ago
    While there is a failure to provide clean energy, increasing demand makes it harder to supply energy to everyone. If the rich keep on pushing demand by using energy on speculative financial products, we can’t make up the supply in time to prevent the worst of climate change. Bitcoin is basically class warfare, except because of climate and air pollution in general, it’s lethal class warfare. I’m not saying to stop all innovation, but crypto is 5+ orders of magnitude more energy inefficient, and it’s killer apps so far have been asset speculation, untaxed remittances, and cyber crime. Governments have no interest in those innovations at all.
- asah 4y ago
  Hey don, long time! So the thing with crypto: yeah sure there's bad crap on the margins, but the core of crypto is a completely new, faster and more flexible way to handle money, value, ownership and control. I liken it to "programmable money" but even that's too simplistic. With programmable real estate, the line between rental and ownership can blur, softening the risk and lability for owners, and creating more responsibility and upside for renters. A Bored Ape is a club membership and flexible ownership in a rapidly expanding brand that earns licensing fees: the folks at Disney are paying close attention. A $1+mm apartment is worth $1mm because people say it is and because zoning limits supply, not because the sum of the wood and metal adds up to $1mm. Today, we spend enormous time/energy/etc on nonsense that should be one line of code, from incorporating companies to paying taxes. As crypto continues to mature and weave itself into business systems, these processes become lines of code that execute while we conduct business. You spin up a company with complex ownership, conduct the transaction, send money to and from the parties (incl government) and year it all down - in seconds. Today, you need weeks and lawyers, accountants, notaries, etc. It's insane. As for the environment, we can't save our way to success: the solution is either geoengineering or murdering billions (plural) of people and slowing the rest from breeding. I'm hopeful for geoengineering. Anyway, we can raise our fists to the sky, but the next generation is going to demand 24x7x365 business and banking, have taxes woven into transactions, sophisticated fractional ownership, etc.
  - ShamelessC 4y ago
    Just gonna try to scam people out in the open? You sound like you're in a cult.
    - asah 4y ago
      Ad hominem attacks are not welcome on HN, and if lookup my HN profile, I'm about the last person anyone would ascribe as being a cultist. I've seen a lot of unusual tech and trends win when they "shouldn't." I've seen "first they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win" over and over and over. I don't personally care if crypto wins or loses or if today's crypto goes to infinity or zero, and I especially don't care if greedy speculators lose their life savings after everybody told them so. What's interesting to me are novel ways for people to communicate, transact, store and share things.
ourmandave 4y ago
What is "proof of work" or "proof of stake"? “Proof of work” and “proof of stake” are the two major consensus mechanisms cryptocurrencies use to verify new transactions, add them to the blockchain, and create new tokens. https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-proof-of-work-or-proof-of-stake https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-proof-o...
- xiphias2 4y ago
  ,,The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work.'' (From the Bitcoin whitepaper) I would prefer to quote Satoshi Nakamoto or Dr Adam Back on the subject. Brian Armstrong is in the business of selling altcoins, he can sell Bitcoin only once, but new altcoins can be created every day.
  - randomhodler84 4y ago
    I like that message “he can Sell Bitcoin only once”, however, he is selling Bitcoin over and over again, being the most traded asset on the exchange. He might even be able to sell the same sats multiple times too, without having those sats for settlement. Get your coin off the exchange!

DonHopkins 4y ago

You're totally missing the point and pointlessly nit picking at irrelevant technicalities in the language, according to your own biased interpretation. People burning massive amounts coal and gas for fraudulent get-rich-quick pyramid schemes, rug pulls, pump-and-dump schemes, money laundering, fraud, ransomeware, ugly ape jpegs, insider trading, getting around international sanctions in response to unprovoked military attacks and war crimes against humanity, and other criminal enterprises clearly don't understand (or care about) the problem space of climate change, and what lowering carbon emission and regulating crime and fraud solve.

carom 4y ago
Technicalities of the language matter with respect to laws. To the second point, that sounds like a failure of the government to provide clean energy. In Los Angeles, we get 16% of our energy from coal and 28% from natural gas. I do not blame Bitcoin miners for this. It is a failure of the government to meet the energy needs of its people with clean sources. Write legislation that mandates building new nuclear power plants or wind farms off the coast.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  Not the subjective definitions and technicalities he's nit-picking about. Words have many different meanings in different contexts, and he's cherry picking one particular interpretation that's completely irrelevant and out of context. And governments can do multiple things at once to solve problems. The fact that they could build more nuclear power plants and wind farms doesn't mean they shouldn't also regulate burning coal to defraud people, commit crimes, and get around banking regulation and international sanctions.
- spinchange 4y ago
  Government cannot create a bottomless supply of renewable energy by pen stroke. Proof of work mining is taking exponentially more resources out of the universe that anything facilitated by it is giving back to the economy or anything. It's terrible trade-off for humanity. This is precisely what mandates are for to stop harmful action not to wish into existence some magical thinking solution so that people can do bad things with negative consequences forever
- doctor_eval 4y ago
  That’s crazy. Why should a government spend taxpayer money to build energy supplies to support the “energy needs” of crypto scams? Its a terrible idea, if for no other reason than that a vanishingly small percentage of the population would benefit.
  - saalweachter 4y ago
    This is also one of the ways a government attempts to promote clean energy: by banning, in part or in whole, a source of dirty energy, people can either do without... or switch to a clean-energy source. Instead of electric vehicle tax credits, which cost the government in question an increasing amount of money as more people use them, you could apply a similar force with an ICE tax on purchasing new ICE vehicles, which raises a decreasing amount of revenue as people stop buying ICEs in response.
- labster 4y ago
  While there is a failure to provide clean energy, increasing demand makes it harder to supply energy to everyone. If the rich keep on pushing demand by using energy on speculative financial products, we can’t make up the supply in time to prevent the worst of climate change. Bitcoin is basically class warfare, except because of climate and air pollution in general, it’s lethal class warfare. I’m not saying to stop all innovation, but crypto is 5+ orders of magnitude more energy inefficient, and it’s killer apps so far have been asset speculation, untaxed remittances, and cyber crime. Governments have no interest in those innovations at all.
asah 4y ago
Hey don, long time! So the thing with crypto: yeah sure there's bad crap on the margins, but the core of crypto is a completely new, faster and more flexible way to handle money, value, ownership and control. I liken it to "programmable money" but even that's too simplistic. With programmable real estate, the line between rental and ownership can blur, softening the risk and lability for owners, and creating more responsibility and upside for renters. A Bored Ape is a club membership and flexible ownership in a rapidly expanding brand that earns licensing fees: the folks at Disney are paying close attention. A $1+mm apartment is worth $1mm because people say it is and because zoning limits supply, not because the sum of the wood and metal adds up to $1mm. Today, we spend enormous time/energy/etc on nonsense that should be one line of code, from incorporating companies to paying taxes. As crypto continues to mature and weave itself into business systems, these processes become lines of code that execute while we conduct business. You spin up a company with complex ownership, conduct the transaction, send money to and from the parties (incl government) and year it all down - in seconds. Today, you need weeks and lawyers, accountants, notaries, etc. It's insane. As for the environment, we can't save our way to success: the solution is either geoengineering or murdering billions (plural) of people and slowing the rest from breeding. I'm hopeful for geoengineering. Anyway, we can raise our fists to the sky, but the next generation is going to demand 24x7x365 business and banking, have taxes woven into transactions, sophisticated fractional ownership, etc.
- ShamelessC 4y ago
  Just gonna try to scam people out in the open? You sound like you're in a cult.
  - asah 4y ago
    Ad hominem attacks are not welcome on HN, and if lookup my HN profile, I'm about the last person anyone would ascribe as being a cultist. I've seen a lot of unusual tech and trends win when they "shouldn't." I've seen "first they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win" over and over and over. I don't personally care if crypto wins or loses or if today's crypto goes to infinity or zero, and I especially don't care if greedy speculators lose their life savings after everybody told them so. What's interesting to me are novel ways for people to communicate, transact, store and share things.

ourmandave 4y ago

What is "proof of work" or "proof of stake"? “Proof of work” and “proof of stake” are the two major consensus mechanisms cryptocurrencies use to verify new transactions, add them to the blockchain, and create new tokens. https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-proof-of-work-or-proof-of-stake https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-proof-o...

xiphias2 4y ago
,,The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work.'' (From the Bitcoin whitepaper) I would prefer to quote Satoshi Nakamoto or Dr Adam Back on the subject. Brian Armstrong is in the business of selling altcoins, he can sell Bitcoin only once, but new altcoins can be created every day.
- randomhodler84 4y ago
  I like that message “he can Sell Bitcoin only once”, however, he is selling Bitcoin over and over again, being the most traded asset on the exchange. He might even be able to sell the same sats multiple times too, without having those sats for settlement. Get your coin off the exchange!