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> The Merge will reduce Ethereum's energy consumption by ~99.95%. That's something Bitcoin needs ... or even better get rid of it altogether. https://ccaf.io/

> The Merge will reduce Ethereum's energy consumption by ~99.95%. That's something Bitcoin needs ... or even better get rid of it altogether. https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

wyager 4y ago
Proof of work is the only way to get acceptable security properties for a monetary system. Proof of stake suffers from the "nothing at stake" problem, leading to grinding attacks etc.
- Victerius 4y ago
  > Proof of work is the only way to get acceptable security properties for a monetary system. Every country's financial system: ahem. The U.S. dollar doesn't require giant energy-hungry server farms to be secure.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    The U.S. dollar is backed by a military many times more energy intensive.
    - Victerius 4y ago
      What?
    - Macha 4y ago
      So if the us replaced the dollar with Bitcoin they could eliminate or downsize their military? Doubtful
      - cowtools 4y ago
        I agree with the point you are making here. I just think that Proof-of-Work is usually a better choice for a cryptocurrency than Proof-of-Stake. Conventional currencies (notably the US Dollar) are also backed by signifigant military (and thus electrical) power. I would posit that Fiat currencies are nessisary in some sense, but not that they are more efficient to maintain than cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies tend to piggyback on the infrastructure and economy that are built on fiat (e.g. The internet).
      - novantadue 4y ago
        We wouldn't have to overthrow mid-east dictators every time they threaten to price oil in Euros -- but obviously this wouldn't help much because we'd still need to maintain superpower status or risk losing the world order.
    - jcranmer 4y ago
      Fiat currency is not backed by military power. Note that there exist several countries without militaries, and none of those countries have worthless currencies. And there have existed countries that put significant investment into their military and still wound up with a worthless currency at the end.
      - cowtools 4y ago
        Those countries exist as client states to countries with militaries. Yes, the militatary spending is nessisary but not sufficient to sustain a currency.
      - smashem 4y ago
        You really believe that the USD, as the world's reserve currency, doesn't require its military to keep it that way.
        jcranmer 4y ago
        Yes, I do, actually. The US economy is the world's largest economy in gross value, is the largest or one of the largest trade partners of much of the world, and has very limited policies on capital control or other monetary restrictions. This means that there is going to be more depth on trading pairs via USD and even small currencies than you would likely have with other countries, you would have very little counterparty risk holding USD, and much trade will end up being denominated in USD anyways. So you'd be a bloody fool not to hold USD. Magically blinking away the US military would not change any of the above consideration one iota. So let me flip the question around: why do you believe that the US military is essential to its role as a major reserve currency?
        everfree 4y ago
        > why do you believe that the US military is essential to its role as a major reserve currency? Because it's the final backstop that compels people to pay taxes, and taxes are essential to that role. If you refuse to pay taxes, they send a policeman to arrest you. If you evade the policeman's arrest, they send more policemen. If you somehow evade all the policemen, they send the military. If the US had no armed federal agents, then people wouldn't pay taxes and the government would shrivel up and die, because governments can't survive on zero revenue. In this way, the US dollar's value is reliant on the threat of physical force - or in a broad sense, a military.
  - _Algernon_ 4y ago
    Granted, it is not a server farm, but the US military isn't exactly carbon neutral.
    - smashem 4y ago
      There are server farms within the military, so by proxy, the USD does require server farms. Then the private financial institutions have server farms.
  - hapticmonkey 4y ago
    Does the army and law enforcement not use energy? Do banks not have server farms?
    - Victerius 4y ago
      Okay, back up a little. Crypto miners mine crypto in order to become rich. With national currencies, this is impossible. Citizens cannot create their own currency, and that's a good thing. If money could be easily forged, it would either be worthless, or a speculative instrument, like every crypto in existence. National governments are the source and the only legal creators of money. Crypto mining also makes the blockchain secure. What this means is that a malicious individual cannot, say, transfer crypto from another person's wallet to his own, or alter the software algorithm that controls the creation of the cryptocurrency. Proof of work cryptocurrencies require miners to expend an enormous quantity of energy in order to prevent problems that national currencies don't have in the first place. Cryptocurrencies have no advantage over national currencies except for anonymous online transactions.
      - smashem 4y ago
        > National governments are the source and the only legal creators of money. And those closest to the money printer benefit. And hint, the average joe is furthest from the printer. The future of the average joe is stolen via currency debasement and inflation, but those closest to the printer get richer.
        pessimizer 4y ago
        It's people who hold debt who are robbed by inflation, not people who are in debt. The entire political program of the people closest to the money printer is to reduce inflation (and to lower government debt without changing the balance of payments, which by necessity shifts that same debt to individuals.)
        nervlord 4y ago
  - smashem 4y ago
    True, the USD just requires violence and cohersion.
  - Loveaway 4y ago
    Fiat currencies are backed by huge financial sectors. If all you need are numbers in a database, what are all those towers in NY for?
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      There's nothing about crypto that shows it wouldn't have exactly the same size of a financial sector in addition to proof of work, so the two aren't doing the same things. Forget fiat. When money was gold in a vault, that's proof of stake, not proof of work. For proof of work, you'd have to disintegrate the gold. I wouldn't put my trust in a dollar backed by the absence of gold. edit: I think maybe bitcoin enthusiasts think that value is a sort of spirit, and that if you kill something valuable, then through a huge mass ritual you can direct that spirit into another vessel. Proof that you once had money, and further proof that no one else has that money, should be enough for people to treat you as if you currently have money.
      - betwixthewires 4y ago
        Your gold analogy makes no sense to me, so either I'm misunderstanding it or you don't understand what you're trying to explain. > I think maybe bitcoin enthusiasts think that value is a sort of spirit... Interestingly, that is actually kind of how it works. The money you use itself has no value, it's value is in the things you use it to trade. So if you start trading in other currencies, those currencies receive that value, which gets reflected in the purchasing power metric.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - wyager 4y ago
    Are you familiar with petrodollar warfare? It consumes a lot more energy and resources than bitcoin.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  Good discussion on the topic below (~10 minutes). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-_CuPtzoDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-_CuPtzoDU
- everfree 4y ago
  Slashing fixes the "nothing at stake" problem, and the RANDAO fixes the stake grinding attack. Both of those were open questions in 2015, but they are solved problems now.
  - wyager 4y ago
    PoS people always add more epicycles and claim it solves the problem. On closer inspection, it never has. At this point, I'm tired of wasting my time by humoring them. Once again, this seems to be the case. I can see at least one trivial attack against RANDAO, as is often the case with many-party interactive RNG: you just have to be willing to lose your pledge.
    - everfree 4y ago
      > I can see at least one trivial attack against RANDAO, as is often the case with many-party interactive RNG: you just have to be willing to lose your pledge. What is the trivial attack, and why does it involve losing your pledge? To the best of my knowledge none of Ethereum's slashing conditions involve the RANDAO, so you've piqued my interest. Unless by "losing pledge", you mean extra-protocol slashing by social consensus? You would be doing me a big favor by explaining the vulnerability in this system that I generally consider to be secure.
      - wyager 4y ago
        Let's say you're gambling 10k ETH on the last bit of RANDAO output being 1. You pay 5k to enter, and get either 0 or 10k back. Become a contributor to RANDAO. Put up your pledge (say 1k ETH). Set up the bet. Wait to be the last person to submit their pre-image to RANDAO. Calculate what the post-image will be. If it has a 1 at the end (and you would win 10k), continue as normal. If it would have a 0 (and you would win nothing), refuse to disclose your pre-image and lose your pledge. Now it's 50/50 you win. 50% win and keep pledge. 25% win and lose pledge. 25% lose and lose pledge. EV (0.510k + 0.259k + 0.25*-1k)-5k = 2k. You can submit more than 1 pledge to get your odds arbitrarily close to 100%.
repomies69 4y ago
Bitcoin is never going to change from PoW... That's the point of the system, Bitcoin is unchangable, unlike Ethereum. But you are free to create your own PoS cryptocurrency. If some PoS system offers the same security features as Bitcoin, people will just switch from Bitcoin to that.
- betwixthewires 4y ago
  Ignoring network effects.
- lapser 4y ago
  Bitcoin is still software. Software can change. It's the people who refuse to change it
  - MBCook 4y ago
    A huge chunk of the miners fought tooth-and-nail to not increase the maximum block size. The chance of them agreeing to something like this seems very low indeed.
    - rcxdude 4y ago
      Doesn't actually need the miner's consent, only needs the market to agree. Problem is there isn't really any entity with sufficient authority for the market to follow, so it will tent to bias towards the status quo, and miners tend to have a lot of money and so influence in the market (both hard and soft).
  - earnesti 4y ago
    Yes, other way to put it is that the incentives for the software are designed in a way which makes certain changes extremely unlikely. However some changes are happening all the time (features added via a soft fork)
- konschubert 4y ago
  Bitcoin will either die or will eventually have much higher transaction fees compared to Ethereum. Because somebody's gotta pay that power bill. Maybe that won't matter, but I hope it will. https://www.konstantinschubert.com/2018/11/28/proof-of-stake-will-kill-proof-of-work.html https://www.konstantinschubert.com/2018/11/28/proof-of-stake...
smashem 4y ago
End the FUD https://endthefud.org/ https://endthefud.org/
- numlock86 4y ago
  > The delusional shitcoiner's funny compilation Yeah, thanks for reminding me. We all had out good laugh at that site at some point.
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  I really enjoyed mousing over each link and looking at the sources.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
paulpauper 4y ago
That's something Bitcoin needs ... or even better get rid of it altogether. As the price keeps falling, presumably so will energy consumption. The energy consumption problem fixes itself as the bubble bursts and people lose interest and mining becomes unprofitable, without the need for regulation.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  The hardware to perform PoW already exists. All someone needs to do for a 51% attack is buy up the old mining hardware that is being sold for so cheap. Every "bust" period for BTC comes with the risk of a 51% attack / centralization. If the difficulty falls by 90% because 90% of miners were shut off, you only need to buy 5.6% of those thrown-away miners to cause a 51% attack on BTC.
  - icoder 4y ago
    Assuminge no one buys up any of the other 94.4%
    - dragontamer 4y ago
      It doesn't matter if they buy it or not. If they're waiting for profitability, they won't turn those machines on. Or do you think people will spend $100 on electricity to mine $10 of BTC just to keep the security of the token high? A hypothetical 51% attacker isn't doing it for profits, they're doing it for some other reason. Whatever that reason is, the 51% attack gets cheaper-and-cheaper each time these "bust" cycles happen.
      - mattwilsonn888 4y ago
        Let us know when you figure out that "some other reason." The primary defense against 51% attacks is waiting the amount of block confirmations that make the cost of attacking the block your transaction is in more than the possible rewards. If we all have to worry about people randomly burning money to 51% attack blockchains then the whole premise is bunko anyways. Here's a hint, randomly attacking the network in a way that loses you money eventually removes you from the playing field. The network is stronger than a motivated attacker, in principle.
X6S1x6Okd1st 4y ago
I believe that after the block size wars that resulted in Bitcoin cash and bitcoin (the chain that chose the path of no change) the bitcoin community ossified into a community that is actively resistant towards changes, and bitcoin cash is much smaller and suffered from many subsequent forks. Without significant outside force bitcoin will not change to proof of stake, they are currently framing proof of stake as useless and insecure, IMO because of motivated reasoning from the stance that bitcoin is perfect, therefore any deviation from what bitcoin has is a mistake.
littlestymaar 4y ago
By moving to PoS, they are also moving from a permissionless blockchain (anybody can participate) to a pay-to-play one (if you want to be in, you need to pay the insiders), this obviously benefits the current holders.

wyager 4y ago

Proof of work is the only way to get acceptable security properties for a monetary system. Proof of stake suffers from the "nothing at stake" problem, leading to grinding attacks etc.

Victerius 4y ago
> Proof of work is the only way to get acceptable security properties for a monetary system. Every country's financial system: ahem. The U.S. dollar doesn't require giant energy-hungry server farms to be secure.
- cowtools 4y ago
  The U.S. dollar is backed by a military many times more energy intensive.
  - Victerius 4y ago
    What?
  - Macha 4y ago
    So if the us replaced the dollar with Bitcoin they could eliminate or downsize their military? Doubtful
    - cowtools 4y ago
      I agree with the point you are making here. I just think that Proof-of-Work is usually a better choice for a cryptocurrency than Proof-of-Stake. Conventional currencies (notably the US Dollar) are also backed by signifigant military (and thus electrical) power. I would posit that Fiat currencies are nessisary in some sense, but not that they are more efficient to maintain than cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies tend to piggyback on the infrastructure and economy that are built on fiat (e.g. The internet).
    - novantadue 4y ago
      We wouldn't have to overthrow mid-east dictators every time they threaten to price oil in Euros -- but obviously this wouldn't help much because we'd still need to maintain superpower status or risk losing the world order.
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    Fiat currency is not backed by military power. Note that there exist several countries without militaries, and none of those countries have worthless currencies. And there have existed countries that put significant investment into their military and still wound up with a worthless currency at the end.
    - cowtools 4y ago
      Those countries exist as client states to countries with militaries. Yes, the militatary spending is nessisary but not sufficient to sustain a currency.
    - smashem 4y ago
      You really believe that the USD, as the world's reserve currency, doesn't require its military to keep it that way.
      - jcranmer 4y ago
        Yes, I do, actually. The US economy is the world's largest economy in gross value, is the largest or one of the largest trade partners of much of the world, and has very limited policies on capital control or other monetary restrictions. This means that there is going to be more depth on trading pairs via USD and even small currencies than you would likely have with other countries, you would have very little counterparty risk holding USD, and much trade will end up being denominated in USD anyways. So you'd be a bloody fool not to hold USD. Magically blinking away the US military would not change any of the above consideration one iota. So let me flip the question around: why do you believe that the US military is essential to its role as a major reserve currency?
        everfree 4y ago
        > why do you believe that the US military is essential to its role as a major reserve currency? Because it's the final backstop that compels people to pay taxes, and taxes are essential to that role. If you refuse to pay taxes, they send a policeman to arrest you. If you evade the policeman's arrest, they send more policemen. If you somehow evade all the policemen, they send the military. If the US had no armed federal agents, then people wouldn't pay taxes and the government would shrivel up and die, because governments can't survive on zero revenue. In this way, the US dollar's value is reliant on the threat of physical force - or in a broad sense, a military.
- _Algernon_ 4y ago
  Granted, it is not a server farm, but the US military isn't exactly carbon neutral.
  - smashem 4y ago
    There are server farms within the military, so by proxy, the USD does require server farms. Then the private financial institutions have server farms.
- hapticmonkey 4y ago
  Does the army and law enforcement not use energy? Do banks not have server farms?
  - Victerius 4y ago
    Okay, back up a little. Crypto miners mine crypto in order to become rich. With national currencies, this is impossible. Citizens cannot create their own currency, and that's a good thing. If money could be easily forged, it would either be worthless, or a speculative instrument, like every crypto in existence. National governments are the source and the only legal creators of money. Crypto mining also makes the blockchain secure. What this means is that a malicious individual cannot, say, transfer crypto from another person's wallet to his own, or alter the software algorithm that controls the creation of the cryptocurrency. Proof of work cryptocurrencies require miners to expend an enormous quantity of energy in order to prevent problems that national currencies don't have in the first place. Cryptocurrencies have no advantage over national currencies except for anonymous online transactions.
    - smashem 4y ago
      > National governments are the source and the only legal creators of money. And those closest to the money printer benefit. And hint, the average joe is furthest from the printer. The future of the average joe is stolen via currency debasement and inflation, but those closest to the printer get richer.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        It's people who hold debt who are robbed by inflation, not people who are in debt. The entire political program of the people closest to the money printer is to reduce inflation (and to lower government debt without changing the balance of payments, which by necessity shifts that same debt to individuals.)
        nervlord 4y ago
- smashem 4y ago
  True, the USD just requires violence and cohersion.
- Loveaway 4y ago
  Fiat currencies are backed by huge financial sectors. If all you need are numbers in a database, what are all those towers in NY for?
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    There's nothing about crypto that shows it wouldn't have exactly the same size of a financial sector in addition to proof of work, so the two aren't doing the same things. Forget fiat. When money was gold in a vault, that's proof of stake, not proof of work. For proof of work, you'd have to disintegrate the gold. I wouldn't put my trust in a dollar backed by the absence of gold. edit: I think maybe bitcoin enthusiasts think that value is a sort of spirit, and that if you kill something valuable, then through a huge mass ritual you can direct that spirit into another vessel. Proof that you once had money, and further proof that no one else has that money, should be enough for people to treat you as if you currently have money.
    - betwixthewires 4y ago
      Your gold analogy makes no sense to me, so either I'm misunderstanding it or you don't understand what you're trying to explain. > I think maybe bitcoin enthusiasts think that value is a sort of spirit... Interestingly, that is actually kind of how it works. The money you use itself has no value, it's value is in the things you use it to trade. So if you start trading in other currencies, those currencies receive that value, which gets reflected in the purchasing power metric.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- wyager 4y ago
  Are you familiar with petrodollar warfare? It consumes a lot more energy and resources than bitcoin.
osigurdson 4y ago
Good discussion on the topic below (~10 minutes). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-_CuPtzoDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-_CuPtzoDU
everfree 4y ago
Slashing fixes the "nothing at stake" problem, and the RANDAO fixes the stake grinding attack. Both of those were open questions in 2015, but they are solved problems now.
- wyager 4y ago
  PoS people always add more epicycles and claim it solves the problem. On closer inspection, it never has. At this point, I'm tired of wasting my time by humoring them. Once again, this seems to be the case. I can see at least one trivial attack against RANDAO, as is often the case with many-party interactive RNG: you just have to be willing to lose your pledge.
  - everfree 4y ago
    > I can see at least one trivial attack against RANDAO, as is often the case with many-party interactive RNG: you just have to be willing to lose your pledge. What is the trivial attack, and why does it involve losing your pledge? To the best of my knowledge none of Ethereum's slashing conditions involve the RANDAO, so you've piqued my interest. Unless by "losing pledge", you mean extra-protocol slashing by social consensus? You would be doing me a big favor by explaining the vulnerability in this system that I generally consider to be secure.
    - wyager 4y ago
      Let's say you're gambling 10k ETH on the last bit of RANDAO output being 1. You pay 5k to enter, and get either 0 or 10k back. Become a contributor to RANDAO. Put up your pledge (say 1k ETH). Set up the bet. Wait to be the last person to submit their pre-image to RANDAO. Calculate what the post-image will be. If it has a 1 at the end (and you would win 10k), continue as normal. If it would have a 0 (and you would win nothing), refuse to disclose your pre-image and lose your pledge. Now it's 50/50 you win. 50% win and keep pledge. 25% win and lose pledge. 25% lose and lose pledge. EV (0.510k + 0.259k + 0.25*-1k)-5k = 2k. You can submit more than 1 pledge to get your odds arbitrarily close to 100%.

repomies69 4y ago

Bitcoin is never going to change from PoW... That's the point of the system, Bitcoin is unchangable, unlike Ethereum. But you are free to create your own PoS cryptocurrency. If some PoS system offers the same security features as Bitcoin, people will just switch from Bitcoin to that.

betwixthewires 4y ago
Ignoring network effects.
lapser 4y ago
Bitcoin is still software. Software can change. It's the people who refuse to change it
- MBCook 4y ago
  A huge chunk of the miners fought tooth-and-nail to not increase the maximum block size. The chance of them agreeing to something like this seems very low indeed.
  - rcxdude 4y ago
    Doesn't actually need the miner's consent, only needs the market to agree. Problem is there isn't really any entity with sufficient authority for the market to follow, so it will tent to bias towards the status quo, and miners tend to have a lot of money and so influence in the market (both hard and soft).
- earnesti 4y ago
  Yes, other way to put it is that the incentives for the software are designed in a way which makes certain changes extremely unlikely. However some changes are happening all the time (features added via a soft fork)
konschubert 4y ago
Bitcoin will either die or will eventually have much higher transaction fees compared to Ethereum. Because somebody's gotta pay that power bill. Maybe that won't matter, but I hope it will. https://www.konstantinschubert.com/2018/11/28/proof-of-stake-will-kill-proof-of-work.html https://www.konstantinschubert.com/2018/11/28/proof-of-stake...

smashem 4y ago

End the FUD https://endthefud.org/ https://endthefud.org/

numlock86 4y ago
> The delusional shitcoiner's funny compilation Yeah, thanks for reminding me. We all had out good laugh at that site at some point.
Forgeties79 4y ago
I really enjoyed mousing over each link and looking at the sources.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

paulpauper 4y ago

That's something Bitcoin needs ... or even better get rid of it altogether. As the price keeps falling, presumably so will energy consumption. The energy consumption problem fixes itself as the bubble bursts and people lose interest and mining becomes unprofitable, without the need for regulation.

dragontamer 4y ago
The hardware to perform PoW already exists. All someone needs to do for a 51% attack is buy up the old mining hardware that is being sold for so cheap. Every "bust" period for BTC comes with the risk of a 51% attack / centralization. If the difficulty falls by 90% because 90% of miners were shut off, you only need to buy 5.6% of those thrown-away miners to cause a 51% attack on BTC.
- icoder 4y ago
  Assuminge no one buys up any of the other 94.4%
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    It doesn't matter if they buy it or not. If they're waiting for profitability, they won't turn those machines on. Or do you think people will spend $100 on electricity to mine $10 of BTC just to keep the security of the token high? A hypothetical 51% attacker isn't doing it for profits, they're doing it for some other reason. Whatever that reason is, the 51% attack gets cheaper-and-cheaper each time these "bust" cycles happen.
    - mattwilsonn888 4y ago
      Let us know when you figure out that "some other reason." The primary defense against 51% attacks is waiting the amount of block confirmations that make the cost of attacking the block your transaction is in more than the possible rewards. If we all have to worry about people randomly burning money to 51% attack blockchains then the whole premise is bunko anyways. Here's a hint, randomly attacking the network in a way that loses you money eventually removes you from the playing field. The network is stronger than a motivated attacker, in principle.

X6S1x6Okd1st 4y ago

I believe that after the block size wars that resulted in Bitcoin cash and bitcoin (the chain that chose the path of no change) the bitcoin community ossified into a community that is actively resistant towards changes, and bitcoin cash is much smaller and suffered from many subsequent forks. Without significant outside force bitcoin will not change to proof of stake, they are currently framing proof of stake as useless and insecure, IMO because of motivated reasoning from the stance that bitcoin is perfect, therefore any deviation from what bitcoin has is a mistake.

littlestymaar 4y ago

By moving to PoS, they are also moving from a permissionless blockchain (anybody can participate) to a pay-to-play one (if you want to be in, you need to pay the insiders), this obviously benefits the current holders.