10 ms·

It should be illegal everywhere, all Proof of Work does is to calculate trillions of hashes every minute, to discard all of them but one. It's very similar to a

It should be illegal everywhere, all Proof of Work does is to calculate trillions of hashes every minute, to discard all of them but one. It's very similar to a lottery, with energy being used instead of tickets.

texasbigdata 4y ago
Why not ban lotteries too? And casinos? Or have some committee legislate all activities a human can engage in? Where do you draw the line? Let the government solve how to produce energy and let it keep their fingers out of our personal lives.
- geysersam 4y ago
  Lotteries and Casinos are also heavily regulated
- acomms 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man If this is your best argument for burning $1 of (subsidized) fossil fuels so you can get $1.05 of crypto you need to reevaluate what you're spending your time on.
  - dskloet 4y ago
    It shouldn't be subsidized. That's the real problem.
    - leaf8937 4y ago
      price of electricity should be doubled after a certain high use. lots of businesses just leave their ac and lights on despite not needing, all because its too cheap.
      - BlueTemplar 4y ago
        Yeah, IMHO it makes no sense that they get cheaper power than residential users (well, it does make financial sense for the electric businesses to attract big customers using low prices, but that's not my point) : the cheapest power should be for the poorest citizens (but with limits to maximum power and lack of guarantees for continuous power supply), while the most expensive power should be for the businesses requiring lots of uninterrupted power ! (Note that cryptominers should be able to deal very well with programmed power cuts...)
        dskloet 4y ago
        Even for poor citizens, electricity shouldn't be subsidized. They should get straight up money and decide for themselves if they want to use it for (non-subsidized) electricity or if they can use it more efficiently on something else.
        BlueTemplar 4y ago
        In theory, I agree : it's probably everyone else that should be taxed instead. The issue here is that at the very bottom you end up with really nasty vicious poverty circles... and now that I think of it, we don't know in advance what kind of combination of minimum low power and low time fraction of guaranteed supply is the best, and how you combine market discovery for that with regulation...
      - germandiago 4y ago
        There are many people here with a lot of potentially destructive ideas. How do u know the exact needs of each business? What u would do is to make many go bankrupt just bc of a regulation. Of course, I know that many of you... as lomg as it is not your own business everything is ok.
        dskloet 4y ago
        If they can only exist when subsidized, we need to decide explicitly whether the business is worth subsidizing. Not keep lots of businesses alive through subsidized electricity while they would otherwise not be profitable.
    - germandiago 4y ago
      Agree on this.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Legal gambling is a lesser evil. It would be better for society if gambling did not exist, but if we ban it, it will just happen anyway. Gambling is primarily legal to be able to regulate it. Illegal gambling is a major cash cow for organized crime. (Although organized crime has also been known to muscle in on legal gambling)
  - mcherm 4y ago
    Your reasoning seems unsound. It would [let us assume for the sake of argument] be better for society if proof of work systems did not exist. But if we ban it it will just happen anyway. It would be better for society if murder did not exist but even though we banned it, murder just happens anyway.
    - marginalia_nu 4y ago
      The difference is that while legalized gambling is bad, illegal gambling is much worse, it's more predatory where games can be outright rigged, and it's also funding organized crime and has a corrupting effect on society. A politician owing money to a bank is bad. The same owing money to a mob-affiliated loan shark is worse. Banning this type of activity has historically proven difficult, it's basically the lesson we keep re-learning with the prohibition, the war on drugs and so forth.
      - maxwell 4y ago
        > A politician owing money to a bank is bad. Why?
        marginalia_nu 4y ago
        Speaking primarily in the context of being up to your ears in debt, but because it creates a conflict of interest. Such a person is a lot more susceptible to bribes as a means to get out of their predicament, because they can't afford to tell someone waving a bag of money in front of them to piss off. Debt is also something foreign intelligence looks for when attempting to recruit spies.
- bigbillheck 4y ago
  > Why not ban lotteries too? And casinos? Your terms are acceptable.
- yabones 4y ago
  Lotteries and casinos don't have massive externalities like crypto does. If running a casino required burning coal 24/7 to produce an absurd amount of energy, creating kilotonnes of CO2 & sulfur dioxide and causing respiratory illnesses, environmental damage, climate change, etc., then it would absolutely be illegal.
  - siwatanejo 4y ago
    Bitcoin mining uses energy, it does not generate it. What needs to be regulated is the dirty ways of producing energy, they should be banned out right. All fossil fuels. But miners just pay their energy bills like any other citizen. Who are you to tell them what activity should they perform with the energy they purchase?
    - germandiago 4y ago
      If you ban fossil energies and nuclear/gas I am not sure from where you are going to take all energy from. With the current technology it is just impossible.
    - felurx 4y ago
      They aren't like any other citizen, because they use a really, really huge amount of energy. If they did use as little energy as any other citizen, there wouldn't be a problem. If anything, you'd have to compare them to huge companies or something. And those are still significantly different to (and usually more useful to society) cryptominers.
      - siwatanejo 4y ago
        Sure, so compare them with Google if you want (because I guess google's electricity bill for data centers is huge). Now, why would you want to forbid what bitcoin miners do with the energy they purchase while you don't forbid what Google does with the energy they purchase?
      - ashwagary 4y ago
        >If anything, you'd have to compare them to huge companies Sounds like this is a good reason for them to pay lower rates per kwh.
- eyeinthepyramid 4y ago
  Why not two committees and a head of state?
datadata 4y ago
The net hashing that goes into mining increases the security of the network and is quite different from a lottery. The energy consumed produces a real energy barrier that makes it hard to produce a different variant of the next block. It is not a waste, but a sacrifice made to make the blockchain strongly immutable.
- jraph 4y ago
  > It is not a waste, but a sacrifice made to make the blockchain strongly immutable That's a sacrifice for the whole world and not only for the people it benefits though. And I wish nobody made that sacrifice. I don't quite care about the blockchain being strongly immutable. However, I strongly care about global warming. > It is not a waste Well, it is a waste for anybody who does not need this blockchain. And I'm not sure it's that useful even for its current users. "Don't feed the blockchain!"
  - datadata 4y ago
    Common, this argument is like saying that I don't want you to be able to have Christmas lights on your house. Doing that would be sacrificing energy that the entire world needs for a benefit that only you and your neighbors get, and that non-Christian people might idealologically not care about.
    - jraph 4y ago
      You have a point. However, I indeed don't want Christmas light on my home for somewhat related reasons.gratuitously But I suspect Christmas lights are not even close to reaching the levels of energy consumed by blockchain mining worldwide. Even Christmas lights are more useful than PoW blockchains. As human beings we are going to consume energy and produce CO2 for pleasure (we are not talking about strict necessity here). Because in the end, I believe enjoying life is almost an (the?) end-goal of life, if any. But we don't need to burn some so gratuitously neither.
      - datadata 4y ago
tromp 4y ago
> all Proof of Work does is to calculate trillions of hashes There's more to mining than hashing [1]. My Cuckoo Cycle Proof-of-Work scheme for example searches random graphs for fixed length cycles. It would be more correct to say all the Hashcash Proof-of-Work does is calculating hashes. [1] https://cryptorials.io/beyond-hashcash-proof-work-theres-mining-hashing https://cryptorials.io/beyond-hashcash-proof-work-theres-min...
- jraph 4y ago
  The certificate of this domain is expired. I can't check what it does exactly but I would guess that all your Cuckoo Cycle Proof-of-Work scheme does is [something equivalent to calculating hashes - something equally meaningless in itself - for all intents and purposes of your parent commenter].
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    The point is that it's not all equally meaningless. However useful uses (typically finding new primes and similar mathematical searches) seem to be fundamentally incompatible with using a blockchain as a distributed ledger in a zero trust environment, because that usefulness automatically weakens the cryptographic safety ?
  - tromp 4y ago
    https://web.archive.org/web/20210506232722/http://cryptorials.io/beyond-hashcash-proof-work-theres-mining-hashing/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210506232722/http://cryptorial... also works if your browser is picky about expired certs.
voldacar 4y ago
It's my computer though, and I'm paying for the electricity to run it. Why is it any business of yours what calculations I run on it? What an absurd statement.
- datameta 4y ago
  Multiply your argument by a million people (some of whom run mining farms) and that's when we have a problem.
- angelbar 4y ago
  Subsidized energy is the problem. Or if it is yours to generate it, the permit to pollute for that energy against the public benefits
- felurx 4y ago
  If you burn dozens of kilo-watts, and it's not just you but many others too, and you're all doing it in a way that harms society / the global population much more than it benefits us all, it very much is my and everyone's business. (Or, in other words: It's my lighter, and I'm paying for the gasoline, so why is it any business of yours what I'm setting on fire with it?)
Mistletoe 4y ago
The market is solving the problem for humanity. Ethereum transitioned to proof of stake (99.988% less electricity usage) and the price has now outperformed Bitcoin in the bull market and the bear market.
- taolegal 4y ago
  > The market is solving the problem for humanity The market still considers a bitcoin to be worth 10x more than ethereum.
  - Mistletoe 4y ago
    A better comparison would be market cap and Bitcoin is only about 2x Ethereum right now. If that ever gets closer or flips, I feel like it’s pretty much over for Bitcoin and its first mover advantage and store of money meme.
- danuker 4y ago
  Hope it's not susceptible to some yet-undiscovered Sybil attack or network split bug.
0xfffafaCrash 4y ago
I don’t think Proof of Work should be illegal anywhere. The value is not in what is computed but in what properties it gives to the system. What should be addressed though is the problem of negative externalities not being priced in. This is not specific to energy usage of PoW or any other use of energy. Those producing emissions should categorically be required to foot the bill for repairing any damage done and those taxes should be put to use to that end. Once priced in, many things that otherwise commonize costs but privatize profits may prove to be not worth pursuing. If the societal good done by certain things is worth the negative externalities, those can be explicitly and transparently funded through subsidies which offset some portion of the costs.
- nells 4y ago
  There’s absolutely no way to compute the price of the damage that every ton of CO2 is going to do, so whatever value you choose is going to be arbitrary and ultimately unfair.
  - 0xfffafaCrash 4y ago
    What’s the cost of sequestering each ton of CO2? $30? $90? Prohibitively high for some purposes? Well that seems like a relatively good place to start. Having a positive number adjustable based on large scale statistics does a hell of a lot more to fix market incentives than pricing it at a constant $0 and banning one specific thing (in a way which can’t even be enforced) as a political gimmick.
    - nells 4y ago
      You can also price it at $0 and NOT ban it.
      - 0xfffafaCrash 4y ago
        Sure, but that does nothing to help with the tragedy of the commons caused by unaddressed negative externalities…
germandiago 4y ago
So let us say I do a transaction and now instead of doing it online I have to take a car and go to city 20 km away, go to the bank, withdraw and go to Western Union and send it abroad. What takes more energy? No, forbidden forbiding, please, for things like these.
- assbuttbuttass 4y ago
  I'll be generous and assume you use a whole gallon of gas for a 20km trip, that's approx. 34 kWh [0]. Meanwhile, a single Bitcoin transaction takes 1,173 kWh [1] [0] https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Miles_per_gallon_gasoline_equivalent#:~:text=When%20testing%20electric%20vehicles%20for,which%20converts%20to%2033.7%20kWh https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Miles_per_gallon_gas.... [1] https://fortune.com/2021/10/26/bitcoin-electricity-consumption-carbon-footprin/ https://fortune.com/2021/10/26/bitcoin-electricity-consumpti...
  - germandiago 4y ago
    is it really that polluting? :O: I find myself shocked, let me take a look. Anyways, I think the real fear here is from govts. and their loss of control through fiat currency and transaction systems, honestly. But that is an entirely different topic...
  - oska 4y ago
    A single transaction uses the trivial energy it takes to power the device that signs the transaction and whatever trivial amount is required to transmit it to the network. Your quoted sources make the egregious error of considering the energy used to secure the network and protocol as the energy used to process transactions. This ignorant error has been pointed out many times already in the discussion around POW.
- felurx 4y ago
  If you have a devive you can send crypto with, you almost certainly have a device you can use online banking with. Also, I don't really see how this is really relevant, it really sounds like a "But Sometimes" issue, where some edge case of something sucks, but that doesn't say much about if that something in total is bad or not.
BoppreH 4y ago
The comparison to a lottery is too kind. In a lottery the ticket fees go to the organizer, who wastes a little in administrative fees, takes a percentage for themselves, and returns the rest as prizes. Bad for income distribution, but not especially wasteful. In a PoW blockchain the "ticket fee" — the electricity and depreciating hardware — is completely used up. The reward doesn't come from the other miners, but from transaction fees and new coins (diluting the value). It's like a lottery that uses all the income from tickets to pay for marketing, and the actual prizes are paid by government subsidy.
tommiegannert 4y ago
> all Proof of Work does [---] similar to a lottery It's a probabilistic distributed rate limiter to speed up information convergence in a gossip system. I agree it's a wasteful way of deciding what your VCS' HEAD is.
charlesrocket 4y ago
The lottery that is based on non-existing concept like gambling where all the fees piped to one party? Not to mention you can’t use your brain while “playing” since calculating winning locations is illegal. Also it sound like you missing the whole point why all these hashes are discarded and what is being produced at the end of each cycle.
ashwagary 4y ago
You like the state regulating how electricity can be used? Slippery slope.

texasbigdata 4y ago

Why not ban lotteries too? And casinos? Or have some committee legislate all activities a human can engage in? Where do you draw the line? Let the government solve how to produce energy and let it keep their fingers out of our personal lives.

geysersam 4y ago
Lotteries and Casinos are also heavily regulated
acomms 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man If this is your best argument for burning $1 of (subsidized) fossil fuels so you can get $1.05 of crypto you need to reevaluate what you're spending your time on.
- dskloet 4y ago
  It shouldn't be subsidized. That's the real problem.
  - leaf8937 4y ago
    price of electricity should be doubled after a certain high use. lots of businesses just leave their ac and lights on despite not needing, all because its too cheap.
    - BlueTemplar 4y ago
      Yeah, IMHO it makes no sense that they get cheaper power than residential users (well, it does make financial sense for the electric businesses to attract big customers using low prices, but that's not my point) : the cheapest power should be for the poorest citizens (but with limits to maximum power and lack of guarantees for continuous power supply), while the most expensive power should be for the businesses requiring lots of uninterrupted power ! (Note that cryptominers should be able to deal very well with programmed power cuts...)
      - dskloet 4y ago
        Even for poor citizens, electricity shouldn't be subsidized. They should get straight up money and decide for themselves if they want to use it for (non-subsidized) electricity or if they can use it more efficiently on something else.
        BlueTemplar 4y ago
        In theory, I agree : it's probably everyone else that should be taxed instead. The issue here is that at the very bottom you end up with really nasty vicious poverty circles... and now that I think of it, we don't know in advance what kind of combination of minimum low power and low time fraction of guaranteed supply is the best, and how you combine market discovery for that with regulation...
    - germandiago 4y ago
      There are many people here with a lot of potentially destructive ideas. How do u know the exact needs of each business? What u would do is to make many go bankrupt just bc of a regulation. Of course, I know that many of you... as lomg as it is not your own business everything is ok.
      - dskloet 4y ago
        If they can only exist when subsidized, we need to decide explicitly whether the business is worth subsidizing. Not keep lots of businesses alive through subsidized electricity while they would otherwise not be profitable.
  - germandiago 4y ago
    Agree on this.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
Legal gambling is a lesser evil. It would be better for society if gambling did not exist, but if we ban it, it will just happen anyway. Gambling is primarily legal to be able to regulate it. Illegal gambling is a major cash cow for organized crime. (Although organized crime has also been known to muscle in on legal gambling)
- mcherm 4y ago
  Your reasoning seems unsound. It would [let us assume for the sake of argument] be better for society if proof of work systems did not exist. But if we ban it it will just happen anyway. It would be better for society if murder did not exist but even though we banned it, murder just happens anyway.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    The difference is that while legalized gambling is bad, illegal gambling is much worse, it's more predatory where games can be outright rigged, and it's also funding organized crime and has a corrupting effect on society. A politician owing money to a bank is bad. The same owing money to a mob-affiliated loan shark is worse. Banning this type of activity has historically proven difficult, it's basically the lesson we keep re-learning with the prohibition, the war on drugs and so forth.
    - maxwell 4y ago
      > A politician owing money to a bank is bad. Why?
      - marginalia_nu 4y ago
        Speaking primarily in the context of being up to your ears in debt, but because it creates a conflict of interest. Such a person is a lot more susceptible to bribes as a means to get out of their predicament, because they can't afford to tell someone waving a bag of money in front of them to piss off. Debt is also something foreign intelligence looks for when attempting to recruit spies.
bigbillheck 4y ago
> Why not ban lotteries too? And casinos? Your terms are acceptable.
yabones 4y ago
Lotteries and casinos don't have massive externalities like crypto does. If running a casino required burning coal 24/7 to produce an absurd amount of energy, creating kilotonnes of CO2 & sulfur dioxide and causing respiratory illnesses, environmental damage, climate change, etc., then it would absolutely be illegal.
- siwatanejo 4y ago
  Bitcoin mining uses energy, it does not generate it. What needs to be regulated is the dirty ways of producing energy, they should be banned out right. All fossil fuels. But miners just pay their energy bills like any other citizen. Who are you to tell them what activity should they perform with the energy they purchase?
  - germandiago 4y ago
    If you ban fossil energies and nuclear/gas I am not sure from where you are going to take all energy from. With the current technology it is just impossible.
  - felurx 4y ago
    They aren't like any other citizen, because they use a really, really huge amount of energy. If they did use as little energy as any other citizen, there wouldn't be a problem. If anything, you'd have to compare them to huge companies or something. And those are still significantly different to (and usually more useful to society) cryptominers.
    - siwatanejo 4y ago
      Sure, so compare them with Google if you want (because I guess google's electricity bill for data centers is huge). Now, why would you want to forbid what bitcoin miners do with the energy they purchase while you don't forbid what Google does with the energy they purchase?
    - ashwagary 4y ago
      >If anything, you'd have to compare them to huge companies Sounds like this is a good reason for them to pay lower rates per kwh.
eyeinthepyramid 4y ago
Why not two committees and a head of state?

datadata 4y ago

The net hashing that goes into mining increases the security of the network and is quite different from a lottery. The energy consumed produces a real energy barrier that makes it hard to produce a different variant of the next block. It is not a waste, but a sacrifice made to make the blockchain strongly immutable.

jraph 4y ago
> It is not a waste, but a sacrifice made to make the blockchain strongly immutable That's a sacrifice for the whole world and not only for the people it benefits though. And I wish nobody made that sacrifice. I don't quite care about the blockchain being strongly immutable. However, I strongly care about global warming. > It is not a waste Well, it is a waste for anybody who does not need this blockchain. And I'm not sure it's that useful even for its current users. "Don't feed the blockchain!"
- datadata 4y ago
  Common, this argument is like saying that I don't want you to be able to have Christmas lights on your house. Doing that would be sacrificing energy that the entire world needs for a benefit that only you and your neighbors get, and that non-Christian people might idealologically not care about.
  - jraph 4y ago
    You have a point. However, I indeed don't want Christmas light on my home for somewhat related reasons.gratuitously But I suspect Christmas lights are not even close to reaching the levels of energy consumed by blockchain mining worldwide. Even Christmas lights are more useful than PoW blockchains. As human beings we are going to consume energy and produce CO2 for pleasure (we are not talking about strict necessity here). Because in the end, I believe enjoying life is almost an (the?) end-goal of life, if any. But we don't need to burn some so gratuitously neither.
    - datadata 4y ago

tromp 4y ago

> all Proof of Work does is to calculate trillions of hashes There's more to mining than hashing [1]. My Cuckoo Cycle Proof-of-Work scheme for example searches random graphs for fixed length cycles. It would be more correct to say all the Hashcash Proof-of-Work does is calculating hashes. [1] https://cryptorials.io/beyond-hashcash-proof-work-theres-mining-hashing https://cryptorials.io/beyond-hashcash-proof-work-theres-min...

jraph 4y ago
The certificate of this domain is expired. I can't check what it does exactly but I would guess that all your Cuckoo Cycle Proof-of-Work scheme does is [something equivalent to calculating hashes - something equally meaningless in itself - for all intents and purposes of your parent commenter].
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  The point is that it's not all equally meaningless. However useful uses (typically finding new primes and similar mathematical searches) seem to be fundamentally incompatible with using a blockchain as a distributed ledger in a zero trust environment, because that usefulness automatically weakens the cryptographic safety ?
- tromp 4y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20210506232722/http://cryptorials.io/beyond-hashcash-proof-work-theres-mining-hashing/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210506232722/http://cryptorial... also works if your browser is picky about expired certs.

voldacar 4y ago

It's my computer though, and I'm paying for the electricity to run it. Why is it any business of yours what calculations I run on it? What an absurd statement.

datameta 4y ago
Multiply your argument by a million people (some of whom run mining farms) and that's when we have a problem.
angelbar 4y ago
Subsidized energy is the problem. Or if it is yours to generate it, the permit to pollute for that energy against the public benefits
felurx 4y ago
If you burn dozens of kilo-watts, and it's not just you but many others too, and you're all doing it in a way that harms society / the global population much more than it benefits us all, it very much is my and everyone's business. (Or, in other words: It's my lighter, and I'm paying for the gasoline, so why is it any business of yours what I'm setting on fire with it?)

Mistletoe 4y ago

The market is solving the problem for humanity. Ethereum transitioned to proof of stake (99.988% less electricity usage) and the price has now outperformed Bitcoin in the bull market and the bear market.

taolegal 4y ago
> The market is solving the problem for humanity The market still considers a bitcoin to be worth 10x more than ethereum.
- Mistletoe 4y ago
  A better comparison would be market cap and Bitcoin is only about 2x Ethereum right now. If that ever gets closer or flips, I feel like it’s pretty much over for Bitcoin and its first mover advantage and store of money meme.
danuker 4y ago
Hope it's not susceptible to some yet-undiscovered Sybil attack or network split bug.

0xfffafaCrash 4y ago

I don’t think Proof of Work should be illegal anywhere. The value is not in what is computed but in what properties it gives to the system. What should be addressed though is the problem of negative externalities not being priced in. This is not specific to energy usage of PoW or any other use of energy. Those producing emissions should categorically be required to foot the bill for repairing any damage done and those taxes should be put to use to that end. Once priced in, many things that otherwise commonize costs but privatize profits may prove to be not worth pursuing. If the societal good done by certain things is worth the negative externalities, those can be explicitly and transparently funded through subsidies which offset some portion of the costs.

nells 4y ago
There’s absolutely no way to compute the price of the damage that every ton of CO2 is going to do, so whatever value you choose is going to be arbitrary and ultimately unfair.
- 0xfffafaCrash 4y ago
  What’s the cost of sequestering each ton of CO2? $30? $90? Prohibitively high for some purposes? Well that seems like a relatively good place to start. Having a positive number adjustable based on large scale statistics does a hell of a lot more to fix market incentives than pricing it at a constant $0 and banning one specific thing (in a way which can’t even be enforced) as a political gimmick.
  - nells 4y ago
    You can also price it at $0 and NOT ban it.
    - 0xfffafaCrash 4y ago
      Sure, but that does nothing to help with the tragedy of the commons caused by unaddressed negative externalities…

germandiago 4y ago

So let us say I do a transaction and now instead of doing it online I have to take a car and go to city 20 km away, go to the bank, withdraw and go to Western Union and send it abroad. What takes more energy? No, forbidden forbiding, please, for things like these.

assbuttbuttass 4y ago
I'll be generous and assume you use a whole gallon of gas for a 20km trip, that's approx. 34 kWh [0]. Meanwhile, a single Bitcoin transaction takes 1,173 kWh [1] [0] https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Miles_per_gallon_gasoline_equivalent#:~:text=When%20testing%20electric%20vehicles%20for,which%20converts%20to%2033.7%20kWh https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Miles_per_gallon_gas.... [1] https://fortune.com/2021/10/26/bitcoin-electricity-consumption-carbon-footprin/ https://fortune.com/2021/10/26/bitcoin-electricity-consumpti...
- germandiago 4y ago
  is it really that polluting? :O: I find myself shocked, let me take a look. Anyways, I think the real fear here is from govts. and their loss of control through fiat currency and transaction systems, honestly. But that is an entirely different topic...
- oska 4y ago
  A single transaction uses the trivial energy it takes to power the device that signs the transaction and whatever trivial amount is required to transmit it to the network. Your quoted sources make the egregious error of considering the energy used to secure the network and protocol as the energy used to process transactions. This ignorant error has been pointed out many times already in the discussion around POW.
felurx 4y ago
If you have a devive you can send crypto with, you almost certainly have a device you can use online banking with. Also, I don't really see how this is really relevant, it really sounds like a "But Sometimes" issue, where some edge case of something sucks, but that doesn't say much about if that something in total is bad or not.

BoppreH 4y ago

The comparison to a lottery is too kind. In a lottery the ticket fees go to the organizer, who wastes a little in administrative fees, takes a percentage for themselves, and returns the rest as prizes. Bad for income distribution, but not especially wasteful. In a PoW blockchain the "ticket fee" — the electricity and depreciating hardware — is completely used up. The reward doesn't come from the other miners, but from transaction fees and new coins (diluting the value). It's like a lottery that uses all the income from tickets to pay for marketing, and the actual prizes are paid by government subsidy.

tommiegannert 4y ago

> all Proof of Work does [---] similar to a lottery It's a probabilistic distributed rate limiter to speed up information convergence in a gossip system. I agree it's a wasteful way of deciding what your VCS' HEAD is.

charlesrocket 4y ago

The lottery that is based on non-existing concept like gambling where all the fees piped to one party? Not to mention you can’t use your brain while “playing” since calculating winning locations is illegal. Also it sound like you missing the whole point why all these hashes are discarded and what is being produced at the end of each cycle.

ashwagary 4y ago

You like the state regulating how electricity can be used? Slippery slope.