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Bitcoin Block 840000
- windowshopping 3y agowhat's notable about this? has 11 upvotes at time of this comment but zero explanation for those of us who do not follow bitcoin in detail
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 3y agohttps://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/bitcoin-halving-cbs-news-explains/ https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/bitcoin-halving-cbs-news-ex... > Bitcoin is expected to go through a "halving" within the next day or two, a preprogrammed event that could impact production of the world's largest cryptocurrency. > A halving, which occurs about every four years, was designed by bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, to effectively reduce by half the reward that miners of the digital token receive. The idea is that by cutting in half the amount bitcoin miners currently make for their efforts, fewer bitcoins will enter the market, creating more scarcity of the cryptocurrency.
- atherton33 3y agoDoes that mean Bitcoin has just doubled its energy waste?
- MattOfNZ 3y agoYes.
- s0ss 3y agoWaste is constant in this context.
- mort96 3y agoThe energy use didn't significantly change, and the value it creates for humanity didn't significantly change, so probably not?
- TheRoque 3y agoNot really, it just means what it means: a block rewards 2 times less than before. What happens regarding the number of miners growing or shrinking depends on a lot of factors. If you're so sure it's gonna increase the mining power, then I suggest you invest in it right now.
- tylersmith 3y agoNo, the energy expended and the value it provides to the Bitcoin network is unaffected. The only change is that the inflation of the token decreased.
- barbarr 3y agoEnergy requirement is constant, reward is halved. So smaller players get out and bigger players benefiting from ASICs and economy of scale will stay. Usually after these events the energy usage of the network decreases temporarily for ~60 days and then settles to what it was before. [0] [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/19/bitcoin-just-completed-its-fourth-ever-halving-heres-what-investors-need-to-watch-now.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/19/bitcoin-just-completed-its-f...
- AlienRobot 3y agoHow is it going to keep itself decentralized if the smaller players get out every time there's a halvening?
- wmf 3y agoIf you have cheap electricity and a $5,000 AntMiner you can mine profitably. I would expect the halving to push out those who have more expensive electricity, not necessarily the smallest operators.
- ABeeSea 3y agoHopefully it means waste goes down as more miners become unprofitable and shutdown.
- cybercephas 3y ago[flagged]
- microtherion 3y agoAssuming that miners are rational actors, the hash rate should settle at a point where the expenses to mine a block (energy, hardware depreciation, etc) equal the rewards (block reward and fees), so, if the price of BTC and the fees stay constant, halving the block reward should reduce energy waste. Conversely, energy waste is proportional to, the BTC price. Energy waste could also be reduced by instituting a global tax on Bitcoin mining. The cost to miners would remain the same (because it's still equal to the rewards), but a part of what would be spent on wasted energy is now spent on taxes instead. Unfortunately this is highly dependent on avoiding tax cheating.
- SilasX 3y agoJust BTC mining? Not all uses of energy? It makes more sense to do a fossil fuel tax, which penalizes all activity that doesn't justify its environmental cost, as opposed to playing whack-a-mole with whatever uses are least popular right now.
- microtherion 3y agoCrypto mining is unique in that the absolute consumption provides no benefit at all. The "work" consists purely in demonstrably having spent a certain amount of value, and the energy is purely an unit of accounting. So if you could manage to make this unit more expensive for EVERY miner, the accounting system would work as before, the safety properties of the system would be unchanged, and less energy would be used. I can think of no other use of energy where this situation holds.
- SilasX 3y agoYou'd get that same benefit, and reduce numerous, non-obvious wastes of fossil fuels with a carbon tax.
- psychlops 3y ago[flagged]
- riffic 3y agoah it's orange site, you're supposed to be aware of everything and context is frowned upon edit: this is sarcasm if not clear but it reflects how often stuff gets posted here without an indication what is interesting about the topic (and it's poor form!)
- RivieraKid 3y agoHacker News has a fetish for these kinds of posts.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- riffic 3y agocontext? is there anything inherently notable about this?
- MuffinFlavored 3y agoonce every 4 years "bitcoin mining block reward halving"
- Heliodex 3y agoBitcoin's block reward halves every 210 000 blocks (210k * 10 minutes = 4 years), this block marks Bitcoin entering its 5th epoch with a block reward of 3.125 BTC down from its original of 50 BTC. Interestingly there must have been a lot of people that wanted to get a transaction in the halving block, including fees and subsidy it resulted in a total reward of over 40 BTC for the pool that mined the block, ViaBTC.
- foota 3y agoWas the multiplier high enough for this block that it would have made sense to rent GPUs to mine it?
- sanswork 3y agoNo
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Heliodex 3y agoI don't think so, partly because the total reward + fees was only 5-6x that of a typical block and partly because almost all blocks are now mined by pools that share block rewards among their members usually based on hash rate, so one would have to be in the pool that mined the block as well. Also the fact that GPUs are less efficient than using specific mining hardware/ASICs for most Proof of Work cryptocurrencies.
- px43 3y agoNo, GPUs are literally millions of times less power performant than equivalent ASICs for sha256 mining. In the GPU days, mining was talked about in terms of megahashes per second, and ASIC miners these days are talked about in terms of terrahashes per second.
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago>In the GPU days... Back in my earliest days, a CPU could mine bitcoin (it was just a check/enable box in the preferences). HODL, erryday, frens.
- xyst 3y ago$2M award for the miners. Wonder how much energy that took
- jpcfl 3y agoPresumably somewhere in the ballpark of $2M worth.
- vitiral 3y agoWell, 2M of energy + opex at least
- quesera 3y agoIf that was correct, every miner would have to win every block to stay in business. That's clearly not the case.
- jpcfl 3y agoIf I spend $2M to mine $2M of gold, and the value of that gold increases by 2x over the next 10 years, then I think I could stay in business. That would actually be a pretty solid business. The value of BTC has increased nearly ~200x in the last 10 years. I don't anticipate it will do this again, but I'm sure some of these miners think it will continue to grow at some rate (plus, they have already capitalized on the last 10yrs of growth).
- quesera 3y agoThat doesn't make sense. If miners are break-even only after pricing in future valuation movement, then they would just buy BTC at SPOT. No need for all the capex, opex, uncertainty of hashing success, and time-limited acquisition of doing the work of mining.
- jpcfl 3y agoThat wasn't my point. My point was that they could stay in business. My original point was that it was in the ballpark of $2M. Could be more, could be less, all depending on a number of variables--I believe one of those variable just doubled. I'm not sure what the cost is now, but back in 2012-ish when I briefly looked into mining, it cost about $1 in energy to mine $1 worth of BTC. I used your logic and decided it didn't make sense to invest in mining, so I didn't. I wish I had, or at least purchased some BTC, but I was a broke college student just looking to capitalize on the hardware I already owned, and I didn't really know a thing about investing (other than investing in a 6 pack of beer to meet girls at parties--my ROI was not great, BTW, so I don't recommend this strategy).
- robryan 3y agoI still don't get why I would want to hold a bitcoin for anything other than speculation. If I want some form of currency to actually use there are plenty of less volatile options.
- spacemanspiff01 3y agoMy view is that it can never be used as a currency because it is inherently deflationary.
- clementmas 3y agoGenuine question: why is that? Is inflation required?
- psychlops 3y agoNot at all, but it's a dominant view for a variety of reasons. A base concept is to keep money moving into other investments and discourage saving. I suspect the ongoing inflation rates will make this view less attractive in the future.
- halfcat 3y agoNot required, but a deflationary asset used as currency discourages borrowing, and companies and governments love borrowing. If you knew that inflation was going to rapidly increase, the smartest thing you could do would be to take out as many loans as you can and buy usable assets, like a car and a warehouse full of canned beans. Imagine you take out a loan to buy a car. Tomorrow, hyperinflation happens and the currency has lost 99% of its value. You can now pay off your car with a can of beans. Inflation is also an avenue for a government to steal the excess value produced by an economy over time. Probably just a coincidence though.
- whimsicalism 3y agoIt does not, in an ideal economic scenario, discourage borrowing - it just means nominal interest rates might be negative.
- munchler 3y agoAny interest I might have in this is tempered by the fact that Bitcoin mining accounts for about 0.2% of global carbon emissions - roughly the same as the country of Greece. As long as Bitcoin is based on a proof-of-work process, I think the world would be better off without it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_bitcoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_bitco...
- Heliodex 3y agoI do believe there are many better proof systems available at the moment, and I thought its emissions would be higher than 0.2%. Though if fossil fuels account for the majority of global carbon emissions, and banks providing the majority of fossil fuel investments, banks should surely account for a much larger portion of global emissions. There is an argument to be made that Bitcoin could end up producing more carbon emissions if it already produces this much with a much lower transaction capacity than most banking systems. However, systems like the Lightning Network <https://wiki2.org/en/Lightning_Network https://wiki2.org/en/Lightning_Network> build on top of Bitcoin by settling transactions before they ever reach the blockchain, slashing fees and bundling possibly hundreds or thousands of transactions into one, so the number of payments that actually occur could be much greater than it seems.
- lowkey 3y agoIgnoring banks for a moment, consider the US military which some claim protects the value of the dollar. According to The Atlantic, the US military alone counts for 5.5% of global carbon emissions. https://archive.is/DVWZs https://archive.is/DVWZs
- cdchn 3y agoWhats the total market cap of the economic value protected by the US military?
- kinakomochidayo 3y agoLightning Network design is horrible, and it's literally impossible to onboard millions of users without increasing the L1 blocksize to an absurd amount. The world will likely move onto using rollups on other chains like Ethereum instead, which scale better, and pays gas to validators to get included into the blocks. Seems like the Bitcoin community is looking into rollups on Bitcoin, but it'll be impossible to get trustless Bitcoin on them, even with BitVM, without a hardfork.
- arduanika 3y agoCould we get a title change that adds a bit more context? Something like: Bitcoin passes reward "halvening" milestone at block 840000 You could sort of argue that the halvening concept is common-ish knowledge for tech people with passing familiarity, but hardly anyone outside the crypto space knows the significance of the number 840000.
- greyface- 3y agoI intentionally chose not to editorialize the title, as doing so is against HN guidelines. If a moderator wants to change it, though, I'll abide!
- lolinder 3y agoI think it's fine as is, comments are already in place providing the context.
- riffic 3y agoadding basic context is not editorializing and nothing should be considered "common knowledge" considering how vast and complex the whole domain of technology etc
- lolinder 3y agoI disagree: I'd rather see people use the original title (when it's not clickbait) and leave a comment with the context that they feel is important. That places your sense of what context is important on the same footing as everyone else's and doesn't allow the submitter to shape the discussion more than is warranted.
- colejohnson66 3y agoAm I reading these transactions right? It can cost over $5000 to transfer less than a single dollar? https://mempool.space/tx/2fc565c457bf3202704f3b2e61c50312c073e2b365152233f0315e82d7a51659 https://mempool.space/tx/2fc565c457bf3202704f3b2e61c50312c07...
- dotty- 3y agoWhen you make a transaction on the Bitcoin network (and really every other cryptocurrency), you tack on a fee to the amount of coin you want to send. Miners prioritize higher fee transactions when deciding which transactions to include in the next block. Therefore, to guarantee your inclusion in the next block, you would choose to increase the fee you pay. So, for this transaction, they chose to pay a $5000 fee to guarantee their placement in this block.
- chrisbolt 3y agoThat transaction appears to have an image attached: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/transactions/btc/2fc565c457bf3202704f3b2e61c50312c073e2b365152233f0315e82d7a51659 https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/transactions/btc/2fc565c... (see Ordinals Inscription)
- mvdtnz 3y agoWow they spent $5k to put some incredibly ugly AI generated art on the blockchain. Money well spent.
- stablemaxi 3y ago[dead]
- block_dagger 3y agoBut it's on a halving block, so whoever did it has bragging rights in a way. In twenty years they can point to it and say "I did that." I fear that ordinal inscriptions will start making the blockchain unwieldy, but I'm not educated enough to know if the mining cost of adding them is a good enough defense against such spam on the bitcoin chain.
- neom 3y agoAnyone have a sense on when realistically mining becomes totally impractical for the reward? I seem to recall reading somewhere that with the current technology it would take till around 2100 to mine them all, but surely somewhere between 2030 and 2040 the reward to power consumption will get out of whack such that nobody will do it?
- SeanAnderson 3y agoThat depends on the valuation of BTC, no?
- psychlops 3y agoMiners make money from the transaction fees as well as the block reward. If fewer people mine, then the difficulty level drops and allows people with lower computer power to get the rewards.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- redox99 3y agoIt will always make economical sense to mine, because difficulty automatically adjusts. The issue is when it becomes cheap enough to do a 51% attack.
- latchkey 3y agoIt will never be cheap enough to 51% attack either and even if it was attacked, it wouldn't matter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncPyMUfNyVM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncPyMUfNyVM https://www.crypto51.app/ https://www.crypto51.app/
- geraldog 3y agoThe only way I can foresee a cryptocoin actually holding value is if spending the coin meant spending processing cycles and RAM doing things like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volunteer_computing_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volunteer_computing_pr... But in more general sense, less like https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ and more like AWS... It's the only way to have value, actually holding computing power in a distributed network.
- gruez 3y agoYou're not the first person to think of that idea. The problem is how you can assign and reward workloads in a trustless way. Proof of work is easy to verify and you don't need to trust anyone. How would you do it for Folding@home or whatever?
- shagie 3y agoYou'd need multiple verifications with the same (or similar) result ... but that isn't trustless since Sybil attacks would still be possible. ... and proof of work tends to be the solution to Sybil attacks.
- geraldog 3y agoAnd you'd need to be sure that the work being done wasn't some real-world scam... I see the point of how difficult it would be - I'm just saying that's tremendous value.
- Jerrrry 3y agoThere have been very recent developments in homomorphic encryption - essentially doing addition and multiplication on encrypted data without revealing the inputs or outputs, and zero-knowledge proofs, thus enabling general trust-less computing.
- px43 3y agoYou're talking about Gridcoin. It didn't do too great economically, for reasons that become obvious when you think about it for a while. It was a great way to fund research, but you can't actually build a global economy on BOINC tasks.
- RivieraKid 3y agoGiven some weak assumptions, it can be proven that Bitcoin can't beat the performance of S&P 500 in a long enough time horizon. The gist of it is this: Bitcoin can't perpetually grow faster than world wealth. If we assume, say, 3% inflation-adjusted growth in world wealth, it means that Bitcoin cannot perpetually make more than 3% annually. Stocks, bonds, real-estate don't have this constraint because they pay cash to investors. At some point in the future, Bitcoin will be down over the last decade while S&P 500 will be up significantly. Bitcoin holders will start to think - wait, why am I holding Bitcoin instead of S&P 500? Edit: Hacker News says I'm posting too fast so I can't reply to comments below.
- robjan 3y agoThis doesn't really make sense. Bitcoin is deflationary but the market cap has no ceiling, it's just based on what people are currently willing to pay for a coin.
- RivieraKid 3y agoBitcoin's market cap can't grow faster than world wealth perpetually. S&P 500 can and has consistently done so. Does it make sense now?
- nwiswell 3y ago> perpetually Is this a fun thought experiment, or are you immortal? You may be shocked to learn that GDP growth can't continue perpetually either, under reasonable assumptions: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2005/2005.05244.pdf https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2005/2005.05244.pdf
- robjan 3y agoThe market cap is just the last price multiplied by the number of the asset in existence. There is no restriction on last price for either SP500 or bitcoin.
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- Octokiddie 3y agoContext: Bitcoin miners have just adopted a 50% pay cut for themselves. This pay cut was baked into Bitcoin protocol at the launch of the network (mostly, see "BIP 42" [1]). The OP link gives information about the block in which this pay cut was made. I get that HN comments tend to dismiss Bitcoin. But the fact that for the fourth time this pay cut has happened without a hitch speaks volumes to what makes Bitcoin interesting: It's a rare combination of economic incentives and technology that keeps chugging. Nobody can stop it. And it's extremely resistant to change. It requires no governmental approval. All attempts at subversion or interference have failed. There aren't many systems that come close to that kind of record. [1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0042.mediawiki https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0042.mediawi...
- worik 3y ago> speaks volumes to what makes Bitcoin interesting: Yes It is interesting It is not useful It is a huge waste
- phantomathkg 3y ago> Nobody can stop it. Hypothetically, government can with severe enough punishment. Governments will do anything to squeeze tax from things, and as long as any digital transfer is not being taxed, it will find way to stop it or squeeze tax out of it.
- whimsicalism 3y agoThere are tons of countries with severe capital controls where crypto is thriving.
- XorNot 3y agoThere's also an endless stream of very surprised crypenthusiasts who owe large tax bills. The tax department may not get you on any given year, but they will eventually get you.
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- AustinDev 3y agohooray bitcoin, bitcoin is dead, long live bitcoin!
- ngcc_hk 3y agoStrange a decentralised money supply can be coordinated so easily for changes. Is the miners already so concentrated they can do whatever they want.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wmf 3y agoThe supply halving schedule was coded into Bitcoin from day one so there's no coordination needed.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mancerayder 3y agoBTC to 100k as a 'base case' by the end of the year, but an inevitable climb towards 1 million per coin, say a barrage of influencers, YouTube personalities who used to run hedge funds, and other assorted media outlets. I trade BTC for swings, and have a vague belief in its future. It seems like more is happening with other coins in terms of platform development and r and d. But the shills are grating on me more than ever in this cycle.
- mancerayder 3y agoFolks have taken issue with calling out rampant shilling of the price to retail investors?
- gosub100 3y agoIf btc was successful it would always be measured relative to the dollar.
- lowkey 3y agoTruth is Bitcoin has mostly failed as a currency, and that’s ok. The only thing Bitcoin really buys is freedom.