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I hope this is not the case. Bitcoin demands a massive energy investment (every watt used by the attacker must at least be matched by a watt used by the honest

I hope this is not the case. Bitcoin demands a massive energy investment (every watt used by the attacker must at least be matched by a watt used by the honest parties), and in the future we are going to need to be more careful about power utilization.

wwweston 13y ago
To emphasize the point, this isn't just true to the extent that energy is scarce: "the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase." https://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets... By making an economic exchange computationally expensive, we may have invented another way to make economic activity ecologically expensive.
- intelliot 13y ago
  It's too early for anyone to say whether this concern is a real problem, but here are a few points that you should analyze further: 1) ASICs. In the early days of Bitcoin, one of the biggest concerns was: "Now that computational power is worth real money, aren't malicious hackers going to become rich and powerful by harnessing botnets? And more normal people's computers will join botnets as hackers are directly incentivized, by bitcoin mining, to exploit users more often." With the rise of the Bitcoin-specific ASIC, that suddenly became a total non-issue. It's completely worthless for a normal desktop PC to mine for bitcoins now: their total computational power, as measured in SHA256 hashes per second, is a tiny drop in the ocean compared to the high-end ASICs that are mining today. Problem solved. Though governments will try to get involved, and no one can definitively predict the winner in advance -- I believe it's most likely that private industry, incentivized by Bitcoin's mining rewards, will create the most advanced specialized chips for Bitcoin. They're already pushing much lower nanometer processes than general purpose CPUs! 2) Energy expense of current monetary system. People, computers, ATMs, POS's, paper, time expenditure, inflation/hyperinflation, uncertainty, economic/debt crises, counterfeiting, unemployment - all problems that could be reduced or eliminated by Bitcoin. 3) Future technology. Before cars were invented, one of the biggest concerns was: "How are we going to get rid of the horse manure that's piling up in the world's densest cities?" Infrared radiation isn't the only way to release heat to space. And even if it were, no one could say that it's not possible for humans+technology to amplify/improve this process.
  - gamblor956 13y ago
    1) ASICs generate a lot of heat, so that problem is not solved. 2) People, computers, POS, time expenditure, currency fluctuation, uncertainty, economic crisis, and unemployment are problems which are either not addressable by Bitcoin or not meaningfully impacted by it. Bitcoin isn't some magical economic cure-all. It's just a means of exchange. 3) This is a straw man. Horse manure disposal was not a primary concern before cars were invented. The primary concern was how to transport goods before they spoiled. Improved cargo transportation technologies and refrigeration technologies changed the economic landscape, not cars. 4) Infrared radiation is the primary way in which heat is released in to space. The sum of all other means of heat loss from the Earth is currently a rounding error compared to heat loss by radiation. It would take an absolutely massive investment in technology to change that.
    - fiatmoney 13y ago
      3 is historically inaccurate; in the timeframe when horses were widely used, a fairly large amount of effort was expended in removing manure (& human waste, for that matter) in major cities like New York and London.
    - sroerick 13y ago
      2. Parent was simply comparing the infrastructure supporting the bitcoin netwrok with the infrastructure supporting credit card processing. The question isn't "is Bitcoin wasteful?", the question is "Is Bitcoin more or less wasteful than the current payment infrastructure?"
  - brianbarker 13y ago
    The cost and scarcity of ASICs will just centralize the mining power into the hands of a few groups. Not so decentralized at that point.
  - wwweston 13y ago
    1) Two words: Landauer Limit. No matter what your incentives or process improvements are, efficiency for non-reversible computation (and we are talking about crypto here) has fundamental limits. 2) The first bit is a potentially fair point -- I don't know what the energy costs and waste heat contributions of a transaction is under the current system. The second bit? "inflation/hyperinflation, uncertainty, economic/debt crises, counterfeiting, unemployment - all problems that could be reduced or eliminated by Bitcoin" Mostly sounds somewhere between naive and unhinged, but show the work if you can. 3) I guess the horse manure analogy implies we're going to come up with different technology that doesn't produce waste heat? Are we talking about a revolutionary breakthrough in thermodynamics, or just a shift to more renewables (say, from automobiles to horses)? The talk about whether infrared radiation is the only way to release heat to space is related, and addressed in the article I linked: "E: Could not technology pipe or beam the heat elsewhere, rather than relying on thermal radiation? P: Well, we could (and do, somewhat) beam non-thermal radiation into space, like light, lasers, radio waves, etc. But the problem is that these “sources” are forms of high-grade, low-entropy energy. Instead, we’re talking about getting rid of the waste heat from all the processes by which we use energy. This energy is thermal in nature. We might be able to scoop up some of this to do useful “work,” but at very low thermodynamic efficiency. If you want to use high-grade energy in the first place, having high-entropy waste heat is pretty inescapable." In other words, it seems to me you're talking about either a fundamental breakthrough in thermodynamics again.
- EGreg 13y ago
  As I see it, there is only one solution - the Malthusian solution. Have less children. Population rates in developed countries are plummeting. And just in time too. If only we could make the developing countries do the same thing -- but instead of condoms, careers and consumerism, they have poverty and religion which prohibits condoms. We should be figuring out ways to handle economic problems such as those Ukraine and Japan will face: an aging, graying population for a few decades followed by less people and more robots doing work. We tax the robots and distribute Basic Income to everybody. Instead, we are worried about sustaining an exponentially growing economy, and how will the kids pay for the parents. On a global scale this is the most dangerous thing on the planet! Pollution and heat!
applecore 13y ago
That's really not true. There's boundless, practically unlimited energy all around us, and we're increasingly able to capture and utilize it. We should plan for more novel methods of utilization, not less.
frabcus 13y ago
Other cryptocurrencies use "proof of stake" instead of "proof of work". Notably, Peercoin. This doesn't use energy. It's quite possible at some point that one of those will supersede Bitcoin, and/or Bitcoin will alter to proof of stake (perhaps when nearly all coins are mined).
- wcoenen 13y ago
  How can proof of stake drive consensus? It seems you could mine both sides of a fork simultaneously.
  - fragsworth 13y ago
    Proof of stake requires that you are holding coins, making miners personally invested. If a fork occurs, consensus is driven by the fact that stakeholders would lose value if they allow the fork to continue, so they will form consensus quickly.
    - kahoon 13y ago
      Why would they lose value if they allow the fork to continue? They can hold and stake coins in both forks, right?
      - fragsworth 13y ago
        Because the market value of the currency would probably drop if it were forked for very long.
    - wcoenen 13y ago
      When you chose a side of a fork, you risk having chosen the wrong one. So it seems rational not to chose. Let the other miners take the risk. After all, they won't let the currency collapse right? It seems that the Nash equilibrium for this game will then be that none of the miners take the risk, consensus is lost, and the currency does collapse. Perhaps I'm missing something though.
philrapo 13y ago
Ripple's consensus algorithm is a much more energy efficient process that achieves the same result, i.e. getting the network to reach consensus about a distributed database. https://ripple.com/wiki/Consensus_Graphic https://ripple.com/wiki/Consensus_Graphic
- wmf 13y ago
  As long as you assume that Sybil attacks don't exist.

wwweston 13y ago

To emphasize the point, this isn't just true to the extent that energy is scarce: "the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase." https://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets... By making an economic exchange computationally expensive, we may have invented another way to make economic activity ecologically expensive.

intelliot 13y ago
It's too early for anyone to say whether this concern is a real problem, but here are a few points that you should analyze further: 1) ASICs. In the early days of Bitcoin, one of the biggest concerns was: "Now that computational power is worth real money, aren't malicious hackers going to become rich and powerful by harnessing botnets? And more normal people's computers will join botnets as hackers are directly incentivized, by bitcoin mining, to exploit users more often." With the rise of the Bitcoin-specific ASIC, that suddenly became a total non-issue. It's completely worthless for a normal desktop PC to mine for bitcoins now: their total computational power, as measured in SHA256 hashes per second, is a tiny drop in the ocean compared to the high-end ASICs that are mining today. Problem solved. Though governments will try to get involved, and no one can definitively predict the winner in advance -- I believe it's most likely that private industry, incentivized by Bitcoin's mining rewards, will create the most advanced specialized chips for Bitcoin. They're already pushing much lower nanometer processes than general purpose CPUs! 2) Energy expense of current monetary system. People, computers, ATMs, POS's, paper, time expenditure, inflation/hyperinflation, uncertainty, economic/debt crises, counterfeiting, unemployment - all problems that could be reduced or eliminated by Bitcoin. 3) Future technology. Before cars were invented, one of the biggest concerns was: "How are we going to get rid of the horse manure that's piling up in the world's densest cities?" Infrared radiation isn't the only way to release heat to space. And even if it were, no one could say that it's not possible for humans+technology to amplify/improve this process.
- gamblor956 13y ago
  1) ASICs generate a lot of heat, so that problem is not solved. 2) People, computers, POS, time expenditure, currency fluctuation, uncertainty, economic crisis, and unemployment are problems which are either not addressable by Bitcoin or not meaningfully impacted by it. Bitcoin isn't some magical economic cure-all. It's just a means of exchange. 3) This is a straw man. Horse manure disposal was not a primary concern before cars were invented. The primary concern was how to transport goods before they spoiled. Improved cargo transportation technologies and refrigeration technologies changed the economic landscape, not cars. 4) Infrared radiation is the primary way in which heat is released in to space. The sum of all other means of heat loss from the Earth is currently a rounding error compared to heat loss by radiation. It would take an absolutely massive investment in technology to change that.
  - fiatmoney 13y ago
    3 is historically inaccurate; in the timeframe when horses were widely used, a fairly large amount of effort was expended in removing manure (& human waste, for that matter) in major cities like New York and London.
  - sroerick 13y ago
    2. Parent was simply comparing the infrastructure supporting the bitcoin netwrok with the infrastructure supporting credit card processing. The question isn't "is Bitcoin wasteful?", the question is "Is Bitcoin more or less wasteful than the current payment infrastructure?"
- brianbarker 13y ago
  The cost and scarcity of ASICs will just centralize the mining power into the hands of a few groups. Not so decentralized at that point.
- wwweston 13y ago
  1) Two words: Landauer Limit. No matter what your incentives or process improvements are, efficiency for non-reversible computation (and we are talking about crypto here) has fundamental limits. 2) The first bit is a potentially fair point -- I don't know what the energy costs and waste heat contributions of a transaction is under the current system. The second bit? "inflation/hyperinflation, uncertainty, economic/debt crises, counterfeiting, unemployment - all problems that could be reduced or eliminated by Bitcoin" Mostly sounds somewhere between naive and unhinged, but show the work if you can. 3) I guess the horse manure analogy implies we're going to come up with different technology that doesn't produce waste heat? Are we talking about a revolutionary breakthrough in thermodynamics, or just a shift to more renewables (say, from automobiles to horses)? The talk about whether infrared radiation is the only way to release heat to space is related, and addressed in the article I linked: "E: Could not technology pipe or beam the heat elsewhere, rather than relying on thermal radiation? P: Well, we could (and do, somewhat) beam non-thermal radiation into space, like light, lasers, radio waves, etc. But the problem is that these “sources” are forms of high-grade, low-entropy energy. Instead, we’re talking about getting rid of the waste heat from all the processes by which we use energy. This energy is thermal in nature. We might be able to scoop up some of this to do useful “work,” but at very low thermodynamic efficiency. If you want to use high-grade energy in the first place, having high-entropy waste heat is pretty inescapable." In other words, it seems to me you're talking about either a fundamental breakthrough in thermodynamics again.
EGreg 13y ago
As I see it, there is only one solution - the Malthusian solution. Have less children. Population rates in developed countries are plummeting. And just in time too. If only we could make the developing countries do the same thing -- but instead of condoms, careers and consumerism, they have poverty and religion which prohibits condoms. We should be figuring out ways to handle economic problems such as those Ukraine and Japan will face: an aging, graying population for a few decades followed by less people and more robots doing work. We tax the robots and distribute Basic Income to everybody. Instead, we are worried about sustaining an exponentially growing economy, and how will the kids pay for the parents. On a global scale this is the most dangerous thing on the planet! Pollution and heat!

applecore 13y ago

That's really not true. There's boundless, practically unlimited energy all around us, and we're increasingly able to capture and utilize it. We should plan for more novel methods of utilization, not less.

frabcus 13y ago

Other cryptocurrencies use "proof of stake" instead of "proof of work". Notably, Peercoin. This doesn't use energy. It's quite possible at some point that one of those will supersede Bitcoin, and/or Bitcoin will alter to proof of stake (perhaps when nearly all coins are mined).

wcoenen 13y ago
How can proof of stake drive consensus? It seems you could mine both sides of a fork simultaneously.
- fragsworth 13y ago
  Proof of stake requires that you are holding coins, making miners personally invested. If a fork occurs, consensus is driven by the fact that stakeholders would lose value if they allow the fork to continue, so they will form consensus quickly.
  - kahoon 13y ago
    Why would they lose value if they allow the fork to continue? They can hold and stake coins in both forks, right?
    - fragsworth 13y ago
      Because the market value of the currency would probably drop if it were forked for very long.
  - wcoenen 13y ago
    When you chose a side of a fork, you risk having chosen the wrong one. So it seems rational not to chose. Let the other miners take the risk. After all, they won't let the currency collapse right? It seems that the Nash equilibrium for this game will then be that none of the miners take the risk, consensus is lost, and the currency does collapse. Perhaps I'm missing something though.

philrapo 13y ago

Ripple's consensus algorithm is a much more energy efficient process that achieves the same result, i.e. getting the network to reach consensus about a distributed database. https://ripple.com/wiki/Consensus_Graphic https://ripple.com/wiki/Consensus_Graphic

wmf 13y ago
As long as you assume that Sybil attacks don't exist.