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BurtW

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Quote from: ernie- on July 02, 2014, 04:12:20 PM

More than half of all the 21million bitcoins that were ever designed to exist are already out there in circulation. Mining new coins is not important to liquidity, we just need to find 144 blocks each day for transactions to ride on, it no longer requires many coins in those blocks as we have enough in circulation, so it might as well just be the one coin. I don't think waiting until 2029 is the answer, the world will be struggling for oil and coal around then unless something else happens to curb world demand.

Oh.

You are suggesting a change to the protocol. Not just any change but a change that would cause a hard fork. And, not just any hard fork but a hard fork that would greatly punish the miners that switch to your suggested alternate protocol (only 1 BTC/block) versus staying on the original protocol (25 BTC/block).

So, it will never happen. And just so you know when I said never, I meant never and there is no need to try to argue for the various virtues of the proposal - unless you actually like talking to a walls or trying to move mountains.

DannyElfman

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ernie-

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Quote from: brenzi on July 02, 2014, 02:06:15 PM

Quote from: ernie- on July 02, 2014, 04:11:59 AM

I think one way to slow the growth is reduce the block reward from 25 coins to just 1 coin per block, there is no way the BTC price will jump 25 fold to compensate as more then half the coins are already mined so there is no shortage of supply, and no reason for that much fiat to enter the market.

According to this formula:

Quote from: brenzi on April 20, 2013, 04:43:07 PM

[...]
GlobalEnergyConsumptionForMining ~= (MiningReward + TransactionFees) * bitcoinValueInUSD / EnergyCostInUSDperkWh[/i]

your suggestion might make things 25x better. But there would be a shortage of liquidity on the exchanges driving BTC price. So it's not 25x.
And it only works if people do not pay more transaction fees.

More than half of all the 21million bitcoins that were ever designed to exist are already out there in circulation. Mining new coins is not important to liquidity, we just need to find 144 blocks each day for transactions to ride on, it no longer requires many coins in those blocks as we have enough in circulation, so it might as well just be the one coin. I don't think waiting until 2029 is the answer, the world will be struggling for oil and coal around then unless something else happens to curb world demand.

BurtW

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Quote from: ernie- on July 02, 2014, 04:11:59 AM

I think one way to slow the growth is reduce the block reward from 25 coins to just 1 coin per block, there is no way the BTC price will jump 25 fold to compensate as more then half the coins are already mined so there is no shortage of supply, and no reason for that much fiat to enter the market.

Great minds think alike (you and Satoshi)! In fact, the block reward will be reduced to just 0.78125000 BTC per block in about 2033.

See entire schedule here:

Code:

       Original      BTC per
Era  start year        block
---  ----------  -----------
  0        2009  50.00000000
  1        2013  25.00000000
  2        2017  12.50000000
  3        2021   6.25000000
  4        2025   3.12500000
  5        2029   1.56250000
  6        2033   0.78125000
  7        2037   0.39062500
  8        2041   0.19531250
  9        2045   0.09765625
 10        2049   0.04882813
 11        2053   0.02441406
 12        2057   0.01220703
 13        2061   0.00610352
 14        2065   0.00305176
 15        2069   0.00152588
 16        2073   0.00076294
 17        2077   0.00038147
 18        2081   0.00019073
 19        2085   0.00009537
 20        2089   0.00004768
 21        2093   0.00002384
 22        2097   0.00001192
 23        2101   0.00000596
 24        2105   0.00000298
 25        2109   0.00000149
 26        2113   0.00000075
 27        2117   0.00000037
 28        2121   0.00000019
 29        2125   0.00000009
 30        2129   0.00000005
 31        2133   0.00000002
 32        2137   0.00000001

brenzi

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Quote from: ernie- on July 02, 2014, 04:11:59 AM

I think one way to slow the growth is reduce the block reward from 25 coins to just 1 coin per block, there is no way the BTC price will jump 25 fold to compensate as more then half the coins are already mined so there is no shortage of supply, and no reason for that much fiat to enter the market.

According to this formula:

Quote from: brenzi on April 20, 2013, 04:43:07 PM

[...]
GlobalEnergyConsumptionForMining ~= (MiningReward + TransactionFees) * bitcoinValueInUSD / EnergyCostInUSDperkWh[/i]

your suggestion might make things 25x better. But there would be a shortage of liquidity on the exchanges driving BTC price. So it's not 25x.
And it only works if people do not pay more transaction fees.

brenzi

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Quote from: ?? on ??

[...]
The only solution I can see is :
- when there are no longer possible improvements in ASIC technologies,
- ASICs are sold at marginal cost of production (a few cents per chip),
- Difficulty is so high that a mining operation is only marginally profitable ($100 of electricity mining between $99 and $101 of bitcoins)
Then what may happen is :
- Large mining farms contract with electricity producers and accept to modulate their usage on "orders" given by the grid
- This way they would pay the real-time spot price of electricity (positive or negative)
- At night, or when there is too much wind

, the farm could even be paid to burn electricity !

Your scenario is not very likely to happen.
And good luck with network security if mining power is fluctuating heavily.
Of course, if miners would be distributed equally around the globe, electricity spot prices would even out quite well and so would actual hashpower. But a heavy centralization of mining in the countries with lowest electricity prices is much more probable in your scenario.

I don't see how your suggestions could make things better. The only way out I see is a hard fork to PoS. With today's market cap that should be pretty secure. Or all of us support energy-sufficient altcoins by holding more value in a PoS altcoin than in Bitcoin!

ernie-

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I think one way to slow the growth is reduce the block reward from 25 coins to just 1 coin per block, there is no way the BTC price will jump 25 fold to compensate as more then half the coins are already mined so there is no shortage of supply, and no reason for that much fiat to enter the market.

ernie-

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Quote from: ?? on ??

http://www.scribd.com/doc/228253109/The-Relative-Sustainability-of-the-Bitcoin-Network-by-Hass-McCook

The guy is clearly wrong, he claims the Bitcoin emission trend is decreasing. Then he quotes the nethash as 95PH/s yet it's already hit 145PH/s a week ago. Trying to compare Bitcoin mining with physical mining in the real world is obviously a stunt and an attempt to distract and uninformed reader. There is no relationship between the two processes other than they both use the word "mining'.

What he fails to grasp is the exponential growth in bitcoin mining power consumption.

BurtW

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I have just updated my thread here:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.7626097

where I show what would happen if the growth in hash rate over the last one year period (23.45% per adjustment) were to continue at the same rate for one more year.

It shows that something (price or growth in hash rate) must give before the end of the year.

You can also see the current power and energy numbers and most importantly for this thread the projected energy and power consumption if the growth in hash rate were to be maintained for just one more year. Don't worry it can't and it won't.

BurtW

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Quote

Google on Thursday shed some light on its energy consumption, which worked out to about 2.26 million megawatt hours of electricity in 2010.

(http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2392654,00.asp) also (http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-09/google-releases-its-energy-consumption-numbers-revealing-260-million-watt-continuous-suck)

( 2.26 * 10¹² Wh/y ) / (24*365.25 h/y) = 257 MW

Quote

Direct electricity use of the Internet is probably around 10% of total electricity consumption, said Jon Koomey Research Fellow at Stanford University but he immediately added that the number does not tell us very much.

(http://www.techthefuture.com/technology/how-much-electricity-does-the-internet-use/)

Current minimum consumption of the Bitcoin network (it is probably more than this due to AC needs and the use of less efficient older hashing units):

From https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate lets call it 120,000,000 GH/s

(1.2 * 10¹⁷ H/s) * (0.8 * 10^-9 J/H)

   = ( 1.2 * 0.8 ) * ( 10¹⁷ * 10^-9 ) ( H/s * J/H )

   = 0.96 * 10^(17-9) (J/s)

   = 96 MW

Let's double it. Still less than Google at the current time.

We should surpase Google for sure.

brenzi

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Quote from: Collider on July 01, 2014, 01:26:23 AM

[...]

Mining uses a miniscule amount of energy compared to all the wasteful use of electricity in the United States alone.

How come the electricity consumption per capita is more than 2.5* that of Germany?

If everyone of the 318m US citizens would reduce power consumption by only 10% (easily achieved by switching lightbulbs...), it would save 25 700 MW of generation capacity alone.

You can do all the bitcoin mining of your hearts´content with that, and then some.

This statement is just very shortsighted. Minuscule is only bitcoin's market cap compared to the world's whole economy.

Quote from: BurtW on July 01, 2014, 10:45:16 AM

[...]

= 4.3128 GW

World power production from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation

is about 2311.4 GW.

So Bitcoin would use about 0.1866 % of world electrical output in this maximum build out scenario.

BTW in the above scenario the difficulty would be 753,000,000,000

That is today, at 600$/BTC. Let's assume 6000$/BTC and you'll already be using 1.866% of the world's elecricity use but still be a minuscule economy. (directly following from the calculation above)

This by the way also means hidden cost of the bitcoin network paid by everybody because of increasing electricity prices due to increased demand.

BurtW

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Quote from: Collider on July 01, 2014, 01:44:57 AM

There is a very real limit to difficulty, and it is Btc price, power efficiency, power price, available hosting facilities, hardware price and some other factors.

The upper limit is calculated in this thread:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/break-even-difficulty-by-hardware-efficiency-power-cost-value-of-btc-281279

Based on $100 per BTC and $0.10 per kWh the electrical cost break even point is about 179.7 PH/s.

Adjusting for $600 per BTC (x6) and $0.02 per kWh (x5) would give us 179.7 * 6 * 5 = 5,391 PH/s.

The same thread assumes 0.8 J/GH so:

   5,391 PH/s = 5.391 * 10¹⁸ H/s
   0.8 J/GH = 0.8 * 10^-9 J/H

   (5.391 * 10¹⁸ H/s) * (0.8 * 10^-9 J/H)

   = ( 5.391 * 0.8 ) * ( 10¹⁸ * 10^-9 ) ( H/s * J/H )

   = 4.3128 * 10^(18-9) (J/s)

   = 4.3128 GW

World power production from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation

is about 2311.4 GW.

So Bitcoin would use about 0.1866 % of world electrical output in this maximum build out scenario.

BTW in the above scenario the difficulty would be 753,000,000,000

Marlo Stanfield

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Quote from: ernie- on July 01, 2014, 01:31:49 AM

Quote from: Collider on July 01, 2014, 01:26:23 AM

Mining uses a miniscule amount of energy compared to all the wasteful use of electricity in the United States alone.

How come the electricity consumption per capita is more than 2.5* that of Germany?

If everyone of the 318m US citizens would reduce power consumption by only 10% (easily achieved by switching lightbulbs...), it would save 25 700 MW of generation capacity alone.

You can do all the bitcoin mining of your hearts´content with that, and then some.

And how long do you think it will be before the bitcoin mining network is up to many gigawatts of power consumption, with nethash growing by 60% each month?

If only MegaBigPower keeps up with their 50PH/s per mth. expansion plans, that will require a new nuclear power station every 18months.

http://www.coindesk.com/megabigpower-launches-global-franchisee-network-add-50phs-per-month-bitcoin-network/

This picture is mind blowing. Wow, bitcoin mining has come a long way. It's almost ridiculous at this point. How much further are we going to see this go?

ernie-

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Quote from: Ayers on July 01, 2014, 04:14:10 AM

can energy be redirected to do useful things? maybe i'm speaking bullshit i know lol

Its mostly waste heat, so that can have uses.

Ayers

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can energy be redirected to do useful things? maybe i'm speaking bullshit i know lol

Collider

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Quote from: ernie- on July 01, 2014, 01:31:49 AM

If only MegaBigPower keeps up with their expansion plans, that will require a new nuclear power station every 18months.

In a first stage they want to build 10MW of capacity until 2015 and are planning to build one up to 50MW facility.

You probably might not know this but assuming exponential difficulty growth is obviously a fallacy (aslong as there isn´t exponential price increase in Btc).

There is a very real limit to difficulty, and it is Btc price, power efficiency, power price, available hosting facilities, hardware price and some other factors.

Regardless, compared to my example, Difficulty could increase atleast 171 fold before being the same amount that can easily be saved by some energy efficient appliances in the household in the US alone.
It really is a TINY usage compared to wasteful electricity usage in the US, let alone globally.

ernie-

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Quote from: Collider on July 01, 2014, 01:26:23 AM

Mining uses a miniscule amount of energy compared to all the wasteful use of electricity in the United States alone.

How come the electricity consumption per capita is more than 2.5* that of Germany?

If everyone of the 318m US citizens would reduce power consumption by only 10% (easily achieved by switching lightbulbs...), it would save 25 700 MW of generation capacity alone.

You can do all the bitcoin mining of your hearts´content with that, and then some.

And how long do you think it will be before the bitcoin mining network is up to many gigawatts of power consumption, with nethash growing by 60% each month?

If only MegaBigPower keeps up with their 50PH/s per mth. expansion plans, that will require a new nuclear power station every 18months.

http://www.coindesk.com/megabigpower-launches-global-franchisee-network-add-50phs-per-month-bitcoin-network/

Collider

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Quote from: ernie- on July 01, 2014, 01:24:55 AM

Quote from: Collider on July 01, 2014, 01:15:28 AM

The whole "mining is a huge waste of electricity" motion is just completely wrong.

Mining currently uses between 105MW and 150MW.
However, the act of mining is the act of keeping the Bitcoin payment system alive and secure.

Do you know how much electricity all the banks in the world use for their "services" to the people?
Hint: It is most likely much more.

Nonsense, the comparison between mining and the banking network is specious. You don't have to mine fiat the power consumption of the banking system is to provide the layer above the currency, the accounting, recording, lending and other services. Bitcoin still needs those infrastructures as well, it's just that it's not widely accepted so that part of the infrastructure is currently quite small, but growing every day. If Bitcoin becomes mainstream and adopted by banks and credit card providers, you wait and see how much total power is used then!

Mining uses a miniscule amount of energy compared to all the wasteful use of electricity in the United States alone.

How come the electricity consumption per capita is more than 2.5* that of Germany?

If everyone of the 318m US citizens would reduce power consumption by only 10% (easily achieved by switching lightbulbs...), it would save 25 700 MW of generation capacity alone.

You can do all the bitcoin mining of your hearts´content with that, and then some.

ernie-

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Quote from: Collider on July 01, 2014, 01:15:28 AM

The whole "mining is a huge waste of electricity" motion is just completely wrong.

Mining currently uses between 105MW and 150MW.
However, the act of mining is the act of keeping the Bitcoin payment system alive and secure.

Do you know how much electricity all the banks in the world use for their "services" to the people?
Hint: It is most likely much more.

Nonsense, the comparison between mining and the banking network is specious. You don't have to mine fiat the power consumption of the banking system is to provide the layer above the currency, the accounting, recording, lending, usury, and other services. Bitcoin still needs those infrastructures as well, it's just that it's not widely accepted so that part of the infrastructure is currently quite small, but growing every day. If Bitcoin becomes mainstream and adopted by banks and credit card providers, you wait and see how much total power is used then!

Collider

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Activity: 714

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The whole "mining is a huge waste of electricity" motion is just completely wrong.

Mining currently uses between 105MW and 150MW.
However, the act of mining is the act of keeping the Bitcoin payment system alive and secure.

Do you know how much electricity all the banks in the world use for their "services" to the people?
Hint: It is most likely much more.

Regardless of the above, many miners use renewable energy sources for mining, as in most areas it is simply cheaper.

The example of WA state with 2-4ct/kWh for commercial use is just one example, but it clearly shows that unsubsidized renewable energy can be far cheaper than any coal / gas plant.

Many miners also get hosting in Iceland, having the benefit of 100% renewable energy there plus extremely good conditions for free cooling (my miner has an intake temperature of 18°C in the summer).

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