Topic: A legal solution for bitcoin. (Max 5 computers per person to mine bitcoins) (Read 312 times)

This is an extreme solution.
It's not applicable to the real world.

There's no need to worry regarding this as no chances that it will happen someday.

you do not have to be scared. After all, not everyone does the this job.we have to solve other factors that cause global warming..

This is just really a selfish thinking on having these kind of restrictions or imposing such limitation of miners to each individual.We do all know that not all people do have that capability on producing their own miners then whos the one would really pushing up transactions when theres a lot and theres only a few miners existing? Its normal for those people or company that do have the capability on having it more than we do expect and just let it be and theres nothing to oppose of. I don't know why they do see this mining operation does really contribute global problems which same as you said there are even more worst things that produce even higher effects.

ridiculous.

we live in a world made up of countries. these countries are in competition with each other. if there's money to be made scalping a law made by another country then you can bet they'll do it.

until laws are applied globally nothing will work. money will go where the incentives encourage them to go.

as for bitcoin's electricity usage, maybe it will be a significant driver in pushing renewables forward. and if the local power company finds themselves shutting off life support machines then the mining farms get shut down first. it's not hard to do. the mining farms then go somewhere with an excess of electricity.

Bitcoin mining can be power-hungry but this is not the only industry that is...there are so many others useless business producing money while directly destroying the environment. The thing is that since Bitcoin is new it became the focus of some though there are many others out there contributing to the pollution and directly or indirectly the change of our weather. Still, I know that there are now studies and researches made to come up with mining equipment that requires much less power...we hope this can be coming to the market soon.

Analysis showed Satoshi used 5 computers or something like that to mine bitcoins initially so it seems fair to limit it to the same ammount he used. The number is arbitrary it could even be limited to 1 or lowered from 5 to 3 eventually.

However I like the idea of "electricity costs" cannot rise above a certain limit. This would allow computer hobbists to have as much "stored" computers as they want, but can only run so many at a time.

More's law is doubling of transisters every 1.5 years though this years number may vary a bit. It doesn't really say anything about electricity usage and also bitcoin's user and hashrate seems to be 10-folding and thus is outrunning more's law.

A legal solution for bitcoin would also apply to other similiar coins so the discussion is a bit broader than just bitcoin. Other coins may be mined with GPUs and these run hot and consume 300 watts per gpu.

Big gpu mining farms exist which is somewhat worriesome if these are multipled in the near future.

One super computer/data center was used to analyze heat output and came to conclusion that it itself was also contributing to warming... so another sign of worry... surely these big mining farmings are also contributing heavily to heat output. And this is just a sign of things to come.

We in the developed nations should shown the less developed nations how to proceed in this regard concerning electricity usage and heat production. By giving a good example and perhaps negotiating with them in the future they can also implement limits like these. One has to start somewhere.

I am skeptical of how much electricity can be generated with solar panels, especialy in europe and usa, england, etc. Perhaps weather and space is ok, however solar panels also use up precious minerals.

There is also a chance that Africa/desert/arab will become a big "power/energy" player in the future, it kinda already is with "oil". There is also the possibility with poorer countries perhaps building more nuclear reactors which could also lead to environmental problems if such a nuclear reactor were to explode. So there are many issues which huge adoption and mining of cryptocurrencies in general could cause.

Currently it seems people are used to thinking of "electricity" as being "free". Many do not recgonize the "costs / underlieing" value of bitcoin. Which is basically electricity costs. Electricity is just there... one pays a monthly or yearly bill and that's that.

Again my worry is that in a couple of years this might all change !

Think of what would become problematic:

1. Microwave usage
2. Television/news
3. Internet/Computer
4. Washing machine
5. Dish washer
6. Lights
7. Telephony

Etc.

Now ask yourself the following question:

If you had to choose between: "spending electricity on producing bitcoins" or "spending electricity on the things above and beyond" what would you choose ?

My point with this question is that there are more usefull things to spent electricity on then producing a "computer code" for "security reasons" and such.

Is our money/us dollar/euro this unsafe that we must spent huge ammounts of electricity to secure something as "trivial/hackish" as bitcoin ? 99.9% of all computers sold currently haven proven to be vunerable to meltdown/spectre attacks just to give one exampe of the futility currently of storing wealth on a computer.

See this as a political debate about what electricity should be spent on in the case of shortage.

Also with this tenfolding usage... pointing towards countries which produce it cheaper seems somewhat irresponsible and short-sighted. It will not be long before they too run out of electricity.

To me it seems somewhat unethical to be running these huge mining farms out of profit/greed.

I do like the freedom that bitcoin might or might not give to people vs goverment/bank/fiat money. So bitcoin/cryptos do have some merit. But should it be let run out of control ? or should it be constrained ?

Constraining it may give oppertunities to 'secret organizations' which might have huge processing power so this may be an issue.

That's what i thought exactly on how would the transaction could get confirmed immediately if the mining rig was being limit. I know not everyone could afford to buy a single mining rig, so does this mean that only those who have a huge money in their banks could buy.

And what about those companies that has a mining farm? I'm sure every company would react to this report, that's why they should find another way to limit the electric usage such as solar panels and create more on green eco.

Also doing that will lead them to ban bitcoin mining outright just like what is going on in Venezuela right now.
And I don't doubt with those machines the police there confiscated they are not mining with them making the bitcoins for themselves now.

So you mean the law you talking about if enacted in the US, the same thing should be enacted in China, South Africa, South Korea, India, Japan or Ghana. I also hope you know that something can be illegal in some states in the US and in another state, its totally legal depending on jurisdiction. What I am trying to say is that its completely not going to work for a countries to agree on a uniform position even the ones they come together to sign an alliance or treaty, it gets violated.

Now to the recommendation, of people limited to a maximum of 5 computers, I guess we then have to wait for like 3 months for a transaction to confirm because even despite the various mining farms spread across the world, there is still some lagging behind in confirmation time and that alone is promoting centralization (a body telling everyone what to be done) and that negates what bitcoin stands for.

This idea sucks lol. Sorry, but wow.

If you cap hash rate, then you're going to cap the speed of the networks. We're not just talking bitcoin, we're talking all alts and blockchains.

Also, yes, you're also asking for totalitarianism because:

1. To enforce such a measure, the govts would have to get access to your ISPs logs to scout for mining activity... Yeah.... on a daily basis
2. Then they'd be able to get warrants for probable cause and routinely inspect your home / office for any secondary computers mining crypto....
3. It may even lead to computer / mining rig registration. Just like gun registration, the gov'ts will require that you register your machines so they can keep track of possible secondary minining rigs... wow.

What they should do instead:

1. Enact laws where if your monthly electric usage goes over a certain dollar amount, you must enact green measures to lower your electric bill back down to below the threshold. I.e: If you're using more than $300 in electricity, then you're required to install solar panels or hydro power or some other clean energy source that lowers your unclean energy electric bill back down below $300.
2. They should impose fines if you're spending more than a threshold amount. So if you're spending more than $300, they'll impose a unilateral fine for spending too much electricity. It's up to you to keep using that much electricity and paying a monthly fine, or you'll have to find a way to lower electricity costs by getting renewable energy or lowering your mining operations.

Lol. Why 5 computers? Why not 10? This is an unreasonable demand. It is very difficult to control and I do not understand the reasons for this restriction. If this is due to energy savings in the world there is a surplus of electricity. Where to put it? I am opposed to any unjustified restrictions.

The world is not functioning like that. We are always expanding and growing. You can't control how much computers I have, it's not practical and people would get furious. Electric power restrictions in severe cases of energy system overload are possible. But technology would shift to POS or some other mining system faster.

Bitcoin's power usage is a function of 1) the current block reward, 2) the current Bitcoin price and 3) the current electricity prices according to the region where mining is taking place. Using hashrate as basis for the calculation of Bitcoin's power usage is a futile exercise since the productive hardware mining being used is changing all the time.

GPU mining has been out of the picture for Bitcoin since 2013.



Most bitcoins have already been mined -- about 80% of the final amount. Current mining operations are merely competing over the last few scraps and transaction fees. It follows that most coins that are currently being traded are "old" coins and not freshly mined ones, thus the influence of current mining operations on the currency in circulation is limited.



Becoming richer and expanding your operation is part of running a business.



Exponential hashrate growth does not translate to exponential hardware purchases. It's called Moore's Law.



You stated worries based on uninformed assumptions without acknowledging any of the counter-arguments to your initial proposal.

My worry is based on exponentially increase of hash rate.

This seems a clear indication that more and more computation power and thus devices and thus energy is consumed.

However some devices may be very energy efficient (asic) than again others are not (gpu).

The number of users has also grown exponential, yet most users do not own many bitcoins, this is another indication that most of the hash rate growth is from big mining farms.

These will eventually become richer and then expand their operation, this has me worried.

Most companies don't buy air conditioners at an exponential rate so that comparision doesn't fly.

So I have more clearly stated the problem in this new text.

Do you think it is possible to watch everyone in the world that how many computers they are using?

I don't think bitcoin mining is the major rason for the global warming there are other things cause more worse than bitcoin mining for example aircon produces CFC which is the main reason for oxone depletion and global warming so can we say that one house must have only one aircon.

It does not make sense to me. You are actually inviting government to your bedroom and empower them to control the number of computers or mining rigs you can have. There are many other things that can be used to reduce the effect global warming. Like Cars and Air conditioning units. On a global perspective, air conditioning units consume more power than mining rigs, does that mean we will invite government to control the maximum numbers of units you can buy?

The best solution to the global warming is to move to the renewable and green energy like Solar panels and windmills. There are probably more sources from where we can achieve green energy. That is the only long term and viable solution to the threat of global warming. It makes sense, if governments say that every mining operation should move to such green energy instead of conventional energy sources. But limiting the number of computers is not a viable solution.

That’s lame excuse, bitcoin mining isn’t the reason of global warming because for long time even without the existence of bitcoin our society is abusing the environment and all of the sudden we blame it on mining cryptocurrency that’s a banker statements all the time. Suggesting to limit someone to buy computers on 5 is a No, No. We can limit buying cars because it makes more harm than a computers.

It seems that all the anonymity and the purpose of crypto is gone... KYC, restrictions, and regulations. It becomes to look more and more like the fiat currency, controlled by the governments and laws. Maybe I'm wrong, but this is how it looks like

It won't.

China is leading in clean energy:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/10/china-on-track-to-lead-in-renewables-as-us-retreats-report-says

US electricity usage is stagnant:
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/2/27/17052488/electricity-demand-utilities

Russian power companies are looking for ways to monetize excess energy:
http://bitcoinist.com/russia-power-sell-energy-bitcoin-miners/

Cryptocurrencies are unlikely to lead to rising electricity costs, as mining operations tend to flock around places with low electricity costs ie. places that have a surplus of electricity already.

If electricity prices rise, whatever the cause may be, mining operations either move to cheaper places still or get simply shut down due to decreased profitability.



Such a law is neither desirable, nor definable, nor executable.

English translation (google-translate assisted ):

My fear is that bitcoin will cause global warming and rising electricity costs.

A possible solution for bitcoin is to introduce a law that states that a person can only mine bitcoins with only one or a maximum of 5 computers.

Such a law could then be used to tackle / close large bitcoin mining farms and to promote even the distribution of bitcoin and other crypto currencies / currencies.

An "if you can not beat them then join them approach" but in the spirit as bitcoin was meant ... a bit for everyone.

I think that's a nice solution.

Dutch:

Mijn angst is dat bitcoin gaat zorgen voor opwarming van de aarde en stijgende electriciteits kosten.

Een mogelijke oplossing voor bitcoin is om een wet te introduceren waarin staat dat een persoon met slechts een of maximaal 5 computers bitcoins mag minen.

Zo een wet zou dan gebruikt kunnen worden om grote bitcoin mining farms aan te pakken/te sluiten en om zelfs de verdeling van bitcoin en andere crypto munten/valuta te bevorderen.

Een "if you can't beat em join em approach" maar dan wel in de geest zoals bitcoin was bedoeld... een beetje voor iedereen.

Best een mooie oplossing denk ik zo.

Doei,
  Skybuck.