Topic: At what point do we stop kidding ourselves? Bye Bye mining farms. - page 4. (Read 4459 times)

You are correct. I got mine off of the same place. No idea why i pulled that number though.

So 88MW is more along the lines of 160MW.

Monetary freedom followed by bankruptcy once a 51% attack occurs.

Gavin blogged about some ideas on stopping 51% attacks but  I think his ideas were far from water tight.

51% seems like an issue we shouldn't worry too much about. The whole network is pretty spread apart now, sure some are pretty large but not 50% large.

Gavin blogged about some ideas on stopping 51% attacks but  I think his ideas were far from water tight.

What matters here is the probability that an attacker will eventually exceed the main chain if he starts from $N$ blocks back. There is a 'magic threshold' at 50% in the sense that at 50% hashpower, this probability is 100% regardless of $N$. You're correct that for every $N$, the probability approaches 100% as hashpower approaches 50%, so an attacker with even 40% of hashpower is extremely dangerous. But below 50%, the probability drops off exponentially with $N$, so in the presence of a sub-50%-attacker you can be safe by simply requiring many (perhaps tens of thousands) confirmations.

Gavin blogged about some ideas on stopping 51% attacks but  I think his ideas were far from water tight.

I'm aware. As should everyone here who's ever joined a pool. I see it on the horizon than I see it just possible. But that me man. My proposal? I don't have one. I'm looking to the people on this one. We probably have the least amount of nodes we ever did. At least in the past we had every person in the usa with an ATI video card running nodes. Now its down to who can afford asic's for basically fun, and large farms.

Yes, the military and their various War Pigs use much more power than the Bitcoin network.
Three cheers for monetary freedom! 

So you are telling me that the entire Bitcoin network doesn't even use a much power as a single Nimitz class aircraft carrier traveling at full speed.

And for that we get monetary freedom?

What a bargain.

It's called a 51% attack.  Yes, its possible.

What's your proposal?  Mine less?? huh?

Where did you get this number from?


This might seem like a lot of power to you, but it actually isn't. Couldn't you say the same for everyone wasting power playing games or contributing to projects online?
There are a lot of projects out there that work similarly to Bitcoin (e.g. you can donate processing power). Can you really say that energy is being wasted when it is used for operating the network?

At least hardware is becoming more and more efficient, especially compared to the first ASICs.

Again you are all making a classical mistake under the assumption that added hashrate equals more network security. It DOES NOT. Individual nodes do. You know the individual miners that started this whole thing with GPU's.

Consider Farms will expand until they can no longer. Large mining farms start buying out other mining farms (Free market you keep raving about). A monopoly is possible. Don't you dare say its not. The second its not profitable some people wont mine at all. Others will for fun but their hashrate will be outweighed by the large farms that will consolidate over time.

What happens when the majority of network hashrate is owned by one farm? Your security is fucking gone and the largest farm really is the central bank now isn't it? They can manipulate the network at will REGARDLESS of overall hashrate. What matters is who owns what % of OVERALL hashrate. More hashrate does not equal more security. It means nothing.

How are you guys blind to this.

Your taking an entire community and comparing it to one company. A government can hold a company liable for pollution it creates. They have absolutely NO way of holding a community liable for the pollution it creates.

All of your rational is very logical but its applied in the wrong way.

I would for the second time state and agree that it creates less pollution than current systems. Again this argument is not about gold vs btc. Nor current banking vs btc. Its about solely the pollution created by mining. Lets stay OT.  That been said I think we could all agree that bitcoin is not nearly evolved enough to maintain an entire world of banking systems. Its ready to make an appearance but its not owning the show any time soon.


People just like with bitcoin, make lots of money on international banking. Like petrol.. don't expect it to go anywhere anytime soon. Not until bitcoin is a MASSIVE competitor and even then probably not.

There is the 16nm 3D chip KNC claims to have developed. Don't expect to get your hands on one without a group buy. They plan on self-mining the shit out of that hardware. The claims for that are 1/10th the power usage. Maybe. Probably not. That would revolutionize computation in general much less bitcoin.

The government will not shutdown a company for polluting, they just regulate it.  I have worked with oil/chemical companies for many years.  The government allows so much pollution and if you have a spill or go over that it is usually just a small fine.  Of course disaster like Exxon Valdez are a different story, but the extra pollution on a day to day is easily allowed.

I can tell you 1 chemical plant can easily use well over 88.9MW of power just 1, some of the large data centers have 100MW.

88.9MW for an entire planet of BTC mining is nothing in comparison to other industries or even a single facility.  I would say by your math you just proved BTC is more eco friendly then stuff we use everyday.

Edit: I found this after the fact. Chemical Companies alone back in 2002 use 3.7 Quadriillion BTUs of energy or converted 1,172,284,280 MW. http://www.eia.gov/consumption/manufacturing/briefs/chemical/

I rarely see discussion on the impact of bitcoin. No, not financially, not from an economic standpoint.

How about the eco-system?

Our network hashrate for bitcoin alone (there are also many alts out there) is 177,943,954.
-snip-

Okay I myself mine. So just hush. I'm not here telling anyone what they should or shouldn't be doing. I'm just saying think about it. Be mindful. Instead of not giving shits like you clearly do.




To the gentleman who cited a Nimitz class aircraft carrier traveling at full speed....

You do realize that's a nuclear ship right? And nuclear carbon footprint is non-existent until it goes boom?


Most of the world is running oil or coal for power buddy. Even the nuclear reactors we've put in america we realized were a huge mistake. Try apples to apples.


You would have to be a complete moron to assume that monetary freedom isn't worth a lot. But even a moron can tell you there's a limitation to whats acceptable. I love bitcoin. I love mining. Again i'm not putting bitcoin in the spotlight. I'm putting all of our competitive mining in the spotlight. Mining farms. People driving the net-hash beyond where it needs to be in the act of greed. Don't even try to tell me KNC is in it for the monetary freedom. They are located in one of the most private countries in the world... They are in it for the $$$. Do you think they are paying there power bill with BTC? No. Its being converted into fiat to cover overhead probably along with their salaries. I'm sure they are banking lots of btc. But they aren't in it for the love of btc. A fool could tell you this.

88.9 MEGAWATTS OF POWER PEOPLE

We can only assume that with the reward drop coming up that either hashrate will double or the price of bitcoin will have to rise. Maybe a bit of both as im speculating but regardless.

Does this seem responsible? We are basically polluting on a massive scale to make pennies on the dollar.

You have to assume at some point governments will come together to put this to an end?