Topic: Bitcoin & PoW is a waste of energy & destroys nature - page 4. (Read 14008 times)
Energy spent on BitCoin is a fraction of the energy spent on fiat currencies.
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Energy costs of mining BTC appear to be a minor issue to me.
How can high costs of energy be a minor issue when it is easily eliminated by using PoS?
PoS doesn't really work. It's subject to a trusted node being hacked, or otherwise turning opprotunisticly malicious. PoW doesn't have that problem, and that is part of the point of it all, because it's truely trustless. PoS cannot be trustless.
Mining is centralisation through pools and specialised hardware.
That too. Great point.
Maybe if it were true, but it's not.
Energy is there to be used. If you think that every bit helps, then stop driving a car, stop using a computer, use candles instead of light and so on. Because if you don't you are just a hypocritical hippie.
Reminds me of people who buy lots of RAM, then do everything to make sure the computer never uses more than 10% of it...
Reminds me of people who buy lots of RAM, then do everything to make sure the computer never uses more than 10% of it...
Mining is centralisation through pools and specialised hardware.
That too. Great point.
Mining is centralisation through pools and specialised hardware.
PoW is a waste since PoS exist.
Mining is obsolete but this mining-scheme is still alive because people find it fun to waste electricity and lose money on expensive hardware.
I wonder if readers have comprehended my upthread posts wherein I explained that democracy = fiat. We can't eliminate fiat if we retain voting (tallied by and to create a top-down authority) and reputation systems of control, because top-down control over money is the definition of fiat. A top-down controlled digital fiat can be technically secure, but the security is vacuous in the sense it is not protecting us from the power vacuum boogeyman that we were trying to eliminate in the first place. We might as well just continue to use Paypal, VISA, and Mastercard.
Money itself is nothing other than a ledger accounting of the societal consensus regarding how to dispose of the products and services that human society produces in relation to the various degrees of social status that are prevalent among the individuals whom comprise society. Individuals do not produce these things in a vacuum, all production is a consequences of all the moving parts of society working together to serve a greater purpose, to enforce and perpetuate the social contract between the individual and society.
The purpose of top down control is to institute a system that abrogates the consensus of society at large for the consensus of a few who can profit by the situation by imposing the external costs of production on society at large without fair recompense. This is exactly what wasting energy to mine cryptocurrency does. It imposes a cost to society without recompense to society.
That theory is bass ackards.
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Energy costs of mining BTC appear to be a minor issue to me.
How can high costs of energy be a minor issue when it is easily eliminated by using PoS?
Everybody is familiar with those large door heaters at the entrance of stores?
You, these electrical heat monsters which make it able to let the door open to attract customers into a store?
Why not produce some asic heaters for this purpose. 99% of the energy is wasted on heat anyway.
You would earn money while heating your house.
Why not put these heaters in other electrical heating components, like water cookers and stuff.
You should concern about all electrical heaters instead of crypto mining.
Crypto mining is 0,00000000000000000001% of all electrical energy used.
You, these electrical heat monsters which make it able to let the door open to attract customers into a store?
Why not produce some asic heaters for this purpose. 99% of the energy is wasted on heat anyway.
You would earn money while heating your house.
Why not put these heaters in other electrical heating components, like water cookers and stuff.
You should concern about all electrical heaters instead of crypto mining.
Crypto mining is 0,00000000000000000001% of all electrical energy used.
That is kind of a rube goldberg type solution
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Mining gold and mining really almost anything uses large amounts of energy and destroys (at least some) nature too. Yet, we wish to lead modern lives. No mining = crappy lives...
Energy costs of mining BTC appear to be a minor issue to me.
Mining gold and mining really almost anything uses large amounts of energy and destroys (at least some) nature too. Yet, we wish to lead modern lives. No mining = crappy lives...
Energy costs of mining BTC appear to be a minor issue to me.
Grunching, but I'm pretty sure the resource expenditure of the world banking systems is much greater than that of bitcoin.
What about after mass adoption?
Everybody is familiar with those large door heaters at the entrance of stores?
You, these electrical heat monsters which make it able to let the door open to attract customers into a store?
Why not produce some asic heaters for this purpose. 99% of the energy is wasted on heat anyway.
You would earn money while heating your house.
Why not put these heaters in other electrical heating components, like water cookers and stuff.
You should concern about all electrical heaters instead of crypto mining.
Crypto mining is 0,00000000000000000001% of all electrical energy used.
You, these electrical heat monsters which make it able to let the door open to attract customers into a store?
Why not produce some asic heaters for this purpose. 99% of the energy is wasted on heat anyway.
You would earn money while heating your house.
Why not put these heaters in other electrical heating components, like water cookers and stuff.
You should concern about all electrical heaters instead of crypto mining.
Crypto mining is 0,00000000000000000001% of all electrical energy used.
Why does it matter ?
The "financial industry" will still exists.
The "financial industry" will still exists.
It will matter because in a world where bitcoin is $100,000 per, the 'legacy' financial industry will be significantly downsized. I assume, of course, that use of bitcoin will as a matter of course displace portions of the legacy financial industry. To assume otherwise seems rather preposterous.
I said that IF some day one bitcoin is worth one hundred thousand dollars THEN the bitcoin network will consumes as much as US nuclear power generation.
Indeed you did. So I guess the next layer of the onion is to estimate how small a percentage of GDP would the non-bitcoin financial industry be reduced to, in an environment where bitcoin is $100,000 each?
I am pretty sure that the world banking system doesn't consume that kind of power.
Pretty sure, or very sure? I wouldn't be so sure.
In the US, the financial industry is on the order of 10% of GDP, and the share has been doubling every 20 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization
Simple-minded fractions tells me that the financial industry might plausibly consume 5-10% of the total power. We can quibble over efficiencies and whatnot, but not without first quibbling more intently over your assertion that Bitcoin consumes about as much as US nuclear power generation.
a big pos attack is if a govt announces it will buy out pos coins to kill it, then people will flood out as the govt slowly controls more and more percentage of the coins
in pos the rich get richer, less incentive to spend since you get less shares next block
in pos the rich get richer, less incentive to spend since you get less shares next block
Grunching, but I'm pretty sure the resource expenditure of the world banking systems is much greater than that of bitcoin.
This thread started by OP is a FUD.
No it's not. The calculation may be false (because he assumes that the mining efficiency of the miners is still what it was one year ago), but the result is valid : the Bitcoin network consumes a very high electric power for such a small economy.
Right now the power of the Bitcoin network is in the range of a small nuclear reactor (see my post here) : 600 MW.
This calculation only take the electricity spent by the miners. Not the electricity spent by Blockchain.info, Bitstamp, Bitpay or any other part of the Bitcoin economy.
And if we want to be fair we cannot assume that all the electricity spent by the banks is necessary to run "the fiat network". We should only take into account :
- the printing of the paper bills (probably in the range of $0.01 per dollar or less)
- the minting of the metal coins (maybe up to $0.5 per dollar)
- the running of the central banks ($0,0000??? per dollar)
This is what must be compared to the cost of running "the Bitcoin network" (mining costs).
All other actors of the system (commercial banks included) are only "users" of the fiat system. The day they switch to Bitcoin they will spend exactly the same amount of energy than with fiat.
There is an argument to be made that the Fiat system uses Fractional Reserve Banking (FRB) and generally has a minimum 2.5% non negotiable exponential growth target, that results is an exponential environmental consumption tax.
The FRB system favours big business, it loans money pre growth and inflation and profits post growth and inflation. The result is industry is encouraged to find new and innovative ways to increase consumption. The outcome is disposable 1 time use packaging, built in obsolescence and optimising a cradle to grave use of recourses (he who consumes the most benefits the most)
In a world with a finite money supply capable of functioning without FRB, the result would be akin to a permanent deflationary spiral, this would have a negative impact on consumer goods, (less the essentials people seem to always buy food) people would shift to conserving capital reducing the motive from investing in new recourse extraction, and incentivising thrift and efficiency. (he who delays consumption benefits the most)
This impact could be achieved with finite crypto currencies and the impact on the plaint would be staggering, people would voluntarily offset consumption, to benefit at a future date.
When you factor the environmental effects of our existing economic system (cradle to grave incentivised consumption in the name of economic growth) the cost of securing Bitcoin is insignificant.
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Some argue that methods based on Proof of Work alone might lead to a low network security due to Tragedy of the Commons, and Proof of Stake is one way of changing the miner's incentives in favor of higher network security.
I don't see any "Tragedy of the Commons" happening here at this time. Do you?
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