Topic: Bitcoin Proof of Work still the winner (Read 284 times)

I had completely forgotten about this coin. The devs always said miners should not be using consumer grade SSDs and instead recommended going with high endurance drives used in data centers. They tried to avoid using terms like proof-of-work and mining to market themselves as environmentally friendly but the truth is that doing this on a large scale created a ton of waste and used lots of electricity.

There is a huge difference betweeen "green", sustainable or clean. Green energy is a term used to mislead people into thinking that there are no problems with using that much electricity. That is untrue.

For starters, there is no such thing as green energy. Any energy source as we know it has environmental degradation or significant contribution to climate change. Nuclear plants produce radioactive waste, solar panels degrades the environment through silicon mining, dams destroy habitats. Just because something is sustainable doesn't mean we should use it; it still produces significant environmental impacts. Specifically for Bitcoin mining and ignoring all that electricity usage, you are looking at ASICs which only serves a single purpose; to mine Bitcoin only. Afterwards, there is a small chance that it could be recycled but majority of it would just end up at landfills.

We don't call Bitcoin green, because any PoW will not be. The threshold for which we should tolerate would be the point at which the entire network consumes a certain level of energy such that the net benefits outweighs the cost. Don't rely on reports which are obviously flawed and biased, for they offer little perspective other than the agenda that they're trying to push.

As far as I know you kinda pre calculate tons of hashes and store them on your drive, then every 10 minutes when new blocks are created by the network, you quickly look up if you have the hash for one of them.
Something kind of like that. I’ll dig out some info and add it if I find it.

I think this gives a rough idea:
https://www.chia.net/faq/#faq-4

And I'm saying that from Bitcoin's standpoint, both types of energy can be used to produce hashes.

Take an authoritarian government as an example, like North Korea. The internet there is censored, but even if it wasn't, your activities have to be approved by the government.

But, we shouldn't go that far. In order for the whole world to adopt it (A.K.A. global adoption), the governments have to approve its usage. But, a currency that requires even more energy as demands increases means that it's not environmental-friendly, assuming the energy does not come from renewable sources of energy. Thus, anyone could use this as an excuse to not adopt Bitcoin.

That's what they say.

From Bitcoin’s standpoint, not “they”.


Why talk about government “approval”? Because of Proof of Work, Bitcoin is a censorship-resistant cryptocurrency. It doesn’t ask for “approval” in every transaction.


Are renewable sources always cheaper than dirty coal? 

Do not understand why they should have wasted their time? Most of them certainly mined to make a profit. And they certainly did, because Chia was significantly more profitable to mine than Bitcoin, for example. So if they sold in time before the short crashed, they still made a nice profit.

I'm still curious how that cryptocurrency's mechanism work. I mean Chia's. They call it proof of storage, but I haven't understood the technical explanation from any website.

You mean if they both do the same work? Obviously, they do, but using “dirty” energy will not sensitize someone to use it. It'd be too dumb if governments approved a currency that damages the environment if its demand increases. One of the greatest parts of Bitcoin is that it gets advantage of the humans' greed for the common good. The miners will prefer using a renewable source instead, because they'll increase their profit.

From Bitcoin’s standpoint, should it truly care where the energy comes from? “Clean” and “Dirty” produces the same solution to the Proof of Work puzzle. I believe the government should probably ban dirty energy providers, not Bitcoin.

It is narrative attack to make bitcoin outsiders are fearful of any potential participation. It succeeds to prevent a massive flow of new bitcoiners but it won't be able to prevent all people become new bitcoiners.

It is another thing. Bitcoin mining industry is green because of big renewable energy proportion and also most of renewable resources are cheap.

The cost from energy and ASIC equipments constitutes the intrinsic value of Bitcoin. Yes, I agree that Bitcoin is safe.

The bullish case for Bitcoin
https://endthefud.org/

Deniers, no-coiners, and those who are supporting different agenda can tell us that PoW on bitcoin isn't helping the environment all they want, but the mere fact that most mining firms are trying to shift to greener energy solutions already tell much about what kind of landscape bitcoin is. Other industries waste just as much energy—or more, on some occasions— but aren't the talk of the town, simply because they are protected by the narrative that they are more important than bitcoin (ehem, banks).


I almost got hooked on the idea of mining using my hard drives back then without thinking much about the health of my drives which also housed some important files. Had I give in to the idea of HDD/SSD mining back then, I might have regretted it even though the price per Chia coin reached more than $1500+ which only required a less complex setup than what other coins need.

“Clean Energy”, “Dirty Energy”, that’s the narrative the nocoiners wanted you to believe. That Bitcoin = Evil, because of “wasteful” energy usage? Laughable. The Honey Badger don’t care. Energy providers are always incentivized to act as quasi-central banks by providing energy the miners need, “Clean”, or “Dirty”.

They caused a huge price increase on the hard drive market and a lot of people couldn't afford to buy the drives that they needed and for what? So that some entrepreneurs could make quick money? Altcoins are a net loss for society, they don't create anything productive, they don't have any big utility, it's just a speculation and attempt to find a bigger fool. It alone would have been fine if they weren't screwing up the computer hardware markets in the process.

i call B.S on many stats in that report

the fools stupidly think if a pool uses XXth and in that country of say 5 power plants only 3 are renewable . they stupidly deem it as the pools XXth is only 60% renewable

reality is that the asic farms set up a warehouse in the region of one of those 3 renewable power stations specifically for the reason of cheap 'excess' electric contracts
and is infact 100% renewable because its getting its power from the renewable power plant direct.

ever since 2014  asic farms have always set up near renewables. its actually the silly residential hobby miners that cant control their home setup. and the percentage in that group is low.
its actually the crappy altcoins that are hashing from hobby homes because no one cares much about altcoins to want to invest in large corporate farms. so its altcoins like doge that are the most carbon dirtiest

...
also saying that bitcoin uses 189twh is B.S

bitcoin for the last year has never ever approached more then say 200exahash EVER
so lets do some math and lets assume if every day was 180exa(no day is equal but lets assume so)
take 2 machines from 2 generations for lower and upper
(a)s19 95thash 3.25kw
(b)s19pro 110thash 3.25kw

(a) (180000000th/95th)
=1894736.842105263 asics
=6157894.736842105 kwh
=6157.894mwh
=6.1579gwh
=53943.15789473684gwh a year
=53.94twh a year

(b) (180000000/110th)
=1636363.636363636 asics
=5318181.818181818 kwh
=5318.181 mwh
=5.318181 gwh
=46587.27gwh a year
=46.587twh a year

meaning AT MOST IF EVERY DAY WAS 180EXA the low and upper bound would be 46-54tw .. not 189tw
(c)even if you do the math of the very very old s9 (14th for 1.4kw)
again if every day had the hashrate of 180exa. then the upper bound would be 157tw

so not having every day as 180exa means all numbers shown above are lower then that.

heck lets do the actual math, the average hashrate is only 138exa over the year.
meaning the tw utilised is somewhere between
(a) 41.35tw
(b) 35.71tw
(c) 120.36tw

meaning at best they are off by 33% at worse they are off by 81%

most of the s9 fangirls moved them crappy outdated hardware over to the altcoins in the mining dip drama of autumn 2018
these days most asics are the s19 range or other brand equivalent
so estimates for 2021 should be more like 35-41tw range. and no where near 189tw

That is very interesting. Its been reported far and wide that HDD manufacturers consider their warranty void if HDDs are used to mine chia coin. But I had no idea the design and algorithm of chia carried an excessively high volume of read/write cycles that could destroy HDDs in 40 to 80 days.

Could their algorithm be shifted to use RAM while hardware is active. And only save to HDD when hardware is shut down.

The simple fact that the HDDs last more or less 80 days alone. Imagine the amounts of landfill of unnecessarily wasted HDDs. Seriously, we'd be wasting a lot less resources in general if other cryptocurrencies would just stop trying to beat Bitcoin's PoW. Though far more centralized, at least PoS is far less resource wasteful(and the fact that it's not trying to beat bitcoin).

I'd also like to see an energy footprint of all central banks, bank branches, visa and mastercard together and see how those stack up against Bitcoin's miner + node + LN node energy usage. And their energy sources.. I don't think it's possible to compile all that data but it will surely add up to a huge amount of energy as well.

Although mining uses renewable energy, as hydroelectricity sources are usually cheap, I think that all this dicussiion about renewable energy, pollution, etc is out of bitcoin scope.

Bitcoin uses energy to secure the network. Energy is something valuable, this is why bitcoin is safe.

Bitcoin shouldn't even consider any protocol change because mankind use bad energy sources. Naturally, as solar/wind energy technology develops, bitcoin mining will become greener.

Bitcoin is green enough.

The Bitcoin mining network 2019. 73% energy for mining is renewable.

Bitcoin Mining Council Survey Confirms Sustainable Power Mix. 67% of power is sustainable.

Global Bitcoin Data mining Q2 2021. 56% of Energy power is sustainable.

https://wccftech.com/beware-chia-coin-miners-selling-used-ssds-hdds-as-brand-new-on-online-marketplaces-as-coin-crashes/

Chia miners/community members thought they/the coin were doing the morally right way to “mine” cryptocurrency, by “not wasting” electricity, but what they did was waste the most precious currency on Earth. Their Time.