Topic: The principle of entropy reduction in Bitcoin mining (Read 199 times)

Haha, thank you for your wonderful suggestions. I always believe that Bitcoin has material properties, so it also follows the laws of physics to a certain extent. This is my philosophical thinking about the knowledge behind Bitcoin. It is not necessarily correct, but it inspires more people to think together. The main application is still in the second law of thermodynamics, and the third law has not yet been studied. Haha, don't wait any longer.


Hi, Pmalek, thank you for your continued recognition and support. I have never been to the Serious discussion board you mentioned. I just went and took a look and found that there were not many people there. Since these articles of mine are all about Bitcoin, they have been published in the Bitcoin discussion forum. Perhaps most people still cannot understand the value of my articles. I hope that through my continuous writing output, more people will be interested in them gradually. Of course, this process must be very long. Thank you again, my good friend.


Hi, Worle1bm, thank you for your wonderful reply. Now that more and more people can understand my philosophical thinking, I am really very happy. I always believe that our understanding of Bitcoin should not be limited to the field of technology and currency, but should focus on the field of thought. All our actions should be guided by our thoughts. I am trying to summarize the ideas behind Bitcoin as much as possible. This process is very difficult, so I am willing to put my life into it. I want to become a true follower and preacher of Satoshi Nakamoto.

First of all it's good that you have worked on your writing style and break up the whole bunch of information into small paragraph easily readable by users.

Your philosophical thought have inspired good discussion among members and thermodynamics is applicable in every physics related feilds these days when it was restricted to steam engine in the past year and with all that research now it's possible to implement in most extreme cases aslo.

Since you got loads of merits recently and people were made aware of your philosophical nature, you have the required rank to post in the Serious discussion board. Have you considered doing that and do you know of its existence? You might get a completely different type of audience in that section.

Actually,,, there is an interesting crypto project which I simply cannot recall the name now, which was using blockchain as a means to ensure entropy reduction, but more like a time lapse for the tokens. Like using block height to determine "age" of the token attributes, and other factors to make sure if the token is not "maintained" by the user it becomes older and breaks down. To encourage "active" use. Super interesting if Bitcoin does this for mining:)

This is the first time I've seen the laws of physics used to think about bitcoin. Accustomed to sociology, game theory to discuss bitcoin, suddenly not adapted to think in this perspective.
Physics is a bit of a storm in a teacup. It's easier to understand and resonate with the sociology we're familiar with.
Still, it's worth learning. Your other articles has original ideas, even if I don't quite understand some of them.

It's safe to assume that your talking about an open system because an isolated system or closed system is where you can only increase the entropy and not decrease. If you consider every factor and parameter, the net increase would always be will always be positive.

I don't really think that applying this principle can help us. Isn't this mostly applied with heat and matter? What is the measurable property of Bitcoin mining that you could correlate with this?

P.S. I will be waiting for your "application" of third law of thermodynamics. lol

These Entropy and Thermodynamics based statements about Bitcoin may be of some interest to those who like philosophy and such esoteric explanations. Yet, I don't find such explanations very useful or persuasive when talking about the usefulness or value of Bitcoin.

That expense of energy provides security but does not contribute to value in a direct, thermodynamic process way but in an indirect, game-theoretic way. It arises out of the game theory of miners and stakeholders agreeing on the value of the only truly decentralized ledger that we have. Whether that game theory arises out of the thermodynamics or purely human nature is probably debatable. Maybe the right answer is that its a combination of the two.

Sometimes the word entropy really represents the ultimate secret of our universe. Over the years, I have been thinking about entropy in the ultimate sense. The more I know about it, the more secrets of the universe will be realized. As a living being, we human beings all walk against entropy. The same is true of human civilization. In subsequent articles, I will explain my understanding of entropy from different perspectives.

Entropy is simply understood as transformation, so it is easy to understand the article.
Mining bitcoin is an energy conversion process, converting heat and wind energy into bitcoin.
This is an energy consumption in today's society, because the converted bitcoin is useless in their view.

There is another problem. According to the exposition of the principle of entropy increase, the universe and everything it contains are developing from order to disorder, spontaneously to the increase of chaos, and the cosmic order has been in continuous disintegration. So why has life on earth been in continuous evolution for tens of millions of years?
Similarly, if bitcoin is regarded as a closed system, it will also perish unless it can get energy outside the system.Is it a waste to continuously supply energy and resources?
It depends on what people think of the bitcoin. If you think bitcoin is a scam, you will say it is a waste of energy.

As I said previously, according to the basic principles of the first law of thermodynamics, Bitcoin mining is not essentially a waste of energy, but the conversion and storage of energy, transforming energy of the natural world into Bitcoin through hashrate of mining machine, that's why Bitcoin could be applied in value reserve, it is supported by real energy. Simultaneously, the process of Bitcoin mining involves not only the first law of thermodynamics, but the second law. Now let's look at some knowledge of the second law of thermodynamics briefly.

The second law of thermodynamics, one of the basic laws of thermodynamics, is expressed as: it is impossible to transfer heat from a low-temperature to a high-temperature object without causing other effects; or it is impossible to take heat from a single heat source to completely convert it into useful work without triggering other effects; or the micro-increment of entropy in the irreversible thermal process is always greater than zero, also known as the law of entropy increase. It shows that in natural process, the total chaos of an isolated system will not decrease.

Why does entropy mean the degree of chaos of a system? Let’s talk about what heat is. Heat is a manifestation of the irregular movement of a large number of molecules, representing how confused a system is to some extent. The second law of thermodynamics states that spontaneous processes are irreversible, from order to disorder. The law concerns the conversion of heat and work. Work can be converted into heat, but it's a one-way street because work is a directional and orderly behavior while heat is disorderly. So the entropy function is a measure of chaos. All spontaneous and irreversible processes are from order to disorder, proceeding in the direction of growing chaos.

Low entropy signifies a low degree of chaos, vice versa. The second law of thermodynamics conveys the idea that all moving systems have energy conversion and all closed ones prefer the state of maximum chaos, unless external energy is injected. If no external influence is exerted, things will always develop into a more chaotic and disordered situation. For example, if our room is not cleaned, it will become messier and messier unless cleaning comes, which will undoubtedly take energy. The maintenance of order means the consumption of energy.

All things in the universe are going through a process of transferring from high energy to low energy, a process of gradually declining. People grow old and die, the environment deteriorates, the sun goes out, and ultimately everything goes to destruction. The arrow of time perpetually heads for increasing entropy.

Maybe after trillions of years, all stars will disappear, so will the universe. But all human activities are against entropy. By adding external energy, we turn disorder into order. Bitcoin mining also conforms to the principle of entropy increase principle, but it does not actually accumulate entropy, but maintains the entropy reduction of the entire Bitcoin network with the help of external energy, that is to say, maintains the order of the Bitcoin system.

Bitcoin mining factually uses the computing power of the chip to continuously carry out hash collisions and get the answer faster than others to win the accounting rights on the Bitcoin ledger and obtain Bitcoin rewards. This dull and repeated process is visually compared to mining. Developing Bitcoin is similar to mining gold: ceaseless electric energy is supplied to the mining machine for hash calculation, which would then be converted into hashrate. Then Bitcoin rewards will be finally obtained based on the proportion of hashrate provided.

With continuous input of external energy maintaining the entropy reduction state of the Bitcoin network, Bitcoin ledger will record human economic behavior and ultimately generate value. The process of Bitcoin mining is of energy conversion, turning disordered information into order. So how is external energy infused into Bitcoin network? As a matter of fact, the computer is for coping with information, which can be measured by entropy. Before CPU starts working, the system is disordered. When CPU functions, bit will be controlled to become 0 or 1 and system becomes organized. CPU can handle information the information is finally fed back to the Bitcoin network. That is Bitcoin's ledger information. During the course, the real effective part is not the conversion of electrical energy but the order of the ledger system of Bitcoin and the reduction of entropy.

Very obscure as it seems, it is my deep thinking of some entropy reduction principles in Bitcoin mining. What do you think?

Second law of thermodynamics:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics

Entropy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy