L4sBotOver 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin
SinningStromgaldHonestly surprised it is that low.
OtterMaybe the larger American owned projects are located in places where energy is cheaper / cooling is easier
I can’t believe its that high, what a fucking big, stupid, dumbdumb thing. So wasteful and for what benefit?
NateNate60The argument on the other side of the coin is that renewable electricity is often produced in excess, and when it cannot be stored, mining bitcoin is an effective way to convert that excess electricity into money. Normally, that energy would just be wasted, reducing the efficiency and economic viability of renewable electricity sources.
This argument is sound, but the problem is that it doesn’t describe reality. The reality is that Bitcoin miners set up shop wherever electricity is the cheapest and consume inordinate amounts of electricity whether that electricity is in excess or not, and whether that electricity was generated renewably or not.
First of all I doubt the profits generated from this go towards anything or anyone worthwhile, second, doesn’t bitcoin mining cause diminishing returns individually and across the network? Like aren’t the problems getting harder and more expensive computationally?
deafboyThe mining difficulty adjusts automatically so that 1 block is produced every 10 minutes on average.
More miners join, more difficult and expensive it gets, to the point it forces the least efficient miners to be turned off, or seek cheaper electricity. If too many leave or the price of BTC raises, more people are incentivized to join.
More miners join, more difficult and expensive it gets, to the point it forces the least efficient miners to be turned off, or seek cheaper electricity.
So wealth continues to be concentrated by the wealthy while polluting a bunch.
The cops used to find people growing marijuana in winter by the snow thawed on the roofs. Now there would be a mining rig under such a roof (also, most of the time there will be no snow, and then too much snow on occasion)
What a huge waste in times where we have global and urgently need to cut our carbon footprint a bunch of greedy people are living like there is no tomorrow.
Yes, good, blame the poor, make them feel responsible. Forget corporations, forget who is actually burning the earth down. The earth is going to die because YOU drove a gas car, used bitcoin, and don’t like paper straws.
Bitcoin mining is a multi-billion-dollar business. The block reward along is 900 BTC = 38.7 million USD a day (at 43,000 USD per BTC as of writing), shared between half a dozen big mining pools. Bitcoin mining equipment costs thousands of dollars.
Mining bitcoin is solely a game for men with means.
Lol, $40 million USD. The actually rich people, the people standing up there laughing at all of us, are moving $40m themselves as pocket change. Zuckerberg just got $700M. They blocked Elon from getting $56000M. The 1% are laughing at the 99% and I’m starting to as well.
40 million USD per day. That’s 14 billion USD annually.
Also I’d like to point out that it’s not 1% of the population that’s like that, more like 0.01% or even just dozens. There are many rich people, but few are crazy rich like that.
Source: dunno just google it maybe you’ll find something
Oh hey, it’s the guy Dan Olsen was talking about in that Folding Ideas video!
There is no tomorrow, because of global warming.
For you, mega flora will be super stoked.
The economics of Bitcoin mining are a bit weird in that it impossible to make it more energy efficient.
The system auto adjusts the computational complexity of mining bitcoin so that it always costs a little less than one bitcoin to mine a bitcoin, and at scale the only variable expense is electricity so as the price of bitcoin goes up, so does the amount of money that must be spent on electricity.
Current 6.25 Bitcoin are mined every 10 minutes. So globally about $2 million must be spent on electricity every hour.
In a little over 2 months the block reward cuts in half to only 3.125 bitcoin every 10 minutes. That will have the side effect of reducing the money spent on electricity for mining bitcoin so long as the price of bitcoin remains the same.
“The System” is not really that intelligent. The statement that “It will always cost a little less than one Bitcoin to mine a Bitcoin” is only correct because the incentives in the system steer everyone toward that. There’s no direct link between the two. Bitcoin Miners are intently aware of how much energy they consume, and if the price of Bitcoin dips below what they are paying for electricity, they likely will shut down their rigs, because no one wants to mine at a loss.
The real issue with Bitcoin is that the algorithm used to find more Bitcoins is kind of basic in terms of its difficulty mechanism. It was the first one ever used for cryptocurrency. It was originally envisioned that owners could mine more bitcoin with spare cycles on their CPU, but since it was first designed, people have come up with custom mining chips that can mine faster and much more power efficiently. But paradoxically, this has made things worse, because the bitcoin mining difficulty simply scaled up to account for all that. So now the only way to mine Bitcoin is to have this custom hardware – it’s too hard to do any other way – and you need so much of it that you are just as power hungry as before.
There are other algorithms that don’t have these same problems. They have been designed to use other computing resources (like gobs of memory) that are much harder to concentrate on custom chips, making it much more expensive (spatially as well as computationally) to simply spam more of them. Ethereum uses a totally different model now that doesn’t rely directly on power consumption at all.
OG Bitcoiners seem to think that the massive power consumption is a net benefit, because it is spent in making the overall network more secure, and less likely to be attacked. So they will never try to change their block algorithm, even though other projects are more secure with less power consumed. And if that opinion holds, the only way to eliminate this source of power consumption would be to crash the price, and cause the Bitcoin miners to have to mine at a huge loss to continue.
the massive power consumption is a net benefit, because it is spent in making the overall network more secure
I really have trouble understanding this argument. Joining a mining pool secures nothing.
The whole point of mining is to arrange transactions into blocks, and then generate a cryptographic hash of the block that meets some difficulty criteria. It costs some small amount of computing to do that. But an astonishingly large number of hashes won’t meet that difficulty criteria, which is why miners have to try a gazillion times to find one that works.
However, once a block has a valid hash, it is added to the chain. Then, the hash of that valid block must be used in the next block, which will be equally hard to find.
By “security”, what is really meant is “How can I be sure that a transaction can’t be undone once it is committed”? And it’s because all these blocks are stacked on top of each other, and cryptographically related. Once a transaction appears in a block, and a few blocks get mined on top of it, it becomes prohibitively difficult to un-do it, because someone would have to put in the computing power to re-authenticate a string of blocks, all while the rest of the network is adding blocks to the valid chain at a faster rate.
The security of this whole arrangement has so far been working good as well.
In order for someone to try and perform a 51% attack, they’ll need to either compromise a large swathe of existing miners (e.g if the government seized control) or create/acquire hardware totaling more than 100% of the existing network today plus growth while you attempt to build more than 100% and then maintain growth over the rest of the network.
As the network grows that becomes exceedingly more difficult to perform.
I have really high hopes for something like proof of work, but it’s not without it’s own problems either, and with Ethereum, it’s the first massive scale test, so it’s not as battle tested as proof of work yet, although it’s been used in smaller projects so there has been some testing. With more money on the line though, comes more will to try and break it, or use an exploit you may have held back beforehand.
One interesting difference with POW/POS is that if a miner/entity does somehow perform an attack, they keep the hardware and can continue to try. With POS, they should get slashed in which case the money is gone. But with POW you have the barrier of actually acquiring the correct amount of hardware, meanwhile in POS, you just need the money so there’s no manufacturing/lead time.
My main issue with Bitcoin isn’t even the POW vs POS angle, it’s the fact that the core devs see no problem with their current POW algorithm, which is not designed to put any bounds at all on energy consumption. But I also think they should have increased the block size, and you can see where that discussion went.
Fuck the core devs is really all i have to add to that without going into it…
Luckily something like Ethereum and others were born due to them.
I sometimes have a weird vibe like someone somehow crippled Bitcoin by making it not able to evolve and develop.
I mean… If I wanted it gone and couldn’t just destroy it, I would cripple it. Idk, just feels sus.
Anything that makes bitcoin more valuable is a financial benefit to all people holding bitcoin. Anyone who has a brilliant idea is financially better off by making their own coin.
Miners, who have money tied up in bitcoin-specific hardware, have a vested interest in maintaining the POW system or else their capital loses value.
There are probably exchanges short on bitcoin that stand to profit from a decreasing price.
So yeah. Someone crippled bitcoin. That someone is Satoshi.
Right… I don’t get what you’re saying.
I like Cardano better anyways, it is using a provably secure PoS, has a more decentralized block production, will transition to a fully on-chain governance this year most likely and genesis keys will be burned AKA it will finally be decentralized in all aspects. It has UTXO like Bitcoin but with SCs (which are not insecure like EVM and Solidity). It will also have L2s and sidechains, Hydra (like LN with SCs). And on top of that we have a plan to scale L1 without compromising on security or decentralization (Input endorsers). I could go on and on. Best case scenario - Cardano becomes the main blockchain of the world, worst case - it coexists with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin has literally 2 pools who have more then half of the block production.
Also not all PoS systems have locking and slashing btw.
Pools that people could leave if something suspicious was happening.
Very different than an individual entity.
Well… Cardano has like 30 different pools that add up to 50+% of the block production.
If something sus was happening with one or more of those - people can just leave them.
Same thing but 30 is better than 2.
If something sus was happening with one or more of those - people can just leave them.
Same thing but 30 is better than 2.
Definitely agree, 2 isn’t ideal, and there’s some level of trust happening there because of it.
There’s been pushes over the years to get people to split apart more, and I’m pretty sure there was a significant split due to this at least once in the past.
It’s gotta be either something like reliability, ui/ux, ease of setup, otherwise all I can come up with is a larger pool pays out smaller amounts more consistently and people prefer that?
We in Cardano have a “saturation” limit per pool. So if you have more than like 70M ADA, you don’t get rewards for anything above that. This encourages people with a lot of ADA (either theirs or delegated to them) to run multiple pools. We call them multi pool operators. Cardano community has a really strong sentiment against delegating to multi pools. And if you are wondering if that figure I mentioned earlier (30 pools to reach 50+%) is just a few entities with many pools. No - this is actually 30 individual MPOs (multi pool operators).
That’s a pretty cool solution to the problem.
That’s a pretty cool way to address the problem. I originally wrote solution, but that’s not really a solution since it could just be multi pools, but by putting a barrier in place like that to discourage it, it should lessen the problem.
mojofrododojothe power reqs keep the plebes out.
Instead of using an independent RNG to determine the next block producer Bitcoin miners are essentially flipping coins and whoever manages to flip like 78 tails in a row gets to create the next block. How crazy is that?
What’s even more astonishing is that when someone creates a new Crypto wallet, it creates an obscenely long random number as a seed, and just starts using it. As long as the number is sufficiently random, the chance that someone else has generated the same random number is so small as to be functionally zero. So you don’t have to ask for anyone’s permission first before using Crypto. You only have to ask the Universe for some of its entropy.
It’s the same math of large numbers that leads us to conclude that every time we shuffle a deck of cards, the result is a deck that nobody in the history of the Universe has ever seen before. 52! is an insanely large number, which is on the order of 10^67 .
quantumbase.com/how-unique-is-a-random-shuffle/
The math behind Crypto is sound, and ensures that everyone’s wallets stay secure. Noone but their owners can move funds put of their wallets, and once a transaction is sufficiently confirmed, it can’t be undone. The only real threat to this is Quantum Computing, which might be used someday to Crack the relationship between public and private keys which is unassailable now. We’ll see whether the people who run these Crypto networks are able to change their algorithms to be Quantum resistant in rhe future.
Oh yeah, Quantum computing won’t ruin crypto. Cardano already has plans to transition to quantum resistant crypto primitives. We just need to wait for some standards to form around which algorithms should be used in the future instead of current ones. I’m not worried about quantum computers at all.
Oh, I have confidence that we can develop quantum-resistant crypto. My concern is in the governance of all the projects. Cardano seems to be in good shape, but it put some thought into how to make decisions that have at least some community involvement. But the market is driven by BTC mainly, and they have some issues in how they run themselves.
I lost hope in Bitcoin because of this. It doesn’t seem like it can evolve and develop. And holders don’t have a say, just miners and devs.
I like Cardano because it’s actually trying and cares. It will transition to a full on-chain governance this year most likely.
makeasnekBTC’s protocol has gotten steady, incremental improvements for 15 years without a single hour of downtime. Lightning was deployed a few years ago and continues to grow each year and get easier to use and deploy. Migration to quantum-resistant algorithms is in the interest of all parties who use the system including miners, banks, hedge funds, developers, users, etc. It’s a very easy problem compared to other questions they faced around blocksize, taproot, etc.
Quantum computing is not a threat at all tbh. Computers that can crack public key encryption are “20 years away” and require some fundemental shifts in our ability to control physics. And that’s the lab production version, not one available on the open market.
Quantum-resistant algorithms already exist and continue to be refined. Things will get migrated long before they become a realistic threat.
Fucking nightmare.
I wish all my the nightmares would be like this!
Is it not a way in which some governments could collaborate to end this Bitcoin madness?
Genuinely question.
Like maybe some big countries could agree to collaborate and join resources to make a 51% attack and bring Bitcoin price to 0 so people stop wasting resources on it.
2% of enery usage for something that do not add any value to society is INSANE.
If you destroy Bitcoin, another currency would take its place.
Good. Most don’t use proof of work anymore because they don’t feel the need to watch the world burn for no reason other than propping up techno bros.
A lot still do, and that’s where the miners would go
If governments started regulating bitcoin because it was proof of work based then people aren’t going to pump real money into another proof of work scheme to replace it - why would they take the risk of it happening again when there are alternatives? the mining profit margins would disappear and so would they.
It woulf take years and years to pass such a ban in a significant number of countries - assuming they would ever want to cooperate on this, that is
Oh I think that’s probably true, but the question assumed it taking place
Cardano.
I think the best solution would be to properly tax carbon. That way Bitcoin miners would either become unprofitable or move to greener energy.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to establish the precedent that gov’t can decide what you can and cannot do with your energy. You may think it’s a waste of energy, but if the externality is properly taxed, I don’t see the problem with letting it continue
Agreed, tax what the problem is not just one facet of it.
I think the best solution would be to properly tax carbon. That way Bitcoin miners would either become unprofitable or move to greener energy.
I think cap and trade can be a good idea, the problem is getting all the countries in the world to sign onto it. Any country that doesn’t ends up with a competitive advantage. But if you somehow got them to all agree, blockchain actually provides a perfect way to build a cap-and-trade system that every country can participate in, transparently, without having to trust one country or group of countries to run it honestly. That’s the essential problem blockchain solves: administering systems trustlessly.
Bitcoin miners do by and large use green energy since it tends to be the cheapest (off-peak hours from over-provisioned grids). If electricity gets more expensive, it doesn’t mean it becomes unprofitable to mine, that’s only one side of the equation. The other side is how much people are willing to pay to get transactions added to the blockchain, which is a number, on average, that has increased year after year. Not that you ever need to make an on-chain transaction, with Bitcoin lightning you can do transactions off-chain while getting much of the security of on-chain transactions. You can move money internationally in under a second for pennies in fees. And it works just as easily as venmo. In fact, if you have cash app on your phone, you already have the ability to use the lightning network, though it’s a custodial wallet (meaning you are trusting cash app not to take/lose your BTC).
Then it’s just gonna suck up “green energy”. It’s still energy.
We have already have provably secure PoS (not Ethereum btw, it’s PoS sucks ass).
Yeah I’m pro PoS in general, but I don’t think we should forbid people from running PoW on their own computers. Seems like a step too far.
Side note, what’s wrong with Ethereum’s PoS in your opinion?
Oh yeah, I was never for banning PoW. I just don’t like it since I know same or better can be achieved with a well designed PoS.
Ethereum PoS has slashing so people are scared to stake thus causing low participation rate. Also, in Ethereum, you need a minimum amount of 32 ETH to solo stake. Ethereum also doesn’t have a native liquid staking and has locking, unlike Cardano. And you can’t delegate your coins without giving up custody of them. Cardano PoS is designed completely differently and is natively liquid with no locking, no min amount to stake, native delegation and both delegation and self-staking is risk free when it comes to your balance. Worst case - you miss out on those 3.5% rewards for the period your balance is delegated to a pool that’s not doing its job. All of this is the reason staking participation is like 65% in Cardano. Would probably be even higher if it wasn’t for lost coins and large whale wallets that are not staking/delegating for some reason.
I think the 32 ETH lockup + slashing does make it riskier to stake, but it also makes the chain more secure. As a malicious Ethereum staker, every failed attack costs me a lot of money. As a Cardano staker, I can attempt an attack many times because there I don’t lost that much if it fails.
The lack of liquid staking is the only real drawback I see here, as it has allowed some centralization in the Lido token. Ethereum has yet to address that issue
Yeah, but people are just gonna leave your pool if you try to attack the network or miss blocks. (And good luck attacking the network where even the largest 2 entities Binance and Coinbase together only have amount 12% of block production (stake)).
Like… ye, it’s not happening.
And why would you attack a network (if you could) where your value is stored. It’s a suicide.
If you did have so much stake, it might be smarter to play by the rules.
Like… ye, it’s not happening.
And why would you attack a network (if you could) where your value is stored. It’s a suicide.
If you did have so much stake, it might be smarter to play by the rules.