[HN Gopher] Bitcoin's Climate Problem
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Bitcoin's Climate Problem
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 9 points
Date : 2021-03-09 21:25 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| iameli wrote:
| I believe in the potential of cryptocurrency. I believe it to be
| the only thing with any chance of upending some particularly
| entrenched and harmful bits of the legacy financial system.
|
| Proof of Work is not necessary to achieve this. Many blockchains
| already exist without it. Ethereum will, in theory, be moving
| away from it within a couple of years.
|
| I'm scared that Bitcoin will never change or reduce its energy
| consumption despite the existence of eco-friendly alternatives.
| The definition of "Bitcoin" seems to be controlled by the miners,
| who will be the last ones that want to move away from an energy-
| intensive mining process.
|
| What can be done to stop this?
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| The only thing to stop is thinking that PoS is secure, or a
| valid alternative to Nakamoto Consensus. PoW is the only way
| (we know of, and possibly the optimum way) to secure a
| blockchain, and bootstrap value.
|
| Let it go. Energy will be used. Money will be made. You will be
| free.
| iameli wrote:
| What would it take to get you to change your mind about PoW
| alternatives? How many years of secure operation? How much
| value transfer? How large of an ecosystem? How much academic
| research into the mechanisms?
|
| Assume for the sake of argument that an alternative to
| Nakamoto Consensus is developed that meets your standards for
| security/decentralization and requires orders of magnitude
| less energy. Perhaps you're right and no such system exists
| today, but I'm not ready to accept that such a thing is
| physically impossible. Would you support hardforking Bitcoin
| to use the new system?
|
| My concern is that miners never will, no matter the merits of
| switching.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Nothing will convince me against this. I believe it is a
| matter of simple physics. The fundamental argument is
| energy use provides the value and security. You can't have
| both less energy and more security. Its either universal
| computationally secure through Proof of Work, or its a
| shell game with big players. You cant remove energy from
| the equation. In general we should be looking for universal
| (math/physics, focusing on number theory/computation and
| energy usage) solutions, not human constructs like "bob has
| a lot of money so we listen to him."
|
| Do I trust the universe of math more than I trust the
| universe of humans? Yes.
| iameli wrote:
| Very well, thank you for your time.
| neighbour wrote:
| >How many years of secure operation?
|
| I don't believe this is a way of validating the security of
| a blockchain. Consider the turkey problem as stated in "THE
| BLACK SWAN" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: "A Turkey is fed for
| 1000 days by a butcher. Every day confirms to the turkey
| (and the turkey's economics department, and its risk
| management department and its analytics department ...)
| that in fact the butcher loves turkeys. Every day brings
| more confidence to the statement. Until one day the Turkey
| is ripe for Thanks Giving".
|
| You may very well be correct but I don't think length of
| time without a fatal error is a valid metric.
|
| For me personally, I am in the Bitcoin proof-of-stake camp
| however I would be lying if I didn't say I also have a
| position in Ethereum.
| iameli wrote:
| Sure, totally fair - days of continued operation would be
| but one metric of thousands we could use to evaluate the
| efficacy/security/decentralization of a blockchain.
|
| My concern is that no matter which criteria we pick, and
| no matter how well PoW alternatives perform according to
| those criteria, miners will never vote to migrate.
| Bitcoin proof-of-stake would be great, but my concern
| applies equally to any potential eco-friendly
| alternatives, whether or not they've yet been invented.
|
| I work in the Ethereum ecosystem but my continued support
| is entirely dependent on the PoS migration... and the
| same factors that make me nervous about Bitcoin make me
| nervous for eth2. But I hope they pull it off.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| What's with the increasing regularity of reporting on this
| specific issue? The power usage of miners doesn't appear to have
| changed significantly, but the reporting of it seems to have
| increased by orders of magnitude in the last month.
| tomComb wrote:
| But that is true of crypto and Bitcoin in general: it is going
| through another of its peaks, and with that comes a new wave of
| coverage - both good and bad.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Its an attack by bitcoin's enemies (and those that simply refuse
| to understand) to decredit it. We see this every so often,
| especially when there are big price jumps. Standard FUD attack.
| This cycle we are seeing: "Mining Concentration", "Based on
| Nothing" or "My Energy Usage".
|
| I think its a form of therapy for the nocoiners. They can be safe
| with their delusion that 'thank goodness I didn't get involved in
| such a shady business! its destroying the planet.', while tradfi
| continues to commodify their life, and central banks print away
| their life savings.
| ngokevin wrote:
| That doesn't address the point raised, that's just ad hominem.
| You could just as well say people that defend bitcoin are just
| holders enjoying the pumps, claiming decentralization is the
| reason they hold it versus a likely real reason: wanting
| personally get rich and multiply their investments.
| aeternum wrote:
| The article raises a false equivalence. The energy
| consumption of bitcoin is unrelated to the transaction rate.
|
| The hashrate is ultimately what secures Bitcoin and is
| completely independent of transactions processed. A better
| comparison would be the Bitcoin hashrate vs. the human life,
| electricity, and resources spent securing gold vaults and
| other physical assets.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Because the point is not valid. Its not worth addressing for
| the 7th time. Once you tire of the arguments year after year,
| and they just repeat, on loop -- you start to question the
| person that keeps raising it.
| asdev wrote:
| This issue has been beat to death. Everyone here loves to FUD
| crypto around here for some reason.
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