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I don't get winging about mining crypto currency and "wasting power", it's not really a waste, it's proof of work. Besides, we humans waste energy on way worse things than mining Bitcoin.

What about running Facebook, the tens of thousands of high end servers running globally just to figure out what useless junk to feed people, in a way that is detrimental to their health. I don't hear many people complaining about that side of it personally and it's a way bigger waste of electricity IMO.

The other issue is the fact that electricity is produced using fossil fuels, again, not enough protesting about that issue.

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Facebook buys servers to meet their needs, not to grind away on useless "proof of work" systems.

They're also interested in aggressively optimizing how that capacity is used, and where possible work to reduce power consumption, compute requirements, and other such things. They can alter how their software interfaces with their systems, how many requests it makes, what kind of data they return and how often.

Facebook can also power down systems that aren't needed at their current load.

Bitcoin is the opposite: The more work you put in, the more you stand to benefit. You must run your systems flat out, all the time, no breaks. Apart from more efficient mining hardware, there's no way to optimize how it mines, it's 100% utilization all the time.

What's the point of security staff at a bank or military installation? If things are slow, just send guards home. We'd be able to save millions.

You might be aware that, outside of the world of cryptocurrencies, people have been exchanging money and other assets totally fine without proof-of-work since we stopped living on trees.

A better argument would be to point toward proof of stake or other consensus systems like that used in Ripple. Until there is a more effective method, Proof of work is a highly effective alternative to physical security.

Trying to pass off counterfeit government currency has consequences that involve work by numerous individuals and organizations - and they don't always succeed. Proof of work in a crypto system is effectively successful all of the time, instantly.

The same applies to any form of money and fraudulent activity since the beginning of history. There is always work involved, and the effectiveness of that work has never been greater than with crypto... the consequences of which must be kept in mind - just like existing governments and systems, crypto can be used to control its participants.

I believe if you're a serious miner, then you're just as interested in building the most energy efficient system possible [1], that way you will receive the greatest return on your investments. Just like FB, Amazon, Google etc. I would also say the majority of miners buy their own servers, so I don't get your point on that front.

> You must run your systems flat out, all the time, no breaks. Apart from more efficient mining hardware, there's no way to optimize how it mines, it's 100% utilization all the time.

Do you have the same problem with other projects such as SETI@Home and Folding@Home? How about serious gamers or people who watch a really big screen TV all night while on their phone hardly watching it?

I also think that you're making assumptions about these large tech companies by thinking they really do care about energy efficiency as an absolute top priority. While I'm sure it's a consideration, it doesn't mean it always gets the front seat. Remember these companies had time to make this a focus just like new coins are making energy efficiency a priority [2].

Crypto currencies are a new technology and need time to evolve,they will become more efficient in the near future.

[1] http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/geothermal-gold-why-bitcoin-mines-a...

[2] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bitcoin-alternative...

SETI@Home and Folding@Home actually solve real problems. Are the calculations done by bitcoin miners actually applied in a way that accomplishes anything other than being used as a score to decide who gets a new bitcoin?

The problem with bitcoin is not that it costs energy, but that it's specifically designed to waste energy. If it was designed to help SETI and Folding, every conceivable @Home problem would probably have been solved by now.

SETI@Home doesn't pay out, it's purely voluntary. If it's too hot out and I don't to turn things off that's fine, no big deal.

If I turn off any mining equipment I get nothing. Zero. I'm no longer participating in any meaningful capacity. I have no "vote", I have no upside.

> How about serious gamers or people who watch a really big screen TV all night while on their phone hardly watching it?

Let's not "whatabout" this.

> it's not really a waste, it's proof of work

Every kind of waste I can think of is a proof of some kind of work. That doesn't make it a good thing.

The value provide by these systems is trust, which literally requires proof of work to establish.

Facebook news feeds don't require proof of work in the same sense.

That's not a requirement for trust. It's a requirement for this particular kind of decentralised trust.

> The value provide by these systems is trust, which literally requires proof of work to establish.

This is going to go on a tangent but I do not see why proof of work has anything to do with trust. Does your trust in me increase somehow if I give you a string whose hash ends in twenty zeros? i.e. if I subsequently told you I had found a number whose hash ended in thirty zeros but didn't give you the number, would you somehow trust me more than someone else who hadn't shown you proof of work for twenty zeros? Not really.

If anything, proof of work is not producing trust, but eliminating it (and the need for it).

It's computationally expensive to trick the network by rehashing all blocks in the chain, which is essentially needing to re-do all the proof of work operations since the begging of the BTC ledger. This is how POW adds integrity, for bitcoin and how you can trust your not dealing with a tampered system.

I'm not saying it's efficient, but it's worked well so far.

Good explanation here: https://decentralize.today/how-does-proof-of-work-um-work-f4...

Proof of Work is better described as Proof of (resource) Waste (for late adopters).

The only thing PoW attempts to do is increase the amount of capital wasted via wasting electricity and computational cycles as time progresses.

Ironically if you actually look at the protocol, miners are rewarded less and less yet have to work harder and harder. The vast majority of the supply sits with less than ~100 of the early miners who put in the least amount of work for the most amount of coins.

No; most kinds of waste are not instantly verifiable, but proof of work is.

What's verifiable is that you wasted a lot of work.

Is anything useful actually being done with all those calculations that are being performed? It seems the only purpose is to prove that you performed this amount of useless work, because the system is built on rewarding new bitcoins to those who waste the most work this way. It's intentionally wasteful just because the system needs something that isn't easily gamed without massive investment of equipment and energy.

Other cryptocurrencies manage to exist without being designed around wasting energy.

Other entities burning energy isn't a good argument for "wasting power" mining cryptocurrency as it boils down to whataboutism [0].

The proof of work is a potentially valid argument but wouldn't it be better if the work was useful in some way?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

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