Bitcoin’s Climate Problem | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin’s Climate Problem

nytimes.com

13 pointsadrian_mrd16 comments

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.

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.

This issue has been beat to death. Everyone here loves to FUD crypto around here for some reason.

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.

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.

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.

"they're wrong" is not very convincing. It's not the same person writing the articles, and I'm not the same person you've been responding to over and over.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Very well, thank you for your time.

>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.

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.

Consider the Lindy Effect, also popularized by Taleb: "The Lindy effect is a theorized phenomenon by which the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things like a technology or an idea is proportional to their current age, so that every additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life expectancy."

Bitcoin has survived bugs, attacks, forks, bans, smearing... and it all just made it stronger. Antifragile, although very volatile.

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