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Comment by hasa | Hacker News Reader

No one has yet mentioned bitcoin?

Exactly… the projection that datacenters' demand for computing power won't be offset by silicon efficiency improvements is somewhat speculative; the projection that Bitcoin's demand for computing power won't be offset by silicon efficiency improvements is obvious and is by design of the fucking system.

bitcoin mining provides an opportunity for anyone, anywhere to convert their computing resources into value. the competitive pressure is to have more efficient energy usage than your competitors

so in reality, bitcoin provides an direct incentive for more efficient computing (the kind that can't be handle with by building smaller, more efficient processors). it might do more to boost computational efficiency (and reduce emissions) than all the millions of pages of blogger platitude-ing flooding the internet

Absolute bullshit. Bitcoin does not even use processors for mining, it uses massively specialised hardware that is absolutely useless for anything else. No advances in bitcoin mining will translate to gain in anything else.

It also massively increases emissions and does nothing to decrease them. The difficulty adjustment algorithm of bitcoin will ensure that you always have to keep wasting more resources to mine, and will cancel out any gains you ever make. By design. Bitcoin is explicitly built to waste resources.

by specialized hardware, you mean GPUs? which are extremely useful for graphics, machine learning, and large-scale mathematical calculations? the gains to society that GPUs brought can't be understated. how do you think they run the climate-projection models? [1]

and my argument is about second-order effects. even if bitcoin mining remains inefficient, the technological gains of directly incentivising lower energy usage than your competitors carries over to other markets / enterprises

plus, bitcoin is scheduled to run out. so eventually the mining issue is moot

a second-order prediction is obviously more noisy and holds less weight without any direct evidence, but 'lack of direct evidence' characterizes much of this debate

[1]: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2019/07/17/clima-climate-model...

No, nobody mines bitcoin on GPUs. Surely you would know that if you're here trying to make argument about it?

I was under the impression that standard bitcoin mining leveraged GPUs for the heavy lifting. If that's not the case I'm happy to know what does

There are ASIC chips as far as I know.

That hasn't been the case for most of the decade. I already told you what does: Completely custom-built hardware that can do nothing but bitcoin mining, such as Antminers.

For instance, here is a shipping container that burns 1 megawatt of power in a pure and complete waste of energy and carbon emissions: https://shop.bitmain.com/product/detail?pid=0002021123118285...

alright, in that case you're right, the processors seem wasteful

though interestingly, the specialized processors alkso seem like an example of a second order effect of bitcoin: driving innovation towards more energy efficiency. (though the tradeoff here seems to be wasting materials versus wasting energy)

It's all the other shitcoins that are mined on GPUs.

I'm sorry, what? Bitcoin mining has spawned an entire new industry focused solely on converting a scarce shared resource (electrical energy) into perceived personal profits. It is wasteful pollution on a global scale: a single bitcoin transaction consumes as much power as an average U.S. household does in 77 days (https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption)

It's a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons. The energy already wasted on bitcoin mining will never be recuperated by the efficiency gains you so eagerly (and without merit) ascribe to bitcoin.

So when bitcoin hits it's schedule max limit and can't be mined anymore, is the point moot?

I guess the question is: how much of a total energy bill will it have racked up before we get to that point, and should we consider the likely improvements to computing efficiency when we start speculating about the long term impact

"converting a scarce shared resource (electrical energy) into perceived personal profits" (1) is this entirely new?, and (2) it doesn't just exist for increasing profits, it provides a service: a digital cash infrastructure

Harping on about how individuals can reduce energy usage in computing but not talking about Bitcoin is directly comparable to pushing lame individual recycling efforts but ignoring coal power plants and industrial scale methane leaks.

The good thing about Bitcoin is that we can just ban it, since nobody actually uses it for anything important. It could be turned off tomorrow and nothing of value would be lost.

except all the goods and services that it currently stands in as a reference for (given people had to buy it with their own money, which they provided some service to obtain) but hey,

Literally nobody buys goods with bitcoin. Any services you buy tend to exchange to real money as soon as they get the payment.

just because bitcoin wasn't directly involved in a transaction doesn't mean it isn't standing in for economic value

if I steal an ancient coin worth $10,000 dollars from you, and you're upset about it, am I making a good rebuttal by saying: "it's not like you could buy anything at the grocery store with it anyways"

It stands in for a gambling token, that is all. Speculators like to gamble using it.

That is bringing actual value to society. We can get rid of it and it will be a net positive.

except all the goods and services that it currently stands in as a reference for (given people had to buy it with their own money, which they provided some service to obtain)

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