Bitcoin Forum

Whatever your feelings are for Greenpeace, I think most would agree these folks have chutzpah...my guess is that they would support Bitcoin. Anyone a member? Has Bitpay been in touch?

The challenge is in getting past how Bitcoin mining consumes a fair amount of electricity.  Maybe with the efficiency of ASIC this will temper that argument for a while.

1. Competition will always drive miners to dissipate a large fraction of the block reward in electricity. Efficiency gains are only short term.
2. Bitcoin is more energy efficient than cash, vaults and armored cars driving around everywhere.

Long-run Electricity usage depends on the ratio of electricity use to hardware costs. Decreasing this ratio saves electricity (though it does not affect waste overall). You are just replace wasteful electiricty use with wasteful R&D and hardware production. PoW will remain a complete waste regardless of whether that waste occurs via electricity or otherwise.

Nevertheless, you are wrong to suggest that electricity savings are only short-term.

A Minirig SC supposedly yields 50 Mhash/s per $ and 1000 Mhash per joule. The ratio is 200 Joules/s per $ of capital expenditure.

A 5970 yields 1.67 Mhash/s per $ and 2.2 Mhash per joule. The ratio is 1.3 Joules/s per $ of capital expenditure.

As you can see the minirig supposedly has made tremendous progress reducing electricity use, but much less progress in reducing capital costs.

This means that ASIC technology is biased towards energy saving. The long-run competitive equilibrium will feature a quite large reduction in direct electricity use via mining. Perhaps 10-fold.
By contrast, capital expenditure will increase dramatically. This will help to price small miners out of the market. Purchase a mini-rig if they exist, or go home.

I'm too lazy to do all the math at the moment. It is hard to find motivation in a failed technology. Question me further if you want to see exact calculations.


Show math supporting your claim. Currently, bitcoin is orders of magnitude more wasteful than other payment technologies. Here is a reference: http://www.google.com.sg/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=can%20we%20afford%20proof%20of%20work&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDcQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fweis2012.econinfosec.org%2Fpresentation%2FBreuker_presentation_WEIS2012.pdf&ei=ooWwUMzuL8PorAf7tIHYCg&usg=AFQjCNHVP4mza5SJp6E3amVUszxrFR9A2Q (http://www.google.com.sg/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=can%20we%20afford%20proof%20of%20work&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDcQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fweis2012.econinfosec.org%2Fpresentation%2FBreuker_presentation_WEIS2012.pdf&ei=ooWwUMzuL8PorAf7tIHYCg&usg=AFQjCNHVP4mza5SJp6E3amVUszxrFR9A2Q). Future circumstances are speculative.

While I think it would be good to see political groups become more open minded to Bitcoin groups like Greenpeace make me want to repeatedly bash my head in with a blunt object.

Once the block reward is gone, or even just lowered short-term, mining should go towards a minimum as people choose as low fees as they can while maintaining speed and security on the network.

Bitcoin is far from a failed technology.

Are you going to be running the network. Why does what you think 'should' happen have any relevance to what will happen?

I am usually right, you should try it some day ;)

I would explain my logic, but I doubt a guy with a hundred ignores or so would understand or want to.

Greenpeace (at least in Poland) does nothing but blocks valuable investments(of course they "change their mind" if the investor makes donation) and makes anti-nuclear propaganda.

I consider myself an environmentalist and I do not like GreenPeace.  They have managed to block/slow down and even work to close nuclear plants all over the world.  In exchange we get more coal plants.  Nice going GreenPleace. 

This.

Most people don't know that coal mining/burning releases far more radiation per watt of power into the air than nuclear power does. A little thing called radon gas getting released from the coal.

Coal mining also kills more people per watt of power than nuclear power does.

This is taking into account all of the accidents too which are reducing in number and severity with newer reactors.

France is doing a great job producing over 80% of their power with nuclear and they are doing great.

Just goes to show how much damage you can cause mixing good intentions with ignorance.

They are doing fine with archaic nuclear technology. Imagine what they could do with a "modern" (developed in the 1970s) reactor design like LFTR.

This is true. Nuclear power's benefit of causing less death and releasing less radiation than coal per watt is only going to improve as the newer generation of plants replace the old ones.

Greenpeace lie, deceive, spread misinformation and routinely recruit vulnerable, malleable youth who don't know better to break the law. Why would anybody want to associate with them these days is beyond me.

By 'break the law', Are you referring to Natural Law or State Law?

Mostly the body of Common Law surrounding the sanctity of private property; you know like breaking and entering, defacing buildings, vandalism, denying right of entry ... have you not noticed Greenpeace was doing these things?

Okay, so State Law. I agree with you.

I'm not a fan of Greenpeace either. They are like libertarians. They live in some world where there is Natural Law (e.g. Nuclear power is bad because it is against nature). In my opinion, Nuclear (expected death rate low; variance extremely high) much better than Coal (expected death rate high; variance very low).

Quite horrible. They have the nerve to show how easy it is to break into powerplants, and to risc their lifes to protect endangered species.
The even have the nerve to do dangerous things like chaining themselves to a rooftop. Horrible.

We would be much better of if everybode just did exactly as they were told caused it was written in the law.

If even half of these are true...
http://www.jimella.me.uk/laws01.cfm

Court ruled greenpeace were justified in breaking the "law".
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/court-rules-activists-were-justified-in-break/blog/38731/


This is why we should not have a single powerplant.

Watch this in fullhd on fullscreen. Its a video of all know asteriods to this day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_d-gs0WoUw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_d-gs0WoUw)

And we have placed powerplants all over the earth.
One powerplant meltdown that can´t be stopped is enough to render half the earth inhabitable for hundreds of years.

Or when a tsunami hits US East Costs or a earthquake happens and it will, and you have placed "safe" powerplants on got damn Earthquake lines and along the coast (morons).

Just like the morons who placed the fukushima nuclear below the tsunami warning signs.
And people think its safe because people did not die at once...

US East Coast Faces Variety of Tsunami Threats
http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/3774-east-coast-tsunamis.html (http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/3774-east-coast-tsunamis.html)

Tsunami can also come from an asteroid going into the ocean.

People die in 5-15 years as they eat food that is contaminated and the tiny radioactive substances and particles are picked up and stays in the human tissue.
They die from heart diseases etc, not just cancer.

40% of the fish caught in japan is now not edible.

What do you think a poor fisherman does with some of the fish they caught...
Next time you eat fish and ships, the fish you just had might had been swimming through that contaminated pacific ocean.
If there is a small text on the fishsticks that says from caught in Area 61.
 
This is what that means:
http://www.fao.org/fishery/area/Area61/en (http://www.fao.org/fishery/area/Area61/en)

Now watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eh4nBVJTsw&feature=player_embedded

Done by these:
http://www.asrltd.com/japan/plume.php

And it can all go even worse. Reactor no4 contains tons of superdeadly nuclearwaste. Nuclearwaste is more deadly.
http://www.naturalnews.com/035789_Fukushima_Cesium-137_Plume-Gate.html (http://www.naturalnews.com/035789_Fukushima_Cesium-137_Plume-Gate.html)

And now the reactor no4 is sinking into the ground. So it can collapse.

And you think its over?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFoVUNApOg8&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFoVUNApOg8&feature=related)

Here is what happens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWOeKk1GUo&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWOeKk1GUo&feature=related)






 

 ::)

Thank you, istar.
Not everything is lost on bitcointalk..
Most of the people here arguing with "statistics" and "variance" and "secure" have no fkn clue what they are talking about.
I could go on for hours about what other necessary things greenpeace do, what other problems there are with nuclear power, and what the real alternatives to coal are.
I will safe my breath and just say:
Yes, greenpeace accepting bitcoins would be nice.

Ente

I don't know the current power usage by miners but I did a rough caculation about a year ago and estimated something in the range of 10 MW (mega watt) world-wide for mining.

According to one wikipedia source [1] there are 2,2 million ATM cash machines running 24/7 word wide. Assuming each of those consumes about 100 Watts with display we are at 220 MW just for ATMs. This doesn't include printing fiat money and securely distributing it in trucks etc. Just like the Internet at large it's futile to argue Bitcoin is polluting the environment - there's always other costs that can be avoided by utilizing a new techology. It's more about how the energy is produced and what steps are taken to make it more efficient - i.e. ASIC is a step in the right direction!

Power consumption has not been a deterrent for BUND Berlin e.V.  (chapter of Friends of the Earth Germany) in my discussion with them (they are about to launch Bitcoin donations) - utility outweighs cost to nature - just like the offices of any NGO will have electric lighting and Internet access - obviously from renewable sources where possible :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_teller_machine

Edit: typo fix, added source

Ok, you've sold me already.  Where do I send the coins? 

There is actually quite a good environmental argument to be made for Bitcoin - compare it to gold.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/08/28/18688943.php

If you want to donat for environmental causes not to Greenpeace because they don't offer Bitcoin donations yet but to BUND Berlin :) http://www.bund-berlin.de/bund_berlinde/spenden/bitcoin_spenden/bitcoin_english.html

blockchain.info/stats assumes 650 Watt per Gigahash on current hardware (GPU including host computer) - at 25 TH this would be roughly 17 MW of power and it's probably less because ~10 TH may well be FPGA already at this time. One source in the Wikipedia article on ATMs cites 2,2 million ATM cash machines around the world, at 100 Watt per ATM that's 220 MW just for the ATMs - without the manufacturing and distribution of the cash itself. I'd appreciate feedback on this because I'm trying to get the facts right for an article.

You are comparing watermelons to an ameoba. The bitcoin network supplies very very few people. You can't just total the MWs, you need to calculate a ratio such as MW per user. (Unless of course you are trying to come up with some bitcoin propoganda)

I certainly am trying to argue in Bitcoins favor, so please do help :)

Fair point about Watt/User - thank you. At least the hashrate is independent of the number of users - so the footprint could roughly stay the same no matter how many users are using the network. Bitcoinmagazine #2 cites ~1 million bitcoin users in 2012. That'd be 15 Watt per user. No small figure, but not dramatic either and there's a good chance it'll decrease with the growth of the userbase.

Okay bitcoin propoganda, then. 1 million users is obviously made up. 100,000 seems like an overestimate to me. 30,000 would be my estimate (i.e. my best guess, not my generous guess). 30,000 works out to 566 Watts per user or 4950 KwH per user-year, or about US$742 per user-year in electricity expenditure. Not pretty. Not pretty at all.

Sorry can't help you with your article for Pravda.

Watts/user could only be a useless metric dreamed up by an economist ....

watts/unit-value is the only thing that would make sense for an apples/apples comparison.

I agree with this, but unit-value is not going to be hard to enumerate on the fiat side. I suggest you go with the estimates in the original ppt linked to in this thread.

Are you referring to http://weis2012.econinfosec.org/presentation/Breuker_presentation_WEIS2012.pdf ?
I'd appreciate if you could explain the ppt / pdf linked earlier. It looks fairly strange to me. The assumption there is to use 0.3% of all USD payment transactions as budget in electricity for the PoW network. He arrives at ~17600 Petaflops of power, so around 1385 Terahash of SHA256 compute power (according to the ratio on bitcoinwatch.com). While all other arguments of the presentation stay valid with BFL ASIC technology rated at 1W/GH it should be possible to build this size of network at 1,4 MW, give it 2,8 MW for the hosts computers involved. He states himself that interest in PoW would trigger innovation - well it already has.

Which other conclusions does the paper arrive at that I'm missing or are we talking about another paper?

There is the really important point that if you reduce electricity costs and replace them with hardware costs, you are just substituting one form of waste for another.

I think the most appropriate comparison is between bitcoin and electronic banking. After all, bitcoin is not a replacement for in person exchanges of cash. (Though we could print bitbills which would seem to be identical to cash and probably have the same electricity requirements)
If I swipe my debit card, how much electricity do I use?
If I use my smart phone to pay with bitcoin, how much electricity do I use?

I don't think he's wrong. The hardware costs are only so high now because they have to offset the high development cost. As the competition becomes more fierce and the economies of scale kick in, the price of hardware is likely to plummet.

Yes, you are right but your conclusion depends on the market becoming increasingly competitive. Because of the economies of scale and high entry costs, I'm doubt that we will see a competitive market. Without a competitive market, we will continue to see low electricity costs and high hardware costs.

The number of market players is determined by the entry equation.
Say market size is y, then number of market players is n, and Entry Cost is some constant C.

Say there is a new entrant, should they enter and increase the number of players to n+1?

Expected Profit Conditional on Entering (y,n+1) - C >=0 (If so then they should enter)

Expected profit is going to be strictly increasing in y and strictly decreasing in n. For any fixed market size, there is some n where entry is no longer profitable. The larger entry costs are, the smaller the equilibrium n will be.

On a positive note, y may grow if bitcoin takes off. On a negative note, y will shrink as block reward falls. Therefore, if bitcoin fails to grow, then the market will become less and less competitive over time. My expectation is that we will end up with n=1.

[This is a gross oversimplification of course. A full model would have to specify a lot of other stuff (in particular an exit equation is important). The entry equation is just one piece. However, the general conclusion that high entry costs lead to monopoly or oligopoly would not be affected by adding in the other stuff.]

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/

Please try to click on "Donate" :)

Awesome! :-)

Is that new?

Ente

Yes, it is.