Bitcoin Forum

To start with this "mini thesis", nullius wrote a great piece on why bitcoin is an inflation hedge (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5408084.msg60651820#msg60651820).

TL;DR:


By lately some people have been claiming that "Bitcoin's power consumption is a central point of failure - someone can just switch off the electricity and all miners stop". And in particular "Bitcoin will not survive the coming winter". Both of these are wrong.

Being an inflation hedge implies being a store of value, since people will keep BTC for longer periods of time in the latter case.

Miners getting their power cut depends entirely on which country their operating in, not all countries think the same. In particular, Siberian miners using Russian natural gas will not see any change or harassment of their operations (because Russia desperately needs foreign cash).

Sure, mining will be unprofitable in places like Germany, but the high electricity prices argue that miners have moved their operations to more favorable places.

The truth is, all miners will go to places with cheap electricity. Cheap electricity means the grids can sustain the miners and the rest of the population without overloading, making the much-trumpeted "economic collapse" non-existent.

Local rules: See below, same rules apply here:

It was a tremendously bad argument in the first place. It's not like stopping all the miners is going to take a single(or a few) press of a button; it's going to require some sort of extensive global government collaboration to literally look for and stop every single miner(including miners that only run their operations at home). It's simply not realistically viable.

I have not heard the argument of Bitcoin not surviving the coming winter. Does that refer to the actual season (weather) or the metaphor used to describe grim bear markets? I'm assuming it would be more of the former, as Bitcoin has been through multiple market cycles, but would appreciate a bit of clarity.

About someone switching off electricity and stopping mining, that's quite a ridiculous argument. For one, if there is a global electricity crisis, almost all industries would take a huge hit. And there's no someone that can switch off electricity and cut of miners.

Also, why are presumed global crisis said to be a Bitcoin problem?
People are always discussing the effect of quantum computers on the cryptography of Bitcoin, but if hypothetically it became a reality, this would be an issue for all global security outlets. Same with an electricity crisis.

I meant that literally. Some people actually believe that power utilities will kick miners off this coming winter to have spare power for everyone else!

This talking point is also reusable at the opposite time of the year - they say that utilities will kick miners off during the summer heat waves so that there's more power for ACs.

the 21m cap. is a mechanism that prevents bitcoin being inflationary.
thus a flat currency of no increase/decrease of value(subject to desire/demand)

as for the hedge against inflation (deflationary)
thats the mining algo of depleting reward periodically(halvening rate of coin release) to get to that 21m,

in short.
the 21m = non inflationary
the 'halvinings' = deflationary(inflation hedge)

so its a double feature that makes bitcoin a hedge against inflation
..
as for the store of value.
thats to do with the difficulty (having an actual cost/more cost) to create coin/secure network

..
as for the debates about the energy and store of value side of it

with PoW the more people that want to mine it, the more costly it becomes to mine/acquire
the most efficient mining on the planet underlies as a bottomline store of value for bitcoin where the cheapest acquisition costs lay. over time this amount increases (at a more steady rate than the volatile market price that sits above the store of value line)
above the store of value line is the speculative market zone/window
where the random higher mining costs of more expensive regions/in efficient miners. and basically those that just want to get coin without mining it then push the speculative PRICE above because people decide to mine or buy at the higher prices than the cheapest on planet thus adding a premium to the store of value.
 
so when the overal cost increases due to difficulty increases/hashrate competition and global energy costs that raise the bottom. this then raises everything else above it

---

PoS however the more people that want to stake. they end up having to custodianise their stake because the thresholds increase and the time/chance of a validator creating a block decreases..
whereby instead of million of PC's passive validating, it becomes central exchanges(custodians) single PC's doing the work. meaning the electric/hardware COST decreases

but when they pool(custodian).. PoS costs decrease even further. thus PoS has little to no underlying bottom store of value.
and majority of its price is built up not of an allotment of large store of value and then ontop some speculation premium.. but instead a very very small couple dollar store of value and then a very high speculation of pure desire/demand to buy. which is not healthy nor valuable

---

lets use ethereum as a prime example using just electric prices of $0.04

scenario A Eth PoW using efficient asic:
Eth PoW hashrate ~850,000Ghash
eth asic of 2.4ghash  at 1.92kwh per asic
=354167 asics = 680000kwh = $27,200/hour
there are ~260 coins made an hour = $104.62 electric cost per coin

scenario B Eth PoS solo stake:
Eth PoS solo validator ~420,000
Pc solo validators of 100w per pc
= 42,000kwh = $1680/hour
there are ~260 coins made an hour = $6.46 electric cost per coin

scenario C Eth PoS custodial stake:
Eth PoS solo validator ~30 custodians

= 3kwh = $0.12/hour
there are ~260 coins made an hour = $0.0046 electric cost per coin

thus, the underlying cost of security/creating a coin drops with PoS and drops further the more popular a PoS becomes. (both cost and security)
where by the difference between the underlying value. vs the market price is made up of pure speculation of human choice. rather than an underlying cost

This seems like an equally ridiculous take to me. Are there any laws guiding what industries can be let off or what takes priority over others.

Mining is sort of a business venture for miners, same with industries and factories everywhere which consumes loads of electricity. Why would one take precedence over the other...

fun fact about energy waste
did you know what the most energy intense government public utility is?

you might laugh at the pun. but its a fact

yep the answer is waste treatment plants(sewerage).
yep they use far more energy on average than any other government public utility does
.. now i call that a waste

You are right! Made a new thread Bitcoin wastes electricity? - No - Heat your home with mining https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5412448.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5412448.0)

Miners will go to favorable place where they will mine their operations. They will not stop due to power cut .
They will find new solution for mining. Bitcoin is a really store of value Whoever earns bitcoin today will be able to earn more profit in future

Not kick them out but pay them in order to shut the gear down to drop consumption.
And it's a fact, it just happened in Texas, and if you don't believe rumors, you might believe financial statements from Riot:
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/08/03/2491455/0/en/Riot-Blockchain-Announces-July-2022-Production-and-Operations-Updates.html


Of course, it's voluntary but it's still about the money!
If miners would be faced with 40cents per kWh like in Europe they would be shutting also voluntary but a different type.


And keep following the rules of the free market, what happens when the excess free energy there is no longer enough? The truth is that the current situation can hold only x amount of miners, that's it, there is no way for an infinite number, somewhere there is a stop and the cheap energy stops becoming cheap.

People lives are worth more than btc,
so when the power rationing increases as it will because of energy mismanagement by the world governments.
They will ban PoW, to save as many people as possible.

If you look at https://poweroutage.us/
Texas right this second has ~27000 homes without power,
Arizona has ~21000 homes without power
California has ~12000 homes without power. (Where they are already begging people not to charge their electric cars.)

Plus an early warning has already started for PoW,
the prelude to the bans,
Energy Utilities raising the energy rate so high, that the miners just shut down.
IE:
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/09/01/bitcoin-mining-middleman-compass-georgia-facilities-to-close-as-energy-prices-soar/


Look where they think , it is safe to go , TEXAS, which at the moment has the highest power outages in the US.

Look, many think this is all fud, but I assure you ,
this is the reality of where this world is headed, and it will be ~10 years before the energy situation can be repaired to a reliable power grid.
The baseload power requirements have been ignored for over 20 years, in favor of green energy which can not support 24x7 baseload,
and at the moment Nuclear or Tidal energy are the best solutions, and it will take ~10 years for enough new one to just keep our grids stable.

Their are no 1st world countries anymore, starting this Winter, every country on the Planet is a 3rd world country unable to keep the power on 24x7 for it's citizens.  :P
 

It would probably create an entire new wave of miners. Lower power, low noise, perfect for home mining. Perhaps get back to the rack mount style like the antminer S2 / Spondoolies tech miners so people could place it in their equipment racks and nobody would know the difference.

Yes, the governments could play whack-a-mole trying to find it all but it would never happen.

Since BTC is for people to do with what they want, it can be a store of value, it can be a hedge against inflation, it can be an investment, it can be a cash replacement. It can be whatever you want it to be. And if someone does not agree, fine you don't have to agree it's what YOU want, not what THEY want.

-Dave

Precisely. People are forgetting about the difficult adjustments. If large-scale mining businesses would be ruled out, then it would be highly more viable for at-home miners. There's a reason it was designed this way — for Bitcoin to work regardless if there was a huge censorship campaign for large-scale miners.

A common misconception is that hash rate is reduced when miners shut down their rigs when their country imposes taxes to the energy or just isn't profitable anymore for them according to high energy prices. That's false. These people may not mine, but their infrastructure, and therefore their work, is transferred to mining-friendly countries, as is said above.

Non-mining-friendly countries already own a small minority of the hash rate.

More people are forgetting that as energy rate keeps increasing,
the cost of the energy to mine a bitcoin is exceeded by the energy purchased price.
Meaning, every bitcoin mined costs more money than it brings in.
How many home users do you think will go in the hole even $1k every month for 1 to 2 years to save btc.
With Food and energy prices still increasing, odds are they won't be able to afford it,
many normal business are already shutting down from just the normal energy they use.

Giant mining firms can offset their loss in profit by going to the outside financial sector for capital investment.
Home users can not get a major capital investment on a whim, because to be honest their operations will be too small to ever profit mining bitcoin.
Bitcoin is only more profitable than the energy used for ~ 6 months every 4 years, the rest of the time , it is in the hole.
* Due to the aging Baby Boomers, the capital investment is already in decline,
so even the big boys are not going to be able to offset the costs anymore like in the past.*  

And you are forgetting that if big players do drop out difficulty goes down, and as it does the home / small miners will if not make a profit will not incur a noticeable loss.
You also do not seem to understand the amount of people who are mining with fixed infrastructure power costs.
Or where there is unused power generation that can't go anyplace else.  https://decrypt.co/98424/bitcoin-firm-crusoe-energy-raises-505-million-grow-flare-gas-mining-business

Or the bottom of the mountain wind turbine miners in CA.

Or overnight hydro mining, it's not like a river stops flowing when everyone goes to sleep at night and power use drops.....

And so on.

-Dave

The 10-minute block time and 21-million Bitcoin both imply a store-of-value, due to slow updates and limited Bitcoin.

The Genesis block tells us Satoshi's intention: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” The bailouts were due to large banks and mortgages failing.  These would be large accounts, ones where value would be stored, and the statement of "bailout"'s says that Satoshi was annoyed by a loss-of-value.

"The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust."
"Coins have to get initially distributed somehow, and a constant rate seems like the best formula."
"Bitcoin [is] more like a collectible or commodity."
"As the number of users grows, the value per coin increases."
" if you get larger amounts then you can upgrade to the actual bitcoin software."
"Maybe it could get an initial value circularly as you’ve suggested, by people foreseeing its potential usefulness for exchange... Maybe collectors, any random reason could spark it."
"Escape the arbitrary inflation risk of centrally managed currencies! Bitcoin’s total circulation is limited to 21 million coins."
(lifted from http://sampatt.com/blog/2019/06/06/breakdown-of-all-satoshi-writings-proves-bitcoin-not-built-primarily-as-store-of-value#evidence-for-store-of-value)

At the moment, Bitcoin is not a store-of-value. It's not stable enough for that. It is likely an increase-of-value after several years, but not always within a short yearly period.

If you wanted to force people to transact, you would go for a different model. Inflation encourages spending, so to encourage transactions it would be better to have a schedule that starts with block halvings to encourage uptake, but after a few decades change to block doublings.

Bitcoin's value is determined on the difficulty of obtaining new Bitcoin. While that may be CPU/hash power, difficulty can also come in the form of legal restrictions. More legal restrictions increases difficulty, which would increase the cost of creating new Bitcoin, and push the price upwards. You may find that if Bitcoin becomes banned in some countries that miners will still continue in those countries because they find Bitcoin worth it. Hash rate is partially irrelevant since that automatically adjusts -- it's the "difficulty" that matters, and "difficulty" includes hash rate, technological progress, power generation and consumption -- but social reasons can also increase "difficulty".

You seem to be forgetting it takes 2 weeks for the BTC PoW difficulty to reset.
As observed from other coins, that had a major drop off of miners,
It could take six months for the difficulty to drop low enough for a home miner to actually mine a block.
You think the public will wait patiently or the exchanges will just go , we wait no problem, I don't think so.

You're kind of missing the reality that is heading toward you this winter.
There is not going to be any excess power generation,
the majority of hydro is about to shut down due to world wide droughts,
no water no power no food. Time to wake up Dave.
https://www.vox.com/23292669/drought-2022-power-energy-grid-lake-mead-climate-heat-hoover-dam

If you have ignored the price of natural gas skyrocketing cost in Europe,
you realize that those flaring gas, instead of selling it, are going to lose money instead of making it.
The larger profit will be from selling natural gas, not burning it to lose money mining btc.

In the world we are moving into, reality returns ,
UNPROFITABLE VENTURES will be discarded for Profitable Ventures.
If you think btc PoW mining will be profitable , knock yourself out, you'll find out the hard way soon enough.
PoW fatal flaw, the PoW network fails when the cost of energy exceeds it network maintenance cost and their is no outside capital investment to keep it on life support.

Bruh.

Where I live, my whole area, a 6-mile radius, just got its power cut off for 6-12 hours/day for the past week (welcome to Africa). And this is when the temperature outside is 10-15°C and I don't see people around me starving or freezing to death just because of electric bills becoming "expensive". If I add up all the houses in my town that have no power at any given time, it's a similar amount to your numbers above, and again I don't see people becoming desperate because of that.

What you have described, is exclusively a first-world problem. Not energy mismanagement, but panicking about electricity. Here we have a saying: "Live one day at a time".


There's no correlation. Miners shut down operations because of high power all the time. Why didn't you mention any EU meeting or something like that?  ::)


Great! I'll assume you have made a contingency plan for what to do when your utility starts switching off your power for entire days at a time. /sarcasm

 :D :D :D

Dude , you already live in a 3rd world country, if you got power only 12 hours per day.
How many btc PoW miners are in your area?  Hmm?
None, I imagine, because you can't keep the power on.

I would doubt people are freezing to death at 10-15°C , however -15°C is another story.
Hopefully your area does not get that cold naturally, however the US and Europe can easily hit that # and lower.

Starvation to Africa will come from lack of fertilizers, and problems importing food to your country.  
When the power is off 4 days, your food in the freezers are gone.
Unless of course you are 3rd world enough to just go outside and slaughter a fresh goat when hungry.  ;)
https://www.theafricareport.com/123719/whats-behind-africas-skyrocketing-imports-yet-increased-production-growth/



Your ability to ignore what is in front of you is amazing.
Mining firm closes down in Georgia, because the energy prices doubled.
Mining firm claims they are moving to Texas, Texas already has rolling blackouts. Energy prices there are also increasing.
What this means is the miners moving to Texas will make the energy problems in Texas even worse.
Also meaning that the Texas Grid comes 1 step closer to failure, and your precious miners having no where left to go.
Think about it , if Texas grid goes to failure, the transformers will be down for 2 or 3 years before repair.
No country in their right mind will allow PoW mining in their county after they see that happen.



Yes,
Generac whole house battery backup, with Gas powered Inverters to maintain the backup, with enough Gas stored for a year.
Generac backup run you ~$30K USD, ~$1.5K for Gas power Inverter, your local gas prices ~$8700 for a years worth, suspect a increase soon.
I assume you are keeping a herd of Boer goats in your front yard, eat the males, drink the milk from the females, and burn their shit for warmth.
So we are both ready.  :D


My vacation is now over, so I shall leave you to spread your nonsense.
Good Luck in the Dark Winter, and the coming Hunger Games in 2023.

Anyway...


I wonder if ETH will still retain its store-of-value properties after the POS upgrade, in the long term - as in several years or decades from now once governments become smart and realize that they can just issue a warrant to POS miners they don't like and seize their equipments in typical raids.

store of value "properties"?

store of value is just that. a store of value
value(economic number) is the bottomline number where the most cheapest most efficient most lowest cost of getting coin that no one else on the planet can go below

anything can develop a store of value. even if that store of value is just a X cents.
the issue is... if the PRICE remains close to that SoV to protect majority of someones wealth from loss when they buy. or if its bubble inflated/premium far far above SoV line
(its why most PoS coins are not $1k+ and those that are. thats just unprotected pure speculation over hyped/pumped prices that are not sustainable)

EG
right now people buying bitcoin at this quarters rates have a wealth security of 75% SoV, IF!! they bought at $20k(Sov ~$15k)

where as if they bought at $60k their wealth has only a 25% SoV security

bitcoin is a good store of value because its deflationary nature means at the next market cycle that pishes up SoV and thus the price speculation window above it. that wealth stores last/this year gets more protected later..
unlike inflationary fiat where the longer you hoard fiat the less value is protected and you lose value

..
separate scenario
those buying eth at $1.5k might have a 66% Sov now(~$1k inc hardware pow). but will soon be more like 0.05% after PoS
so expect a massive price correction when fully PoS and a value protection loss of like 99.95%

---

as for your other comment about government..
PoS doesnt use special equipment
what you might be more concerned with if you like PoS and are gov worried is...
..is not equipment. but [inserting slight gov conspiracy theory for you] if the custodial pools (EG coinbase which is regulated and licenced) got told to seize all the staked value by regulators(hand custodial keys to regulators) or if coinbase got told by regulators to perform some task using its staking opportunities(and other regulated services told the same).
- but thats entering into the extreme realms of the line between possibility and conspiracy


a more rational concern of gov intervention is..
..is even when regulators are saying that for instance liquid, LN and monero are bad currencies which exchanges should not custodianise or offer services for.
reality is those regulators are not begging to seize all monero/ln/liquid funds. they are just saying to regulated exchanges, to just dont offer services to those currencies in the first place. thus most govs wont seize equipment/coins for the sake of it. but instead you will just see less custodians(legit businesses running pools) and businesses (merchants) accepting those PoS coins should governments take a bad eye to a PoS.
but that same rationale can happen with any 'proof-of..'  coin

---

but to the point of store of value
bitcoins SoV grew from about $0.04 early 2010. to ~$15k 2022
eth grew to about $1k in 2022 but is about to drop to a couple dollars or even a few cents SoV after PoS
(expect a massive price correction)

as for the market prices of those coins. well thats the speculation and whimsy stuff above SoV of the times.. which is more wiggling and volatile above SoV
so just be sure to buy the LOW not the HIGH if you want to protect more of your wealth when you buy.

..
bitcoin is a great SoV because even if you buy a high. deflation means if you leave it long enough more of your wealth becomes protected as the SoV increases over time
(unless bitcoin foolishly does a PoS or algo reset or something massive to change the dynamics of economic policy)

To begin with, "winter" doesn't happen in the entire world at the same time. Sure the opposite pole is summer, but there are still the whole tropics. Not the entire planet is having power scarcity, in fact, some places have excess of it. Take for example the natural gas from oil extraction, its normally just vented or burned, but there are mining operations running generators from that gas on site instead, those are not connected to the grid and are immune to the problems in California, Texas etc.

Bitcoin can work with lots or little hashrate, and it can have hashrate come and go as well. The market self regulates itself according to hashprice, and this in turn is what also keeps in check those thinking of "attacks". So if it went low enough to make an attack feasible, more miners would come to profit lifting the difficulty again and keeping the incentive away in perpetuity (its more expensive to perform the attack than the possible benefit).

Those that don't understand, or even fear Bitcoin, have not read the Austrian school of economy (https://mises.org/), they think deflation is the end of the world, it isn't. Unlike what the current trend says, you don't have to get in debt to invest, without garbage money you can simply save to invest. Its slower, but steady than the roller coaster of credit expansion, bubbles and crashes.

And the price of things is subjective, period. Its valuable to people because they feel like it. Those who don't think so sell. And that's the correlation you get in the market. This value is changing according to time and location as well as the feelings of every individual person. Things don't have "intrinsic" or "extrinsic" value, it is subjective, and its not fixed in time and space. Again, Austrian school of economy...

Once you understand it, you know the place of Bitcoin in the world, and how is pushing it to a different era. Altcoins made by people who don't understand and just reproduce the vice of fiat in digital form, are destined to fail. Infinite emission, voluntary "burning", reverting transactions on a whim by a select few, that's the kind of trash the State has always done. None of that exists in Bitcoin.