Correct, but the fact that these exists is probably facilitated by another pool so it'll be more of a cat and mouse game. I don't think mining pools would be particularly inclined to sacrifice their revenue from fees in this manner, it's expensive and doesn't do much for them. In addition, they would have to answer to their miners as well, not too popular. It's a real problem that can possibly only be solved at a protocol level.

I think a benefit to the society and a benefit to the economy can be quite conflicting at the same time. Generally, a lot of human activities are associated with global warming and its an unfortunate side-effect, and thus efforts are there to get people to reduce their carbon footprint. It doesn't matter whether the economic output is high; the pursuit of economic growth is rather frivolous and we've demonstrate from time to time again that using it to justify carbon emissions is not the way to go.

Bitcoin actually wastes energy because in the grand scheme of things, Bitcoin doesn't have a good marginal utility; the benefit to cost for each person is far lower than other popular payment methods (ie. lower marginal utility than most). I can see this argument getting defeated if Bitcoin goes mainstream and our usage increases. I would admit that Bitcoin is a "waste" in the grand scheme of things.

I get where you are coming from.  It could possibly happen if these exists all across the globe and that the weather conditions are sustainable plus predictable over a period of time. If it is neither, then it wouldn't be attractive enough for an investment since the volatility is too high for such a costly investment; MOP for most Bitmain miners at a discount is around 500 (perhaps smaller but I have yet to chance upon it). Any higher and your cost per device could be 1.5 to 2x of the discounted price.

Predictable and cheap electricity could possibly happen, but I doubt that it would be competitive enough to rival the bigger players and go mainstream. Most energy markets are only cheap periodically and
I understand, so we would be taking the assumption of predictable and frequent cheap electricity (50% of the time). Then the ROI per ASIC would be twice as long. Hence, your profits would probably be coming in after you have hit the ROI which may or may not result in higher overall profits thereafter due to the difficulty increase.
That is correct. From a macro perspective, we would probably have to consider the world's energy requirements. I don't think we are reaching a surplus of energy for a longer term in the future, though I certainly hope that we do. The energy requirements are projected to rise in the foreseeable future. Another area that we have been struggling with is actually energy storage. The reason why negative pricing happens is that certain places doesn't have enough energy storage facilities, and thus it acts as a signal to stop the production of energy to get rid of the surplus. I hope that we are able to go around the whole issue on energy storage, that is a reason for the fluctuation that you see on the energy market and this would cushion and hopefully provide for a sustainable price.
I think then the issue is whether it occurs frequently enough, or if there are no future plans to develop the grid infrastructure to supply the rest of the region with electricity. I don't have enough data on how feasible this is but I think that is the general direction that they want to adopt; Bitcoin mining is quite volatile in terms of the revenue and using miners to offload electricity is usually seen as a quick and easy method to offload them without the need for extensive infrastructure dev. This would work if it's already an existing facility and the region is generally already in energy surplus, but then you would probably have access to generally cheaper electricity to run 24/7.

Yeah, I can see it working if it get cheap enough and Bitcoin mining is more profitable when compared to selling it to the grid.

This is actually incorrect, unfortunately. However, this is actually an implementation used by blockchair, and the format is unique to them. Confusion seems to stem from the fact that people think that these are addresses and not representation of scripts on Blockchair.

There are three different types as correctly identified, d-, m-, s-. d- is for OP_return and m- is for multisig and s- is for non-standard script. S- is relevant to that transaction mentioned is because the script is just OP_NOP OP_NOP OP_NOP OP_NOP OP_NOP OP_PUSHNUM_1. Not a standard that Blockchair recognizes, and thus the s- prefix.

There was an FAQ on this previously, but the only reference I can find currently is here: https://github.com/Blockchair/Blockchair.Support/issues/273.

Yeah, MARA is that pool.

I think that these outputs aren't technically unspendable (2nd tx), because you can see that they are spendable, just non-standard. Probably would face too much pushback to purge UTXOs, instead of defining a new standard for this. It's just too bad.

Quite accurate, but just a slight correction and a little bit more technical. Bitcoin addresses are RIPEMD160(SHA256(PublicKey)) which means that the actual security would be 160 bits instead of 256 bits. Bruteforcing for any private key that evaluates to a hash which fulfils the spending conditions would be sufficient, even if its a different key. Since Bitcoin evaluates for the scriptsig, if you can meet the spending conditions of your UXTO, then it's ok.

Now, just to clear up the confusion from the technical portion. We are probably a decade or two away from any quantum computers that can crack ECDSA. If it exists, then you have better things to worry about.

The PSBT file is not in a JSON format and it would appear to be a bunch of gibberish.

It's fine. The Electrum on your cold wallet will show a preview and you can validate everything there.
You should use change address unless you want to be tracked with ease. Change address mixes in some uncertainty and should be used to enhance your privacy.

I was slightly confused about your question and I might've given a confusing and inaccurate answer. On the cold wallet, when you are signing, you should be able to see the following.

The change address is always highlighted in green and you should verify that your change is going there. On the cold wallet, you can also press on "Add to history" on the transaction preview. This allows your transaction to be saved on your offline wallet as well.


No and yes.

That is inaccurate. If that's the case, then my address would've been cracked years ago. Knowing the public key does not diminish the security by any measurable amount at all, ie. it is equally secure if you're using a fresh or a used address.

These are Ordinal transactions. For the former, you can see that the transaction exists when you query on the ordinal explorer: https://ordiscan.com/inscription/61847582. You can see that the subsequent transaction that you've referenced is a transfer of this ordinal. Most explorers can't or doesn't really want to deal with ordinals and that's why you don't see any details on this and it just appears to be a weird malformed transaction.

Not impossible, but highly unlikely. If you are executing anything other than the verified Electrum executable, then there is no guarantees.
Just whatever you are signing. You have to ensure that whatever you are signing is verified by you and that there is nothing out of the ordinary. A visual check of the transaction details will do. For example, if you are signing a transaction with two inputs, you should be sure about the amount that you're spending from the two inputs into your destination and change address. Anything that is not sent to those addresses are used as fees.
You will, but what is stopping the adversary from tampering with your transaction preview before you broadcast it?
You can. To do so, just increase the gap_limit from electrum console.

You should be referring to the receiving address, and not the change address in this case. Change addresses are generated and are automatically used in the transaction by the wallet.

You would still have to run an Electrum server.
Bitcoin Core doesn't accept .txn file. You would have to use Bitcoin Core console to do so.
Confirmed transactions are unlikely to be changed, unless they have a competing transaction on another fork. In that case, the competing transaction must be in a longer chain. They can be replaced by another transaction, but it would require another signed transaction. The attacker can't do anything without a signed, valid transaction from you.
No.

Incorrect. Security is not decreased by spending from an address.

Yep, that is one of the main concerns. I see only a way to go with this: Introduce new transaction formats and I'm fairly sure proof of ownership for P2PK outputs are difficult or close to impossible, so there is a dilemma: Either you burn them, or you let the adversary take it. Either ways, not particularly ethical. Had several discussions on this, and I think that there are pros and cons to both, just the lesser of both evils.

Quantum computing will not cripple Bitcoin, at least not in the immediate future. The whole fear about Quantum Computing is with the fact that Shor's algorithm can break Asymmetric Crypto algorithms, which is basically used by everything. Note that this doesn't provide enough speedup for symmetric ones, SHA256 and RIPEMD160 for example. Now, not everything with Bitcoin would be broken, just that it'll be possible to get a speedup on cracking the public key to get the private key.

However, the breaking of the keys are not instantaneous. Time is needed to run and the only time that the public key gets exposed when used in a P2PKH, P2WPKH, etc transaction is when a transaction gets sent. So long as you are not reusing your addresses, I don't see this to be an immediate problem that we have to solve. Waiting to evaluate and slowly transitioning will be the best. Currently, I think the amount of qubits is still nowhere near. Probably would need more than 2K with a fairly reliable one to be able to do it.

Bitcoin would probably be the least of the target; If governments were to have exclusive access, they would be too busy trying to break the hordes of data rather than trying to get some Bitcoins.

Yeah, there is a bit of a space compromise when dealing with QR code and thus your computer only sees the partial transactions from the QR code PSBT. Hence, without the actual transactions, there is a risk of the user accidentally burning the fees should a malicious attacker modify the PBST.

That's untrue. Bitcoin addresses are meant to be a one-use address only, and using the same addresses repeatedly by sending change and other funds into the same address will compromise your privacy. The server can still deduce your identity when you are using the same addresses over and over again.
I think those that are quite well known would be quite difficult to run on Windows. If you are using a server, then possibly Electrs is good: https://github.com/romanz/electrs. Read the usage column. If you are running Bitcoin Core on your current computer, then you should probably just use Bitcoin Core.
Someone else can broadcast it. Do not sign any transactions that you are not intending to send.
It's called a repeated nonce. Wallets have safe guards against these, the nonce is now deterministically random.
PSBT is supported by Bitcoin Core. For the simplicity, I recommend just sticking with either or.
It's not.
TX shouldn't leak the private key. It is rare for block reorganization to happen, but if it happens and there is a competing transaction on the other chain, then another transaction could possibly be confirmed.

Assuming a similar business model, sure. However, the business model posed here is vastly different. Instead of ensuring 100% uptime, you are assuming less than 50% uptime, mining with cheaper and less efficient equipment (more on this later), etc. In terms of sustainable returns, I don't think this model works.
I'd go out and say that this actually depends. As said, continuous loads on chip is actually better than varying and sporadic loads on them throughout the seasons. It's likely going to increase your failure rates, and it definitely has to be used ASICs, new ASICs are very expensive and likely wouldn't be suitable where electricity is not a concern.

Ditto on that. I think that using proportions can be rather misleading because it doesn't capture the essence of the study and the results are often non-transferrable. Besides, I've haven't heard of anyone who actively practices this for a large scale mining operations, so I'm sure that feasibility study has been conducted on this. Do correct my train of thoughts but I thought of the following points from the top of my head:

1. The proportion can be quite skewed because of ASIC efficiency. There was quite a few jumps across different generation of ASICs, S17 to S19 was 20% improvement IIRC, with a larger hashrate density. That can affect the revenue and the running costs for running S17 over S19. Depending on how you get your hands on the ASICs, you can possibly negate this if you're lucky though S17 would probably have low scrap value after. S19 is roughly 2-3X more expensive than S17 for now, so it would depend quite a bit on the case by case basis.

2. The difficulty changes every 2 weeks, assuming continuous increment. Let's say there are seasonal miners, but because the large farms are so profitable with the economy of scale, you would likely not make a dent in the hashrate at all. Hashrate would increase continually regardless of weather conditions, climate or whatever. You would probably have to ensure that you are able to mine at a profit before the difficult gets too high.

3. The electricity rates were assumed to be higher than most. I've heard of some miners enjoying incredibly good rates on their electricity, think 0.03c/kwh for their operations. A 50% off would equate 0.015c/kwh, and probably that would be for quite a short period of time and higher for the rest. I would find it hard to believe that 0.02c/kwh electricity would be feasible with this form of business model, after taxes and other overhead costs. If the low electricity prices are not sustainable for long periods of time and there is absolutely no guarantees whatsoever, then it isn't favorable for miners.

4. The methodology of the study isn't accurate. Using SEC filings as a point of reference of the data won't exactly yield the most accurate results, which can sway it quite a bit. I'm not sure if it takes into account the various sunk costs as well, balance sheet usually group these under assets and not expenses.

I wasn't intending to compare it, but yes they are all wildlife killers, certain renewable energy are also culpable. For migratory birds, buildings are quite a PITA too. Buildings and transports are quite irreplaceable though, but I think more than be done there as well. It would be better if we could reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and instead invest in better infrastructure to fulfill the energy needs of the general population. Instead, some governments are justifying them by building more renewable energy farms, without focusing on electrical grid infrastructure. Bummer but that is for another topic.

It's an exponential distribution. Transactions are relayed through the inv messages, and there are indeed delays to prevent topological analysis. The timing depends on whether it is an inbound and outbound, should be lambda of 5 seconds for inbound connections, 2 for outbound connections.

Relevant code is here for the delay: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/2b260eadf7960290328e13dbdb029fd506105ca4/src/net_processing.cpp#L5784
Function for the exp dist function: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/2b260eadf7960290328e13dbdb029fd506105ca4/src/random.cpp#L764

Just to add on mikeywith's point, I didn't consider ASICs failure rates. But yes, that is why farms run those continuously 24/7 and why some considered mining GPUs to be reliable.

Thanks, appreciate the detailed breakdown and the substantiation.

The wholesale market that they refer to is most likely only applicable if they are a heavy user of electricity, which means that they are sustained over long periods of time with a fairly long contract. It is not possible for miners of any smaller scale or those that require energy on demand to enjoy these prices or access to the market. The prices will trickle down, but it won't be as substantial as it seems after you account for VAT and the various overheads and taxes associated with the energy consumption.

I consider solar and wind power as a low efficiency  (say 8 to 10 hours a day, at the maximum... A light breeze or shady day won't cut it) + high environmental impact renewable energy. They are only able to operate when it is extremely sunny and windy while serving as a wildlife killer on the other, besides occupying a huge area of space. I'm more curious about how the spot prices actually change; the actual market can be more volatile than it seems (instantaneous drops and peaks) and I'm unsure if they are reflective of the actual market or are they simply aggregated.

If there is a huge drop in the electricity pricing, then you would expect for the prices to be fairly high and sticky downwards for various reasons. Even if the drop is high, you are experiencing high electricity fees for most of the time and it would negate any benefits. You can only mine when the weather is favorable, just like a farmer.

For starters, the study assumes that the miners are using relatively newer and more efficient ASICs. These are fairly expensive and thus we have to purchase a less efficient ASIC for cheap to take advantage of the cheap electricity. Running efficient ASICs periodically is a waste and shouldn't be in the books at all. Hence, your revenue would probably be around 80% of the ASICs mentioned in the study and occupying more space in your warehouse.

I had some interactions with large scale miners in a few seminars so far. From my understanding, setting up the ASICs is usually a pain in the ass, and they don't want to touch it unless they have to. I suspect that the calculations doesn't include the exorbitant manhours spent in setting up the farm and debugging any errors as well as the need for a team of on-site technicians to supervise and debug the machines for any errors during the startup cycles. These are probably tiny costs that adds up and doesn't compete with miners who enjoy consistently low rates from coal farms (China, in the past) and large scale miners who are able to maximize their output with the most efficient equipment.

As for the calculations, I think a more accurate calculation would be to consider the depreciation of equipment, electricity costs, and suitable overheads with regards to labour, land space, tax and miscellaneous costs (internet, regulatory compliance, etc). I'll do a quick calculation on this when I have the time later, but I don't think the results would be very good.

Spot prices are generally the price for the generation of the electricity, which doesn't account for the delivery of the electricity, maintenance of grid, substations, etc and they usually add up. That is the reason why prices for the electricity is usually signed on a term basis, instead of bidding for the electricity itself. I'd say that the electrical fees aren't going to vary unless you are the supplier yourself, and you are having the full control of the grid. This wouldn't be possible even for the largest miner out there. CMMIW though, this is how the energy market works for my country.

The marginal utility is absolutely important, because the sunk cost would be the cost of equipment, normal maintenance, facilities, and all of its upkeep. It would make sense if the only marginal cost is the electricity but that is hardly the case. Hence, every miner runs their equipment at its fullest.

Not exactly.

With climate change, you have vastly different weather conditions and it becomes very unpredictable. It isn't like the change in the seasons, where you can roughly gauge the period where the seasons change. Weather is very difficult to predict and is definitely not periodic for any given region. Solar and wind power are not very efficient for the costs and the space that they require, and that probably puts it out of the question given how unreliable they can be. Miners are not distributed evenly around the world, because labour costs, land costs are not the same throughout the world. This is why we saw a high concentration of miners in China and nowhere else.

Let's demonstrate with a given scenario:

Let's include the computation of the miscellaneous and running costs. From the on-start, miners wouldn't purchase the latest and the most efficient equipment for this operation; because that negates the benefits of having cheap electricity. Let's say they require a month to setup everything, that would be a month of labour cost with the land costs, electricity costs  and the opportunity costs of the equipment already.

If the region experiences a favorable weather, the miner turns them on and run them at the fullest power. Once the electricity gets too expensive, it gets shut down and is dormant again. All this while, you have the different running costs being incurred with no certainty whatsoever when the next favorable weather will be. In addition, you have other competing miners who are continually mining and are increasing their operations at the same time. The next time you switch it on, it'll get far, far less profitable. You'll find it difficult to breakeven.

Yes, perfectly possible. That is assuming that no one is actively eavesdropping on your connection, logging all your metadata and your MAC addresses. Invasion of privacy is rampant with free WiFi out there and I'm sure this could happen with any free WiFi you find out there. Tor is a far better choice by comparison.

You would have to tailor the behavior of the wallet as well to avoid privacy leakage.

Electrum is notoriously bad for privacy because the server will always be able to see whatever you're trying to query. If you want privacy, then use a privacy focused wallet or run Bitcoin Core. Public WiFi doesn't enhance the privacy because the server would still be able to see all the addresses that you're querying and thereby linking all of them to your identity.

In addition, public Wifis are not secure and it would be likely that they are eavesdropping on your connections. If you need privacy, use Tor.
 
Your watch-only wallet is a convenient wallet for you to query for your addresses and create/broadcast transactions. It has nothing to do with privacy.

It would be a small improvement to remove zfill, since it doesn't do much other than padding with zeros for which it isn't needed when there is a SHA256 hashing after. That probably should be removed eitherways, if the entropy is lower than required, then they should be able to run the entropy generation again. In a similar vein, a sanity check on the entropy before the SHA256 hashing would improve the security as well.

Edit: I stand corrected on the point about regeneration of entropy; should not be strictly enforced at 128.

It's just simple economics. Environmental damage has no costs to the miners, or at least they are negative externalities that are not paid for.

Not possible. If a miner doesn't run their ASICs at full power, aka. being shut down, then it would be running at less than efficient which has the same marginal utility as running at full efficiency. This is considering that wholesale electricity doesn't have tiers and it is likely that the difference between the tiers are not big enough to account for any difference. As such, it wouldn't make sense for miners to shut down or tune their ASICs to run at lower power.

In the long run, the benefits will be the exact same. It is unlikely for miners to increase their margin significantly between the cycles. Note that the variability during the hashrate is possibly leveled out in the long run by the fluctuation in the difficulty. Mining with a higher hashrate within the period makes more a higher difficulty in the next.

I agree with not providing miners with subsidies but I disagree with this point. Corporations are overly focused on being profit making, and profits only. If we didn't have government regulations and controls over certain parts of our society, I'm convinced that capitalism would make us worse off. While it is true that governments aren't the most efficient, they are needed for the social aspects. That is besides the topic.

With regards to government's role, I would argue that they could limit the amount of fossil fuel that they are using rather than providing subsidies. Subsidies doesn't make sense, especially if the society doesn't exactly need it. Either taxing it or regulating it would be more efficient and effective.