Mining & Grid Computing

[corvaxmuzzy]

I shudder when I think of all of the wasted watts involved in inefficient mining.

I would prefer to see bitcoin mining solving useful problems (while maintaining its secure characteristics), instead of just being strictly POW (proof-of-work):
Folding@Home
World Community Grid
BOINC


I know that I'm not the only one.

http://i35.tinypic.com/10d9p43.jpg

[Foxpup]

The purpose of mining is to protect the network, and to reward people who provide security for the network. Nothing else. Bitcoin would be completely useless without the security provided by mining. None of the energy involved in mining is "wasted", as it accomplishes useful work (providing security), and people will only do if the work accomplished is more valuable than the energy consumed. In any case, miners have a direct financial incentive to come up with ways of mining that use as little energy as possible.

I would prefer to see bitcoin mining solving useful problems (while maintaining its secure characteristics)

It solves the Byzantine Generals' Problem using a cryptographic proof-of-work system. This is a useful problem to solve, since it allows Bitcoin nodes to know for certain that the majority of other Bitcoin nodes agree on which transactions took place and in what order, allowing it to determine whether a given transaction is fraudulent or not without requiring a trusted third party (which is the whole point of Bitcoin).

Other problems are in no way useful for providing security and are therefore completely useless to Bitcoin.

instead of just being strictly POW (proof-of-work):

Proof of work is the only thing required or useful to secure the Bitcoin network. Doing anything else would be wasteful and inefficient.

[corvaxmuzzy]

...and people will only do if the work accomplished is more valuable than the energy consumed.[sic]

I'm sure that you will agree that this is not true.

Furthermore, how is solving the Byzantine General's problem helpful (to the world)?

[Gabi]

(while maintaining its secure characteristics)

Good luck.

[Stephen Gornick]

Furthermore, how is solving the Byzantine General's problem helpful (to the world)?

It helps prevent monetary tyranny, that's how:

 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/10/04/bitcoin-prevents-monetary-tyranny/

[Foxpup]

...and people will only do if the work accomplished is more valuable than the energy consumed.[sic]

I'm sure that you will agree that this is not true.

The only situation in which this is not true is if people are stealing their electricity, which is not a problem that Bitcoin can address. People who mine when it is not profitable do so because they consider helping the network to be more valuable than their electricity, or they think Bitcoins are undervalued (which are really just two ways of looking at the same thing).

Furthermore, how is solving the Byzantine General's problem helpful (to the world)?

It's not (at least, not directly), and it's not supposed to be. It's helpful to Bitcoin, and that's all that matters. You seem to be extremely confused about what Bitcoin is or should be. It is not, nor is it intended to be, some kind of system to harvest computer power to save the world, or for any other arbitrary purpose. Bitcoin is a currency and a payment system for that currency, and the resources it consumes serve the specific purpose of securing the payment system from various attacks and preventing the currency from being counterfeited. That's it. No other purpose is, or ever will be, served by the mining process.

You might as well ask for bank vault doors that create cancer drugs. Even if it were possible, it doesn't even remotely make sense for bank vault doors to be designed that way. That's simply not their intended function.

[Graet]

oh groan - here we go again

cant immediately find the post , but someone wiser than me has pointed out the whole Bitcoin network uses less power than 1 Bank of America building. last time this came up.
Compared to fiat money Bitcoin is quite energy efficient - think about what it takes to make the lowest denomination note in your currency, and I mean from raw material to a piece of "spendable money". factor in transport costs, the costs of building secure areas to keep the printed fiat and on and on

Bitcoin has the potential to be as world changing as any of the things OP suggested....

[Gatorhex]

The bitcoin market forces efficiency on the network.

If you're not efficient you will lose money mining.

[corvaxmuzzy]

I must be the only one who sees the (tens of?) thousands of posts by people saying something along the lines of, "Yeah, my ___ system is inefficient, but lol, I'm not doing anything else with it."

Also, who saw the power bill on a BOA building?  Who saw the aggregate power of the miners (this is harder to believe)?

I'm not saying that the system is poo.  I was just throwing out an idealistic proposal.

Maybe some genius can come up with a solution to accomodate such:  Philanthrobitcoin....or Phicoin!

I should patent that concept/framework, so that I can go "all Apple" on an trespassers.

[Stephen Gornick]

Also, who saw the power bill on a BOA building?

Well, the City of NY did.  And they shared it, indirectly:

Who saw the aggregate power of the miners (this is harder to believe)?

Actually, that's pretty easy to calculate.  We know the difficulty and thus how many hashes are needed.    And thus we can tell how many ATI 5970s it would take.  With that, we know how much electricity each 5970 draws, and thus can estimate fairly accurately how much electricity is consumed (presuming all mining is on 5970s).

Here's the raw time series data on difficulty:
 - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmcTCtjBoRWUdHVRMHpqWUJValI1RlZiaEtCT1RrQmc

the whole Bitcoin network uses less power than 1 Bank of America building. last time this came up.

This?

Looks like the BoA building is estimated to use 6.5 megawatts of electricity.

Coincidentally, that one building would be just a little less than all Bitcoin mining combined.

The problem is, we don't know the breakdown between FPGAs and GPUs (and maybe some ASICs even).  The "one B of A building" was when difficulty was 1.5 million.  At over 3.0 million, Bitcoin is now at "two B of A buildings", assuming every hash is done on power-hungry GPUs.

ASICs could push out GPUs (for all except those with free or really cheap  electricity) and the total network consumption drop well below the "one B fo A building" metric once again.