Crazy pow power reduction idea

[stompix]

The cost for trying to get that much hashrate would be so high that they ironically would have to print even more money just to do it, which hurts their own currencies and banks. [basically any commercial pool that attempts to cooperate with a government to do this will be dismantled by outraged miners.

Those costs are overestimated, I've run in this discussion a lot of time.

~
Nope, not even close to tens of billions.
The current hashrate is around 130 Exa, you need 1.1 million S19pro for this, bitmain was selling them for 2500$ with a profit so you could get it for about two billion, that's 1/6 of the annual defense budget of Sweden....or 0.1% of the F35 program    Not even mentioning the fact that such a sudden increase in hashrate would put easily legit miners out of business and it will give you also a bit of reward while mining to cover costs.
Hard to do it, yeah, maybe. Impossible? Let's serious, if a medium GDP-sized country would have really wanted that it could have done it and it can do it.

Updating this, the price for miner stays the same as that's the cost to manufacture it, not what the current market pays for it, to make 20% with a  current 160exa you would need about 300 000 S19pro, that would be just around 750 million, powering them would require just about half of a modern nuclear powerplant full capacity.

And at this point, they would still mine coins for themselves, if people are getting profits at 10cents/kwh imagine how much they would be able to recover from the initial costs at 2-3 cents what power before taxes costs.

It would be some variant of mutually-assured-destruction from the Cold War era where the government's currency is crippled along with bitcoin.

It would be more like the Anglo-Zanzibar War, fortunately enough no government has such plans, and hopefully, with the chip crisis going away the numbers in our favor will start to increase and with adoption people wanting to support the coin value and security might turn to non-profit mining, just for support.

[amishmanish]

The cost for trying to get that much hashrate would be so high that they ironically would have to print even more money just to do it, which hurts their own currencies and banks. [basically any commercial pool that attempts to cooperate with a government to do this will be dismantled by outraged miners.

Those costs are overestimated, I've run in this discussion a lot of time.

~
Nope, not even close to tens of billions.
The current hashrate is around 130 Exa, you need 1.1 million S19pro for this, bitmain was selling them for 2500$ with a profit so you could get it for about two billion, that's 1/6 of the annual defense budget of Sweden....or 0.1% of the F35 program    Not even mentioning the fact that such a sudden increase in hashrate would put easily legit miners out of business and it will give you also a bit of reward while mining to cover costs.
Hard to do it, yeah, maybe. Impossible? Let's serious, if a medium GDP-sized country would have really wanted that it could have done it and it can do it.

The money may not be the issue but the logistics for manufacturing an equivalent of 10 years output of all the miner manufacturers would still be significant. If a Govt body ever attempted this, it would be hard to keep it a secret. Government agencies have gotten away with a lot in the earlier era when they performed nuclear tests and diverted the attention of a naïve citizenry from the ill-effects. I don't think it can be done in today's world.

With the benefits that Bitcoin and all of its spawns have given to millions of people worldwide, such a move to cripple Bitcoin would be hugely unpopular. Any potential hash-war between people and governments is basically a matter of perception. If they convince enough people that Bitcoin power consumption is a bad thing and that their centralized coins are better, we may have a problem at hand.

[pooya87]

~

Your numbers are a bit off. Google tells me that s19pro price starts from $17,799 and each can produce 110 Th/s that means to get ~160 Eh/s you need 1,454,545 which costs $25.88 billion not 2.

You are also forgetting that just owning ASICs is not enough, they have to be run and that requires a tremendous amount of electricity. So basically the malicious government has to shut down their country (or a big part of it at least) to mine bitcoin with their 1.45 million ASICs! Not to mention that the cost of this electricity is also added on top of the cost of the ASICs.
That is about $390k daily per ASIC which $560 billion for all 1.45 million ASICs per day for 5 cent per kwh.

There is also cooling costs since you can't just let 1.45 million ASICs just run without cooling them or they'd blow up. The cost of that is also in the billions.
Now are are suddenly closer to trillion territory.

There is also another problem that the manufacturer can not suddenly produce 1.45 million ASICs and give ALL to this malicious government. It is also starve the market, you suddenly see globally that no new ASICs are coming to miners.

P.S. Getting current hasharate is 160 Eh/s to have 50% of the hashrate you have to have 160 Eh/s

[stompix]

~

Your numbers are a bit off. Google tells me that s19pro price starts from $17,799 and each can produce 110 Th/s that means to get ~160 Eh/s you need 1,454,545 which costs $25.88 billion not 2.

You've missed this part:

Updating this, the price for miner stays the same as that's the cost to manufacture it, not what the current market pays for it

Video cards go for 3 times the price now that doesn't mean it costs NVIDIA 3 times more to produce.
That's the price bitmain was selling it before the surge in mining profits, that's the real price of the equipment!

You are also forgetting that just owning ASICs is not enough, they have to be run and that requires a tremendous amount of electricity. So basically the malicious government has to shut down their country (or a big part of it at least) to mine bitcoin with their 1.45 million ASICs!

Wait, are you saying that bitcoin mining is energy-intensive and rivals a whole country activity, of people eating, going to work, having fun, watching tv, and making transactions?  Infidel!

Not to mention that the cost of this electricity is also added on top of the cost of the ASICs.
That is about $390k daily per ASIC which $560 billion for all 1.45 million ASICs per day for 5 cent per kwh.

An s19pro burns around 90kwh of power a day, at 5 cents that are 4.5$, for the global network would be close to 6 million a day.
Not to mention that with 20% of the hashrate you would be making $10millions in profits from mining a day, a fact you completely ignored.

Now, are suddenly closer to trillion territory.

No, we're not!

P.S. Getting current hasharate is 160 Eh/s to have 50% of the hashrate you have to have 160 Eh/s

P.S.
You're again ignoring the numbers in my scenario and it's a bit...you know..

Updating this, the price for miner stays the same as that's the cost to manufacture it, not what the current market pays for it, to make 20% with a  current 160exa you would need about 300 000 S19pro, that would be just around 750 million,

The money may not be the issue but the logistics for manufacturing an equivalent of 10 years output of all the miner manufacturers would still be significant.

10 years? More like 4 that counts and probably that one split in half due to faulty equipment and low hashing power of the older batches.
In 2014 (7 years ago) Bitmain released the S3, it was doing just half of TH/s, at that time just 1000 modern miners would have been able to launch a 300% attack

[Quickseller]

You are also forgetting that just owning ASICs is not enough, they have to be run and that requires a tremendous amount of electricity. So basically the malicious government has to shut down their country (or a big part of it at least) to mine bitcoin with their 1.45 million ASICs! Not to mention that the cost of this electricity is also added on top of the cost of the ASICs.
That is about $390k daily per ASIC which $560 billion for all 1.45 million ASICs per day for 5 cent per kwh.

It costs about $3.90 per S9Pro, not $390k, lol. Each S9Pro consumes about 3250 watts per hour, or 78,000 watts per 24 hour day. To convert watts to kwh, you need to divide the number of watts by 1000, not multiply by 1000. The cost to power 1.5mm S9Pros would be about $5.85 million per day at 5 cents per kwh.

There is also cooling costs since you can't just let 1.45 million ASICs just run without cooling them or they'd blow up. The cost of that is also in the billions.
Now are are suddenly closer to trillion territory.

I think you are overestimating the cost of HVAC units. A HVAC unit has a very long useful life, and can be used for things other than cooling ASICs. In the past, I have also mined with ASICs and did so without having the air conditioning on due to the outdoor climate.

A government could also use the ASICs in a facility that is cold such as Northern China or Alaska. 

There is also another problem that the manufacturer can not suddenly produce 1.45 million ASICs and give ALL to this malicious government.

Wanna bet? If manufacturing is done in a country, the government gets to say what leaves the country. With manufacturing of ASICs done mostly in China, the CCP can force manufacturers to produce many miners, and prevent them from leaving the country via export controls. It could also seize the miners from the manufacturer.

[odolvlobo]

Reduce difficulty to target block time of 2 minutes..
After block solved nodes start timer to 8 minutes..
...
Reduces power consumption by 80%..

I hope I am not repeating what others have already written...

Your proposal is ineffective.

Regardless of how you structure it, PoW is designed such that the cost of mining approaches the value of the block reward. So, even if you only have 2 minutes of mining, a block reward's worth of energy will be expended in those two minutes.

Your proposal is similar to proposals that attempt to get useful work out of mining (such as generating useful information). That also does not work in general because the money gained by using or selling the PoW is spent on more hash rate.

Similarly, improving the efficiency of mining equipment is also ineffective because the money saved by efficiency is spent on increasing the hash rate. If a machine uses half the amount of electricity, the miner will run twice as many machines.

[pooya87]

Wait, are you saying that bitcoin mining is energy-intensive and rivals a whole country activity, of people eating, going to work, having fun, watching tv, and making transactions?  Infidel!

HAHA I meant a tiny country. The power consumption is a lot and it is for a reason, the high security of a global decentralized money doesn't come cheap.

It costs about $3.90 per S9Pro, not $390k, lol. Each S9Pro consumes about 3250 watts per hour, or 78,000 watts per 24 hour day. To convert watts to kwh, you need to divide the number of watts by 1000, not multiply by 1000. The cost to power 1.5mm S9Pros would be about $5.85 million per day at 5 cents per kwh.

It appears that sometimes I terribly suck at math

Wanna bet? If manufacturing is done in a country, the government gets to say what leaves the country. With manufacturing of ASICs done mostly in China, the CCP can force manufacturers to produce many miners, and prevent them from leaving the country via export controls. It could also seize the miners from the manufacturer.

Then it would starve the rest of the world and the accumulated demand means either the manufacturer leaves the country or other competitors in other jurisdictions come along to fill the gap. This also raises red flags for bitcoin community which would start planning for the possible attack before it happens (while the government is accumulating ASICs).

[eddie13]

Similarly, improving the efficiency of mining equipment is also ineffective because the money saved by efficiency is spent on increasing the hash rate. If a machine uses half the amount of electricity, the miner will run twice as many machines.

I fail so see how this is a bad thing..
Greatly increasing the security of Bitcoin at the same electrical cost sounds great to me..

[odolvlobo]

Similarly, improving the efficiency of mining equipment is also ineffective because the money saved by efficiency is spent on increasing the hash rate. If a machine uses half the amount of electricity, the miner will run twice as many machines.

I fail so see how this is a bad thing..
Greatly increasing the security of Bitcoin at the same electrical cost sounds great to me..

It is not a good thing or a bad thing. It is just reality. Increasing efficiency is ineffective if your goal is to decrease energy consumption. Also, the security is not measured by the hash rate. It is measured by the cost of mining a block.

[eddie13]

Also, the security is not measured by the hash rate. It is measured by the cost of mining a block.

See, I have to disagree with this assertion..
If it only took dollars $$ to mine blocks, then the US government and/or central banks could 51% attack Bitcoin at any time easily..
They have all the $$ dollars in the world, they could just print them, they have all the electricity they would ever need at their disposal..
The only thing they DO NOT have is access to enough computing power to come up with the needed hash rate..

Therefore IMO hashrate alone is what keeps Bitcoin secure..


BTW the US government has all sorts of nuclear reactor power plants that are military only and completely independent from the civilian power grid that can make ridiculous amounts of electricity..
Aside from ones at their bases and classifies ones, every modern warship and sub has a massive nuclear reactor they could use to power anything imaginable..

“measured by the cost of mining a block.”
I think this is a fine thing for energy consumption apologists to say, but isn’t very true..
Cost is no object when it comes to central banks and governments..
More like “security is measured by the difficulty of pulling off a 51% attack”, and the most difficult part would be amassing the computing power, not the money, nor the electricity..

Refute this..

[philipma1957]

PoW power consumption is what makes bitcoin secure. IMO there is no problem to solve here. There is big propaganda made by altcoins criticizing bitcoin TPS and energy consumption...

You are basically staking energy, which is something from outside the blockchain, something valuable in our world and society as we know it. This is one thing that gives value to bitcoin. (the opposite of staking coins, which you are staking something from within the blockchain itself)

Bitcoin is not wasting energy to generate blocks, it is using energy to create value and utility.

Miners also mine in places where energy is cheap, and those places are usually where the generation of eletric energy is bigger than the consumption.

I saw just now this video from Antonopoulos where he explains that it is easy to bash bitcoin energy consumption, because it is transparent. But you cannot see how much energy banks consome (with buildings, bureaucracy, security, guards, etc)

If people understood this and that the value created can be channelled into solar/windmills power consumption would be a topic of how btc saved the world from polluting coal/oil

If people understood the subsidies given to oil and coal and not given to solar and wind they would freak.  POW mining could create 3 watts of energy for every watt it burns.

I know this because we built and paid off a large solar array with BTC profits.

When I think of what is allowed with coal and oil and not done for solar and wind it is so freaking annoying.

[stompix]

Also, the security is not measured by the hash rate. It is measured by the cost of mining a block.

See, I have to disagree with this assertion..
~
The only thing they DO NOT have is access to enough computing power to come up with the needed hash rate..
Therefore IMO hashrate alone is what keeps Bitcoin secure..

Which is generated by mining gear that can be bought with $.
If a government would simply print $ and offer 100k per s19pro they would be buying all the hashrate required in a matter of days.

odolvlobo is right.
The security is generated from the cost running this and all of what involved in it can be quantified and paid for in fiat.
The hashrate is an expression of that said cost, not a clear indicator of it, a 110th hashrate can be achieved with $10k and 5$ per day electricity consumption it doesn't mean that the network 5 years ago could be attacked with 5$.

As for the threat of the government, look at what's happening in China.
One order and all the mining is shut down, what could stop them from actually seizing those? Nothing!
Just because they haven't tried yet and in my opinion, they will never do it doesn't mean they aren't able to.

[NotATether]

As for the threat of the government, look at what's happening in China.
One order and all the mining is shut down, what could stop them from actually seizing those? Nothing!
Just because they haven't tried yet and in my opinion, they will never do it doesn't mean they aren't able to.

Actually now with the mempool run-on the bigger threat is governments (not just any government, that Chinese mining province whatever-its-called in particular) ordering mining farms in their countries to shut down or otherwise cut off their power. Low fee transactions will eventually hit the 200MB mempool limit on most nodes and be dropped, and if this continues for more days then we could even see moderate-fee transactions hitting the wall too and this could be very disruptive until the next epoch.

1 sat/vbyte transactions already exceeded this cap. 60-70sats transactions are currently at 32MB according to johoe and coal plants are showing no signs of signaling an "all clear restore electricity now".