Bitcoin & PoW is a waste of energy & destroys nature

[cbeast]

The energy savings against just the Bank of America energy use would probably be worth the carbon footprint.

Merge mining Namecoin may offer additional savings if it is adopted.

A single proof of stake coin would never become universally accepted, nor would it need to. Trust issues would prevent the efficiency savings over proof of work. Each sovereign would want their own for obvious reasons. Exchange servers would need to manage hundreds if not thousands of currencies. All the extra resources needed for proof of stake economies would end up dwarfing one global Bitcoin.

[vnvizow]

Why are you complaining about the energy loss caused by Bitcoins? I'm sure mining for minerals, oil, or printing paper money wasted way more energy than what the miners are using currently

[cbeast]

Why are you complaining about the energy loss caused by Bitcoins? I'm sure mining for minerals, oil, or printing paper money wasted way more energy than what the miners are using currently

OP is PoS trolling.

[mgburks77]

Sounds like the issue here is with the source of electrical power not how its used.

OPs argument is like scolding the fat dude for eating too much soylent green because it's made from people and therefore needs to be rationed.  

http://www.examiner.com/article/buckminster-fuller-says-there-is-no-energy-food-or-environmental-crises

Bon appetit fat boy!

 

Fuller has been dead for over 30 years, I hope you don't think that is a valid statement, since it hinges on the human race switching from "weaponry to livingry" (his words, not mine) to make it happen and we have utterly failed to do that since Fuller was alive.

We are wasting order of magnitudes more energy than we were when that idea was first expressed, which was silly enough at the time but just ridiculous levels now.

[mgburks77]

Why are you complaining about the energy loss caused by Bitcoins? I'm sure mining for minerals, oil, or printing paper money wasted way more energy than what the miners are using currently

Some energy is used in producing dollar bills. But they do not need to be maintained electronically at a high cost in energy use while being stored.

If bitcoin reaches dollar parity and becomes the reserve currency for the wold it will not be sustainable. That's just a fact.

[cbeast]

This thread should be moved to the altcoin board.

[RTonietto]

Once again, the "prophets of apocalypse" are forgetting the most precious natural resource that exists: human creativity. As the bitcoin market increases and attracts bigger companies, the competition for the fastest mining machines will eventually lead to more investment on improving the power efficiency of current processors. And this will not only benefit bitcoin mining, but also any other heavy processing tasks. It can even improve the energy consumption of cell phones, for example, and that would lead to more durable batteries, which is another pollution source today. And, if the mining costs begin to reach the value of their rewards, the interest in mining will simply diminish, reducing the amount of complexity and again making it profitable. That's simply supply and demand, and it was not invented with bitcoin. It's a concept motivated by basic human instincts, and has been present in our lives since pre-history.

[BitOnyx]

I don't think it is waste since this way we get great tool for international transactions. Physically moving this money through states and continents would be more wasteful. Not to mention other advancements that people mention here.

But if we look on problem from different perspective, we probably could use all of this power for something useful and still get benefit we get now. There were already such ideas, but I'm afraid it would require centralization and maybe even some big IT companies involved.

[mgburks77]

Once again, the "prophets of apocalypse" are forgetting the most precious natural resource that exists: human creativity. As the bitcoin market increases and attracts bigger companies, the competition for the fastest mining machines will eventually lead to more investment on improving the power efficiency of current processors. And this will not only benefit bitcoin mining, but also any other heavy processing tasks. It can even improve the energy consumption of cell phones, for example, and that would lead to more durable batteries, which is another pollution source today. And, if the mining costs begin to reach the value of their rewards, the interest in mining will simply diminish, reducing the amount of complexity and again making it profitable. That's simply supply and demand, and it was not invented with bitcoin. It's a concept motivated by basic human instincts, and has been present in our lives since pre-history.

Or digital innovation occurs sans "mining". Which is the much simpler solution. The only motivation to retain the characteristics of bitcoin that miners think are essential is from miners, who have sort of formed a guild and now are acting sort of like a proto-state in that they are willing to use force to enforce their monopoly on the currency.

Look at the "Operation Shitcoins" thread. That is a window where one can view a proto-state in the making. Amazing, eh?

One thing must be said. The "bitcoin" phenomena is a lot more interesting than it appears at first blush.

It's social ramifications go WAAAAY beyond "Hey, free money on the computer!".

[superresistant]

again :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=485649.msg5818497#msg5818497

Mining was supposed to grant decentralisation, thus making Bitcoin a trustless system. Without decentralisation, the system cannot be trusted and all the coins worth zero. Spending energy on a flawed system is indeed a waste.

This is not trolling. Serious question. How do you fix this ?

[mattboldfield]

Two wrongs don't make a right!

[cbeast]

again :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=485649.msg5818497#msg5818497

Mining was supposed to grant decentralisation, thus making Bitcoin a trustless system. Without decentralisation, the system cannot be trusted and all the coins worth zero. Spending energy on a flawed system is indeed a waste.

This is not trolling. Serious question. How do you fix this ?

Easy. Go away and support your alt coin.  If it is successful,  then maybe Bitcoin will adopt your amazing ideas. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

[Predatorian]

Well so try to stop world from using oil and all kind of stuff what really pernicious our nature.

[Adrian-x]

Well so try to stop world from using oil and all kind of stuff what really pernicious our nature.

Nature is self directing and balancing, the destructive nature of our behavior is a byproduct of the manipulation of the unit of measure used in commerce for the "equitable" distribution of resources, and the misguided understand that land and sea is property once claimed; and unclaimed land and sea has no value.

on need to stop people doing anything bad, other than to just stop incentivising them by growing the economy.

[Adrian-x]

If bitcoin reaches dollar parity and becomes the reserve currency for the wold it will not be sustainable. That's just a fact.

Facts are a little more persistent, Bitcoin is mined for proffit only. In less than 14 years there will be just 3.125 coins per block.

To put it in perspective today if Bitcoin were to scale to the transaction volume of visa and master card, and the electricity scaled linearly we would be using about the same amount of electricity consumed in Germany, to justify the mining cost of a Bitcoin a Bitcoin would sell for over $1,000,000. (Or miners will just stop mining) now project ahead 14 years the same transaction volume offset by difficulty will put the production cost of a Bitcoin in excess of $8,000,000 if electricity consumption does not increase. (Higher if we are going to use more electricity for mining.)

Jump ahead another 8 years and to justify the same electricity consumption for the linear transaction projection of today a single Bitcoin would need to sell for over $33,000,000 if electricity consumption does not increase. (Higher if we are going to use more electricity for mining.)

So in short unless Bitcoin exceeded our wildest expectations the most pessimistic outcome we will most likely see the energy efficiency increase exponentially along with difficulty, more to the point we will see servers and protocol improvements that will take advantage of any inefficiencies in resource consumption well before things become as perverted as they are in our economy today.

[MoonShadow]

again :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=485649.msg5818497#msg5818497

Mining was supposed to grant decentralisation, thus making Bitcoin a trustless system. Without decentralisation, the system cannot be trusted and all the coins worth zero. Spending energy on a flawed system is indeed a waste.

This is not trolling. Serious question. How do you fix this ?

You simply wait.  The bitcoin market must mature, and as it does, the block reward will decline.  As the block reward declines, the cost/benefit ratio for mining will change.  As it stands right now, the energy requirements for securing this rather small payment system are far lower than just the energy & manpower costs of securing the payment systems centered around the US dollar.  Sure, Visa doesn't use nearly the electricity that Bitcoin does for it's own servers; but overall the energy required to move armored cars, build and power banks & vaults, or even just the environmental control systems for the banks & buildings far exceed what bitcoin consumes today.  There is no reason to assume that the energy consumed per user or per transaction should increase at the network matures, even if the absolute amount of energy consumed continues to rise for some time.  If Bitcoin replaces the need for even a minority of these bank branch buildings and skyscrapers, Bitcoin's energy cost/benefit ratio will be a huge improvement to what already exists.

[Brangdon]

There is a high competition for specialised hardware. When Bitcoin started, everyone could mine it on CPU, then GPU, then FPGA and now only an elite can afford the $10K ASIC. The production of the hardware is highly centralised and the people that have access to it are decreasing everyday.

That's partly because we are at a special time in Bitcoin history. It will mature fairly soon (over the next 5 years). ASICs will plateau in power as they catch up with mainstream chip technology. Then they won't be superseded so quickly, so they'll be kept longer. They'll be produced in greater quantities. They'll become cheaper. We'll go back to more people being miners.

[thedarklight]

There is a high competition for specialised hardware. When Bitcoin started, everyone could mine it on CPU, then GPU, then FPGA and now only an elite can afford the $10K ASIC. The production of the hardware is highly centralised and the people that have access to it are decreasing everyday.

That's partly because we are at a special time in Bitcoin history. It will mature fairly soon (over the next 5 years). ASICs will plateau in power as they catch up with mainstream chip technology. Then they won't be superseded so quickly, so they'll be kept longer. They'll be produced in greater quantities. They'll become cheaper. We'll go back to more people being miners.

But people still have to buy those chips and eventually one company could make them all.
Bitcoin is centralized, it wont be worthless even if it is centralized but let's not act like Bitcoin will be the best coin 5 years from now. I don't think it will because by design Bitcoin isn't easily scalable or flexible.

[cbeast]

I don't think

The only truthful statement in your rant.

[Brangdon]

But people still have to buy those chips and eventually one company could make them all.

That's a bit of a hypothetical, isn't it? Why should one company get a monopoly on ASICs? Even if they have do, their product merely does hashing. It doesn't set policy.