PoW and free energy

[av_v]

I was wondering... When nuclear fusion becomes a thing in "the next 30 years", i.e., almost infinite and free energy production, what do you think will happen to proof of work? Will make the bitcoin consensus stronger or weaker?

If nuclear fusion is going to be centralized, as it seems for now (look at the ITER), then I think it can be a problem. Nation-state attacks could be feasible.

[1713906615]

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[1713906615]

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[tranthidung]

I was wondering... When nuclear fusion becomes a thing in "the next 30 years", i.e., almost infinite and free energy production, what do you think will happen to proof of work? Will make the bitcoin consensus stronger or weaker?

Nuclear power is not a trend for the future. Many nations and foundations are trying to reduce operations of current nuclear power facilities as well as trying to shut down old facilities and won't intend to approve licenses for new facilities.

After the Fukushima Daiichi disaster more than one decade ago, the world has been changing core approach to nuclear power.

If nuclear fusion is going to be centralized, as it seems for now (look at the ITER), then I think it can be a problem. Nation-state attacks could be feasible.

Nations, governments can set up mining farms and mine Bitcoin. Bitcoin is opened for everyone, every institutes, nations so they are free to do this. If they do this, they will do it very secretly. They won't announce anything because they don't want to admit their systematic failures.

[ranochigo]

It is not free. Costs are incurred in the areas of R&D, maintenance, labour, etc. These are all costs that has to be offset by the producer and it should be more expensive than current methods. It's more of a cleaner energy than a free energy.

Proof of work will still function fine, you're possibly only (as stated probably not) reducing the costs from consuming the electricity. There are still scarce resources being consumed and incurred, production of ASICs, land, labour. It doesn't diminish any security of PoW based coins, perhaps slightly in the worst case.

State sponsored attacks, assuming 51% attacks has never been limited by the electrical costs or anything in that area. It is possible for countries to attack Bitcoin this way but it really doesn't make any sense right now and I don't expect countries to attempt it in the future either. ASICs required and the opportunity costs of having an attack is far greater than any benefits that they may have.

[snipie]

Nuclear power is not a trend for the future
-snip-
After the Fukushima Daiichi disaster more than one decade ago, the world has been changing core approach to nuclear power.

Indeed, that accident accelerated the use of renewable energy as the future energy and some countries put plans to be almost 100% green in the future. New nuclear stations are planned to be build mostly in Middle East countries afaik while they should have hell of solar power!
Anyway, I don't expect anything to change in the next 20 years.

[av_v]

It is not free. Costs are incurred in the areas of R&D, maintenance, labour, etc. These are all costs that has to be offset by the producer and it should be more expensive than current methods. It's more of a cleaner energy than a free energy.

Proof of work will still function fine, you're possibly only (as stated probably not) reducing the costs from consuming the electricity. There are still scarce resources being consumed and incurred, production of ASICs, land, labour. It doesn't diminish any security of PoW based coins, perhaps slightly in the worst case.

State sponsored attacks, assuming 51% attacks has never been limited by the electrical costs or anything in that area. It is possible for countries to attack Bitcoin this way but it really doesn't make any sense right now and I don't expect countries to attempt it in the future either. ASICs required and the opportunity costs of having an attack is far greater than any benefits that they may have.

Indeed, that's why I said "almost free". And yeah, the acquisition of ASICs can be difficult too but not impossible for a government (they can reclaim whatever and even coordinate with other states).

But neverthless, the biggest obstacle to a successful long-lasting 51% attack is the energy consumption. And in a hypothetical future where nation-states has the monopoly of nuclear fusion energy production, they can use that advantage to do such attacks.

Nuclear power is not a trend for the future
-snip-
After the Fukushima Daiichi disaster more than one decade ago, the world has been changing core approach to nuclear power.

Indeed, that accident accelerated the use of renewable energy as the future energy and some countries put plans to be almost 100% green in the future. New nuclear stations are planned to be build mostly in Middle East countries afaik while they should have hell of solar power!
Anyway, I don't expect anything to change in the next 20 years.

I think you both are referring to Fision... But I'm talking about Nuclear Fusion, which is under heavy research since a lot of years and is much more clean and green than anything.

[snipie]

Nuclear power is not a trend for the future
-snip-
After the Fukushima Daiichi disaster more than one decade ago, the world has been changing core approach to nuclear power.

Indeed, that accident accelerated the use of renewable energy as the future energy and some countries put plans to be almost 100% green in the future. New nuclear stations are planned to be build mostly in Middle East countries afaik while they should have hell of solar power!
Anyway, I don't expect anything to change in the next 20 years.

I think you both are referring to Fision... But I'm talking about Nuclear Fusion, which is under heavy research since a lot of years and is much more clean and green than anything.

That's true. I was talking about the nuclear fission. Otherwise, I heard about this concept of fusion, not sure how far was made and when it will be widely available, need more data honestly, but having cheap and clean energy will make big oil companies digging for (mining) bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general
For the centralization part and the attacks, I doubt it will occurs.

[Nhazwrath]

I was wondering... When nuclear fusion becomes a thing in "the next 30 years", i.e., almost infinite and free energy production, what do you think will happen to proof of work? Will make the bitcoin consensus stronger or weaker?

If nuclear fusion is going to be centralized, as it seems for now (look at the ITER), then I think it can be a problem. Nation-state attacks could be feasible.

we have been promised fusion for 70 years now.   we don't seem any closer to reality.  its been at 20 years off in time..  the entire time.   the problem is containment.   ultra hot plasma containment.. we manage to hold it for i think tops so far is a few seconds before it gets unstable.   ultra hot plasma is so hard to contain you use All the energy you have created in the fusion process to generate super magnetic fields to contain it.   

2 main types of reactors are still undergoing trials,


Tokomak  < this is an old style that has never worked more then a couple seconds.

Stellarator.  This style is fairly new and is very complicated but shows promise but who knows.   

Both are hugely expensive to build.
Neither is anywhere near ready.

[ranochigo]

Indeed, that's why I said "almost free". And yeah, the acquisition of ASICs can be difficult too but not impossible for a government (they can reclaim whatever and even coordinate with other states).

Coordinating multiple governments is a hard enough tasks, coupled with potential conflict of interests between them.

China actually controls about 65% of the hashrate, based on CBECI's research BUT that is based on a sampling of several mining pools which are pretty much all based in China so take it with a pinch of salt. If you're talking about controlling the current 51% of the hashrate, it is already possible for certain states to have that much within their geographical boundaries but coercing and coordinating an attack, especially with such a huge and diversed region like China could be very difficult.

If you're thinking of the government purchasing them, it is possible but it would be a terrible idea. It would be useless after an attack.

But neverthless, the biggest obstacle to a successful long-lasting 51% attack is the energy consumption. And in a hypothetical future where nation-states has the monopoly of nuclear fusion energy production, they can use that advantage to do such attacks.

Bitcoin's energy consumption is not excessively big, not that current infrastructure cannot support it and I predict by the time nuclear fusion becomes practical, the cost and efficiency of other forms of energy would've probably increased as well. 51% attacks cannot be sustained over long periods of time; after a single attack, the community would react to the attack accordingly and probably render the ASICs useless. There is no point in sustaining such an attack and given Bitcoin's total market cap, any 51% attack would be purely political as the cost would probably be greater than the benefits and that the GDP of a single country is likely greater than what they stand to gain financially from such an attack.

But, if you're talking about countries like North Korea then they probably would be incentivised financially. Given their energy situation, its safe to say that they're far from a threat.

[avikz]

I was wondering... When nuclear fusion becomes a thing in "the next 30 years", i.e., almost infinite and free energy production, what do you think will happen to proof of work? Will make the bitcoin consensus stronger or weaker?

If nuclear fusion is going to be centralized, as it seems for now (look at the ITER), then I think it can be a problem. Nation-state attacks could be feasible.

What made you think that nuclear energy is free!!! It's clean energy but it's not free in any way so get your facts right. But I do agree with your statement about energy production centralization. It may become difficult for big scale miners to continue their mining operations if a government wants to crack down on the mining farms. But that was always a risk because in majority of the countries, government owns the electricity distribution grid and controls the supply. So I don't think governments will take any such drastic step.

But even for argument if this happens, it will give rise to the home based miners. As the big players will be out of the network, the mining difficulty will go down drastically which will become profitable for the small miners to run their mining operations.

[odolvlobo]

I was wondering... When nuclear fusion becomes a thing in "the next 30 years", i.e., almost infinite and free energy production, what do you think will happen to proof of work? Will make the bitcoin consensus stronger or weaker?
If nuclear fusion is going to be centralized, as it seems for now (look at the ITER), then I think it can be a problem. Nation-state attacks could be feasible.

The overall cost of mining is determined by the value of the block reward (subsidy + fees). The cost of electricity does not affect the overall cost of mining. If electricity is cheap, then the overall mining capacity (and thus the difficulty) will increase until the overall cost of mining approaches the value of the block reward. If electricity is expensive, then the overall mining capacity (and thus the difficulty) will drop until the overall cost of mining approaches the value of the block reward.

The security of the network is determined by the overall cost of mining. It will not change due to changes in the price or availability of electricity because the overall cost of mining is not affected by the cost of the electricity, as I explained above.

Attacks on a nation's power supply will affect much more than just Bitcoin.

[dkbit98]

You can't really say this is free energy when creating just one of this Nuclear Fusion reactors will cost around $25 Billion and it is still experimental technology that is not proven safe and can go wrong at any time.
This would also need lot of materials like Lithium, Deuterium, Tritium (that is very scarce) and others for fusion reaction, then we need huge amount of high temperature and cold temperature for keeping magnets cool....
you can only imagine what happens if magnets get hot....
Bitcoin mining is unrelated with source of energy, you can mine it from air, wind, sun, coal, nuclear fusion or whatever else is invented in future.

If nuclear fusion is going to be centralized, as it seems for now (look at the ITER), then I think it can be a problem. Nation-state attacks could be feasible.

Most energy sources are more or less centralized and controlled by states and governments, so I don't see anything different with nuclear fusion.

[slapper]

Nuclear power has caused many iccidents to the world that they decide to reduc the number of reactions.

Old facilities will be shut down and one day, there will be no nuclear factories anymore. The trend of the world is green energy even though nuclear power is effective in many industries. Why dont they make some improvement so as nuclear harvesting will be safer. Im not a scientist or an environmentalist so I do not know what fundamental persuading them to get rid of it.

[hatshepsut93]

I was wondering... When nuclear fusion becomes a thing in "the next 30 years", i.e., almost infinite and free energy production, what do you think will happen to proof of work? Will make the bitcoin consensus stronger or weaker?

Nuclear fusion has been in research for how many years? 60 or 70? It might never be possible on a commercial scale. But even if it will be possible, it won't give us free and infinite electricity, and even in best case when it gives us really cheap electricity, mining would still have other costs, so it's not like you're going to suddenly have a possibility to succesfully launch a 51% attack the day a fusion reactor opens.

[pixie85]

You think fusion is a clean energy? Really?
Ever heard about spent fuel cells?

Before it was banned many countries dumped large amounts of radioactive waste into oceans. This can one day backfire.

What about incidents like Fukushima? Another one is waiting to happen if we continue to use nuclear power.

[xhomerx10]

You think fusion is a clean energy? Really?
Ever heard about spent fuel cells?

Before it was banned many countries dumped large amounts of radioactive waste into oceans. This can one day backfire.

What about incidents like Fukushima? Another one is waiting to happen if we continue to use nuclear power.

   Pssst!  That's nuclear fission - there's a difference - and it's not banned; world government is not a reality just yet.

  Anyway, if the grand architects of the universe had wanted us to have a virtually limitless, free sources of nuclear energy at our disposal, they would have installed huge fusion reactors in our skies beaming vast quantitative of energy to us continuously.

[datguyian]

I was wondering... When nuclear fusion becomes a thing in "the next 30 years", i.e., almost infinite and free energy production, what do you think will happen to proof of work? Will make the bitcoin consensus stronger or weaker?

Nuclear power is not a trend for the future. Many nations and foundations are trying to reduce operations of current nuclear power facilities as well as trying to shut down old facilities and won't intend to approve licenses for new facilities.

After the Fukushima Daiichi disaster more than one decade ago, the world has been changing core approach to nuclear power.

If nuclear fusion is going to be centralized, as it seems for now (look at the ITER), then I think it can be a problem. Nation-state attacks could be feasible.

Nations, governments can set up mining farms and mine Bitcoin. Bitcoin is opened for everyone, every institutes, nations so they are free to do this. If they do this, they will do it very secretly. They won't announce anything because they don't want to admit their systematic failures.

That is not entirely true. While Germany is shutting down nuclear power plants, France is building new ones. EDF France is such a strong corporation with a powerful lobby that I doubt France will reduce their power plants in the near future. USA is also building new nuclear power plants. We are talking a century before nuclear power might disappear. ver then it might be so sophisticated already that they decide to continue using it. Therefore, the question what happens to PoW then is not entirely irrelevant.

[Nhazwrath]

You think fusion is a clean energy? Really?
Ever heard about spent fuel cells?

Before it was banned many countries dumped large amounts of radioactive waste into oceans. This can one day backfire.

What about incidents like Fukushima? Another one is waiting to happen if we continue to use nuclear power.

you are thinking of nuclear fission, not fusion.   also all nuclear fission waste that has ever been made across all nuclear reactors on the entire planet can been stored in less then a football field sized area. thats not to say its not dangerous(it is) but In reality is very easy to store and keep safe.   Coal tailing piles are more dangerous.  and tend to be more uncontained radioactive and thus actually more dangerous No joke.. 

and a couple bad reactor designs ...   the world should be using Canadian CANDU designs instead of the hashups they design. 

[Karartma1]

I was wondering... When nuclear fusion becomes a thing in "the next 30 years", i.e., almost infinite and free energy production, what do you think will happen to proof of work? Will make the bitcoin consensus stronger or weaker?
If nuclear fusion is going to be centralized, as it seems for now (look at the ITER), then I think it can be a problem. Nation-state attacks could be feasible.

Attacks on a nation's power supply will affect much more than just Bitcoin.

Exactly, if such an attach would be carried out, Bitcoin will be the very last thing to worry about!

I can already imagine as the devastation rages, structures burn and people flee our beloved bitcoiners will desperately search for a new source of power to get the miners going again.
/s

[NeuroticFish]

But I'm talking about Nuclear Fusion, which is under heavy research since a lot of years and is much more clean and green than anything.

Under heavy research, yes, but that doesn't give any clues if it will ever be ready for commercial use.
For now they spend huge amounts of energy for (iirc) split seconds of fusion. Probably the scientists still need one more breakthrough to make it stable/self sustaining and that could take a while...

It could be a nice dream of cheap energy - cheap/self-sustaining enough that after a while it can be seen as clean energy - and when it'll be commercially available it could replace all the other sources for energy, making humans no longer care how much energy they consume and on what, it's still just a dream. Possibly a very distant one, not worthy to be seen in current context.

[Lorence.xD]

Nuclear Fusion has been studied and it really can work but the problem is eventually we are going to run out of space to store the waste that nuclear powerplants expel and this waste needs to be kept for a long long time without the worry of being discovered by future generations. Not to mention that there hasn't been any improvement in the design of nuclear powerplant since they stopped racing to get a lot of nuclear missiles, and most plants around the world is being dismantled which is counterproductive because they favor coal and fossil fuels as energy source which is the cause of climate change.