Why exactly is Bitcoin clinging to PoW?

[NotATether]

Here is a question,

what is the PoW supporters plan to stop cities and countries from banning bitcoin PoW mining,
due to their concerns over bitcoin energy usage and carbon footprint?

You have a very important point. Since large-scale profitable mining can only be done in certain regions, banning miners from them could kill their business and cause a (another) short-term dip.

Unfortunately most of us have a very tiny voice compared to all the pollution naysayers, and the few people that do have the power to influence opinion (microstrategy CEO for example) are being outnumbered in debates.

[In the interest of full transparency, I still think an algorithm change is a terrible idea, but not even that's going to stop the ferocious anti-mining politicians.]

[TangentC]

Ethereum and Cardano , the #2 and #4 coins on CMK would disagree with you.

You clearly don't understand anything and farting about centralized altcoins that mostly run on vps servers and have blockchain size that can't fit on normal hard drives is not decentralization or security.
Anyone can run Bitcoin node even on Pi devices, that is impossible on mentioned coins, and they don't spend any energy because they run on centralized VPS almost as database files.
Not to mention you would need to have huge amount of coins to buy and stake, or issues with premine...

You're kind of missing the point, the miners are driving up the energy waste, your little Pi is useless in bitcoin mining,
however that little pi could run a PoS network.

My final point is this a solution to PoW energy waste is needed, don't want to switch to PoS like Ethereum,
fine don't, but thinking that something does not have to be done to fix an ever growing problem will not end well for BTC, IMO.

Have a Great Day.  

[dkbit98]

You're kind of missing the point, the miners are driving up the energy waste, your little Pi is useless in bitcoin mining,
however that little pi could run a PoS network.

Good luck trying to run those crap altcoin nodes on Pi device and good luck purchasing all those coins needed to be validator

I see you are not promoting BCH and Roger Ver anymore who also use PoW, so now you switched for other more centralized coins and you are not calling Maxwell a pet cat anymore.  

Everyone know you G.Maxwell pet cat, shoo bad kitty.

Core BTC coin is BROKEN!!
113403 Unconfirmed Transactions

[thumamuma]

Even if energy is renewal , it is still a limited supply of a semi-fixed total, by bitcoin using an ever increasing % at a growth rate exceeding all other industries, it is still going to cause problems, such as rolling blackouts , and massive price increases in the cost of electricity for anyone unfortunate enough to be on the same power grid as miners.

Why do you think so? PoW has a sustained load, the power grid has only problems with spike loads, like the one that comes from charging millions of electric vehicles, I don't think that is a fair point to be made and not really true. And it is not like that bitcoin uses infinite amount of power, that would only happen if the electricity would be free, which it is not. Also when regulators forbid to mine more than XYZ energy capacity that would be a good thing in the end since that would improve decentralization in total.

[xmready]

[thumamuma]

Interesting. Where is there are source of that picture including the sources of how it was aggregated? Would like to have a deeper dive into the whole analysis (especially having a question mark what the gold energy usage means?)

[thumamuma]

ok found it on my own. A little bit questionable why exactly they put gold in there... . They calculated back the CO2 footprint of gold into theoretical TWH. Dunno what this comparison should tell, this is like putting concrete into comparison. In the end every device also contains gold again so it might have made sense if they wanted to calculate a total CO2 footprint including the gold production. Weird...

https://docsend.com/view/adwmdeeyfvqwecj2
https://github.com/GalaxyDigitalLLC/Financial-Industry-Electricity-Balance

[TangentC]

You're kind of missing the point, the miners are driving up the energy waste, your little Pi is useless in bitcoin mining,
however that little pi could run a PoS network.

Good luck trying to run those crap altcoin nodes on Pi device and good luck purchasing all those coins needed to be validator

I see you are not promoting BCH and Roger Ver anymore who also use PoW, so now you switched for other more centralized coins and you are not calling Maxwell a pet cat anymore.  

Everyone know you G.Maxwell pet cat, shoo bad kitty.

For the record, I was calling the now non-entity formerly know as Lauda the pet cat of G.Maxwell as she/he/it did his bidding on multiple occasions. For a time Lauda red tagged almost everyone that even type BCH.
What I was promoting with BCH was the fact they had no need of offchain networks such as LN, because they were unafraid to raise their blocksize , something it would have been nice if BTC had done, but refused to do so, due to misplaced fear.
If you have a problem with BCH , you should contact the people also mining BTC, because the same miners are keeping both running.  

[vjudeu]

If you have a problem with BCH , you should contact the people also mining BTC, because the same miners are keeping both running.

It is not the case, because merged mining is not activated.

[Wind_FURY]

Ethereum and Cardano , the #2 and #4 coins on CMK would disagree with you.

You clearly don't understand anything and farting about centralized altcoins that mostly run on vps servers and have blockchain size that can't fit on normal hard drives is not decentralization or security.
Anyone can run Bitcoin node even on Pi devices, that is impossible on mentioned coins, and they don't spend any energy because they run on centralized VPS almost as database files.
Not to mention you would need to have huge amount of coins to buy and stake, or issues with premine...

OP, plus Bitcoin mining is also a Sybil Attack prevention mechanism, and the incentive-structure works, the Game Theory works, and the network will chug along for many many years. Why change something that already works?

Change is needed sometimes and anything that is stagnant and not improving can be overtaken, so I would not be surprised if we see some future change in Bitcoin PoW or some better model, but it is certainly not going to be some shitty Proof-of-Stake.

Stagnant? Bitcoin doesn’t need to change. Bitcoin actually has the fastest SETTLEMENT times compared to ALL coins. Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin settle more than 10 times slower than Bitcoin. Compare how much shitcoin confirmations is worth in just one Bitcoin confirmation.

[dkbit98]

Stagnant? Bitcoin doesn’t need to change. Bitcoin actually has the fastest SETTLEMENT times compared to ALL coins. Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin settle more than 10 times slower than Bitcoin. Compare how much shitcoin confirmations is worth in just one Bitcoin confirmation.

Do you know how many code changes Bitcoin had since it's creation? It's changing all the time and that is the rule for anything in life, adapt and change or die.
Even now we are going to see Taproot code update soon, and I am not at all comparing Bitcoin with any altcoins, but I was talking what could happen in future.
If you look at the bigger picture and all climate change plans by 2030 you would realize that we need to start thinking of ways how to improve and change PoW (not by using stupid PoS for sure).
Again, I am not saying Bitcoin is the source of problem with spending only 1% of world energy, but we better be ready for some bad scenarios.

[Wind_FURY]

Change is needed sometimes and anything that is stagnant and not improving can be overtaken, so I would not be surprised if we see some future change in Bitcoin PoW or some better model, but it is certainly not going to be some shitty Proof-of-Stake.

Stagnant? Bitcoin doesn’t need to change.

But Bitcoin already changed many times, from P2PKH, P2SH, SegWit to Taproot which will be activated later in future.

Read his post. He believes a change in Bitcoin’s POW “or some better model” <- not sure what that means, will be better for Bitcoin’s future, and that he “will not be surprised to see that kind of change” in the future. Is he actually saying that Bitcoin must break what makes the whole system work?

[DaveF]

What I have not seen is how much energy is wasted in other ways in relation to fiat vs. cards vs. electronic payments in general vs. crypto.
You can come up with a number showing how much energy the ATMs of the world use. And probably even how much fuel is needed to have the people filing them use.
But where do you draw the line? If I need cash I have to go an ATM. Unless I am passing one that I can use on the way to someplace else there is my fuel burn.

How much oil is used to make the plastic for credit cards?
How much energy / gold / other metals is used to make the chips for credit cards?

It's a very deep rabbit hole to go down and it will be difficult to draw a line as to where to stop.

US bills are cotton & linen, how much does it cost to grow the cotton to make it in terms of fuel & water and land that could be used for food?

-Dave

[BlackHatCoiner]

Read his post.

I believe he did. He just said that Bitcoin has indeed changed a lot of times in the past, to improve the way it works. You see, sometimes, the “singers” of this network must switch tunes, but that's not necessarily bad. As long as there is harmony, we're fine.

He believes a change in Bitcoin’s POW “or some better model” <- not sure what that means

I guess he said that PoW will either be changed or a new mechanism will replace it, although I doubt for both of them.

Is he actually saying that Bitcoin must break what makes the whole system work?

“Break” isn't the greatest word to describe this. The system has to change sooner or later and you should be okay with this, except if you haven't understood the way it is structured.

I'm quoting you a message of this forum:

According to NIST and ECRYPT II, the cryptographic algorithms used in Bitcoin are expected to be strong until at least 2030. (After that, it will not be too difficult to transition to different algorithms.)

[TangentC]

If you have a problem with BCH , you should contact the people also mining BTC, because the same miners are keeping both running.

It is not the case, because merged mining is not activated.

BTC miners have warehouse full of ASICs,
thinking they don't switch back and forth for greater profit gains between BTC and BCH is naive.
Switching does not require merge mining.

Because if all of the BTC miners had the loyalty that a bitcoiner cultist has,
then BCH would have suffered a chain death on day 1 of the split.    

[vjudeu]

If BCH is so good, why they don't switch from Proof of Work to something else? You don't like Proof of Work in BTC, but like it in BCH? Also, you have a lot of coins with other consensus, if something other than Proof of Work is so good, why they are not as successful as Bitcoin? And even if they are less known, why you want to change the way BTC works instead of selling your BTC and buying some other coin that works the way you want? If there is no such coin, you are free to create it, in this way you will learn the hard way, why other consensus are worse.

I think that any consensus other than Proof of Work can be reduced to "obscured Proof of Work", it is well explained for example here: https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/ and if that's the case, then there is no reason to switch to something else.

[TangentC]

If BCH is so good, why they don't switch from Proof of Work to something else? You don't like Proof of Work in BTC, but like it in BCH? Also, you have a lot of coins with other consensus, if something other than Proof of Work is so good, why they are not as successful as Bitcoin? And even if they are less known, why you want to change the way BTC works instead of selling your BTC and buying some other coin that works the way you want? If there is no such coin, you are free to create it, in this way you will learn the hard way, why other consensus are worse.

I think that any consensus other than Proof of Work can be reduced to "obscured Proof of Work", it is well explained for example here: https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/ and if that's the case, then there is no reason to switch to something else.

I don't like proof of work at all, but I hate a coin not improving onchain transaction capacity most of all.

Your bitcoiner cultist attitude does not serve you at all, I am not the one banning PoW mining.
I am pointing out that banning PoW mining is a growing phenomenon.

Instead of getting irrational with me, maybe realize that if you want PoW to continue, you are going to have to work with the ones making the bans. 

 

[pooya87]

Because if all of the BTC miners had the loyalty that a bitcoiner cultist has,
then BCH would have suffered a chain death on day 1 of the split.   

BCH didn't die because first of all there are malicious centralized entities with some amount of hashrate behind this altcoin and secondly because they also changed the difficulty and how it works to reduce it enough to let that tiny amount of hashrate keep the chain alive.
They also created incentive by letting miners find more than 1000 blocks per day (instead of the normal ~144) like an airdrop. There is no room for loyalty in business and also even some bitcoin investors when they see some shitcoin pumping (see profit) they go there temporarily to make quick profit.

you want PoW to continue,

That's your naive interpretation. The problem is that there is nothing better than bitcoin's PoW.

[TangentC]

The problem is that there is nothing better than bitcoin's PoW.

You know, I know you honestly believe that.

But the problem is the growing banning of PoW mining due to what others think that don't share your belief.

Good day to you,
I think enough of all of our time has been wasted on a subject that bitcoiners just refuse to even attempt to comprehend.
As with all things , their will be a tipping point and then denying reality will have consequences.
Until then enjoy your belief that Bitcoin PoW is special.    

[vjudeu]

But the problem is the growing banning of PoW mining due to what others think that don't share your belief.

Proof of Work is harder to ban than other consensus like Proof of Stake. In PoS you cannot reliably prove if someone is DDoSed or is only pretending to get advantage by slashing. In PoW if there is a monopolist, it has to keep working to hold that position, in PoS the validator can sign every competing chain and always be rewarded. In PoW when someone has 51% computing power, then turning off some miners may even be profitable, so it is natural pressure against centralization (imagine you have 100% computing power, then there is no reason to mine blocks starting with 80 zero bits and pay high electricity bills, you can save money by letting the difficulty drop). In PoS when someone has 51% coin supply, then there is no reason to give up. Once 51%, always 51%, it is true in PoS, because you can sign every chain using different addresses and pretending that you are not a monopolist and you can still control everything without making any additional effort, like in PoW where you have to keep your mining equipment running.