Great, the hard disk shortage a few years back was not enough, the current gpu one is not even done, and now we will not be able to buy ssd/hd anymore thanks to proof of space
How is it possible to frame those systems as green?
It's power that goes away to computation
It's hard disks that nobody uses and that sit there, eating power
All those things have not only the energy cost, but also the environmental, production costs associated, and the damage done to countless companies that can't get the hardware anymore
> Renewable power generation from wind and solar has a much higher ratio of wasted power because they have such high variability in output. Because of this, in cases where the power generally can't be cost effectively stored or supplemented (by dynamic increase of dirtier energy), wind and solar simply won't be built in favor of coal plants. Bitcoin mining can use this wasted energy, which increases the revenue that can be generated by renewable sources, thus making it more likely that areas will choose renewable over coal.
So you think that cities will just put up with the increasing power outages, until the miners will give up in that region? That the normal public won't form a mob asking for more power in the night, which will attract more miners, thus making the whole point moot?
That looks like a weird gamble to make
> Bitcoin mining is a fixed quantity: so the more mining done using renewable energy, the less will be done with coal power (so when SamBam mocked this paper by saying "If we double the amount of electricity used on the planet, people will need to spend more on solar panels!" He completely didn't understand the zero sum aspect of bitcoin mining).
no, bitcoin has a fixed max of coin, but we already are at the point where the only limit is how to get the hardware to mine. There is no limit on mining.
Sure, it will shift more towards cheap power. But that needs to be also continuous. So bitcoin will drive the adoption of more continuous power, because if you do not do it, cities power will be a collateral damage more and more often.
> In fact, this has a more pronounced effect because players in the market who aren't as efficient can see their margins decrease below the point of profitablity. Since otherwise wasted electricity is cheapest, more and more bitcoin mining will be done using it, which means less and less will be done using usable electricity.
All this talk about using "waste" electricity is only relevant if your system never goes above max usage, thus causing power outages. That is already not true, and it's not like the power companies allocate only the "waste" electricity to bitcoin. Nobody stops mining when the power plant is near capacity. You just generate more pressure to add more power plants that give continuous power (so: not solar).
We have "waste" electricity because the system is designed to handle peaks and other plants going down.
Mining is eating away all the safety margin on the system. the more there is, the more it will eat
So yesterday in HN we linked to a medium post of mine where I expanded on the problems of Proof of work, and linked to a change.org petition to ban proof of work to force projects move to proof of stake.
It got flagged, but nice to see that somehow the argument itself is not that unapproachable, so I'll link the petition here: https://www.change.org/StopBurncoins
It's full of links on the issue of power, carbon pollution and more.
IMHO the problem is not cryptocoins themselves as is suggested here, but just proof of work
It's an attack on PoW, not bitcoin. Bitcoin can switch tech if the community wants.
1) the problem is that usage != waste. PoW is mostly waste
2) No, it's also about available electricity. Mining is causing blackouts. also health issues due to high coal usage and so on
3) You are not going to run your mining rig on solar power, much less the night. if I cover my house in solar panels I get 6Kw... at the peak. Lots of people can't do even that, it's not their house to begin with
Solar/wind/Hydro is wonderful, but at the end of the game it's not what runs the mining rigs
And miners will not even accept switching to hasing like argon2, which would render GPU and ASIC useless, thus really distributing the mining a lot more.
So we all agree that in one form or the other, the miners are parasitizing the projects, bringing inertia?
Kinda strong words, I know, but If you can't even progress in the PoW world, you have a problem. How to solve it?
Yep, a total of < 1$, on an single, unknown and not even traded, but old coin (which I won't even mention) that is not going anywhere. Basically for fun.
We have whole criminal families and such, "cosa nostra", "'ndrangeta" and many more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organized_crime_in_Italy
Unfortunately they are all very much still alive, and I am pretty sure a lot of those are older than Italy