Climate Campaign Pushes Bitcoin Network To Drop Energy-Hungry Code (theverge.com) 151
Greenpeace and other environmental groups launched a new campaign today to push the Bitcoin network to slash its growing greenhouse gas emissions. The Verge reports: The goal of the campaign, dubbed "Change the code, not the climate," is to switch up the energy-hungry process of verifying transactions and mining new Bitcoins. [...] In order to validate transactions, Bitcoin miners rely on specialized hardware to solve complex puzzles. Their computers gobble up a lot of energy in the process, and the miners get new tokens in return. It's a process called "proof of work," in which the energy used is sort of the price paid to verify transactions. The process is deliberately energy-intensive as a safety measure. The baked-in inefficiency is meant to discourage bad actors from manipulating the data because it would cost a lot of energy to do so.
The new campaign aims to move Bitcoin away from that energy-hungry proof of work process. The most popular alternative is called proof of stake. Cryptocurrencies that use proof of stake use vastly less energy because there are no puzzles to solve. Instead of essentially paying with electricity to participate in the process, you have to offer up some of your own tokens. This is supposed to prove that you have a "stake" in keeping the ledger accurate. If you mess anything up, you lose tokens as a penalty. While proof of stake might make solve a lot of Bitcoin's pollution problems, experts have been skeptical that miners would be willing to make the change. Miners invest a lot in their hardware and would be hard-pressed to abandon it. And some fans of proof of work maintain that it's the most secure way to maintain the ledger. "We know Bitcoin stakeholders are incentivized not to change," the campaign acknowledges on its website. "Changing Bitcoin would render a whole lot of expensive infrastructure worthless, meaning Bitcoin stakeholders will need to walk away from sunk costs -- or find other creative solutions."
As the Guardian notes, the campaign is launching a huge digital advertising push via the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Marketwatch, Politico, Facebook and others. "Organizers are also taking legal action against proposed mining sites and using their large memberships to push bitcoin's biggest investors and influencers to call for a code change." Additionally, the campaign is urging people to tweet at cryptocurrency influencers to support the campaign.
The new campaign aims to move Bitcoin away from that energy-hungry proof of work process. The most popular alternative is called proof of stake. Cryptocurrencies that use proof of stake use vastly less energy because there are no puzzles to solve. Instead of essentially paying with electricity to participate in the process, you have to offer up some of your own tokens. This is supposed to prove that you have a "stake" in keeping the ledger accurate. If you mess anything up, you lose tokens as a penalty. While proof of stake might make solve a lot of Bitcoin's pollution problems, experts have been skeptical that miners would be willing to make the change. Miners invest a lot in their hardware and would be hard-pressed to abandon it. And some fans of proof of work maintain that it's the most secure way to maintain the ledger. "We know Bitcoin stakeholders are incentivized not to change," the campaign acknowledges on its website. "Changing Bitcoin would render a whole lot of expensive infrastructure worthless, meaning Bitcoin stakeholders will need to walk away from sunk costs -- or find other creative solutions."
As the Guardian notes, the campaign is launching a huge digital advertising push via the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Marketwatch, Politico, Facebook and others. "Organizers are also taking legal action against proposed mining sites and using their large memberships to push bitcoin's biggest investors and influencers to call for a code change." Additionally, the campaign is urging people to tweet at cryptocurrency influencers to support the campaign.
Tax the fuck out of fossil fuels (Score:2)
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Or we could just tax the fuck out of people trying to raise taxes on anyone/anything they don't like.
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It doesn't. It does stop some petty tyrants, though, so that's a plus.
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Or we could just shoot people who refuse to pay their taxes.
win win. The environment wins either way.
It hasn't helped China.
Take the externalities out (Score:2)
This.
Take the externalities out, and give the true environmental cost to all users.
All meas also that today, aviation and marine fuel IS NOT TAXED. There's no reason for that.
TAX them.
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I don't know about marine fuel, but there's a fair amount of tax on jet fuel and avgas. It goes to pay for things like ATC and stuff. There is a cap to how much you can tax though because as highly mobile items, people do buy from lower taxed jurisdictions. So it may not be taxed at a state level because of that, but it is taxed at a federal level.
And yes, taxes have a big effect - event hings like sales tax
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In other words: Kneejerk reaction that doesn't impact miners who will happily simply move operations to places which are either not taxed or have abundant green energy, as much as it impacts the general cost of living and cost of goods for ordinary people who have no choice in the matter.
Congrats, your proposal is dead on arrival. You've screwed normal people while doing nothing to address the environmental concerns of bitcoin mining.
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Nope.
Externalities cost are similar.
Tax those out.
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Nope. You can tax fossil fuels much as you want, it won't stop mining which is progressively moving to places with abundant green energy. The problem with this is energy wasted is none the less energy not used for something else.
Your tax successfully hits common people who are immobile while doing nothing to mining operations who happily move their stuff around the world to look for a decent place to mine.
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If mining was restricted to energy that cannot be used any other way, then people would just produce more of it in order to profit from supplying miners. But it isn't, so the whole idea that it reduces inefficiency is completely false.
Bitcoin is NOT the last PoW chain standing, even putting Ethereum aside, although it is by far the biggest. And Ethereum is only "planning" to convert to PoS in the middle of the year, but they planned to do it before now, too. Let's see if they actually switch, and what effec
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Miners producing a demand for green energy could be an effective stimulus for that industry. We're probably exiting the era when that kind of stimulus is effective though.
Really what needs to happen is just regulating cryptocurrencies and exchanges the same way any similar operation is regulated. Then the extra-legal advantages would fall away and you'd just be left with an inherently super expensive way to transfer money to someone. The Americans could fix their banking system too, so there would be some r
hot air (Score:2)
How much CO2 will be produced by this advertising campaign? After folks with money in mining ignore the ads and nothing accomplished, it will be a net loss for the world. Advertising networks have lots of computers busy around the clock too, and those computers turn out even more worthless shit than bitcoin mining. Pretty ironic that the answer to computers using too much power is computers using too much power - way to go climate campaigners.
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Using that logic lets never complain about anything because complaining uses energy. I mean, how much CO2 did complaining about inefficient vehicles generate? What about complaining about coal fired power stations?
Sure, most of the people doing bitcoiing mining are sociopath borderline criminals and won't give a shit. But this might tip a few of the non sociopath ones to change things plus it raises more awareness amongst governments about this bitcoin bullshit and hopefully more of them will ban it.
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Have you heard of bitcoin? Do you know it uses a lot of electricity? Of course you already know those things. What, exactly, will you learn from this advertising?
The entire campaign is a waste in the same way bitcoin mining is a waste.
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Its not really aimed at you, me or most of the people doing mining. Its to get the attention of governments and regulators.
Funny, but useless (Score:2)
Though I find it funny to see crypto-utopians tie themselves into knots to defend the electricity use of a small country to redistribute wealth from greater fools to lesser fools, providing very little entertainment and negative utility along the way, this will obviously accomplish fuck all.
Who are the bad actors? (Score:2)
"...The baked-in inefficiency is meant to discourage bad actors from manipulating the data because it would cost a lot of energy to do so. "
If "bad actor" means some teenager trying to hack the system, then perhaps that is true. But, if you are referring to seriously "bad actors", that may imply organized crime or terror groups or state actors or other well funded dark agencies. I doubt "cost of energy" will match matter in those cases.
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Actually, for a brief time, the PRC had the opportunity to physically seize control of enough BTC-mining gear to attempt a 51% attack. Outside of that moment (which is now passed), I do not think any state actor has ever had a similar opportunity.
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It would still not be that hard to play havoc with the Bitcoin network for any sufficiently funded group, even without a 51% attack. The centralisation is a serious problem. The incentive only depends on how much value there's to it. If Bitcoin ever became truly important for the economy, in the sense that disrupting it could cause some financial collapse, then it shouldn't be too hard to achieve. It would also likely lead to an arms race for mining, taking more and more power. That's the problem with PoW c
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I mean
Maybe?
If any state actors tried to spin up their own mining hardware to try and disrupt the network, odds are good it would just lead to two separate networks. One with nodes that would accept txn validation from the state actors and one with nodes that wouldn't. That's assuming anyone knew what was going on, which they might not. The PRC had the opportunity to essentially use existing miners as sockpuppets, which would have been really disruptive.
Regardless, if state actors felt it necessary to "t
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Shattering bitcoin into a bunch of paranoid forks that attempt to ban miners for being evil government spais sounds like a pretty effective attack.
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Taking a few mega-farms offline for a specific window could be enough to make it feasible.
A better solution (Score:2)
just burn the entire blockchain to the ground.
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And capture the energy from burning it to spin a turbine to generate power for something useful.
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Climate Campaign Pushes (Score:2)
It's a feature, not a bug. (Score:2)
You can't fake energy burn. Thermodynamics is awesome.
It comes down to that. Bitcoin is going to replace central bank currencies, backed by wars, weapons, and opression. There is no more noble use of energy.
The code is on github, though - fork away. lol
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Bitcoin is going to replace central bank currencies, backed by wars, weapons, and opression.
If BTC replaces central bank currencies, then it will simply be backing the wars, weapons, and oppression instead of those currencies. If governments are threatened by cryptocurrencies they will react to the existential threat and destroy them. And yes, they absolutely can do that with concerted effort. They have the men and materiel, and you don't.
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If BTC replaces central bank currencies, then it will simply be backing the wars, weapons, and oppression instead of those currencies.
Yes, but even if it it replaced just Mastercard, it would require more energy than the whole of humanity requires in total.
With PoS on the other hand, you'd only be supporting the people staking money, which means they will get more money which means the system will collapse into a tiny oligopoly of "whales" even quicker than PoW.
In short, crypto currencies and oder "DeFi" schemes have failed to meet any of their goals. The only thing they seem to be useful for is to extract money from stupid people.
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and facilitating ransomware attacks.
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In short, crypto currencies and oder "DeFi" schemes have failed to meet any of their goals. The only thing they seem to be useful for is to extract money from stupid people.
Well, that's the goal of money, right? I mean if we were smart, we'd know cooperation is better than competition and we'd help one another walk hand in hand into a sustainable future in which we can all not only survive but thrive. So from that standpoint, it's hard to call it not a success.
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Don't worry, if bitcoin ever actually caught on as a currency the massive deflation would cripple whatever economy used it to the point where nobody could afford the electricity to mine, or the transfer fees to pay the miners.
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Yes, but it replaces the central banks with even more unaccountable mining pools.
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You can't fake energy burn. Thermodynamics is awesome.
It comes down to that. Bitcoin is going to replace central bank currencies, backed by wars, weapons, and opression. There is no more noble use of energy.
The code is on github, though - fork away. lol
That's ok. The central banks, wars and oppression, will let you know which forks are worth anything. And which will ones will put you in prison.
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Bitcoin is going to replace central bank currencies, backed by wars, weapons, and opression.
That is completely and utterly delusional. The reason central banks and currencies moved away from some standard linked to something physical (be it gold or desperately trying to generate CO2 as quickly as possible) was precisely because the lack of economic handles led to direct negative impacts on society.
The fantasy of removing power from central banks is not too different from jumping out of an airplane without any control over how you pull your parachute and just hoping it'll expand itself.
The only peo
If your making money (Score:2)
BTC is awesome. If you're not, you are paying for BTC indirectly by raised energy prices, silicon shortages (video cards being primary evidence for the skeptics). Proof of work sucks, it is a waste. If you love proof of work, go get your own paycheck convert it to cash and burn some 100$ bills instead.
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In before the "BTC ISN'T MINED WITH VIDEO CARDS" comment. But hey don't let that stop you buddy.
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I would edit that to read, the "majority of BTC isn't mined with video cards", but there are many enthusiasts who buy video cards for this purpose.
https://www.nme.com/news/gamin... [nme.com]
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EVs don't use much more silicon than any other cars, if any. The idea that EVs are responsible for a silicon shortage is just spectacularly ignorant. The days when ICEVs were run off one teeny tiny microcontroller are long, long gone. It's simpler to control an electric motor than just the emissions systems on an ICEV alone.
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Electric cars are awesome. If you don't have one, you are paying for electric cars indirectly by raised energy prices, silicon shortages (chips being primary evidence for the skeptics). Electric cars suck, it is a waste. If you love electric cars, go get your own paycheck and build a windfarm yourself.
Don't you think it's weird that the electric cars are still being manufactured in the middle of the crisis? It's the big-iron Ford pickups that are suffering the chip shortage. How do you keep those two facts in your mind simultaneously?
Sunk costs? (Score:2)
The sunk costs are the mining hardware, which rapidly becomes worthless as new more powerful hardware is built to replace it. If proof of stake does not render your hardware investment worthless overnight, newly developed hardware will render it worthless in a few months anyway.
PoS is a myth. (Score:2)
PoS is a myth, that has promised reduced energy consumption for 5 years...
It did not happen. Energy burned by crypto increased a lot.
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Is a high school diploma a myth? A mortgage on your home? Financing for your car? Fuck, I wish stupid motherfuckers would stop posting ridiculous shit in threads like this. You're doing it just to piss me off, admit it.
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PoS is a myth.
it has not been proven effective, safe, reliable.
It may be exploited as soon as switched on, and this is why it has not been switched on at useful scale.
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They just mean drop code that wastes 99.999% on nothing, like proof-of-work does. The only reason proof-of-work takes a lot of power is that it's designed to become less efficient the more computing power is put into it, as a balancing measure. It's just bad human engineering, not really a matter of computer engineering. Proof-of-work is simply a bad idea, on several levels, and it's good that there's a push to replace it.
ASCII art (Score:2)
Funnily Slashdot didn't want to post my comment when I had a few more '9's in the percentage, claiming that it looks too much like ASCII art.
Not sure why, or what's bad about ASCII art.
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PoS=Myth (Score:2)
PoS is a myth, that has promised reduced energy consumption for 5 years...
It did not happen. Energy burned by crypto increased a lot.
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I guess you have no clue how much resources proof-of-work algorithm waste compared to "regular" inefficient "bloated" software. Proof-of-work literally requires you to do the same calculation over and over again with a tiny modification until they stumble upon a result that has certain characteristics. How many times do they do this same calculation? Billions of times.
It's like throwing dirt at a canvas in a different ways, burning the canvas each time it doesn't resemble a Van Gogh painting. Repeat that
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Ya, but ... (Score:2)
I thought the goal of cryptocurrencies was to get even more people to buy expensive graphics cards and specialized hardware (no one else was buying), or did I miss something?
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Well originally it was to create a decentralized currently free of speculation from banks. Something you could buy money with, but was created by everyone.
Unfortunately the things that everybody predicted would happen did happen and now we are left with highly centralized systems that are highly inefficient and have no value except for speculation.
Essentially the whole DeFI-Crowd is fighting a war against logic wasting real resources to fuel a bubble of imaginary value.
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Well originally it was to create a decentralized currently free of speculation from banks. Something you could buy money with, but was created by everyone.
Yes but the writing was on the wall as soon as one person said "I did X last year and now it's worth 10x as much". Bitcoin is now just a big game of "greater fool".
Let's move to Proof of Steak (Score:2)
I've got some nice sirloin in the freezer right now!
Don't they have anything better to do? (Score:2)
I never expected to need to criticize Greenpeace, but this goes to show how you can politicize even the best of intentions. They could be going for so many other sources of energy expenditure that are far higher than BTC mining which only really cater to the interest of the elites and the laziness of developed societies's middle class and above, such as multiple single-user cars, large houses for no reason, consuming meat... The works. They chose the low-hanging fruit of criticizing tech that nobody really
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They have no "skin in the game" and can bloviate all they want without bearing any consequences. If they were sincere, they would invest in dominating bitcoin mining to the extent where they can make the changes they want.
I'd like to see some proof of work from these whingers.
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They could be going for so many other sources of energy expenditure that are far higher than BTC mining
They are.
which only really cater to the interest of the elites
You mean like cryptocurrency, which is primarily a vehicle for speculation and money laundering?
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Citation needed.
Proof of Stake versus Proof of Work (Score:2)
He may actually desire a "Proof of whatever thing I like" paradigm.
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Thats just not true re load. The majority of bitcoin mining is now in facilities that are generating their own power, or have special arangements with power companies. Part of why a lot of it has moved to the developing world is countries like China growing tired of the huge loads on their grids actively thwarting CO2 mitigation strategies involving reducing reliance on Coal and Gas fired generators.
And yes, I do agree that *ideally* Nuclear power is the optimum strategy, its not clear its the most economic
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Re:Crypto's power usage isn't unusual (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Crypto's power usage isn't unusual" ...compared to a small country, maybe.
But that's a pretty bullshit comparison.
A better comparison is to other financial transaction networks. And all the banks and all the credit card companies and so on are all orders of magnitude more efficient.
So yes, cryptocurrency's power usage is extremely unusual when you make a reasonable comparison.
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Only true for Bitcoin. By that same comparison, PoS chains are better than banks.
Also true for Ethereum, and therefore the two most popular cryptocurrencies.
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It's been doing that for at least half a decade.
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So I decided that I'm going to assume you're not a prototypical crypto bro whitewashing his favourite "get rich doing as little as possible"-scheme and therefore allow the possibility that my memory of seeing this shit in the previous decade could be wrong.
So went to DDG and searched for "ethereum proof of stake" and constrained results to before 2020.
And what do you know, I find out that I'm correct as usual. So if you want to find plethora of "ethereum is totally going to proof of stake soon TM" articles,
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So yes you're correct that they were planning on moving to PoS before 2020 but no they weren't actively merging to a PoS branch until very recently.
So yes you can make a semantic argument here that is mostly bullshit but let's just not, please.
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So let's me see:
The original argument: Ethereum people are saying they're moving to PoS "Soon TM"
My argument: Yes, and they were saying this for at least five years.
You: No they weren't.
Me: Plug in these search terms into this website to find plenty of citations for this claim being made in this time frame.
You: Yes, the plan was always this. And yes, it didn't happen before. But it's different this time! Also this is semantics!
I really need your help to understand this. What other reply other than "just how
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So yes you're correct that they were planning on moving to PoS before 2020 but no they weren't actively merging to a PoS branch until very recently.
It was "originally planned [currency.com]" for 2019, now it's planned for this year, and it may not happen this year either. I'm not gonna hold my breath.
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Have people made estimates that were off? I imagine so.
Have they officially launched a PoS chain and worked on merging it to the exclusion of all other proposals before? Nope.
Stop being a retard, this is something that is actively being implemented right now, and all the complaining from you won't change that.
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Now I understand why you were complaining about semantics. Projection.
See, my claim was that they were saying they're going to move to PoS for a long time (which obviously includes slowly working toward it as well, hence the Star Citizen crack at the end). And here you are, agreeing with it, and merely splitting hairs on how much is being done to facilitate that hypothetical transition that has been worked towards and talked about for many years.
The fact that some very very slow work has been done for last
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Again, the Ethereum team never set a release date for PoS and still has not.
So to be clear, your argument is that it's definitely going to happen even though there's no date so Ethereum is great?
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Glad we agree this is the same "soon TM".
So what do you think we'll get first? Star Citizen, Half Life 3 or Ethereum PoS?
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Only true for Bitcoin. By that same comparison, PoS chains are better than banks.
In what way exactly? PoS essentially turns the whole idea into something even more centralized, plus it seems unlikely that PoS is more efficient than banks. Do you have any numbers for that claim? I mean slashing the energy use of current PoW by a factor of 1000 still is many orders of magnitude above what banks need.
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Well currently the centralisation is slowed down by having to buy and operate mining rigs. Buying those is a slow process, as is getting the infrastructure to operate it. That's why we still have a hand full of mining pools.
With PoS that limit falls and you can directly stake the money you make from staking. There is far less friction keeping the system collapsing into one big whale doing virtually all the staking.
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There's no other algorithm I'm aware of that's designed to become less efficient the more computing power is put into it. That by itself makes proof-of-work unusual.
The only thing stopping Bitcoin's power growth is profitability. Sustainable energy use offers nothing. Miners only care about electricity price, and if they could get electricity at a lower price, they'd just use more power. PoW is a system that inherently uses as much power as it's given.
That's why it has to go.
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The only reason BSV is more efficient is that it's less profitable. PoW is inherently wasteful, as it becomes less efficient (ups difficulty) the more computing power is put into it. Less profitable coins will naturally have less computing power put into them so will be more efficient. This has nothing to do with the underlying crypto algorithm, only with the PoW system.
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Original Bitcoin?
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The miners probably have more ready access to BTC than anyone except a few whales who have stashed BTC for a very long time. If anyone could benefit from PoS, it would be the miners. The issue is whether they're willing to bag on all the mining hardware they've purchased that hasn't necessarily paid for itself yet, and whether or not they were smart enough to stash sufficient BTC for staking to replace their current rate of income.
Some of the miners are probably major HODLers, but others . . . maybe not s
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I doubt they are. Large miners are businesses so what they mine is going to go to paying the loans on the equipment, rent, electricity, salaries, and then either re-invested in more hardware or distributed to shareholders.
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Not just TVPP, complete rubbish. There's no way Bitcoin can "transition".
It's worse than that: By design Bitcoin energy use has to keep increasing exponentially. The whole thing collapses if they don't double the required energy use every once in a while.
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Not sure where you got the idea that Bitcoin energy must increase. Bitcoin energy, and that of any mining-based crypto, is proportional to its profitability. Assuming a stable price, power use will remain constant until the mining rewards are halved (which happens once in a while), at which point power use will drop. On the flip side, Bitcoin having a limited number of coins makes it deflationary, so prices are expected to go up over time, which raises profitability.
Still, energy use is purely a matter of p
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power use will remain constant until the mining rewards are halved (which happens once in a while), at which point power use will drop.
Why should all those miners suddenly stop mining? That doesn't follow at all. More likely they'll double down and invest even more in mining hardware.
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Without them the US would have continued with much more and even more robust atomic power and there would be no $5 gas or war in Ukraine today.
Lol wut? Atomic power is incredibly expensive and takes decades. Take a look at the price tag and schedule for Watts Bar and it's no surprise why nuclear plants aren't being built.
You're saying Greenpeace is responsible for the Putin invading Ukraine and $5 gas? Who knew those dirty hippies had that amount of political power? Christ you're into foil hat territory here.