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"it'll be unhackable"
Then they'll accidentally release the driver again or something akin...
Yeah, of course it won't be hackable!
Oh well, at least it was yet another excuse, along with the daft power consumption of the last few generations, of not upgrading my graphic card.
I must be dumb, but what is the purpose of cryptocurrency and its mining anyway? All it seems to be is the wasting of precious energy of what would seem to be nothing of real material or non-material value?
It's the modern gold rush. Some people will make a fortune, many will toil for scant reward, all while polluting the surrounds - in this case the atmosphere via the increased power usage that should be being legislated against frankly. No point France banning short haul flights but allowing large scale crypto mining to go unchecked.Originally Posted by Eggburt69
CAT-THE-FIFTH (16-04-2021)
Why? Nvidia even released a statement saying that crypto miners aren't causing the GPU shortages. Who cares what their cards get used for?
I get the impression that people think money really is being created here. AFAICS mining just gets you a slice of transaction costs that someone is paying, so any money you get someone else has lost in the sky high transaction fees.
Nvidia want to sell their crypto cards, they'll be priced higher than the geforce cards so this is more about money than anything else.
I'm sorry but the biggest offence caused by that mining rig is the wonky cooler and the protective plastic still left on the cards.
They deserve to be hanged. And if it doesn't work, I'll happily be the one pulling on their legs for that monstrosity.
And anyone saying it's "unhackable" does realise they have just thrown down a gauntlet to every hacker out there?
As for power consumption, my Vega64 with a 250W rating was classed as utterly over the top and badly made. Nvidia laid into it and are now making it look perfectly sensible.
Sorry, I don't buy this environmental argument, if you run the numbers you will find Bitcoin is a more environmentally friendly store of value than Gold and it becomes better the more the price of Bitcoin increases (which it will).
Data:
BTC value = $65,000
BTC annual energy consumption = 121 Twh or 435600000 GJ
BTC produced per year = 328,500 (900 daily until the next halving in 2024 - reduced production will be offset by increase in price)
Energy per BTC = 1,326 GJ
Energy for storage of $1m in value = 20,400 GJ
Gold value = $33,000,000 per ton
Gold energy used to mine 1 ton = 200,000 GJ
Energy for storage of $1m in value = 6,060 GJ
So at current prices Bitcoin uses just over 3 x the amount of energy as Gold to MINE, however, Gold is also very expensive to store and transport, it requires the construction and continual operation of heavy vaults further increasing its energy requirements as a store of value, in comparison Bitcoin costs ZERO energy to store, it only uses energy to validate and record transactions (included in the above figures). In addition to this if the value of Bitcoin was $219,000 it would require the same amount of energy to MINE as Gold (this is without considering the huge amounts of energy on top of mining required to actually store, process and use Gold).
On top of the energy required to produce Gold the mining process uses millions of tons of water each year, requires digging up the Earth, produces millions of tons of dangerous waste including heavy metal contamination and then there are the human costs there is often slavery and cheap labour involved and poor working conditions in Gold production.
In addition the energy used by Bitcoin is generally cheap surplus energy (it has to be for miners to make a profit). This is often energy from renewable sources like hydro dams or solar (Agro-blockchain only use renewable energy in Bitcoin production).
So please stop believing all of the media rubbish about how Bitcoin is so terrible for the environment, it DOES use a lot of energy yes, but when you actually look at how green it is as a STORE OF VALUE in comparison to other things out there it is actually greener than existing hedges against fiat inflation and financial safe havens (the most common of the last 5,000 years has been Gold). Like anything it has to be looked at objectively in context with comparable things - just pulling a headline number out and comparing it against the energy consumption of a country is not a fair comparison and not good journalism in my opinion, it is an attempt to maintain the stigma and demonisation around something that is threatening to eat your lunch.
And before anyone says - yes but Bitcoin isn't backed by anything it has no inherent value - neither is Gold, it is only valuable because it is scarce and human beings have decided this yellow metal is really valuable because it is hard to find.
Sources:
https://ec.europa.eu/environment/int.../302na5_en.pdf
https://www.independent.co.uk/climat...-b1819545.html
Last edited by MaddogPepper; 16-04-2021 at 03:57 PM.
Last time I checked we abandoned gold backed currencies some time ago, like 1930s or so, so I don't get the comparison to gold. How does bitcoin compare to say electronic dollar transactions?
The 'bitcoin mined with green energy' has already been debunked several times on these forums.
CAT-THE-FIFTH (16-04-2021),ik9000 (17-04-2021)
Gold actually has some important engineering uses.
The comparison to gold is the "store of value" argument. Gold isn't an investment, it's a store of value. So when currencies inflate, gold stays static and more fiat currency is required. However, if you go to a central London hotel and place a gold Soverign on the counter, it'll buy you now what it bought you back in 1930.
Bitcoin is seen as similar as it's not vulnerable to government debasement. It is more volatile than gold, will hopefully stabilise as it matures.
That's not the problem. As you say, value is nebulous and just down to what people agree it is worth.
The problem is that the carbon footprint of a transaction is massive. *All* of the successful crypto currencies have started off promising fast and cheap transactions, and ended up with slow expensive transactions. There are currencies out there that aren't like that, if the community gave a damn they would have already migrated. But no, the main crypto contenders are still PoW.
You *must* be able to spend this, and that currently doesn't work for sane use cases. It can cost $20 for a basic Eth transaction at the momemt? So then you hear tripe about how it needs a second layer over the top. No, trust me on this, it doesn't. About 10 years ago it would have been quite hard to spend money in retail in the UK without that money going through some software that I personally had a large involvement in. Payments actually isn't that hard. Really. It always amazes me how badly people mess this stuff up. So, Ethereum had an intended goal that it would cost a few cents to do a transaction. It failed. How am I supposed to have any faith that the people involved in this stuff can get a second layer right when they missed by magnitudes on the first one? And the speed, sheesh. I've put 1000 transactions of EMV compliant credit card transactions per second through a single core-2 duo box, and could have scaled that up with clustering if anyone had needed more. The world computer was bought to its knees by a few crypto kitties, and the response was to tweak the block parameters to make it a bit faster? Sorry, but that's not enough. It needs to scale up with more compute added, and it needs way more efficiency.
That's the key here. Routing a transaction to a bank to ask if your card is good for the amount takes a couple of seconds. That's the power of a centralised banking system. It is fast and very efficient, because if a bank isn't efficient then that comes straight out of their profits and they can't compete.
I have a simple use case that I think should be perfect for crypto but I still can't find a decent answer to: My son is running a Minecraft server and sometimes people want to leave a tip. This is usually done via Paypal.
If someone wants to leave an anonymous tip, in the $1 to $10 range, what should they send it as? Bitcoin costs about $15, Eth is no better. Raven seems to actually penalise people getting lots of small amounts and then cashing it in (no idea why).
This is an honest question, and a real use case that feels like it should be trivial, but I gave up looking. Paypal is better, and that's pretty sad.
The example is based on Bitcoin's use as a store of value in comparison to Gold (not as a currency - Bitcoin is terrible as a currency). Both Gold and Bitcoin share a lot of properties:
1. They both have a limited supply (Bitcoins is actually hard fixed at 21m, Gold is just really hard to find in large quantities)
2. They are both scarce
3. Neither are centrally controlled
4. Neither deserve the value placed on them - humans have decided they are valuable
But Bitcoin brings a few extra benefits over Gold:
1. There is an absolute known fixed supply (no one knows exactly how much Gold there is, we could discover a huge reserve tomorrow which would be very disruptive to the market)
2. It is very easy to move between entities (relatively cheap and fast to move very large amounts of value around compared to Gold)
3. It is publicly traceable (every single transaction is recorded and in the public domain, contrary to what the media report Bitcoin is really not very good for fraud and crime - unlike fiat money which is largely untraceable and great for money laundering, drugs, etc etc)
4. It does not cost anything to store, in fact you can actually generate a yield by storing with a centralised custodian - try and do that with Gold
5. You can actually buy things with it, although I agree as a currency its terrible (fiat is still good for that), but still you can if you want to - and you might for large purchases (houses, cars etc)
Bitcoin is still very young, only been around just over 10 years vs 5000 years for Gold (as a store of value). So Bitcoin is still finding its feet and gaining traction, hence the volatility and scepticism. As it becomes more established and displaces Gold as a store of value (leaving Gold to be used for much better things like electronics and coatings) it will become more stable in terms of price (maybe in the next 50 - 100 years).
So my argument above, is based purely on its comparison to Gold as a store of value and I stand by the claim it is actually better for the environment than Gold for that use case.
Regarding green energy there is no denying that some (not all) of the energy used to mine Bitcoin is from renewable sources such as hydro, wind, geo-thermal and solar and I expect this to increase as a proportion over time. Although if Bitcoin follows Ethereum's lead and becomes proof of stake then the environment argument becomes a moot point.
Last edited by MaddogPepper; 16-04-2021 at 08:26 PM.
I think you are mis-understanding the use of Bitcoin. It is a terrible currency, but an excellent store of value. You have to stop thinking about Bitcoin as being the same as the £5 note in your pocket, that's not it - instead think of it as digital Gold, we don't expect to buy our stuff on Amazon with Gold do we, but countries, individuals and large organisations hold Gold in reserve to hedge against inflation and debasement. You need to think of the carbon footprint of mining NOT transacting.
Ethereum again is not a currency - it was designed to provide a computer on a blockchain - the EVM, allowing other applications to be built on top of it - not to go and buy yourself a Big Mac. Fiat is still far better for every day purchases. Scalability is a problem in its current incarnation, but there are many L2 scaling solutions coming online for Ethereum right now which will allow hundreds of thousands of transactions a second with very very low fees - perfect for digital representations of fiat like USDC on the Ethereum blockchain (look at this: https://polygon.technology/)
Guys, this technology is very new - Ethereum only been around for 5 years, all of the problems you are raising are being worked on and solved right now. This technology will be powering our world sooner than you think.
To pick up some of your points:
That's the key here. Routing a transaction to a bank to ask if your card is good for the amount takes a couple of seconds. That's the power of a centralised banking system. It is fast and very efficient, because if a bank isn't efficient then that comes straight out of their profits and they can't compete. This is what Polygon MATIC allows Ethereum to do, even faster than the VISA network. In fact with MATIC the VISA network can integrate with Ethereum as a side chain - its very clever. VISA are also actively partnering with Crypto.com to potentially use their native blockchain to power the VISA network - only a few weeks ago they allowed for the very first time payments to be cleared with USDC completely by passing the traditional financial system
I have a simple use case that I think should be perfect for crypto but I still can't find a decent answer to: My son is running a Minecraft server and sometimes people want to leave a tip. This is usually done via Paypal.
If someone wants to leave an anonymous tip, in the $1 to $10 range, what should they send it as? Bitcoin costs about $15, Eth is no better. Raven seems to actually penalise people getting lots of small amounts and then cashing it in (no idea why). - You are right this is a real issue at the moment, loads of ERC20 tokens are perfect for this but the scalability issue is really holding Ethereum back, this is being fixed right now with rollups, and it will not be an issue when we move on to the Beacon chain (ETH2) in a year or two. It will come in time.
2008 is a lifetime away in tech terms. There has been massive change, and lots of altcoins to choose from. That I think is part of my beef here; all of these problems are already solved. There are scalable and energy efficient proof of work schemes before you even bother looking at proof of stake. I honestly can't remember the names of the coins involved and can't be bothered to look them up again, but there are networks out there right now that scale up their ability to process transactions as more mining clients are added to the pool, rather than the bizarre feeding frenzy that Bitcoin and Eth use where everyone competes for the same work.
I boggle at the concept of "ASIC resistant" crypto. An ASIC is more energy efficient, but I don't have one so let's ban it? That's greed, not sense. The big corporate buying warehouses full of ASICS can just as happily buy a warehouse full of GPUs and either way the little guy isn't significant so the democratization argument is just daft. But at the end of the day, none of that matters. This *isn't* a new technology at this point, and Bitcoin is established and dominant despite its flaws. That's where the real competition is, not Bitcoin vs Gold but Bitcoin vs any of the altcoins. I can't see any unique selling point for Bitcoin right now. It is clunky and slow, while expensive to use and with a terrible (but not the worst) energy footprint. But Bitcoin has momentum, so in the face of plenty of competitors it is still the gorilla.
All it needs is for an energy efficient altcoin to take off, and the energy complaint goes away. It would hack off the GPU miners, but I can live with that. If it is faster and cheaper and more flexible than Bitcoin, then Bitcoin should wither and die. It has had a good innings, and it is time.
OFC at the back of this is the looming monster of quantum computing. That has the ability to disrupt conventional payments, but they will adapt fast enough as they simply transport financial data over encrypted links. I'm not sure how I can make a quantum wallet, or what a quantum blockchain looks like, but the existing coins all die overnight if that happens.
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