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But the money that comes from the usage provides income for investment in maintenance and capital investment in increased capacity. Including investment in cheaper, cleaner energy.

House_of_Lewis 2y ago

I’d side with #[2] here. And I’m not saying any government should actually dictate how much energy bitcoin miners consume. The real point is that lots of energy has been used for bitcoin mining and so that process is not at all efficient.

Let’s pretend we all stopped eating food, heating/cooling our buildings, watching sports, browsing social media, lighting our spaces, buying & building stuff, and going places. And we did that to the point that the only energy consumption was for mining bitcoin. Seems to me that world would be exactly the opposite of what we want for humanity.

New technologies should be reducing the carbon footprint, not increasing it. We need to find a way to increase the efficiency.

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🐢 2y ago

I appreciate your support, but I’m going to push back on your statement that we need to find a way to increase miners efficiency.

That’s not at all the answer.

The answer is that mining bitcoin should happen where it is appropriate to do so when considering all externalities. A great example is Bitmain’s mining location at what was once the worlds largest aluminum smelter. An energy intensive facility designed with a co-located power plant repurposed for bitcoin mining.

Humanity itself is energy intensive. The more we grow, the more energy intensive we become.

We need to stop bickering and fighting over this fact, and embrace its realities.

Carbon neutrality is a red herring. Energy efficiency is simply a way to use old infrastructure to support more electrical usage.

My only real point in this long discussion is that all electrical use is not equal, and there are specific infrastructure demands that high electrical usage creates. If everyone in the country added a home miner to their house, most likely circuits would trip all around.

Where I would agree with your statement regarding efficiency, is with the electrical grid on a whole. That is the real discussion to be had. Electrical infrastructure around the world is both fragile and inefficient.

Bitcoiners need to stand with electrical utilities to embrace nuclear energy, transmission lines, and updated circuits to embrace the next 100years of energy intensive activists we are embarking upon.

House_of_Lewis 2y ago

Thanks for the reply.

Can we fix old infrastructure by retrofitting sub-systems in it?

Can we also build new infrastructure?

Can we consider improving bitcoin mining efficiency?

I say non of these are mutually exclusive, right?

🐢 2y ago

Yes is the answer to all except Bitcoin mining. I would argue that bitcoin mining efficiency is constantly improving, but it doesn’t matter, because the difficulty adjustment prevents those efficiencies from earning more bitcoin.

There is no way to prevent the inefficiencies of human competition from spoiling those gains.

Ie- the only viable solutions are improving the efficiency of electrical generation and transmission.

harq 2y ago

You completely missed the point of bitcoin mining. The energy expenditure is the main factor that keeps the network secure.

ASICS get more efficient all the time and hashrate keeps going up because of it, but the thing that should be looked at is energy expenditure. That's the real cost of network security.

Mike Brock 2y ago

I don’t think I missed this point? I was talking about the electrical generation and transmission infrastructure.

harq 2y ago

I was under the impression I was replying to someone else. New to nostr, not really getting who I'm answering to on what.

House_of_Lewis 2y ago

So, if someone could figure out some big leap that reduced the energy expenditure, then that could reduce network security?

harq 2y ago

Efficiency improvements have been happening the whole time and energy expenditure isn't going down.

Why do you think that is?

harq 2y ago

Asking this question reveals the lack of understanding about the topic.

If somebody invented an ASIC that is so powerful that just one machine replaces the entire current hashrate, what do you think will happen?

Will everybody except that one guy with that one ASIC just stop mining and leave OR will they try to get a few of those as well?

The limiting factor, in todays world, is energy.

🐢 2y ago

This person gets it. And that energy is Electricity in particular. And electrical power works within parameters of current, voltage, and resistance, within conductors for transmission like copper or aluminum. These create physical restraints to delivering electricity to where it’s needed, further expanding the limitations of todays world for bitcoin mining.