
This Cryptocurrency Miner Says It Solved Bitcoin's Power Problem - thisisit
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-16/this-cryptocurrency-miner-says-it-solved-bitcoin-s-power-problem
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MBCook
So they’re lowering the pollution generated per-bitcoin by using a cleaner
kind of electricity.

But they’re still wasting GOBS of electricity in the process.

The fix to the power problem would be to find a way to mine coins that uses
_less_ electricity, not ‘cleaner’ electricity.

Of course as soon as you do that the usage won’t change. If you can mine x
BTC/kWH then why would accept mining the same amount of bitcoin when for the
same power you were already using you could mine more BTC?

~~~
zamalek
Yes, Bitcoin is fucking greedy to begin with - especially considering the
climate change problem. No, they are not wasting energy per-se in this
instance:

> The country has more than 2,000 small stations, many of them sitting idle
> because of low wholesale power prices and an absence of state support.

That's not to mention the energy disposal problem that you have to deal with
when the majority of your energy is renewable - POW is a good way to get rid
of _unused_ energy. Given that Bitcoin isn't going away, much like anything
else where greed is concerned, this is a fantastic development.

> find a way to mine coins that uses less electricity

Attack SHA-256. That's the only option we have now. People sure-as-hell aren't
going to move away from a tech which they _believe_ is printing free money (I
have some otherwise very smart friends who are mining coins with GPUs).

~~~
mikeash
Attacking SHA-256 won't even do it. If you come up with a more efficient way
to generate POW, then the difficulty will just increase until you reach
equilibrium again.

~~~
vorotato
I'm pretty sure that's actually not what would happen. If you could attack
sha-256, then you could forge all the transactions in the network and take all
of the money. Then people would lose faith in the currency and do something
else.

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mikeash
They're reducing pollution by using cleaner electricity... and this is news?!

Hey Bloomberg, I signed up for 50% wind energy for my house, where's my
article?

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fijter
This isn't solving a problem, it's just making it a little less worse. Proof
of Work by mining is just a plain stupid and wasteful idea. Ethereum is
already switching to Proof of Stake which is slightly better (but it still
gives the power to the biggest holders since you have more influence with more
ETH, leading to more market manipulation by mining cartels).

I think a non-blockchain, Tangle based concept like IOTA uses is a way better
future, better in terms of scaling (the more users the better it gets), no
transaction fees and, maybe best of all, no mining/miners.

~~~
vorotato
Proof of work is better than proof of stake as proof of stake makes it easy
for those with the most power to forge transactions rendering it useless to
anyone who actually sought out cryptocurrency in the first place. Proof of
work is just also very bad.

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redtuesday
As a layman: why don't things like GridCoin take off? Is it only
mindshare/being late to the party/or something alike, or are there technical
reasons for it?

Bitcoin seems like a waste of energy in comparison (again, as a layman).
Apparently enough to be in the top 65 of global power consumption for
countries. [0][1]

[0] [https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-
consumption](https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption)

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UncleEntity
Now they just need to hook up some stirling engines to the cpus and pump the
water back up to complete the cycle...

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Aardwolf
Why is the word "This" in front of the title?

Wouldn't "Cryptocurrency Miner Says It Solved Bitcoin's Power Problem" be
sufficient and sound more professional?

~~~
skywhopper
It would be sufficient, and probably generates fewer clicks.

