
Bitcoin hash-rate exceeds total computing power of all the world’s computers - ubersync
http://tarangill.com/2014/02/03/bitcoin-networks-computing-power/
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throwaway_yy2Di
This isn't the completely worthless observation it appears (like, for example,
the snarky retort that Babbage's difference engine outpowers all the world's
Bitcoin ASICs put together, on a decimal arithmetic benchmark). The Bitcoin
ASIC network is a modest amount of equipment: in dollars, watts, or
transistors, about the size of a one supercomputer from the TOP500. So this
really underscores that general-purpose PCs are terrible at very simple & very
parallel problems.

Adding a FPGA to the CPU/GPU mix could narrow the gap:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1933192](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1933192)

~~~
rtpg
I think it underscores more that general-purpose PCs are terrible at single-
task programs.

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jdiez17
This is not at all surprising. A lot of the machines on the Bitcoin network
are ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Chip), which are extremely good at
doing one thing: calculating SHA256(SHA256(x)). You can't use them for
anything else, so it's a little unfair to compare them to personal computers.

Nitpicks aside, though, the Bitcoin network's hashrate is mindblowing.

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smoyer
In my top-level comment, I wasn't disagreeing with anything you've said but
was bemoaning the use of the words "computing power" since those ASICs are
doing computations as well.

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ck2
I was thinking the other day, let's say someone operating the bitcoin network
wanted to crack a specific AES256 code - couldn't they try to use the network
to insert that into different blocks with different difficulties to try to get
the network to crack it for them?

Or it doesn't work quite that way?

Would be interesting fiction (ala Cory Doctorow style) if say the NSA created
a crypto-currency to make everyone else crack messages for them.

~~~
MiWCryptohn
Doesn't work that way, bitcoin proof of work uses SHA256 twice, which is of
limited value. It gives you a near collision to a double hash. It's burning
energy for work.

~~~
MiWCryptohn
One could make a case that the use of sha256 would drive down the cost of
comodity ASICs, enabling a well resourced attacker to use mining hardware
'off-label' to find sha256 hash collisions. Same goes for scrypt, with the
adoption of its use as a password store.

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smoyer
Well ... except by definition bitcoin is hashing at that rate _AND_ computers
are being used for other tasks, so they can't be using 100%. There are also
billions of embedded systems that have computing power but can't be used for
bitcoin mining. What about CPUs in phones and tablets?

If you define "world's computers" as "desktop PCs" and you exclude GPUs (which
my son seems to use to heat his bedroom), then maybe this statement makes some
sense ... but it's really a pretty weak milestone.

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kubiiii
Breaking news : a single caterpillar excavator has more excavating power than
all the toy shovels in the world together. I still find the approach of the
article interesting, but what would be relevant is to compare the power
consumption of the bitcoins miners compared to the power consumption of all
the personal computers in the world.

~~~
logicallee
I know we're used to reimplmenting PONG at 0.5 fps on an 8088 vm shoehorned
into pure CSS around here... (you know you would click)

but this is ridiculous. Personal computers are 3 ghz * 2-4 cores * a billion
devices.[1] It is huge!

That's why we can work at layers that are 10 layers above what we're actually
doing. Such as a style sheet interpreted by a browser.

Try dropping down to C sometime. These machines are not toys.

[1] random lazy link: [http://www.ask.com/question/how-many-computers-are-
there-in-...](http://www.ask.com/question/how-many-computers-are-there-in-the-
world)

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mikkom
Not all the worlds computers, all the worlds _personal_ computers. That's a
big difference.

~~~
DanBC
I got a bit confused think of the set of all the world's computers that didn't
include the computers doing bitcoin stuff.

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TheRubyist
It's such a waste of computing power.

~~~
OmarIsmail
Mining is what makes the bitcoin network secure. The higher the hashrate, the
more secure the bitcoin network. As I mentioned in another comment, if you
compare the resources required to secure the bitcoin network vs the resources
required to secure any other financial networks, it's miniscule.

~~~
Nursie
It's only required because of the decentralisation fetish of coiners.

Perfectly secure systems exist that don't require this lunacy.

~~~
dasil003
First of all, there's no such thing as a perfectly secure system, second of
all, you tar people who are interested in decentralization at your own peril.
The type of power that is being consolidated in multinational corporations is
greater than anything that's ever existed in the history of the world. If we
don't want to wake up as serfs one day we should be taking decentralization
and other technological democratic aids seriously while we have the chance.

~~~
betterunix
As opposed to the power Bitcoin exchanges, Bitcoin mining pools, and Bitcoin
developers have over Bitcoin? The supposed decentralization in Bitcoin is
theoretical at best; in practice, power is concentrated in a few key places.

So really, we could make a better system, one that uses far less power, by
just accepting that some things cannot be decentralized and designing a system
accordingly.

~~~
dasil003
Right, so because there are emergent power structures of some sort, it's all
equivalent and there's nothing actually decentralized about it. I mean, Linux
might be "open source", but really Linus is calling the shots, so it's really
no different than Windows at the end of the day.

~~~
betterunix
You had said that we should criticize decentralization at our own peril
because power in the current finance system is being concentrated on a small
set of corporations. The only difference between that and Bitcoin is the scale
-- the amount of money involved with Bitcoin is nowhere close to the amount of
money that multinational banks are dealing with.

The difference is that with Bitcoin, we are also pouring otherwise useful
energy down the drain as part of the security model. The is purely because of
a fantasy about an ideal kind of money that requires no central authority. If
we were to drop that fantasy and accept the existence of authorities in the
system, we could create a digital cash system that:

* Has the same kind of payment security properties as Bitcoin

* Actually allows for anonymous payments

* Supports offline transactions

* Requires many orders of magnitude less power than Bitcoin

Of course, as soon as you say "central authority," the Bitcoin crowd dismisses
the idea entirely, regardless of its merits and regardless of the existence of
concentrated authority in Bitcoin.

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martinald
Very worrying. The environmental impacts of Bitcoin are absolutely horrendous.

~~~
OmarIsmail
How much energy, resources, etc are required to sustain cash and credit card
transactions? Think of all those banks, skyscrapers, ATMs, computers, money
printing machines. All of those things exist to power the security of the
modern financial industry.

If bitcoin powers the post-modern financial industry, the resource savings
will be enormous.

~~~
nhaehnle
And yet the actual functionality of Bitcoin - a simple ledger - could be
implemented using much less resources than are used to maintain the Bitcoin
network. It's curious, isn't it?

~~~
debugunit
Isn't it the double-spending solution that requires all those resources, not
the simple ledger?

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easy_rider
Now if they would all have been mapping cancer markers and analyzing
gravitational wave fluctuations through BOINC ... :( You can only wish..

~~~
vidarh
A huge proportion of the current hashing power is asic miners that are only
suitable for coin mining for sha256 type coins.

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bakhy
i almost broke out laughing after reading this :D THE ALIENS ARE MINING
BITCOIN!

ok, now i see the ASIC story in the comments, that kinda helps this have some
sense, provided we skip over the part of the text that says "if we
estimate"...

but, i guess since i clicked, i loose.

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chrisBob
What frame rate can I get playing Portal on a bitcoin mining ASIC? Oh. Well, I
am not impressed then.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Why would you want to play Portal when you could endlessly calculate SHA
hashes instead?

~~~
chrisBob
I guess different people go for different things. I have never gotten too
excited about SHA hashes.

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wnevets
"I would assume that the average"

how very scientific

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Helianthus
What a waste of time. I haven't given too much weight to criticism of
Bitcoin's use of computing resources--there's enough low-hanging fruit--but
this is actually somehow reprehensible.

~~~
MiWCryptohn
Hardly a waste of time. You haven't seen this for what it truly is; a waste of
time is your cash sitting in a clearinghouse for days before going overseas. a
waste of time is any value transaction that takes more than minutes on a
global scale. A waste of time is when the authorities freeze your accounts and
cancel your cards. Cryptocurrency solves these problems and more.

~~~
Helianthus
>You haven't seen this for what it truly is

Just... don't bother with me. I've been watching this since the first hype and
you aren't anywhere near the first breathless comment I've read.

