7 ms·

Is there something unique or special about the private keys that are guessed? This seems like an incredibly wasteful allocation of compute (which wouldn’t be su

Is there something unique or special about the private keys that are guessed? This seems like an incredibly wasteful allocation of compute (which wouldn’t be surprising given that it’s bitcoin but still)

p4bl0 2y ago
I had the same reaction. Isn't Bitcoin wasting enough energy as it is?
- sammy2255 2y ago
  What if it’s 100% green energy? Is it a waste?
  - chx 2y ago
    Of course. It's still energy produced which could be used for something that is not a scam; that is not just funding North Korea with extra steps.
  - danogentili 2y ago
    It's even more of a waste.
  - jgalt212 2y ago
    It's all one energy market however. It's a bit a of rough approximation, but green energy wasted on unnecessary purposes is green energy not used for necessary things.
  - LadyCailin 2y ago
    Given that green energy is currently finite, and shortfalls are (generally) made up for by non-green energy, yes.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    Yes, there are opportunity costs.
  - Byxxi 2y ago
    I would argue that it's still a waste, because that energy could be put to an otherwise better use. Now that energy has to be replaced by a non-green counterpart since it's been spent.
    - throwawaymaths 2y ago
      What if you're using that energy in your hot tub, or to heat your house during the winter?
      - Byxxi 2y ago
        Are you arguing staying alive through winter as something less beneficial to bitcoin mining?
        fecal_henge 2y ago
        Depends if they are wintering inside or in the hot tub.
        thinkmassive 2y ago
        If electricity is being used to generate heat (for a house, hot tub, etc), and that heat happens to be generated by a bitcoin miner, is it more or less wasteful than only using the electricity to generate heat?
        BenjiWiebe 2y ago
        That's fine, provided you weren't going to heat it with a heat pump before you decided to use a Bitcoin miner. I suppose there's also a slight environmental cost in producing a Bitcoin miner vs producing a heating coil but I'm going to assume that's negligible.
    - Mountain_Skies 2y ago
      Since energy isn't easily transported, wouldn't that really depend on where the energy was produced?
  - dodoisdodo 2y ago
    You still have to pay infrastructure deprecation costs, financing costs and labor costs.
  - monkeyfun 2y ago
    There may not be a continuous fuel expenditure, but there is a maintenance cost for the grid infrastructure, keeping panels or turbines in good working condition, etc. -- not to mention the manufacturing costs and, since no organizations are currently engaged in microwave power transmission from solar-power satellites in space -- not insignificant associated monetary and opportunity costs to the land used. Conclusion: yes, it's still a waste, unless that energy was surplus absolutely not going to be used for anything better or able to be stored, although even then the compute resources could have probably been used for more useful problems.
  - TZubiri 2y ago
    Not unless everyone is using green energy. California uses green energy, but in doing so increases the mining reward, which increases the mining from countries like china and russia, who do not use green energy.
  - qwertox 2y ago
    Probably. The energy could have been available to any energy intensive industry, helping them if the resource is too scarce and eventually lowering production prices if it wasn't scarce. You notice it in Germany where energy has become very costly in the last couple of years, where it then makes more sense to limit production or even close all together.
    - ericd 2y ago
      My impression is that transmission capacity is often the limiting factor, so you can’t really think of eg solar energy as being fully fungible. At least in the US, there are frequently multi-year delays on solar deployments because the transmission capacity to where it could be reasonably used isn’t there. The interconnection queue is extremely long in many places. As something that’s eminently portable, I think crypto mining might actually have a use in derisking building out solar deployments, as a sort of buyer of last resort. It might be nice to have other very portable energy sinks to eat up temporarily cheap locally available electricity. I think this might be part of the dream of the hydrogen proponents.
  - nephanth 2y ago
    Yes? If the energy could be used for something productive, but is instead used for something unproductive, then it is a waste While that energy technically serves the purpose of letting a monetary system function, traditional monetary infrastructure requires vastly smaller amounts of energy, thus this is a wasteful use of it
    - Jach 2y ago
      Last time I did some numbers, bank of america spent around $1bn per year in cybersecurity alone, and bitcoin mining energy cost about 10x that. For ensuring the security of a trustless worldwide monetary system, it's not that bad in comparison.
      - misnome 2y ago
        … unless your trustless worldwide monetary system wants to process more than seven transactions per second. I guess BoA probably handles a little more than that?
        fidelramos 2y ago
        The energy expense of Bitcoin is dominated by its Proof-of-Work algorithm, the cost of processing transactions is negligible compared to that. And the PoW operates over the root of the last block's Merkle tree, which is a hash of all the transactions in the block. Being a fixed-size hash it doesn't matter if the block contains 1,000, 1 million or 1 billion transactions. Therefore Bitcoin could scale to handle millions of transactions per second with a sublinear increase in electricity spent. [0] [0] http://blog.vermorel.com/journal/2017/12/17/terabyte-blocks-for-bitcoin-cash.html http://blog.vermorel.com/journal/2017/12/17/terabyte-blocks-...
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    Only in very limited scenarios. Namely when there is excess production and it is used near production of that green energy. And the green energy is not dispatchable. So wind or solar in times of excess production. Which as a whole is very limited scenario.
  - jwr 2y ago
    > What if it’s 100% green energy? It is very much not: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-miners-revive-fossil-fuel-plant-co2-emissions-soared https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m...
  - tgv 2y ago
    Until green energy can cover all the other power use, this will still have wasted non-renewable energy by precluding others from using it and thus contributed to climate change.
  - burkaman 2y ago
    Yes. https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/09/03/giant-wyoming-carbon-capture-project-pulls-plug-for-lack-of-clean-power/ https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/09/03/giant-wyoming-carbon... > CarbonCapture cited “intense competition from data centers” in the region for electricity as partially the reason why it is moving from Wyoming. Wyoming is a very popular state for cryptocurrency mining due to substantial state support, cheap energy, cool climate, etc. Miners use a lot of clean energy that would have been used for more useful purposes, as shown by the article I linked.
  - danw1979 2y ago
    Yes. You can do actual useful stuff with electricity no matter where it came from, like smelting aluminium, training AI models or desalinating water. Wasting it on mining bitcoin is literally the last thing we should be doing with spare energy. If that spare energy doesn’t have a use yet, negative pricing will find one… but allowing that use to be “computing mathematical puzzles to support a deregulated financial instrument whose chief uses are illicit transactions and speculative investment” is just absurd and we should regulate this away.
    - throitallaway 2y ago
      I'd argue that the jet fuel used to fly private planes around is also wasted energy. Let's tack on idling transport/personal vehicles while we're at it please.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    There's no where that is oversaturated with renewables 24/7 and these kind of workloads aren't scaling up and down to just use renewable excess so it's a moot question. Except in the very peak of solar generation when there's a grid excess every watt spent on BTC or any other PoW chain is wasted. They're all speculative toys.
kobalsky 2y ago
controlled arms race to improve things on both sides and it doubles as a canary.
- LegionMammal978 2y ago
  If someone had totally broken the hash in secret, I doubt they'd burn it on such a low-stakes canary.
  - kobalsky 2y ago
    the canary is there for a gas leak, not for an asteroid destroying the earth. the canaries that are left are worth several million of USD combined, if there's any incremental progress towards cracking them, that's a strong incentive not to leave the money on the table. if someone comes up with a full crack sponteously, then yeah the canaries won't protect you, or anything else for that matter.

p4bl0 2y ago

I had the same reaction. Isn't Bitcoin wasting enough energy as it is?

sammy2255 2y ago
What if it’s 100% green energy? Is it a waste?
- chx 2y ago
  Of course. It's still energy produced which could be used for something that is not a scam; that is not just funding North Korea with extra steps.
- danogentili 2y ago
  It's even more of a waste.
- jgalt212 2y ago
  It's all one energy market however. It's a bit a of rough approximation, but green energy wasted on unnecessary purposes is green energy not used for necessary things.
- LadyCailin 2y ago
  Given that green energy is currently finite, and shortfalls are (generally) made up for by non-green energy, yes.
- adastra22 2y ago
  Yes, there are opportunity costs.
- Byxxi 2y ago
  I would argue that it's still a waste, because that energy could be put to an otherwise better use. Now that energy has to be replaced by a non-green counterpart since it's been spent.
  - throwawaymaths 2y ago
    What if you're using that energy in your hot tub, or to heat your house during the winter?
    - Byxxi 2y ago
      Are you arguing staying alive through winter as something less beneficial to bitcoin mining?
      - fecal_henge 2y ago
        Depends if they are wintering inside or in the hot tub.
      - thinkmassive 2y ago
        If electricity is being used to generate heat (for a house, hot tub, etc), and that heat happens to be generated by a bitcoin miner, is it more or less wasteful than only using the electricity to generate heat?
        BenjiWiebe 2y ago
        That's fine, provided you weren't going to heat it with a heat pump before you decided to use a Bitcoin miner. I suppose there's also a slight environmental cost in producing a Bitcoin miner vs producing a heating coil but I'm going to assume that's negligible.
  - Mountain_Skies 2y ago
    Since energy isn't easily transported, wouldn't that really depend on where the energy was produced?
- dodoisdodo 2y ago
  You still have to pay infrastructure deprecation costs, financing costs and labor costs.
- monkeyfun 2y ago
  There may not be a continuous fuel expenditure, but there is a maintenance cost for the grid infrastructure, keeping panels or turbines in good working condition, etc. -- not to mention the manufacturing costs and, since no organizations are currently engaged in microwave power transmission from solar-power satellites in space -- not insignificant associated monetary and opportunity costs to the land used. Conclusion: yes, it's still a waste, unless that energy was surplus absolutely not going to be used for anything better or able to be stored, although even then the compute resources could have probably been used for more useful problems.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  Not unless everyone is using green energy. California uses green energy, but in doing so increases the mining reward, which increases the mining from countries like china and russia, who do not use green energy.
- qwertox 2y ago
  Probably. The energy could have been available to any energy intensive industry, helping them if the resource is too scarce and eventually lowering production prices if it wasn't scarce. You notice it in Germany where energy has become very costly in the last couple of years, where it then makes more sense to limit production or even close all together.
  - ericd 2y ago
    My impression is that transmission capacity is often the limiting factor, so you can’t really think of eg solar energy as being fully fungible. At least in the US, there are frequently multi-year delays on solar deployments because the transmission capacity to where it could be reasonably used isn’t there. The interconnection queue is extremely long in many places. As something that’s eminently portable, I think crypto mining might actually have a use in derisking building out solar deployments, as a sort of buyer of last resort. It might be nice to have other very portable energy sinks to eat up temporarily cheap locally available electricity. I think this might be part of the dream of the hydrogen proponents.
- nephanth 2y ago
  Yes? If the energy could be used for something productive, but is instead used for something unproductive, then it is a waste While that energy technically serves the purpose of letting a monetary system function, traditional monetary infrastructure requires vastly smaller amounts of energy, thus this is a wasteful use of it
  - Jach 2y ago
    Last time I did some numbers, bank of america spent around $1bn per year in cybersecurity alone, and bitcoin mining energy cost about 10x that. For ensuring the security of a trustless worldwide monetary system, it's not that bad in comparison.
    - misnome 2y ago
      … unless your trustless worldwide monetary system wants to process more than seven transactions per second. I guess BoA probably handles a little more than that?
      - fidelramos 2y ago
        The energy expense of Bitcoin is dominated by its Proof-of-Work algorithm, the cost of processing transactions is negligible compared to that. And the PoW operates over the root of the last block's Merkle tree, which is a hash of all the transactions in the block. Being a fixed-size hash it doesn't matter if the block contains 1,000, 1 million or 1 billion transactions. Therefore Bitcoin could scale to handle millions of transactions per second with a sublinear increase in electricity spent. [0] [0] http://blog.vermorel.com/journal/2017/12/17/terabyte-blocks-for-bitcoin-cash.html http://blog.vermorel.com/journal/2017/12/17/terabyte-blocks-...
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Only in very limited scenarios. Namely when there is excess production and it is used near production of that green energy. And the green energy is not dispatchable. So wind or solar in times of excess production. Which as a whole is very limited scenario.
- jwr 2y ago
  > What if it’s 100% green energy? It is very much not: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-miners-revive-fossil-fuel-plant-co2-emissions-soared https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m...
- tgv 2y ago
  Until green energy can cover all the other power use, this will still have wasted non-renewable energy by precluding others from using it and thus contributed to climate change.
- burkaman 2y ago
  Yes. https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/09/03/giant-wyoming-carbon-capture-project-pulls-plug-for-lack-of-clean-power/ https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/09/03/giant-wyoming-carbon... > CarbonCapture cited “intense competition from data centers” in the region for electricity as partially the reason why it is moving from Wyoming. Wyoming is a very popular state for cryptocurrency mining due to substantial state support, cheap energy, cool climate, etc. Miners use a lot of clean energy that would have been used for more useful purposes, as shown by the article I linked.
- danw1979 2y ago
  Yes. You can do actual useful stuff with electricity no matter where it came from, like smelting aluminium, training AI models or desalinating water. Wasting it on mining bitcoin is literally the last thing we should be doing with spare energy. If that spare energy doesn’t have a use yet, negative pricing will find one… but allowing that use to be “computing mathematical puzzles to support a deregulated financial instrument whose chief uses are illicit transactions and speculative investment” is just absurd and we should regulate this away.
  - throitallaway 2y ago
    I'd argue that the jet fuel used to fly private planes around is also wasted energy. Let's tack on idling transport/personal vehicles while we're at it please.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  There's no where that is oversaturated with renewables 24/7 and these kind of workloads aren't scaling up and down to just use renewable excess so it's a moot question. Except in the very peak of solar generation when there's a grid excess every watt spent on BTC or any other PoW chain is wasted. They're all speculative toys.

kobalsky 2y ago

controlled arms race to improve things on both sides and it doubles as a canary.

LegionMammal978 2y ago
If someone had totally broken the hash in secret, I doubt they'd burn it on such a low-stakes canary.
- kobalsky 2y ago
  the canary is there for a gas leak, not for an asteroid destroying the earth. the canaries that are left are worth several million of USD combined, if there's any incremental progress towards cracking them, that's a strong incentive not to leave the money on the table. if someone comes up with a full crack sponteously, then yeah the canaries won't protect you, or anything else for that matter.