Is anyone else starting to become a bit worried? mod note in first post

q85dw7osi4lebg

Bob24 wrote: »

I largely explained why not in a previous post.

It is a developing country which feels it needs cheep electricity for its population and its industry. They are gradually moving towards nuclear and renewables, but it is a lot more expensive to operate and migrating takes time when you are replacing an infrastructure serving over 1 billion people. They (both governments and the population) very well know coal is bad but it is an - arguable - compromise they are making to keep electricity affordable for hundreds of millions of poor people and to give national industries a competitive advantage so that the economy keeps growing. With than in mind, if they feel some industries are not delivering enough value for the economy to be worthwhile of this compromise, it is understandable for them to have a will to restrict them.

So you genuinely believe they are looking to outlaw mining due to it not delivering enough value, as opposed to just wanting to censor their people even further? Facebook...Whatsapp....etc. Regardless, can't see it happening. It's been the worlds largest polluter since long before crypto even came to be.

It's a cheap excuse.

Bob24

Gerald Obedient Manicurist wrote: »

So you genuinely believe they are looking to outlaw mining due to it not delivering enough value, as opposed to just wanting to censor their people even further? Facebook...Whatsapp....etc. Regardless, can't see it happening. It's been the worlds largest polluter since long before crypto even came to be.

It's a cheap excuse.

If it was about censorship, what’s the point in going after miners rather than crypto holders?

They could easily allow crypto mining on segregated networks to which the average Chinese internet user doesn’t have access to. From that perspective, largely controlling the network rather that having it distributed in other counties actually makes censorship easier.

See what they are doing with WeChat, they have a censored version for China and an uncensored version for the rest of the world.

q85dw7osi4lebg

Banning mining is just the start, no doubt they will then begin to clamp down on businesses who accept it, thus rendering it no future in the country. Just my opinion of course but it's certainly the way things look to be going. They are an incredibly hypocritical government. North Korea 2.0

Holy whataboutery, Batman.

"They shouldn't ban it because the Three Gorges Dam exists."

"They shouldn't ban it because they're the world's biggest coal users."

"America shouldn't incentive electric vehicles. They produce four times as much CO2 per capita as China. They should fix that first."

"Charging money for plastic bags is stupid. There's pollution already."

ballyharpat

It's like the arguments people have for cyclists-sure they don't use the few bike paths they have-no mention that most are just a line painted on the footpath with poles in them, or painted on the edge of the road and never maintained.

When they pay road tax-not having a clue that there is no such thing as road tax, once again, it's to do with emissions and carbon footprint.

There aren't enough cyclists to justify it- no s**t, if they were better, more people would use them, and then traffic congestion wouldn't be so bad. https://www.facebook.com/Galwaycyclebus/

Cyclists are always breaking red lights etc https://www.echolive.ie/nationalnews/Permanent-cameras-to-be-installed-in-Dublin-to-combat-breaking-red-lights-f44769c2-a8b9-4d07-bf0b-a27e41516dea-ds

Cognitive dissonance......


Sorry if it seems I am hijacking the thread, and gone OT, but it happens so often when people are unable to look at facts and just use their own bias to defend an agenda.

smacl

Dohnjoe wrote: »

The electricity isn't being wasted because it's being put to use in what is an essential service (for everyone)

The mining in crypto is largely an artificial exercise, there's no real reason for that method to exist anymore, especially since we have much "greener" alternatives now (PoS and other hybrid variants)

This. PoW is a transitional step in blockchain technology that everyone should be keen to move on from. In my opinion, blockchain that is grossly energy inefficient is never going to be ubiquitous and rightly so, energy efficient blockchain most probably will be.

Bob24

Gerald Obedient Manicurist wrote: »

Banning mining is just the start, no doubt they will then begin to clamp down on businesses who accept it, thus rendering it no future in the country. Just my opinion of course but it's certainly the way things look to be going. They are an incredibly hypocritical government. North Korea 2.0

But again, if the idea was to prevent/control crypto usage in China, banning mining isn’t achieving anything whatsoever. And to be clear I definitely agree the Chinese government won’t allow crypto usage unless it has more control over it, but this is a different topic and banning mining is not giving more control (probably the opposite).

And I’ll also say it one more time: the Chinese government is fine with Chinese companies offering online services which are banned in China to the rest of the world (as per the WeChat exemple I provided whereby an Irish user won’t be censored and a Chinese user will be). So if they saw crypto mining as good economic activity but for some reason felt domestically threatened by it, they could easily segregate that activity from the rest of the Chinese Internet.

cnocbui

Perhaps how put upon cyclists feel and the eco considerations of crypto belong in other threads that are not about investments and markets?

It's sounding a bit like animal rights global warmers jumping into a thread on cuisine and cooking and saying meat is murder and bad for the environment so stop talking about how to cook a steak and how it tastes.

makeorbrake

Deleted User wrote: »

One of them serves a purpose..

Same failure time and time again. Approach the issue from those eyes and you'll consider nothing in the PoW energy discussion.

cnocbui

cnocbui wrote: »

Perhaps how put upon cyclists feel and the eco considerations of crypto belong in other threads that are not about investments and markets?

It's sounding a bit like animal rights global warmers jumping into a thread on cuisine and cooking and saying meat is murder and bad for the environment so stop talking about how to cook a steak and how it tastes.

If China bans it, it will affect your investment.

makeorbrake

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Mining PoW coins just consumes electricity and produces waste - and doesn't produce anything. All it does it create an artificial scarcity to give digital trading coins some "value" on a secondary market

And PoW offers the best security of any blockchain network. There's space for one such network if approached in the right way. By all means, regulate - but a ban is not necessary.
Regulate so that stranded power and excess power is used. Regulate so that all crypto mining has to be done on renewables. Most of it is anyway as it's driven by a need for bountiful and cheap electricity.

ballyharpat wrote: »

Cognitive dissonance......

There is NO argument against Bitcoin mining using stranded renewable power that couldn't possibly be used anywhere else. Likewise, for the collaborations that are emerging between miners and power producers on-site. Anyone that would rather excess power to just be lost rather than be used for Bitcoin mining has no credibility.

makeorbrake

Deleted User wrote: »

If China bans it, it will affect your investment.

In effect, they already have. My investment remains intact.

makeorbrake

makeorbrake wrote: »

In effect, they already have. My investment remains intact.

In one fell swoop, Bitcoin has lost its reliance on Chinese miners and cheap electricity to mine its ledger.

This is good for Bitcoin.

makeorbrake

Deleted User wrote: »

In one fell swoop, Bitcoin has lost its reliance on Chinese miners and cheap electricity to mine its ledger.

This is good for Bitcoin.

Markets are efficient. If it was an issue, then that would have been reflected in the markets. Secondly, naysayers have criticized Bitcoin for the concentration of miners in China. That it seems is going to get resolved (albeit there already had been moves to relocate given pronouncements from the Chinese Government previously).

This is not the first time that the Chinese have come down hard on crypto mining. Other than that, there is a wealth of cheap, unused renewable power in South West China. Bitmain are deploying $80 million of mining kit there to benefit from it. It's not all dirty coal.

makeorbrake

makeorbrake wrote: »

In effect, they already have. My investment remains intact.

You cashed out shur, didn't you?

makeorbrake

Deleted User wrote: »

You cashed out shur, didn't you?

I'm very much in right now.

Dohnjoe

makeorbrake wrote: »

This is not the first time that the Chinese have come down hard on crypto mining. Other than that, there is a wealth of cheap, unused renewable power in South West China. Bitmain are deploying $80 million of mining kit there to benefit from it. It's not all dirty coal.

Dunno, I think PoW's time is limited. I can't imagine any world financial system opting to rely on what is essentially an energy-devouring Rune Goldberg mechanism to power a blockchain. On top of that we've had digital centralised databases running flawlessly (and efficiently) for decades - it's not the best sell

My bet would be on PoS and hybrids

makeorbrake

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Dunno, I think PoW's time is limited. I can't imagine any world financial system opting to rely on what is essentially an energy-devouring Rune Goldberg mechanism to power a blockchain. On top of that we've had digital centralised databases running flawlessly (and efficiently) for decades - it's not the best sell

My bet would be on PoS and hybrids

I'm not backing one (PoW) or the other (PoS) with any certainty either - but keeping an open mind. It could be that a few PoS projects and 1 (maybe 2) PoW projects can survive in the right conditions. PoW seems to be a much stronger system from a security point of view. From a scaling perspective, it depends too...if layer 2 works out and/or BTC becomes defacto digital gold.

For sure, it would be best to have a non-energy intensive crypto. However, the approach to the energy usage thing is far from progressive. Regulate all day long - and make it so that 1. only renewables can be used (in most cases, crypto mining is already on-board with that)...and 2. that doesn't compete with domestic energy use. One exception to that - there is energy being wasted at power plants all around the world (regardless of whether they're renewable or fossil-fuel based). If they can't use that energy in any other way, then have miners co-locate and use it.

Dohnjoe

makeorbrake wrote: »

I'm not backing one (PoW) or the other (PoS) with any certainty either - but keeping an open mind. It could be that a few PoS projects and 1 (maybe 2) PoW projects can survive in the right conditions. PoW seems to be a much stronger system from a security point of view. From a scaling perspective, it depends too...if layer 2 works out and/or BTC becomes defacto digital gold.

For sure, it would be best to have a non-energy intensive crypto. However, the approach to the energy usage thing is far from progressive. Regulate all day long - and make it so that 1. only renewables can be used (in most cases, crypto mining is already on-board with that)...and 2. that doesn't compete with domestic energy use. One exception to that - there is energy being wasted at power plants all around the world (regardless of whether they're renewable or fossil-fuel based). If they can't use that energy in any other way, then have miners co-locate and use it.

I agree on the first part. For the second part, energy usage is energy usage. BTC mining consumes the equivalent of a small country - and it produces nothing but trading tokens that do little (or nothing) else. It's a hard one to justify in that particular case

makeorbrake

Dohnjoe wrote: »

I agree on the first part. For the second part, energy usage is energy usage. BTC mining consumes the equivalent of a small country - and it produces nothing but trading tokens that do little (or nothing) else. It's a hard one to justify in that particular case

Energy usage can be such that it doesn't have an impact on the environment or society. If crypto miners are prepared to stump up the cash and invest in a project in the Moroccan Sahara that runs on solar and can't possibly be used by anyone else (due to its location), then what's the harm?

cnocbui

The Chinese don't care about CO2 emissions any more than they care about intellectual property rights. I think this is entirely to do with capital controls and closing a door to prevent the flight of capital ahead of events which will make people in China want to get their capital out the country.

This may be sign the debt bubble is quietly bursting.

smacl

makeorbrake wrote: »

And PoW offers the best security of any blockchain network. There's space for one such network if approached in the right way.

Not if that mining is dominated by an increasingly small number of huge monolithic crypto-mining farms. The security comes from the balanced decentralised network as well as the crytography. It is also exposed technological factors that allow significantly more efficient mining which may be kept under wraps. e.g. move to ASICs in the past and the possibility of quantum computing or similar in the future. A very efficient miner makes all other miners obsolete very quickly, so for example, CPU based mining is a loss making activity, GPU based mining on last gen GPUs is a loss making activity, ASIC mining on last gen miners is a loss making activity etc...

Dohnjoe

makeorbrake wrote: »

Energy usage can be such that it doesn't have an impact on the environment or society. If crypto miners are prepared to stump up the cash and invest in a project in the Moroccan Sahara that runs on solar and can't possibly be used by anyone else (due to its location), then what's the harm?

Fair enough I have no issues with that.

makeorbrake

smacl wrote: »

Not if that mining is dominated by an increasingly small number of huge monolithic crypto-mining farms. The security comes from the balanced decentralised network as well as the crytography. It is also exposed technological factors that allow significantly more efficient mining which may be kept under wraps. e.g. move to ASICs in the past and the possibility of quantum computing or similar in the future. A very efficient miner makes all other miners obsolete very quickly, so for example, CPU based mining is a loss making activity, GPU based mining on last gen GPUs is a loss making activity, ASIC mining on last gen miners is a loss making activity etc...

Its not ideal re. mining centralization. However, if miners fork off the network, they have to bring the other stakeholders with them. Without that, they're mining blocks with no transactions in them. The 'real' network remains the one in which people are actually transacting.

Consensus is achieved via miners, web wallet providers, merchants (eg. Bitpay), crypto exchanges and end users.

smacl

makeorbrake wrote: »

Its not ideal re. mining centralization. However, if miners fork off the network, they have to bring the other stakeholders with them. Without that, they're mining blocks with no transactions in them. The 'real' network remains the one in which people are actually transacting.

Consensus is achieved via miners, web wallet providers, merchants (eg. Bitpay), crypto exchanges and end users.

I could be wrong, but I don't think so. My understanding is that once you mine a block, you have a certain probability of getting a new coin (e.g. a bitcoin). This has the exact same value on an exchange as any other bitcoin. Your assumption demands a fork where none is necessary. If you can centrally control the mining, you can manipulate the currency. The strength of crypto lies with large decentralised peer networking, lose this and you lose consensus. It is the same reason why so called closed block chain systems are of dubious value. Once they're centrally controlled they cease to be trustless.

JohnnyFlash

smacl wrote: »

I could be wrong, but I don't think so. My understanding is that once you mine a block, you have a certain probability of getting a new coin (e.g. a bitcoin). This has the exact same value on an exchange as any other bitcoin. Your assumption demands a fork where none is necessary. If you can centrally control the mining, you can manipulate the currency. The strength of crypto lies with large decentralised peer networking, lose this and you lose consensus. It is the same reason why so called closed block chain systems are of dubious value. Once they're centrally controlled they cease to be trustless.

Is there any Proof of Stake coin that isn't massively centralised?

makeorbrake

smacl wrote: »

I could be wrong, but I don't think so. My understanding is that once you mine a block, you have a certain probability of getting a new coin (e.g. a bitcoin). This has the exact same value on an exchange as any other bitcoin. Your assumption demands a fork where none is necessary. If you can centrally control the mining, you can manipulate the currency. The strength of crypto lies with large decentralised peer networking, lose this and you lose consensus. It is the same reason why so called closed block chain systems are of dubious value. Once they're centrally controlled they cease to be trustless.

There are a couple of different threats that mining centralisation can bring about. One is influence over the network re. a threatened fork which I alluded to above. In your last post, I believe you're referring to a 51% attack - where they could bring about a scenario where they rake in a shed load of money in the very short term. However, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot as there would be panic selling, the price would plummet and their business would be over. It's not impossible but it's unlikely.

I'd hope that the rate of advancement (re. mining chips) comes incrementally and not in sudden 1000x lifts as has happened in the last few years. That way, these guys won't get a leg up on everyone else...or at least not to the same extent. Some say that this is how things will pan out but it remains to be seen.

grindle

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

Is there any Proof of Stake coin that isn't massively centralised?

Probably not. Tezos? Less that 100 connected nodes. Better than EOS I guess, but that's like saying a peanut butter and shít sandwich is better than a pure shít sandwich with bread made of shít.

Having said that, you seem to think PoS is an easy problem to solve - so go solve it. Start reading up on game theory and economic incentives, thinking through every permutation of what could and would go wrong before it happens, then program it. Very interested to hear your proposals or maybe even sending your completed consensus algorithm to the Ethereum Foundation.

JohnnyFlash

grindle wrote: »

Probably not. Tezos? Less that 100 connected nodes. Better than EOS I guess, but that's like saying a peanut butter and shít sandwich is better than a pure shít sandwich with bread made of shít.

Having said that, you seem to think PoS is an easy problem to solve - so go solve it. Start reading up on game theory and economic incentives, thinking through every permutation of what could and would go wrong before it happens, then program it. Very interested to hear your proposals or maybe even sending your completed consensus algorithm to the Ethereum Foundation.

I don't think it's easy to solve, dude. Quite the opposite. I think it mightn't be possible at all, unless So less of the snide remarks please. I just happen to think that PoW is completely unsustainable, so some of them Crypto-Gods like the alien-looking ethereum guy better get the finger out and start moving.

JJJJNR

Pump it up!!