Looks like my dabbling in NiceHash didn't last very long: https://www.reddit.com/r/NiceHash/comments/7i0s6o/official_press_release_statement_by_nicehash/
General / Off-Topic Crypto currencies are messed up, and here's why
- Thread starter Adept
- Start date
'Bitcoin plunges—now down 47 percent from December peak [Updated]':
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/bitcoin-plunges-now-down-42-percent-from-december-peak/
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/bitcoin-plunges-now-down-42-percent-from-december-peak/
Le Monde goes to its loss. For a revival closer to the real values of the life
It'll be up again soon enough 
Another look at the huge energy waste of bitcoin mining.
'Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it':
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...electricity-usage-huge-climate-cryptocurrency
'Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it':
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...electricity-usage-huge-climate-cryptocurrency
The evidence is imaginary.
“These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.”
- John Muir
“Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little”
- Epicurus
“There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.”
- Sophocles
- John Muir
“Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little”
- Epicurus
“There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.”
- Sophocles
Exactly the same can be said about conventional money which is nothing more than entires on a database. What we consider 'Cash' is just a promise, read the words on any note
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Exactly the same can be said about conventional money which is nothing more than entires on a database. What consider 'Cash' is just a promise
The thing is, cash is backed up by governments. Who generally have an interest in keeping exchange rate fluctuations and the like under control. So-called 'cryptocurrencies' are backed up by nobody other than people holding them - and it is in their interest to try to hike up prices whenever they can. Not to mention that the lack of oversight lays people open to endless scams. And of course, governments may decide that they'd rather restore their monopoly on the creation of currencies and declare the whole lot illegal, which would immediately render them worthless.
The whole 'cryptocurrency' bubble is built on wishful thinking, a belief that somehow technology can defeat economics, and a utopian dream that governments will go away if you pretend they don't exist. The real world isn't like that...
What you describe is no different from the LIBOR scandal where bankers worked to fix the interest rates. When talking about the power usage, conventional monies consume far more.
As for crypto currencies, many will appear, most will fail and only some will get rich... Just as with real money.
Also not all money is backed by governments, far from it. They just use tax payers money to fund poorly run banks as letting them fail hurts voters. It also helps keep a countries credit rating in good standing.
I had the pleasure of working alongside some people a few years ago who knew far more than I about banking... What i learned from them made me invest in gold and nothing else. Best move I ever made.
As for crypto currencies, many will appear, most will fail and only some will get rich... Just as with real money.
Also not all money is backed by governments, far from it. They just use tax payers money to fund poorly run banks as letting them fail hurts voters. It also helps keep a countries credit rating in good standing.
I had the pleasure of working alongside some people a few years ago who knew far more than I about banking... What i learned from them made me invest in gold and nothing else. Best move I ever made.
But playing ED is OK?
The idea that mining is pointless is an oft-quoted fallacy. In reality, it serves a critical function that cannot easily be substituted with other mechanisms.
Proof-of-stake certainly has efficiency advantages in the amount of energy used per transaction, but it only works once a critical mass of value tokens have been disseminated, which is impossible to do via anything resembling egalitarian means without starting with proof-of-work.
Anyway, if the price of mining BTC was too high, it wouldn't be mined. Hashing power would be retired (or moved), in order of least efficient to most efficient, and difficulty would fall, until equilibrium was again reached.
It's about the morality of undertaking a task that uses so much energy in a world where energy production produces the climate change we see. Sure huge aspects of the modern world also produce excess CO2, but absolutely for myself there is no way i could do bitcoin mining when i want a future world for my children and their children to enjoy living is (as i have). So many of my life choices (the car i buy, reducing my electricity usage, reducing general consumption, making 'green' choices etc) are directly not compatible with doing something so wasteful and environmentally damaging as bitcoin mining.
It's a 'think about the children' thing.
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Now there are other issues too, that many here can relate too:
'Here’s why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy':
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...creates-insane-global-graphics-card-shortage/
That one is 'think of the gamers'.
Now off course if you have been 'programmed' to only care about money, i can fully understand why you would be happy to do bitcoin mining. Still sucks for the rest of us, and humanities future in general, and very much a sign of the times.
It's a 'think about the children' thing.
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Now there are other issues too, that many here can relate too:
'Here’s why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy':
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...creates-insane-global-graphics-card-shortage/
That one is 'think of the gamers'.
Now off course if you have been 'programmed' to only care about money, i can fully understand why you would be happy to do bitcoin mining. Still sucks for the rest of us, and humanities future in general, and very much a sign of the times.
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If you think my mining systems are more polluting per dollar of income I make from them than what's involved with what most people in the developed world do for a living, you're nuts.
If you think even the most wildly inefficient proof-of-work based cryptos (whose days have long been numbered) are more wasteful, energy wise, than existing monetary systems, you're even crazier. Nation states print trillions of notes and mint tens of trillions of coins, then ship them around and secure them so they can be reserve fraction in fractional reserve banking, or be expended in general circulation, re-collected, and burned or melted down. The waste is immense.
As for how 'green' I am personally, you burn two gallons of gasoline a day and you're putting more CO2 into the air than my entire (well tuned, though relatively modest) mining farm, possibly my entire household.
Hell, the fuel saved by my reduction in heat costs alone more than counters the electricity used by my miners. A computer is 100% efficient at turning electricity into heat...while my purpose-built furnace dumps most of the heat it produces out my chimney! Even accounting for the thermal efficiency of a coal fired power plant (though mine is all hydroelectric) and transmission losses, it's greener to heat with my miners than my furnace, and that would be even if I were throwing away the profits.
I'm probably the 'greenest' person I've ever met that didn't live in a tent or a cardboard box. I don't drive or even own any motor vehicles any more. I don't eat out...hell, I almost never go out. I'm pretty happy with my wife, my dog, and my hobbies (which mostly consist of pencil and paper RPGs that have been out of print for decades, building and tuning computers, playing video games on said computers, and reading what I can). I neither need, nor want for, much.
It sounds like a presumptuous hypocrisy thing.
That one is 'think of the gamers'.
That's just the basic realities of supply and demand. Equilibrium will eventually be reached again.
Also, I've spent at least 4000kWh of electricity on playing Elite: Dangerous. Had I turned that electricity into money, by mining Ether and Monero, over the last 40 months instead, I could probably have converted my home to wind power. Seems pretty clear to me that gaming is more wasteful than mining.
This is more presumption.
The fact that you keep referring to Bitcoin when talking about what people are doing with video cards, or doing at home, tells me you don't know much of anything about the subject.
As for divining my motivations for mining, they are probably similar to your motivations for working (unless you are one of those 'work ethic' types, who just works to work, or because work is expected of you, in which case you are probably beyond hope), and if you'd care to tally up the respective energy costs, or the dollar to energy ratio of our chosen profit making activities, following the entire energy chains, as we are involved in them, I'd be happy to. It's quite possible that if you care as much as you say you do that you're greener than me, but the overwhelming majority of people in developed nations won't be. I live a pretty spartan life, and as far as computers and mining go, I know exactly what I'm doing.
The implication that self-interest, or shortsightedness, are remotely new, or that you aren't indulging them yourself by dismissing what you lack the knowledge to properly assess, is absurd. 'A sign of the times' my butt.
Bitcoin is indeed inefficient, but Bitcoin is not all cryptos (only the first) and the technologies it's demoed (blockchains in particular) are world-changers that will result in radical improvements in all sorts of systems, which will persist long after Bitcoin has become a historical footnote. Those who profit from cryptocurrency along the way, even mining, aren't automatically immoral, just astute.
The articles I and others have posted on the subject suggest otherwise. You (and other bitcoin miners) might not agree or like what they say, but they seem legit enough for mainstream 'science' publications to talk about the issues.
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Mainstream science media sometimes get things wrong. Did you know about Solar Roadways? Yeah, that was doomed from its beginning.