[Cryptography] Standards Trolls: Re: Bitcoin is a disaster.

Chad Perrin perrin at apotheon.com
Mon Jan 4 13:37:44 EST 2021


On Sat, Jan 02, 2021 at 08:04:43AM +0300, Ismail Kizir wrote:
> 
> I don't want to enter into "horrible" details of energy consumption!
> Bitcoin is "flawed by design"!

Bitcoin mining consumes energy, measured by the unit we call a Watt.  A
watt is defined in the ISU as one joule per second.  The unit we call
joule is a unit of work.

Bitcoin mining is based on proof of work.

While advances in mining technology might reduce the waste in mining
Bitcoin, so that more of each Watt (and thus each joule) goes toward
mining instead of peripheral factors, and while it is conceivable that
some kind of update to the Bitcoin proof of work requirement to help
mining technology achieve lower waste, the core requirement of mining is
still work.  For "proof of work" to actually be a proof of work, there
must be a direct correlation between work and block creation.  As such,
there is a minimum bound on energy consumption.

Economic incentives drive the miner to mine as much new Bitcoin as it
can, given available resources.  To the extent that efficiency is
improved, assuming the same capacity for using energy on the part of the
miner, the result will not be a reduction in energy consumption, but an
increase in Bitcoin mined.  This could be great for transaction speeds,
if such efficiency propagates quickly across the network, but
effectively have zero direct effect in reducing energy consumption
overall.

Indirect effects are unpredictable.  It is possible that somehow some of
that extra Bitcoin will go toward funding new scientific breakthroughs
that solve these energy consumption problems in some interesting new
way, but it's difficult for me to foresee incentives for that to happen
as a consequence of greater efficiency in mining at this point, and for
proof of work to remain a meaningful constraint on mining I don't see
how we'll ever invent our way to lower energy consumption where all
other conditions remain equal.

Unfortunately, effectively restricting Bitcoin energy consumption
worldwide without some (currently thought impossible, probably) paradigm
changing advances, seems to give rise to scenarios much worse for
humanity than the energy consumption problem, in the form of turning the
real world into improbable realizations of dystopian novel plotlines
where some central tyrannical entity controls the state of energy policy
with an all-seeing eye and an iron fist, or where Bitcoin itself is
*effectively* suppressed worldwide -- which, again, requires some
central tyrannical entity.

-- 
Chad Perrin


More information about the cryptography mailing list