from Hacker News

(Opinion) Crypto mining is nonessential and is killing our climate

by kixxauth on 7/17/24, 1:17 PM with 27 comments

Don't get me wrong, block chain has some wonderful applications. But at some point, crypto currencies veered off the idealistic track.

Let's spare ourselves the analogies of crypto mining consuming amounts of energy comparable to small nations, and realize the fact that it consumes a tremendous amount of electricity. This, as we all sit here in the sweltering heat, should make us angry.

I propose that, in theory, we have mined all the crypto we need. Further mining will only empower those with the means to continue mining, which is contrary to the objectives of a distributed block chain, particularly a zero-trust currency. Look no further than the large donations being made by Andreessen and Horowitz to their politician of choice (Donald Trump), mostly because they believe his administration will give them more power with crypto.

Mining crypto is really just a gamified incentive structure intended to motivate sys admins to run nodes on the network. These nodes have become so expensive to operate, the power over the network has collapsed onto a few nodes ... the network effect.

One possible solution is to bundle small transactions into a settlement period, similar to trading markets in the classical financial system. Then these transactions can be settled at the end of the settlement period (24 hours, for example). The problem is that we would need some central authority to collect and bundle transactions, which would require some level of trust.

Is there a centralization/trust tradeoff to be made here against centralization of power and climate damage?

  • by silverquiet on 7/17/24, 1:41 PM

    There was a comment here years ago that if an alien civilization wanted to wipe us out, there was perhaps no easier way for them to accomplish it than to send a crypto-currency whitepaper with anonymous authorship. I have to say it stuck with me.

  • by hackernudes on 7/17/24, 4:43 PM

    Is it possible Bitcoin mining could help incentivize green energy? Bitcoin miners will pay for almost unlimited energy as long as it is cheap. Miners can turn on and off almost instantly. The grid can be improved by having lots of extra power that can be shifted to different needs at any moment. There is also stranded energy, like solar not yet connected to the grid or flared methane gas (at wells or landfills).

    I don't think Ethereum uses excessive amounts of energy unless you also think data centers are bad in general. The consensus algorithms are more complicated than Bitcoin. Ethereum validators will lose part of their stake if caught cheating.

  • by b20000 on 7/17/24, 2:25 PM

    I disagree, I think crypto is extremely important, much more important than social media for example, which has been shown to be toxic and to destroy people's health, on top of also requiring a lot of data center resources and thus being bad for the climate.

  • by solardev on 7/17/24, 2:09 PM

    Is this still an issue? I thought crypto is pretty much dead now and the speculators have moved onto AI?

    Also, didn't the big coins (ethereum) move to proof of stake anyway?

  • by Daviey on 7/17/24, 4:23 PM

    Research PoA and PoS and you'll see what you have suggested has been done.

  • by aurareturn on 7/17/24, 1:25 PM

    >Don't get me wrong, block chain has some wonderful applications

    Like what?

    I used to work in crypto. The only use case I found was an extremely easy way to create and trade unregistered securities and trade them in unregulated exchanges.

  • by agumonkey on 7/17/24, 3:24 PM

    There's a slight chance that the blockchain trend represents a global underlying open networked computation for the whole planet. Another point is that the greed seems to make people invest into energy research (unless it's rumors). Otherwise yeah it's an expensive casino.

  • by duped on 7/17/24, 6:17 PM

    This is like arguing over the thermostat setting while your house is on fire. Crypto is a pittance of the global energy demand. The fundamental problem is that we are using fossil fuels to generate heat and electricity. Efforts to reduce demand for energy are not even worth talking about in my opinion, we need to stop the energy production that we know is killing the planet at the source.

  • by streptomycin on 7/17/24, 2:05 PM

    Proof of stake uses a lot less energy.

    And if you're worried about the energy usage of crypto, wait until you hear about this AI thing...