Intel blasts Bitcoin mining, unveils own mining kit Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger just a few days ago raged against Bitcoin, calling it a "climate crisis." "A single ledger entry in Bitcoin consumes enough energy to power your house for almost a day. That's a climate crisis. That's not okay," he told Bloomberg in an interview last week. He was clearly hitting out at power-guzzling …
I propose a means of calculating all the POW/hashes/BlockChainGubbins/CryptoDoohickies you want, all while reducing your impact on the electricity supply, lowering the impact on the climate, & proving that you're serious about helping to save Humanity.
A device that can be used to do all the calculations you want, uses no grid power, & contributes nothing to worsening the problems.
It will have the side benefit of removing the miner-hoarding-kit issue so that prices for all such hardware can return to a sane level.
Best of all, the threat of a chip shortage, supply chain hiccoughs, or other artificial restrictions on the supply can't even begin to affect the market for the devices I propose.
In fact, if governments around the world make it law that all mining must be done on such devices from now on, then enforces that law with extreme prejudice, it would go a very long way to hitting the brakes on the current rate of climate change.
The device I propose is, of course, the Abacus.
A wooden frame, some string, some rocks with holes drilled through them, and you've got yourself a device by which to calculate all the CryptoCoins you want!
/Sarcasm.
You will simply continue the climate crisis with enough Abacuses in the world.
Imagine all computers being replaced by Abacuses. The amount of wood used is a whole forest and you need continual replacements to cover wear, tear and flames. And then, all the emissions from the people's hand/finger movements to perform hashes. You need to feed all those people for the highest hash-finger-rates.
You see where this is going in terms of emissions... We're doomed, dooooooomed I say.
Can I propose an alternative method?
Have a trusted third party to mediate who owns the coins and which coins are genuine.
This could be a government licenced private company such as what happens in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Hong Kong, or it could be a government institution like what happens in most of the rest of the world.
"A single ledger entry in Bitcoin consumes enough energy to power your house for almost a day. That's a climate crisis. That's not okay,"
"But in under a minute in that same interview"
"Intel's bringing forward a blockchain chip that's dramatically better,"
And that is arguable.
Credibility it seems, is meaningless.
Being better does not necessarily mean that the energy use (and waste) is any more acceptable.
IT turns electricity into heat and sometimes bit of useful stuff. Things like Crypto mining, blockchain and data centres filled with pictures of dancing hippos, cats and babies are not actually that useful.
In fact when you had a piece of paper with a picture on it, arguably it was far better for the environment and society as a whole......
Heck even forums like this are contributing to the problem,
Intel's system is slower, consumes MORE power and is around 5x more expensive to purchase than an Antminer.
Hell its less efficient/costlier than an OLD antminer ASIC.
there's no way in hell any big mining outfit will take any of these, unless Intel is secretly paying for their electricity costs. Even then they'd just be a small addition to whatever equipment the people already have.
Be prepared for FUD from Intel as they set up their own mining farm and lie about it being run by [Insert celebrity name here]
A more efficient miner will not make mining more efficient, because bitcoin mining is designed to be as inefficient.
Inefficiency is a necessary and fundamental feature of its security.
Bitcoin is secure because you need a medium sized country's worth of electricity to perform a 51% attack on the blockchain.
If people deploy more efficient miners, the hashrate will go up to ensure that it continues to use the same amount of electricity as before.
This is why proof of work is such a terrible idea.
There is a law going the rounds that if you make some damaging technology more efficient, that will lower the cost and that will encourage more people than ever to find it worth doing and take it up - you end up causing even more damage than before. I just can't recall it's name offhand, but air travel is the classic example.
So less with the Mr. Nice Guy pleading, you are joining the planet-killers here.
The Jevons Paradox
From the Wiki article: technological improvements that increased the efficiency of coal-use led to the increased consumption
...while consuming 3.6kW...
So, still utter shit then?
HINT: If you are using any power at all to do something that nobody really needs, benefitting nobody bar paranoid cockwombles and driven by your own sheer greed, it's a Very Bad Thing at this time in history. Bitcoin miners are just the same as hedgies, happily fucking over everything and anything for profit.
Going to do a thought experiment.
Lets assume you create a very fast and very efficient miner and it can do 1TH for just 1 watt. with the massive increase in hashes the difficulty will also rise massively and the amount of energy used will not come down very much?
Now I could be wrong as my understanding of miners is incomplete and I could be wrong. If I am please tell me how I am wrong :)
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