US government tracking the energy implications of booming bitcoin mining in US.

Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin::US government tracking the energy implications of booming bitcoin mining in US.

  • doylio@lemmy.caEnglish
    29·
    9 months ago

    I think the best solution would be to properly tax carbon. That way Bitcoin miners would either become unprofitable or move to greener energy.

    I don’t think it’s a good idea to establish the precedent that gov’t can decide what you can and cannot do with your energy. You may think it’s a waste of energy, but if the externality is properly taxed, I don’t see the problem with letting it continue

    • makeasnek@lemmy.mlEnglish
      51·
      9 months ago

      I think the best solution would be to properly tax carbon. That way Bitcoin miners would either become unprofitable or move to greener energy.

      I think cap and trade can be a good idea, the problem is getting all the countries in the world to sign onto it. Any country that doesn’t ends up with a competitive advantage. But if you somehow got them to all agree, blockchain actually provides a perfect way to build a cap-and-trade system that every country can participate in, transparently, without having to trust one country or group of countries to run it honestly. That’s the essential problem blockchain solves: administering systems trustlessly.

      Bitcoin miners do by and large use green energy since it tends to be the cheapest (off-peak hours from over-provisioned grids). If electricity gets more expensive, it doesn’t mean it becomes unprofitable to mine, that’s only one side of the equation. The other side is how much people are willing to pay to get transactions added to the blockchain, which is a number, on average, that has increased year after year. Not that you ever need to make an on-chain transaction, with Bitcoin lightning you can do transactions off-chain while getting much of the security of on-chain transactions. You can move money internationally in under a second for pennies in fees. And it works just as easily as venmo. In fact, if you have cash app on your phone, you already have the ability to use the lightning network, though it’s a custodial wallet (meaning you are trusting cash app not to take/lose your BTC).

    • TypicalHog@lemm.eeEnglish
      51·
      9 months ago

      Then it’s just gonna suck up “green energy”. It’s still energy. We have already have provably secure PoS (not Ethereum btw, it’s PoS sucks ass).

      • doylio@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        Yeah I’m pro PoS in general, but I don’t think we should forbid people from running PoW on their own computers. Seems like a step too far.

        Side note, what’s wrong with Ethereum’s PoS in your opinion?

        • TypicalHog@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          Oh yeah, I was never for banning PoW. I just don’t like it since I know same or better can be achieved with a well designed PoS.

          Ethereum PoS has slashing so people are scared to stake thus causing low participation rate. Also, in Ethereum, you need a minimum amount of 32 ETH to solo stake. Ethereum also doesn’t have a native liquid staking and has locking, unlike Cardano. And you can’t delegate your coins without giving up custody of them. Cardano PoS is designed completely differently and is natively liquid with no locking, no min amount to stake, native delegation and both delegation and self-staking is risk free when it comes to your balance. Worst case - you miss out on those 3.5% rewards for the period your balance is delegated to a pool that’s not doing its job. All of this is the reason staking participation is like 65% in Cardano. Would probably be even higher if it wasn’t for lost coins and large whale wallets that are not staking/delegating for some reason.

          • doylio@lemmy.caEnglish
            3·
            9 months ago

            I think the 32 ETH lockup + slashing does make it riskier to stake, but it also makes the chain more secure. As a malicious Ethereum staker, every failed attack costs me a lot of money. As a Cardano staker, I can attempt an attack many times because there I don’t lost that much if it fails.

            The lack of liquid staking is the only real drawback I see here, as it has allowed some centralization in the Lido token. Ethereum has yet to address that issue

            • TypicalHog@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              9 months ago

              Yeah, but people are just gonna leave your pool if you try to attack the network or miss blocks. (And good luck attacking the network where even the largest 2 entities Binance and Coinbase together only have about12% of block production (stake)).
              Like… ye, it’s not happening.
              And why would you attack a network (if you could) where your value is stored. It’s a suicide.
              If you did have so much stake, it might be smarter to play by the rules.