chAngE tHe CoDe
So much cringe; I can't take it.
Greenpeace and other climate change activists have been baited with the propaganda that Bitcoin waste's energy, and have subsequently swallowed that bait: hook, line, and sinker. On a fundamental level, anyone who thinks that Bitcoin wastes energy does not understand the value proposition of Bitcoin. It's very easy to confirm this fact; just talk to them. Ask them what the value of Bitcoin is; they won't be able to tell you. Thus, all the energy it consumes must be a "waste" because intrinsically these people refuse to get the point, willfully or otherwise.
Oh my god... the cringe!
Yes, because that worked out so well for Ethereum.
Already we see that regulators have basically captured ETH instantly with the change to proof-of-stake, and it's going to get much much worse. I've already said this half a dozen times, but ETH is going to have a hostile takeover just like Steem did. Not going to be pretty. Or maybe the community will fold and allow themselves to be lorded over by the regulators. That would be an interesting development as well. Getting majority consensus to leave a community and start over fresh is no simple task.
If we're being honest it's actually a bit surprising that Hive was able to pull it off like we did. Our hostile takeover had the best outcome of a bad situation. ETH might not be so lucky... as it was much easier to rally behind the idea that Justin Sun was a bad fit. Not so much with what's going on with Ethereum, especially if the Ethereum Foundation is on board with the regulators moving in. Moon my bags, guvment.
Speaking of community...
When organizations like Greenpeace tell us we need to "change the code"... what are they really saying? The code is open source. Bitch, you change the code. What are you waiting for?
What this propaganda is really saying is:
Change the community
Your community is not valid.
Change it!
Can you imagine?
Telling an entire community and culture they aren't allowed to operate the way they operate and need to follow a different set of rules dictated by a third party? Yeah, that's not very woke at all. In fact, we like to call that imperialism.
I know what's best for you.
Do what I say or you're being unreasonable.
The shear audacity of the statement.
Again, wildly cringe and completely not self-aware.
These people don't even understand what they are asking demanding.
To think that Bitcoin is the problem is truly mindboggling.
Forget the banking sector.
Forget the military industrial complex.
Forget the thousands of aircraft spewing sludge into the atmosphere.
Nah, Bitcoin... let's focus on that.
Obvious propaganda is obvious.
The value proposition of Bitcoin is that the legacy economy is a complete and utter fail. If we could actually trust the institutions in charge of the legacy system, Bitcoin would be completely worthless and it would use very little energy. These are uncontestable facts. Bitcoin is a ledger that deals in trust; a highly inefficient one. It has no value unless the trust it mines more than makes up for all that inefficiency. 13 years and massive exponential adoption later, we see that hm yea, that trust is extremely valuable. Who would of thunk it.
If Greenpeace wants Bitcoin to use less energy, they should get the banking sector to stop being so corrupt. Oh, I'm sorry, is that an insurmountable task? Yeah, that's why Bitcoin exists. Duh. The chicken & the egg logic being employed here is a thing of legend. So many mental gymnastics. Or perhaps not enough? I'm sure for many it's just a thoughtless knee jerk reaction.
I see problem! You fix problem! Fix it! I have spoken.
Diving into the documentation.
There are two different articles I'd like to parse before finishing here.
https://cleanupbitcoin.com/
This is the main propaganda page... so let's start there.
You've heard
Bitcoin
fuels the climate crisis,but did you know a software code change could clean it up?
Notice how they never actually give a solution or talk about how they will help with a solution. Not their problem. Fix it, Bitcoin people. Just do what Ethereum did. So simpo! Why haven't you done it yet!?!?!?!?!?!?
Sign the petition to tell big tech and finance corporations
to stop Bitcoin from polluting the planet.
Uhhhhhhhhhh.... what?
Big Tech and finance corporations?
What power do they have over changing Bitcoin's code?
Again, these people are delusional.
Welcome to the Children's table of politics.
Recent estimates show Bitcoin uses more electricity than all of Sweden.
And it’s quickly surpassing more countries, according to the University of Cambridge. Unless its price is decoupled from its energy use, Bitcoin will drive devastating climate impacts.
Remember this for later... it's going to be important. They know that Bitcoin's price and energy usage are connected. See what happens next; it's hilarious. But also we need to once again acknowledge that the entire value proposition of Bitcoin is that the legacy system is completely broken. If the price of BTC goes up, this intrinsically implies on a fundamental level that society needs Bitcoin even more than it did before. Should be obvious, but again, these people are delusional and spouting propaganda, so wut-r-u-gonna-do?
Bitcoin is resurrecting fossil fuels.
Bitcoin requires so much power that its “miners” have started buying US coal plants. They’re using fracked gas and are striking deals with the oil industry in Texas to use flare gas to fuel their operations.
Hm yeah they are also taking a good hard look at sustainable energy and safely disposing of methane gas, but let's just ignore these facts because they don't mesh with the given narrative.
A software code change would reduce
Bitcoin’s energy use by 99.9%.
Switching to a low-energy protocol has proven effective and uses a fraction of the energy. Ethereum has changed its code. Many others use less energy. Why isn’t Bitcoin?
Because being "effective" isn't the goal.
The goal is security and trust.
Again, completely missing the point.
We know the problem. Bitcoin uses an outdated technology called proof-of-work to validate transactions. This proof-of-work method, at least as it currently operates, uses massive amounts of energy, and thus is a huge source of climate pollution. As Bitcoin's price surges, so, too does its energy use.
Bro...
An "outdated" technology? It's a 13 year old technology that hasn't even had time to fully be tested in the field or get mainstream adoption. It solved the Byzantine General's problem, which was thought to be unsolvable for over 30 years... but they make the claim it's "outdated"? Seriously... the mental gymnastics. So much cringe.
We know Bitcoin stakeholders are incentivized not to change. Changing Bitcoin would render a whole lot of expensive infrastructure worthless, meaning Bitcoin stakeholders will need to walk away from sunk costs — or find other creative solutions.
We know this isn't going to work but here's why we'd like it to work anyway. I must say, I've never seen someone's argument openly imply that their position is delusional. That's an interesting strategy indeed.
I love Clown World.
All these Bitcoin miners need to do to mitigate their "sunk costs" is come up with a "creative solution". Bitch, POW mining was the creative solution. My dude.
We know crypto doesn’t need much energy to work. Many newer cryptocurrencies are low consumers of energy or carbon-neutral because they use a better model: proof-of-stake.
Better at energy consumption... not better at security and separating governance from the stake holders... which is the entire point of POW.
We know a basic software code change would reduce Bitcoin’s energy use by 99.9%. If only 30 people — the key miners, exchanges, and core developers who build and contribute to Bitcoin’s code — agreed to reinvent proof-of-work mining or move to a low-energy protocol, Bitcoin would stop polluting the planet. So why isn’t Bitcoin changing its code?
This is my favorite quote by far.
And again showcases just how delusional they are... You can get those 30 key people to run along and fork the chain to proof of stake. See what happens. Bitcoin will still be there. Why change the code when you can just tell people to buy Ethereum instead? Why make the claim that POS is a "basic software code change" when it took Ethereum literally YEARS to make the switch? Yeah... so basic. I just can't.
We know who wields influence over the crypto community, from big tech to big banks. Leaders like Elon Musk of Tesla, Jack Dorsey of Block, and Abby Johnson of Fidelity have vested interests in Bitcoin — and the power to affect change. BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, PayPal and many others have a responsibility to help Clean Up Bitcoin.
None of these organizations wield any influence over a change like this.
Woof.
NEXT!
https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/06/04/inside-the-environmentalist-campaign-to-change-bitcoins-code/
This one from Coindesk is a bit more interesting because Coindesk actually understands crypto.
Campaigners explain why they’re convinced all it takes is support from a few powerful firms and people to change the fundamentals of Bitcoin.
Opening with a bang
Right off the bat we see a little bit of shade thrown at the movement.
Campaigners are convinced.
We are not necessarily convinced.
The word 'convincing' was not used.
To old hands, this plan seems ignorant of Bitcoin’s history – specifically the block size wars of 2015-2017, including the debate over the Segregated Witness (SegWit) upgrade, in which one of two proposed alterations pushed by the biggest companies failed in the face of widespread user opposition.
Obviously right?
If you can't even get the community to agree that the blocksize should be increased, then how in the world would you possibly get to them to agree to change the entire consensus algorithm? Absurd logic.
Ken Cook, founder and CEO of EWG, said that, based on his conversations with various insiders within the Bitcoin industry, he thinks Bitcoin’s governance has changed, such that there is now an “inexorable concentration of power and control.”
And yet, none of that consolidated power and control has leveraged that power and control to change the system in a way that benefits themselves, defying thousands of years of history to the contrary. Interesting how no one is talking about that world first. Probably because it's a fantasy.
But the key to changing Bitcoin is to convince “an overwhelming majority of economic activity on Bitcoin to use” the new code, Nick said. “You can always change the rules of chess, but you may have to play alone,” the developer said.
Good analogy for this situation.
Anyone can change the code.
Who's going to follow the new rules?
Hardly anyone.
Bailey thinks that this consensus is “extraordinarily unlikely because Bitcoin has this conservative development culture,” which makes changes slowly and only when the community is absolutely certain about their effects.
So a lot of this article was actually about segwit and increasing the blocksize (or lack thereof). Which is funny... because making Bitcoin more scalable has absolutely nothing to do with energy consumption. Bitcoin could easily 10x the blocksize after 13 years of operation. Modern technology would easily allow this. Solid state drives are cheaper than ever. Just the other day I saw a 64GB SSD on sale for $8. lol
So imagine that Bitcoin scaled up more than 10x. Let's say it scaled up to even as big as the entire legacy banking sector. Okay... so what? It's still going to use exactly the same amount of energy as it did before. In fact it will use a lot more energy because the value of it will have obviously gone up, incentivizing more miners to move in.
Something very weird is going on.
Someone knows something. It's so weird to see Bitcoin suppressed at $19k but hashrate just keep skyrocketing to new all time highs. Perhaps that's exactly what these new players want. Set up your mining operation, keep the price suppressed, then when Bitcoin rips you're sitting pretty while the competition has a much more difficult time entering the market. I don't know... sounds ridiculous, but something weird is definitely going down right now, of that much I am certain.
Conclusion
The same organization that says Nuclear power is the devil also says that Bitcoin "wastes energy". Nuff said. Interestingly enough, these two things are connected. Sustainable/renewable power creates a constant output of electricity. Anything that doesn't get used gets wasted. Bitcoin allows excess power from renewable sources to be converted directly into digital currency while at the same time ensuring that the network is secure and impossible to double-spend. POW mining makes sustainable energy exponentially more sustainable. It's a feature, not a bug.
No one is worried that we are going to run out of uranium. No one is worried that radiation is going to pollute the sky or the earth. I wish I could say the same about the oceans, but that's what happens when people get lazy about safety measures within a capitalistic system that financially incentivizes cutting corners.
If only there was some way to financially incentivize sustainability and balance here on Earth rather than an economy that only works via infinite cancerous growth. Oh wait, we have built the solution: it's called cryptocurrency. The powers that be want people to think that the solution is the problem. The problem is them being in charge. This becomes more and more obvious to the rabble after each passing day. Only matter of time now, but surely things will get worse before they get better.
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Well said.
I wonder how much energy is spent on creating and consuming content about how wrong it is to waste energy and pollute the planet.
A million points worth.
Imagine now if you had to try billions of passwords before your post gets published, because that is exactly how Bitcoin wastes energy.
Yeah. Someone should do something about that.
You do realize that you are implying that anyone should be able to mint a BTC block at the click of a button, yeah? Because that's how I published this post and this comment.
You either did not understand or you are willingly misinterpreting. You did not mine this post, you posted it. To be posted witnesses had to simply sign with their passwords and verify your signature.
With Bitcoin the process is similar but they need to test billions of possible keys per block. Their "witnesses" test billions, dare I say trillions, of "passwords" per block. Here a few hundred keys can sign hundreds of transactions per block.
They don't get bothered about chemtrails though... I guess no one paid em to be bothered of that ;).
Really good read, as always, thanks for the info.
You are describing it so well hats off to you
Bitcoin is going to change the way the entire energy industry works. There will be a lot less wasted energy. As usual, Greenpeace has no idea what they're talking about.
Ethereum just killed itself is what it did.
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It will be interesting to see how Ethereum plays out.
The chance that a community that big just rolls over and dies is basically zero.
It's possible that they bleed users to other EVM chains (including ETH classic)
I wouldn't consider myself ignorant on the subject, but I agree that Bitcoin does waste too much energy. PoW is simply bad. Asking for a change is fair.
I doubt Bitcoin will ever abandon PoW though because too many very powerful people are behind big mining operations.
It think a huge part of the problem is people confusing "wasting" energy w/ "using" energy. To say that Bitcoin potentially providing an alternative to the legacy banking system is "wasting energy" is ridiculous...and its quite scary that people have been duped into seeing it that way.
& "Simply bad" is a very shallow statement, especially considering POW is what has secured BTC all these years. & more importantly, if POW is simply bad, what "good" alternatives are you comparing it to?
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Compared to anything that does not require brute force.
Imagine your account changed passwords every 10 minutes and you had a list of password to try every time you use it.
It would be safe and you would be using all those keys, I can't deny tou would be using, but it would be a huge waste of time.
Brute force is by definition a waste od resources and avoided in computer science whenever possible. PoS proves an alternative is possible so it is a waste to use PoW.
LOL, man, it's nuts out there. People have no common sense anymore.
POW is still my first love as I am a hardware nut. Ethereum's devs and foundations never gave a crap about the mining community. Just really treated it like crap, so why do we think they will do better for validators? Oh, that's right, they are all foundation and exchange validators, lol.
As there are flaws in both ecosystems, I am so much more in favor of the POW consensus. That's why when I get to the farm next year, there is going to be some solar and wind-powered Monero mining going on, lol.
Pick a POW chain, and I guarantee they are way more 'decentralized' than any POS chain.
I have been working in the Cosmos ecosystem for several months with a validator team, and I will say the centralization is utterly ridiculous.
Hive has its own issues with that in my opinion, but, I do get the argument of how it works, in a way, but, it's still way too centralized with 20 plus the 1 rotational witness, just my opinion.
Anyway, Bitcoin mining is actually forcing people to explore different types of alternative energy production to keep the machines hashing, so if anything, mining is doing great things for the energy industry as well.
Quite well stated. I am aghast at the destruction of ETH due to the switch to PoS. Were I BTC I would vow to never ever. Evar. However, BTC is not invulnerable to Larry Fink, Elon Musk, or Fidelity. It's utterly defenseless.
BTC will not survive as a useful currency transacted by pony express or ham radio, and does not own the series of pipes it flows through. There are so many vectors that can bludgeon BTC into submission I can't personally think of them all, but regulation can threaten the necessary power supply, network access, or hardware BTC does not create nor own the means of production of.
If miners are making deals to use flare gas to produce power, they're on the right track to attaining that possession of the means of production that would change that circumstance. They should be also securing a satellite network, landlines, or whatever means of providing a network to BTC they own that can ignore orders to provide their keys to access. Given the immense opportunity the Chips act represents to own a foundry, gaining independent means of production of backdoor free GPU's is probably never going to be more possible than it is now, either.
Security is BTC's value, as you have so often pointed out. Chinks in it's armor limit it's value.
Thanks!
Edit: given the climate scam that shows no signs of being ended, and the fact of the WEF infiltration of national governments across the world that clearly has facilitated utterly unreasonable and totalitarian policies being implemented globally, as the lockdowns and treating free people like unruly prisoners proves, I am confident it's just a matter of time before the WEF decides it's time to forcibly implement CBDCs, and BTC will not be decentralized enough to withstand a global policy to force acceptance of CBDCs that BTC could otherwise prevent succeeding.
Hermann Goering pointed out that no plebs want war, but the leaders of nations can force them to wage it anyway. The same thing is true about CBDCs - unless BTC owns the means of production of all it's needs, just as were plebs secure from armed gangs they could not be forced to fight for overlords.
We are very good at guessing how billionaires can manipulate Bitcoin, but the much less asked question is, "How does Bitcoin manipulate billionaires?" Everyone understands how Bitcoin can get backstabbed but not so much how Bitcoin can do the backstabbing. Even now, politicians are being bought out. Prominent figures who all unilaterally said it was a scam years ago are all starting to turn one by one. Bitcoin is a teenager. And teenagers are mostly harmless... mostly. In another ten years I think we will be having much different conversations.
I don't think you met the same teenagers I did, but I hope you and Yegor Prosvirnin are right and I am completely bonkers.
Stop saying this. THIS is factually not true. Byzantine General's Problem was solved in the paper that introduced it in the 80s. There have been many Byzantine Fault Tolerance algorithms before Bitcoin. For example, pBFT consensus was introduced in a late 90s paper.
These kinds of unfactual statements are not different than what you are trying to fight.
Thanks for a valuable post on a vitally important topic.
The value and importance of Bitcoin and PoW vs Ethereum and PoS vs mainstream currency is a central topic to everyone. We really need to educate the masses on how PoW is more secure than most systems, and therefore necessary.
Also we need to remind people how Bitcoin is aiming towards using excess energy (flaring) as well as natural abundant sources (geothermal, volcanic, etc).
Ethereum's move to PoS has weakened it by allowing for more centralization. That may be what the agenda is - to take over cryptocurrency by weakening it and then controlling it.
If Greenpeace are so worried about pollution, they should stop things like all sports, since the sports industry globally uses more energy than bitcoin. That is obviously not going to happen, so why are they targeting one particular industry and not all others?
Because they have an agenda where they want to stop us from empowering ourselves and fighting the corrupt global financial system.
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"If Greenpeace wants Bitcoin to use less energy, they should get the banking sector to stop being so corrupt."
How much finance goes on with bitcoin?
You made the mistake of actually involving yourself in these bait nonsense statements. But I respect you for doing so ;)
It's crazy to see ETH's downfall so quickly. It's becoming exactly the opposite of what web3's intentions are. I have a hunch that many won't care though, and will be fine with many being cancelled. Let's just leave ETH and the regulatory nonsense behind us and move on with Hive :)
I would not mind BTC going the POS way as ETH did however it would be prudent to say
Let us see how the ETH saga unfolds with the privacy overhang.
Hope it proves the critics wrong and cleans up its act and becomes truly decentralized.
This would be certainly the right precedence to set which would tilt the favor of going from POW to POS and saving a ton of energy.
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Thanks for clarifying the value proposition of Bitcoin.
Yes, this one baffles me. Just more or less a decade and yet considered old? Only minds threatened by bitcoin's existence could think in such a way.
Yeah, I also read an article about this a few days ago. Something fishy and anomalous there.
White is black and black is white. A complete reversal of worldview! This reminds me of the prophet: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."
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