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Here's a month-old article from Politico Magazine about the big business of cloudscale blockchain minery in the better Washington:
Hands on the wheel, eyes squinting against the winter sun, Lauren Miehe eases his Land Rover down the main drag and tells me how he used to spot promising sites to build a bitcoin mine, back in 2013, when he was a freshly arrived techie from Seattle and had just discovered this sleepy rural community.
The attraction then, as now, was the Columbia River, which we can glimpse a few blocks to our left. Bitcoin mining—the complex process in which computers solve a complicated math puzzle to win a stack of virtual currency—uses an inordinate amount of electricity, and thanks to five hydroelectric dams that straddle this stretch of the river, about three hours east of Seattle, miners could buy that power more cheaply here than anywhere else in the nation. Long before locals had even heard the words "cryptocurrency" or "blockchain," Miehe and his peers realized that this semi-arid agricultural region known as the Mid-Columbia Basin was the best place to mine bitcoin in America—and maybe the world.
[...] As bitcoin's soaring price has drawn in thousands of new players worldwide, the strange math at the heart of this cryptocurrency has grown steadily more complicated. Generating a single bitcoin takes a lot more servers than it used to—and a lot more power. Today, a half-megawatt mine, Miehe says, "is nothing." The commercial miners now pouring into the valley are building sites with tens of thousands of servers and electrical loads of as much as 30 megawatts, or enough to power a neighborhood of 13,000 homes. And in the arms race that cryptocurrency mining has become, even these operations will soon be considered small-scale. Miehe knows of substantially larger mining projects in the basin backed by out-of-state investors from Wall Street, Europe and Asia whose prospecting strategy, as he puts it, amounts to "running around with a checkbook just trying to get in there and establish scale."
It's pretty long for an internet article but it's got pictures.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Lester on Tuesday April 17 2018, @06:40PM (26 children)
Bitcoin promised a world with a decentralize currency, where people could sell and buy using it. No dependency on credit cards o banks. No control from governments. People could use it for transactions, that is not only big transactions, but also small transactions that regular people do.
Nowadays, a transaction may cost 20 dollar. For small amounts, it is less expensive paypal or even a wire transfer.
Bitcoin is not a currency, nobody buys or sells in bitcoins. It is just a volatile commodity or a cyurrency for criminals (ramsonware, drugs dealers...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @06:47PM (8 children)
Because it's not [wikipedia.org] possible [wikipedia.org] to do cryptocurrency differently [wikipedia.org]. No sir, Bitcoin is the one and only possible way to implement this idea, and since Bitcoin has obviously failed, there will never be a cryptocurrency.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @07:01PM (7 children)
So explain to me, genius, how those overcome the same issues? Most of the problems with bitcoin are inherent to all those others. The main difference is that, with those other ones, it is still sort of early to jump in on the ponzi scheme. With bitcoin, it is time for the early ones to jump out of the ponzi.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @07:37PM (4 children)
You should probably look up what a ponzi scheme is. Maybe try wikipedia?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @07:59PM (3 children)
Ok, so you don't know then.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday April 17 2018, @08:10PM (2 children)
I would point out that while the early adopters of ${insert-digital-currency-here} have a better chance of making money trading it, that does not make it a ponzi scheme.
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snow on Tuesday April 17 2018, @10:30PM (1 child)
Apple, Tesla, Amazon... All ponzi schemes.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday April 18 2018, @02:05AM
All the rest all simple shell games...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snow on Tuesday April 17 2018, @10:13PM (1 child)
The 'issues' are less issues and more religious in nature.
Bitcoin Core refused to scale onchain because they think that being able to run a bitcoin node on a shitty raspberry pi is a priority. Bitcoin Cash decided that they don't care about non-mining nodes that are run on raspberry pi. Tests have been successfully performed with up to 1GB blocks.
I believe that the long term solution is sharded nodes running in data centers. They would be able to scale indefinitely.
Bitcoin's scaling problems are NOT technical. They are political.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday April 19 2018, @03:52AM
Political problems are a kind of technical problem. If your solution involves human nature or society changing to suit your needs, your solution does not work.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @06:49PM
I tried to buy bitcoin years ago but got an email saying the government killed my trade, so I never logged in again.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @06:54PM (1 child)
I'll bet you don't even understand how nonsensical it is to criticize a currency for being used by criminals but support features like decentralization and lack of government control. You go work on developing that magic medium of exchange that isn't controlled by government but can't be used in ways the government disapproves of. Let me know how it goes.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday April 17 2018, @10:53PM
Freedom to do something is freedom to do something you don't like.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @07:40PM
I have honestly never heard your rant before. Thanks for the original insight in bitcoin!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 17 2018, @07:55PM (7 children)
The dream is not over.
In fact, everything you are saying is: it is still just a dream.
Throw the "hard computation" out of bitcoin, keep the blockchain and multiple validators, and it comes closer to practical. I'm too lazy to tear apart Ethereum, but it seems to promise a compromise in this direction.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday April 17 2018, @10:18PM (6 children)
They want to move to proof of stake. Essentially, that means that large coin holders will be able to vouch for the validity of the chain. It's possible in this scenario that all the major coin holders could collude and re-write past transaction history fairly rapidly.
Colluding and rewriting transaction history is much harder (and more expensive) with proof of work.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 17 2018, @11:41PM (5 children)
Everything is much harder and more expensive with proof of work, thus the problem in using it.
What's needed is a web of trust - a critical mass of validators to sign up and say: yes, this is a valid transaction.
Trusting the people with the most money seems like a Wall Street mindset, how about we trust the people who are the most available and consistent instead?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday April 17 2018, @11:51PM (3 children)
The problem is how can you prove that I am not 50% of the web of trust (using a bot farm).
That's why Proof of Work is so valuable -- it can't be faked.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @05:28AM (2 children)
So I can prove I wasted so many joules of energy...and that is valuable?
God knows how much precious time and resources I spent making spooge. Why isn't that valuable too?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 18 2018, @11:25AM
Yes. Bitcoin is a demonstration of that in practice.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 18 2018, @11:26AM
Good example actually. It is valuable. You don't have future generations without plenty of spooge. But the ability to carry a fetus to term is required too and that demands far more resources.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 18 2018, @02:19AM
Why should you trust it?
You would be very incorrect in that assumption. Wall Street doesn't do that because that is a fabulous way to lose money. Can't think of anyone who does, but maybe I'm missing an obvious example somewhere.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 17 2018, @09:20PM (3 children)
The dream died because it was a stupid idea all along.
Currency is by its very nature a social construction. It's something that has value primarily because everybody says it can be exchanged for other things. If you take out any kind of central authority, then fraud and abuse happen almost immediately.
On top of that, since most businesses do not accept cryptocurrencies in exchange for actual goods and services, it's not really a currency. Why, then, has the price skyrocketed? Because it's a classic economic bubble, and most of the people buying in isn't planning on using it, they're planning on selling it off for more standard currency (dollars, yen, euros, pounds, etc) than they paid for it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snow on Tuesday April 17 2018, @10:25PM
Bitcoin has no fraud. All bitcoin transactions are valid and authentic. Every bitcoin input can be traced all the way back to the block that the coins were generated in.
Bitcoin is a bubble though. Bitcoin Core has crippled the coin. Bitcoin Cash carries the original vision of being a currency for the world.
Crypto is going to be a gamechanger. Provably transferring value anywhere in the world, to anyone, instantly, for under a cent. Transfers of this type is only the first use case. Eventually stocks, bonds & property will all be traded on a public blockchain.
(Score: 2) by patrick on Wednesday April 18 2018, @02:24AM (1 child)
Again?!? Bitcoin has died 278 times since 2010... [99bitcoins.com]
(Score: 2) by Lester on Wednesday April 18 2018, @09:27PM
It has never been a currency. What has died is the dream, the fantasy. It hasn't been wrongly supposed dead 278 times. They have said it is not a currency 278 times.
Have you ever bought anything using bitcoins?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @06:28AM
Well, in EU I can send and receive direct bank transfers free of charge. Free seems less expensive than $20.