Central planning sucks at anticipating demand / huge differences between rainy season and dry season / China is big and the distances to other regions that would need the energy is too great
Pick one, two or three
2) Bitcoin miners are co-locating at hydro plants to get cheap energy.
case China and Russia: https://medium.com/@evawxiao/c...
"China has an enormous surplus of electricity that can be harnessed for mining. In 2016, for instance, overcapacity from hydropower stations in Sichuan and Yunnan amounted to a whopping 45.6 terawatt hours. To put that into perspective, the entire US generated 4,100 terawatt hours of electricity in the same year.* By partnering with these power stations, cryptocurrency miners get access to discounted electricity rates in exchange for a cut of the mining revenue.
Chinese miners aren’t the only ones capitalizing on surplus electricity either. A Russian company co-founded by Putin’s internet advisor is doing the same thing to drive down electricity costs, though Russia only has around 20 gigawatts of excess power to funnel into mining."
case Iceland: https://btcmanager.com/gmo-int...
"Japan-based GMO Internet, an internet and technology conglomerate, has officially kicked off its cryptocurrency mining operation. The company has not disclosed the exact location of the new mine but acknowledged that it is based somewhere in Northern Europe. [...]
The publicly listed firm hinted that as of today, the mine is drawing all its electricity from hydropower and geothermal sources."
As green as it gets.
(Also, energy usage and transaction volume are not correlated. Extrapolating Bitcoin's energy usage into the future is highly questionable to start with)
Please give an example of when "those in control of the hash power" decided to change something, and did.
The value of the computation is that it's what secures the immutability of the ledger.
Complaining about it is like saying the Internet wastes electricity because
It's not profitable, of course, since the value of the network is in doubt if someone has such a majority. However, for the same reason there's a big incentive for others to make sure to increase their own stake.
Again, something that's not true in PoS.
Not being able to outspend everyone else.
No, just because someone reaches ~80% PoW temporarily that doesn't affect future immutability once such a hashrate superiority dips again. The same is still not true for PoS. Once someone gains superiority it stays that way.
I agree Ethereum is a good benchmark. Still no PoS switch in sight.
Of course it damages perception, but the integrity can be regained by others having more PoW than the attacker. The same is not true for PoS. Once the stakes cannot be trusted you cannot regain the trust.
The difference is that any "51% attack" (which in reality needs to be ~80% or so) is temporary with PoW. In PoS any catastrophic breakage in trust cannot be gotten back.
No, the reason PoS isn't popular is because it's provably insecure.
Contrary to a PoW-chain absent a +51% cartel, it’s mathematically proven that it is impossible to determine the “true” transaction history in a PoS blockchain without an additional source of trust. If a source of trust is always needed, a potential pandora’s box of attack and centralization scenarios is opened. This is a seed of truth behind the joke that Ethereum plans to use “proof of Vitalik”.
(follow the links for the actual paper)
A blockchain only has value if it's immutable. Proof of work, the thing that consumes all that energy, is how the Bitcoin blockchain is made immutable.
Many have tried, and none have succeeded, in a better method with the same security. A blockchain isn't immutable (solving the byzantine generals' problem) just because it is - but because of the computing power thrown at securing it.
I just switched from Gmail to ProtonMail because I wanted the most secure email provider. This little feature change by Google does nothing to change any of the important factors - one being that with ProtonMail all my emails are stored using client side encryption.
You cannot, ever, trust a US company where National Security Letters come into play.
IOTA is completely centralized. When this has been pointed out to the project maintainers they have responded quite badly.
Stay away.
That's why I specifically mentioned "Bitcoin". Ethereum isn't Bitcoin.
Today is a good day for information-gathering. Read someone else's mail file.
