China’s Inner Mongolia Declares War on Crypto Mining

[Bitter]

2 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

Well, as mentioned somewhere else in the forum, apparently they're either drug dealers, credit card scammers, or pedophiles, or a combination of those maybe ? Not sure how it works, still waiting on the details. /s

Linus and staff do have facial hair which is a hallmark of criminals world wide.

[Brooksie359]

6 hours ago, MageTank said:

You are going to some extreme lengths to avoid having a proper discussion with me, aren't you? You cannot compare an activity that is considered illegal in most parts of the world to an activity that is currently not illegal in most parts of the world as if that is a proper analogy to make. Again, you are clinging too deeply to making this a moral issue because you have no other points to your argument, and it's sad because I can do the exact same thing to gaming, as I've done dozens of times in these discussions every time they arise. Do not strawman me again. Have a proper discussion or move on.

 

This is a completely subjective opinion of yours. You consider mining a complete waste of resources while miners consider it a source of income. The irony is, you're perfectly fine with people wasting the exact same resources for folding, but not when it's in their own self interest for profit. That would be like me complaining that you're using your hardware for your own self interest (gaming) instead of putting those resources towards the greater good (folding). The irony of me complaining about strawman fallacies after using this analogy is not lost on me.

 

This is again, completely subjective. It's also not "completely unregulated". Even my extremely limited understanding of cryptocurrency knows this to be true just based on various news articles that have popped up over the last few years. It's all publicly available on the library of congress website: https://www.loc.gov/law/help/cryptocurrency/world-survey.php.

 

You also have this little tidbit from the SEC:https://www.sec.gov/ICO

"Less regulated" sounds different than "completely unregulated" to me. I've touched upon this in this thread, but I'll double down to make my point on it very clear. You do not get to dictate what others do with their time. If someone prefers to trade cryptos over stocks, and it is legal to do so where they reside, they are free to do so on their own volition. You not liking it doesn't mean they have to stop. Don't like it? Get active with your local forms of government and start voting on it, otherwise, accept it as an inevitable future if you refuse to put forth any effort to bring about change.

This entire article is about the government in China banning cryptocurrency mining because of fear of increasing energy usage and emissions. How in the world is that not comparable to dumping oil into a river when that was also made illegal for environmental reasons. Clearly I am not the only one who thinks its a waste of energy because they are banning it in one country and I imagine its only a matter of time before others do as well. 

[WkdPaul]

21 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

[...] because of fear of increasing energy usage and emissions. How in the world is that not comparable to dumping oil into a river when that was also made illegal for environmental reasons.[...]

Because dumping oils in waterways isn't the same as lowering emissions produced by coal power plants.

 

Quote

[...] Clearly I am not the only one who thinks its a waste of energy because they are banning it in one country and I imagine its only a matter of time before others do as well.

China banned crypto currency exchanges, but hasn't banned mining. That's why they have big mining farms. Also, China isn't banning crypto mining, Inner Mongolia is, it's not the same. And they're doing it because of energy reduction targets they're trying to meet, they're also closing smaller firms in the steel, ferroalloy, graphite, and coal-fired power sectors (yes, you read that right, they're also closing coal power plants).

 

But painting crypto mining as the ultimate evil drive way more clicks.

Edited March 8, 2021 by wkdpaul

[Moonzy]

2 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

they're also closing smaller firms in the steel, ferroalloy, graphite, and coal-fired power sectors

People who work in these fields are all criminals, pedophiles and scammers confirmed

[Blademaster91]

10 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

But painting crypto mining as the ultimate evil drive way more clicks.

No one is saying its the "ultimate" evil, just important that the negatives are mentioned, but its still amusing to me those biased towards crypto think its completely harmless.

[WkdPaul]

11 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

No one is saying its the "ultimate" evil, just important that the negatives are mentioned,

And that's perfectly fine, but that's not what's happening here, have you even read this thread and the few others related to crypto mining criticism ?

 

Quote

but its still amusing to me those biased towards crypto think its completely harmless.

Same with anti-crypto peeps painting it as if it's the anti-Chris, again, read what I'm replying to, apparently, crypto mining is the equivalent of dumping oil in rivers ...

 

I've said it multiple times in this thread and others ; crypto mining DOES take a lot of electricity, and IMO, ASIC mining is a huge waste as you can't recover the hardware when it becomes unprofitable (at least with GPUs, they can be resold and reused). With that said, I'm not sure how saying miners are all criminals is going to fix anything ? Coins need to shift away from PoW, it's wasteful and is promoting what we're seeing right now with ASICs farms and GPU shortages. But as long as it's profitable, this isn't going to stop.

Edited March 8, 2021 by wkdpaul

[Brooksie359]

32 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

Because dumping oils in waterways isn't the same as lowering emissions produced by coal power plants.

 

China banned crypto currency exchanges, but hasn't banned mining. That's why they have big mining farms. Also, China isn't banning crypto mining, Inner Mongolia is, it's not the same. And they're doing it because of energy reduction targets they're trying to meet, they're also closing smaller firms in the steel, ferroalloy, graphite, and coal-fired power sectors (yes, you read that right, they're also closing coal power plants).

 

But painting crypto mining as the ultimate evil drive way more clicks.

Other places have put regulations on coal power plants a long time ago and for good reason idk how cryptocurrency is any different. They are all regulations made in mind to eliminate unnecessary harm to the environment. Obviously coal power plants wouldn't be regulated if there was no better alternative but there is any they are much better in terms of impact on the environment. The same can be said about cryptocurrency. We have existing systems that do basically all that cryptocurrency does at a far less inefficiency way. It should be illegal imo as its a total waste of energy. 

[Moonzy]

18 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Other places have put regulations on coal power plants a long time ago and for good reason idk how cryptocurrency is any different. They are all regulations made in mind to eliminate unnecessary harm to the environment. Obviously coal power plants wouldn't be regulated if there was no better alternative but there is any they are much better in terms of impact on the environment. The same can be said about cryptocurrency. We have existing systems that do basically all that cryptocurrency does at a far less inefficiency way. It should be illegal imo as its a total waste of energy. 

I see you keep comparing crypto to traditional banking and centralized currency

 

I just wanna ask one question (I literally have no idea, just curious and wants to know)

How many fraudulent transactions happens in a day in normal banking vs crypto?

 

I heard crypto hasn't had any fraudulent transactions thus far(?) Scams and hacks (of people's computer to obtain their wallet) sure, but fraudulent transactions not that I know of.

 

I'm more interested in the mining side of things than the aspects of crypto, so I have no idea, do educate me

[WkdPaul]

37 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Other places have put regulations on coal power plants a long time ago and for good reason idk how cryptocurrency is any different.

Because mining isn't the same as dumping oil in waterways, simple as that ? Again, I'm not saying (and never said) that mining wasn't wasteful, but the solution isn't to ban it, but rather force it to change (switch to PoS instead of PoW for exemple), banning it won't work as long as it's profitable, people are going to mine.

 

It's illegal to bypass your electrical meter, yet lots of people are doing it, because it's profitable and there's always people ready to risk it.

 

 

Quote

They are all regulations made in mind to eliminate unnecessary harm to the environment.

Graphite, steel, aluminium, etc.. are all very useful and not at all unnecessary.

 

Quote

Obviously coal power plants wouldn't be regulated if there was no better alternative but there is any they are much better in terms of impact on the environment. The same can be said about cryptocurrency. We have existing systems that do basically all that cryptocurrency does at a far less inefficiency way.

I'm confused as to what other systems are "like crypto" and are "less inefficient" ?

 

Quote

It should be illegal imo as its a total waste of energy. 

There are plenty of wasteful uses of energy, you should look up the use of AC in South East Asia Hong Kong, this is far worse than what is happening with crypto IMO.

Edited March 8, 2021 by wkdpaul
typo, not sure where that came from !

[Moonzy]

6 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

There are plenty of wasteful uses of energy, you should look up the use of AC in South East Asia, this is far worse than what is happening with crypto IMO.

Me, who is guilty for both:

[WkdPaul]

2 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

Me, who is guilty for both:

Don't tell me your family runs the AC in winter (that's the wasteful stuff I was eluding to) on top of you mining ?

Edited March 8, 2021 by wkdpaul

[tikker]

19 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Are you kidding me? Do you really think that power consumption wouldn't go up if more people mined? You say that miners undervolt to decrease power consumption but they also leave the thing on all the time.

Nowhere did they say that. Of course if more people mine power consumption will go up. If more people game power consumption will go up as well. Miners run 24/7 so indeed tend to use more power per day than gamers who don't game 24/7.

19 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

That not to mention that gamers running their rig at full throttle while gaming isn't even true. You think when people game their cpu and gpu are pegged at 100% the entire time? Absolutely not especially if they are playing a game that isn't intensive or they have a bottleneck somewhere or even if they decide to put vsync on or cap the fps.

"That not to mention that gamers running their rig at full throttle sub-optimal performance while gaming isn't even true. You think when people game their cpu and gpu are pegged at 100% chugging along at 50% the entire time? Absolutely not especially if they are playing a game that isn't intensive is super intensive or they have a bottleneck somewhere nice overclock and/or power hungry parts or even if they decide to put vsync on or cap the fps unlock every setting and overclock to get every single ounce of performance they can get." See? I can pick my cases as well. Of course not every gamer pulls 120% every time they game. Just as not every miner has 20 GPUs on nitro at home slurping all the power they can find. Yes miners use a few times more energy than gaming. You can see my calculation (which you won't believe anyway) that mining or mining+gaming will only take 3-4 times more energy than just gaming for my system.

20 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

If the power consumption from a small amount of people mining now is comparable to gamers that amounts to a ton of people then when more and more people get into mining we will see power consumption that makes gaming look very small in comparison.

  This has been beaten to death and beyond now: nobody is saying the power consumption of mining is a good thing and something that needs to continue. That doesn't mean crypto as a whole needs to be destroyed, just that we need a more efficient implementation.

19 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

The entire point of cryptocurrency is that the transactions aren't traceable so logically speaking they shouldn't even be able to tell how much of the transactions are related to illegal activities.

Wrong again. Sure there are coins like Monero that aim for complete anonymity, but most are more pseudonymous. If anything, the entire point is to have decentralised way of trading where no single entitiy controls the supply or information. That's the point. Bitcoin would literally be one of, if not the worst crypto to conduct criminal activities with, so it makes perfect sense they can estimate how much has been used for illegal activities. All the transactions are on a PUBLIC ledger that anyone can read. Cash is the way to go.

20 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

The even worst part is that the figure you showed was massive regardless. I mean it came out to be what about half a billion dollars in illegal transactions that they know of. That is absolutely massive. 

Yes, half a billion dollars is a massive amount. You know what else is massive? The entirety of illegal transactions outside from crypto. Here are some numbers for crypto crime:

https://ciphertrace.com/2020-year-end-cryptocurrency-crime-and-anti-money-laundering-report/#summary

https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-crypto-crime-report-intro-ransomware-scams-darknet-markets

 

It used to be a significant fraction indeed, but then you find out that, just as in the real world, illegal activity with it declines as it gains public interest and countermeasures are developed, a small part is responsible for most it. The total illegal transactions are estimated in the above reports at 10 billion for 2019 and ~5 billion for 2020, but then you realise that in the same report they estimate this is only 0.34% of crypto transactions in total. Add to that that 2-5% (or 800 billion to 2 trillion dollars) of the global money supply is laundered every year and you see that it's small compared to what is already happening.

 

This is not me defening criminal activities with crypto, just to illustrate that it's not the big evil society-and-planet killer that people make it out to be...

 

4 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

Well, as mentioned somewhere else in the forum, apparently they're either drug dealers, credit card scammers, or pedophiles, or a combination of those maybe ? Not sure how it works, still waiting on the details. /s

Not sure what the share of miners on the forum is, but we sure have a jolly bunch here then.

[Moonzy]

Just now, wkdpaul said:

Don't tell me your family runs the AC in winter (that's the wasteful stuff I was eluding to) on top of you mining ?

We don't get Winter... That's the whole point of AC

Tropical = year long hot and humid

 

My rigs are in a room, passively cooled (windows open)

Including my desktop, it's out of my room and I pull cables in. So the heat stays out of my personal fridge.

 

Mining has made me very aware of energy consumption if anything tbh, I used to be so wasteful of electricity while doing literally nothing with it

[WkdPaul]

4 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

We don't get Winter... That's the whole point of AC

Tropical = year long hot and humid

 

My rigs are in a room, passively cooled (windows open)

Including my desktop, it's out of my room and I pull cables in. So the heat stays out of my personal fridge.

 

Mining has made me very aware of energy consumption if anything tbh, I used to be so wasteful of electricity while doing literally nothing with it

My bad, I wrote southeast asia, but I meant HK ... that's why I was a bit confused as I know you're not in HK. Don't know why I wrote that, brain fart I guess ! lolll

 

EDIT ; BTW, I'm not kidding, I was warned back when I was in China (wanted to visit HK, but ended up not going), that was back in 2009. They have the AC on, full blast even when it's 5c ... They just blast the AC and walk around in coats while indoors.

[tikker]

32 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

I see you keep comparing crypto to traditional banking and centralized currency

 

I just wanna ask one question (I literally have no idea, just curious and wants to know)

How many fraudulent transactions happens in a day in normal banking vs crypto?

 

I heard crypto hasn't had any fraudulent transactions thus far(?) Scams and hacks (of people's computer to obtain their wallet) sure, but fraudulent transactions not that I know of.

 

I'm more interested in the mining side of things than the aspects of crypto, so I have no idea, do educate me

To my knowledge most if not all of the fraud is scams or extracting money from people otherwise since you can't charge a wallet like say a creditcard. Only you can make the transaction, noone else.

 

The worst thing that could happen I think is a 51% attack, which at this point is unlikely for anyone to subtly obtain for BTC or ETH I would guess, in which case you could reverse transactions, stop transactions or double spend your own coins and only as long as you hold >50% of hashpower. Pretty boring I'd say. Plus it would tank hard as nobody would trust the network anymore and I like to think we still have good guys like this out there: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/07/bitcoin-pool-ghash-io-commits-to-40-hashrate-limit-after-its-51-breach/

 

Old, but still nice to read they put community trust first. It would even be in the fraudsters' interests not to do this I think, as the moment it would become known everyone would lose trust in the respective coin's security and it would probably tank.

[Brooksie359]

3 hours ago, Moonzy said:

I see you keep comparing crypto to traditional banking and centralized currency

 

I just wanna ask one question (I literally have no idea, just curious and wants to know)

How many fraudulent transactions happens in a day in normal banking vs crypto?

 

I heard crypto hasn't had any fraudulent transactions thus far(?) Scams and hacks (of people's computer to obtain their wallet) sure, but fraudulent transactions not that I know of.

 

I'm more interested in the mining side of things than the aspects of crypto, so I have no idea, do educate me

I'm confused as to why you brought that up. Fraudulent transactions? I didn't say anything about Fraudulent transactions I did talk about illegal dealings but that is different. If anything cryptocurrency is more like trading stocks than money so I am unsure if the comparison would be really just to a bank. For instance stocks values and cryptocurrency both are volatile in nature but if your country is not doing well financially if you have stocks in companies that aren't attached to your country then your money would be safe from losing its value if its in those stocks. Also like stocks you primarily trade them for money and don't generally use them to buy goods. Sire there are some places that you can use cryptocurrency to buy stuff but most places don't accept it as payment precisely because its volatile in nature. 

[Brooksie359]

3 hours ago, tikker said:

Nowhere did they say that. Of course if more people mine power consumption will go up. If more people game power consumption will go up as well. Miners run 24/7 so indeed tend to use more power per day than gamers who don't game 24/7.

"That not to mention that gamers running their rig at full throttle sub-optimal performance while gaming isn't even true. You think when people game their cpu and gpu are pegged at 100% chugging along at 50% the entire time? Absolutely not especially if they are playing a game that isn't intensive is super intensive or they have a bottleneck somewhere nice overclock and/or power hungry parts or even if they decide to put vsync on or cap the fps unlock every setting and overclock to get every single ounce of performance they can get." See? I can pick my cases as well. Of course not every gamer pulls 120% every time they game. Just as not every miner has 20 GPUs on nitro at home slurping all the power they can find. Yes miners use a few times more energy than gaming. You can see my calculation (which you won't believe anyway) that mining or mining+gaming will only take 3-4 times more energy than just gaming for my system.

  This has been beaten to death and beyond now: nobody is saying the power consumption of mining is a good thing and something that needs to continue. That doesn't mean crypto as a whole needs to be destroyed, just that we need a more efficient implementation.

Wrong again. Sure there are coins like Monero that aim for complete anonymity, but most are more pseudonymous. If anything, the entire point is to have decentralised way of trading where no single entitiy controls the supply or information. That's the point. Bitcoin would literally be one of, if not the worst crypto to conduct criminal activities with, so it makes perfect sense they can estimate how much has been used for illegal activities. All the transactions are on a PUBLIC ledger that anyone can read. Cash is the way to go.

Yes, half a billion dollars is a massive amount. You know what else is massive? The entirety of illegal transactions outside from crypto. Here are some numbers for crypto crime:

https://ciphertrace.com/2020-year-end-cryptocurrency-crime-and-anti-money-laundering-report/#summary

https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-crypto-crime-report-intro-ransomware-scams-darknet-markets

 

It used to be a significant fraction indeed, but then you find out that, just as in the real world, illegal activity with it declines as it gains public interest and countermeasures are developed, a small part is responsible for most it. The total illegal transactions are estimated in the above reports at 10 billion for 2019 and ~5 billion for 2020, but then you realise that in the same report they estimate this is only 0.34% of crypto transactions in total. Add to that that 2-5% (or 800 billion to 2 trillion dollars) of the global money supply is laundered every year and you see that it's small compared to what is already happening.

 

This is not me defening criminal activities with crypto, just to illustrate that it's not the big evil society-and-planet killer that people make it out to be...

 

Not sure what the share of miners on the forum is, but we sure have a jolly bunch here then.

Yep because running a mining rig 24h a day vs playing video games 3 to 4 hours is sure going to match up. And again depending on the games and the settings yeah alot of people don't use their system at full throttle when gaming. I know I don't. You also need to consider that a huge portion of gamers play esports games which to be frank don't push systems very hard and don't have crazy power draw so I am going to call bs on that figure of yours. 

[Moonzy]

3 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Yep because running a mining rig 24h a day vs playing video games 3 to 4 hours is sure going to match up. And again depending on the games and the settings yeah alot of people don't use their system at full throttle when gaming. I know I don't. You also need to consider that a huge portion of gamers play esports games which to be frank don't push systems very hard and don't have crazy power draw so I am going to call bs on that figure of yours. 

Can you come up with a calculation with justification such as @tikker did? This would put more credits into your arguments

 

I agree that not all games (maybe even majority of the games that people play) don't push your GPU to 100%

 

but it's still not an insignificant amount, nor does it matter much in the end, different workload requires different amount of resources, and mining does indeed succ more energy

Whether it's a waste of energy or not is up for debate but that's a very subjective subject that I doubt we'll reach to an agreement here

[Letgomyleghoe]

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

if anything cryptocurrency is more like trading stocks than money so I am unsure if the comparison would be really just to a bank. For instance stocks values and cryptocurrency both are volatile in nature but if your country is not doing well financially if you have stocks in companies that aren't attached to your country then your money would be safe from losing its value if its in those stocks

yeah, just like how if the U.S dollar lost value, but I own some GBP, the GBP would stay the same price because it's not attached to the price of the U.S dollar.  Does that make GBP a stock?

 

[Kisai]

7 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Other places have put regulations on coal power plants a long time ago and for good reason idk how cryptocurrency is any different. They are all regulations made in mind to eliminate unnecessary harm to the environment. Obviously coal power plants wouldn't be regulated if there was no better alternative but there is any they are much better in terms of impact on the environment. The same can be said about cryptocurrency. We have existing systems that do basically all that cryptocurrency does at a far less inefficiency way. It should be illegal imo as its a total waste of energy. 

I'd encourage you to go watch "Planet of the Humans" , hot take "Michael Moore is not always right, and edits material to stoke outrage, but the underlying info is still correct most of the time."

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans

 

The thing I want to draw your attention to is what qualifies as "green" energy.

 

Quote

Gibbs sneaks onto a biomass plant property in Vermont and finds that instead of burning forest residue as advertised, the plant is surrounded by whole trees. A citizen activist in Michigan reveals that her local biomass plant burns PCP and creosote-treated railroad ties shipped in from Canada as well as rubber tires, which cause black snow to appear at the adjacent elementary school. Gibbs explores the practice of universities committing to "go green" by opening biomass plants on campus, tracing the practice back to a college in Middlebury, VT endorsed by Bill McKibben. Gibbs reveals that biomass energy remains the largest percentage of renewable energy in the world. He then explores what he calls the ‘language loopholes’ that allow for the continuation of biomass around the U.S. The section ends with Gibbs, as part of a media event at the Climate March in New York City, asking environmental leaders for their stance on biomass including Van Jones, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Bill McKibben, and Vandana Shiva. Only Shiva denounces biomass & biofuels.

Basically "green energy" in the US, and various other places includes garbage incinerators, and you know what happens when you operate an incinerator? You have to keep feeding it garbage. Where's a good source of garbage? Everywhere. Forget recycling. They do this to get "carbon offsets" from companies that are using dirty energy.

 

That's what happened with the local Burnaby incinerator here. 

 

https://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/turning-garbage-electricity-metal-and-toxic-ash-burnaby-incinerator.html

 

I won't bother quoting from it, it's all about toxic materials found in the fly ash.

 

So you can disguise incineration as a "green energy" as long as the feedstock is biomass, which means organic garbage, trees, building materials from buildings torn down, etc. And you know what happens then when it becomes expensive to ship materials to it? They just send the trees directly to the incinerator, never mind using them for lumber for housing. 

 

The point here is that cryptocurrencies are bad for the environment from multiple points in the generation of that cryptocoin, and short of some regulation coming in to restrict or raise costs on energy as a whole to everyone, it just pushes the coin generation to places with the cheapest, dirtiest energy sources, which are often dirty sources when no carbon taxes are in place.

 

If you own a cryptocoin farm, and you're running it off consumer GPU's, off a Tesla solar roof, then fine, there is absolutely no reason to disagree with what you're doing because ultimately you have minimized your impact on others (regardless of GPU shortages, or solar panel shortages) and you're not being subsidized by the taxpayer. However that doesn't let you off the hook for the ones you trade with.

 

Like the thing is, in BC, energy is cheap. That's why things like sawmills/pulpmills and smelters operate in the province. In fact, this is one of those reasons for conflicts with the United States, who claim that BC is subsidizing softwood, compared to the US which lumber is harvested from private property. Softwood lumber ends up being cheap because the sawmills haven't had to update their infrastructure in a century, and as little as 30 years ago most were private owners. Now the least efficient mills have all been shutdown and cities that depend on them have had to seek other means of attracting business. So nobody is going to fault a community for getting into cryptomining in all the mostly-abandoned lumber facilities that already have all the necessary electrical and warehouse buildings. I'm not aware of any that have, but if I owned a shutdown mill, that's what I'd do with it.

 

But starting a new mining operation in the middle of Metro Vancouver? It would be foolish unless you owned the property already. The best locations in BC would likely all be Columbia River dam locations where saw mills used to exist.

 

 

[tikker]

10 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Yep because running a mining rig 24h a day vs playing video games 3 to 4 hours is sure going to match up. And again depending on the games and the settings yeah alot of people don't use their system at full throttle when gaming. I know I don't. You also need to consider that a huge portion of gamers play esports games which to be frank don't push systems very hard and don't have crazy power draw so I am going to call bs on that figure of yours. 

I'm not saying they match up. I even calculated it for my rig and obviously 4 hours of gaming uses less power than 24 hours of mining. Huge portion of players probably plays esports indeed and there'll be a significant portion that plays casually just as much as there is a significant portion that plays competitive and wants every last FPS (like willing to go to 480p potato settings), so they will have a good to top tier CPU and push their system to the max on the CPU side at least.

 

Here are my numbers while mining. I can do gaming when works is done. Max 257 W on the GPU comes from a different profile. The yellow line indicates it being power limited by the current profile and that is 190 W. The power draw can easily be lowered further, but I like the current hashrate this gives me.

9 hours ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

yeah, just like how if the U.S dollar lost value, but I own some GBP, the GBP would stay the same price because it's not attached to the price of the U.S dollar.  Does that make GBP a stock?

 

Don't give people ideas for fiat daytrading

[MageTank]

17 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

This entire article is about the government in China banning cryptocurrency mining because of fear of increasing energy usage and emissions. How in the world is that not comparable to dumping oil into a river when that was also made illegal for environmental reasons. Clearly I am not the only one who thinks its a waste of energy because they are banning it in one country and I imagine its only a matter of time before others do as well. 

I can't tell if you're going to great lengths to make me repeat myself intentionally, or if you genuinely do not understand the flaws in your analogy, but I'll explain it again nonetheless.

23 hours ago, MageTank said:

You are going to some extreme lengths to avoid having a proper discussion with me, aren't you? You cannot compare an activity that is considered illegal in most parts of the world to an activity that is currently not illegal in most parts of the world as if that is a proper analogy to make. Again, you are clinging too deeply to making this a moral issue because you have no other points to your argument, and it's sad because I can do the exact same thing to gaming, as I've done dozens of times in these discussions every time they arise. Do not strawman me again. Have a proper discussion or move on.

Pay very close attention to the verbiage I used as I chose my words carefully for a reason. I am well aware that some parts of the world has banned cryptocurrency mining, however the vast majority has not. Intentionally polluting the water by dumping oil into it is banned everywhere last I checked. No sane government would allow their water sources to be intentionally defiled. 

 

Since you don't mind sticking to this strawman, allow me to play into it. If we go by the logic of something being banned by the government in one location means it's automatically bad and must be banned everywhere, should we follow this trend for other laws? Here in Columbus Ohio, it's technically illegal to buy Corn Flakes on a Sunday. This law isn't enforced (thankfully), but it being the law doesn't make it right, nor should other states/governments automatically follow suit without first weighing the consequences of banning the sale of Corn Flakes on Sunday (or cryptocurrency mining in this poor analogy). If you wanted to get into heavily political extremes, you could argue some countries still ban people from voting & driving based on their sex, but it's a bit insensitive to make that kind of comparison in the context of mining, but you get my point. Government bans don't automatically make something morally right or wrong, that requires a near universal consensus to establish.

 

Since you've been doing a poor job at having a proper debate with me on this topic, I am going to help you out and give you some valid points to make against me. I might be good at this, but going up against a man of my caliber is difficult, even for me 

 

Valid Moral Concerns:

Quote

• While both considered frivolous activities, cryptocurrency mining currently has a larger environmental impact compared to that of gaming. Until the average miner can get their energy consumption down to that of the average gamer, I am not able to morally tolerate the sheer difference in their impact on our environment and resources.
  • This argument works because it highlights the potential hypocrisy that would be met had they ignored the environmental impact of gaming while condemning that of mining. When having debates on morals, it is important to apply them equally and unequivocally to remove any potential bias in your morals. It also makes certain to highlight that this is how you feel by stating "I am not able to morally tolerate", and doesn't speak in a manner that makes feelings a matter of fact. It's difficult to debate subjective feelings, even more so when someone is careful with their wording such as this.
• The waste produced by cryptocurrency mining is having too large of an impact on the environment, especially ASIC's which offer very little reclaimed resources in recycling and have no reuse value once used. Until a more efficient, easily recyclable/reusable method is introduced, I believe this method of cryptocurrency mining should be banned.
  • Again, this argument works because it makes it clear that your moral concerns is your beliefs, and provides a valid criticism of a form of cryptocurrency mining without banning mining as a whole. Compromise often shows a more unbiased approach to a conversation and choosing to ban one specific form of mining while leaving the others intact shows you genuinely care about what it is you are speaking for and are not driven by other, more petty motives.

Invalid Moral Concerns:

On 3/7/2021 at 6:07 AM, Brooksie359 said:

• Cryptocurrency is bad simply because it can be used for a ton of different illegal activities.
  • This is a poor moral argument because it is extremely easy to compare and contrast this point with that of other forms of currency. Plenty of criminal activities has been performed throughout history with every form of currency imaginable. This includes that of gold and the almighty dollar. Broad generalizations do not bode well for moral concerns and for good reason. We cannot, as a society, intentionally blur the line between right and wrong by broadly applying our sense of right & wrong to anything and everything and expect it to be law.

On 3/6/2021 at 7:53 AM, Brooksie359 said:

• I would also like to point out that making money isn't really a reason for something to exist nor does it make something valuable. If anything folding at home which you don't make money on is far more valuable than cryptocurrency.
  • This is a very poor moral argument, as it implies you are perfectly fine with compromising on your own moral beliefs when it suits you as long as the subject at hand is treated differently than another subject. It breaks what was established in the first example and shows a very clear bias towards one subject. It also introduces a subjective opinion of value which is extremely easy to debate against and disprove as fact.

 

Valid Logical Concerns:

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• With the lack of regulation, increased volatility and longer transaction processing times, I do not see cryptocurrency as a valid replacement for traditional currency.
  • This is a valid logical concern. It implies you've studied up on regulatory status in various countries & markets as well as paid attention to crypto volatility and have some level of knowledge with the transaction process and are not speaking from a place of ignorance. It also implies that while you may not see it as a replacement for traditional currency, you might still be open to the idea of it co-existing as an alternative form of currency. Remember, logical concerns do not come from a place of emotion and having an open mind is required to have these kinds of debates.
• The current climate of cryptocurrency is too vague and confusing for me to understand and as such, I do not feel comfortable with the adoption of cryptocurrency until we have an established understanding of how they will work in our society.
  • This is another valid logical concern, as many people (myself included) know very little about cryptocurrency and would like to better understand it before we simply dive headfirst into it. We are not proposing bans on it, but we definitely want to potentially adopt it from a place of understanding, not from a place of ignorance, and this will require that we are educated on the subject before we are willing to accept it. This will open up a broader dialogue for discussion on the subject and is an approach I wish others would take more often.

Invalid Logical Concerns:

On 3/7/2021 at 1:34 AM, Brooksie359 said:

• And sure maybe most people can make money off of mining today but tomorrow maybe almost no one can because the difficulty of mining is ever increasing and cryptocurrency is simply too volatile to say for sure that by the time you sell your cryptocurrency you will have made profit until you actually sell it. 
  • This one is relatively simple, but never use "maybe" in logical debates. This is an example of a "whatifism" as mentioned by another member in this thread. It implies you are not confident in the information you are providing and that you could very well be wrong. If you have even the slightest bit of doubt that what you are saying could be wrong, then go back and examine it until you come to a better understanding of the subject. Don't present your doubts as matters of fact when even you do not firmly believe in them. I can assure you, others will not as well.

On 3/6/2021 at 7:53 AM, Brooksie359 said:

• Also cryptocurrency is getting more and more power consuming as time goes on while the same can not be said about gaming. 
  • This is another easy one mostly because the information provided is simply false. There was truth behind what you were trying to convey, but you failed to convey it correctly and instead provided misinformation, which is more damaging to your cause. Power consumption has increased in gaming mostly because hardware as of recent has become more powerful. Efficiency doesn't automatically mean "less power consumption". It can also mean more performance at the same power consumption, or even higher performance at higher power consumption than previous generations. Consoles are an example of this. While still very power efficient, the new consoles do consume more power than last generation consoles. The power consumption of the RTX 3000 series exceeds that of the RTX 2000 series slightly, but the performance offered is also much higher. More efficient, but more power consumed. This goes back to the invalid logical concern above in that you need to better understand what it is you are trying to convey before speaking as a matter of fact. Otherwise, it damages your entire point even if that is not your intention.

On 3/4/2021 at 8:47 AM, Brooksie359 said:

• I really hate how this always comes up and somehow people think that entertainment and cryptocurrency mining are equivalent when they are not. That like saying someone who uses water for a slipnslide during the summer for their kids is just as wasteful as a guy whole leaves his sink on for a couple of hours for no reason at all. They clearly aren't equivalent because one is actually providing entertainment while the other is just plain wasteful for no reason. 
  • You start this out by calling out false equivalence (good on you, though ironic given our current position), but then you ruin your argument by being dismissive of facts. You attribute cryptocurrency mining to being "wasteful for no reason" in spite of the overwhelming evidence of people doing it for profit. Calling something entertainment or not is pretty subjective, and arguing otherwise would be difficult, but you stood a much better chance at doing so without being completely dismissive. It goes against the point of having an open mind, mentioned earlier in the first section of valid logical concerns.

On 3/4/2021 at 5:44 PM, Brooksie359 said:

• Its completely unnecessary unless you are a criminal and need untraceable transactions. If anything its worse than doesn't do anything but does harm just by existing. Also you can't use cryptocurrency to buy products anyways so it would be more like using water to create a garden that never produces anything editable even though that was the point of the garden in the first place. 
  • This entire post was simply false. I can't tell if it was your intent to deceive, or if you genuinely refused to look things up before making the post, but I've said it a few times already so no need to repeat myself. Instead, I'll leave you with this:https://promotions.newegg.com/nepro/16-6277/index.html

 

Lastly, we have our honorable mentions, the subjective concerns. These should never be argued because they are simply your opinion. Leave them out of conversation unless someone explicitly asks you for your opinion. Otherwise, you'll be seen as someone with a rhetoric to force onto others. Don't worry, you won't be alone here, this thread has given us plenty of examples to play with. I'll even highlight the subjective opinions of each one to drive the point home:

On 3/4/2021 at 6:27 AM, akio123008 said:

I'm no expert on crypto stuff, so I don't comment on it too much, but from what I know about it, I think cryptocurrencies shouldn't exist. I just hate the idea that people around the world are trying to reduce carbon emissions in all sorts of ways, sometimes even investing large sums of money, and then there's a bunch of people burning up a huge amount of power in these computers doing nothing useful at all, just to make what seems to me like a marginal amount of profit. Power that may as well be spent to do actual useful work. Imagine all that energy being used for scientific research for instance.

On 3/4/2021 at 8:26 AM, TetraSky said:

Great!

Cryptomining is a literal waste of power, just to get a few bits of data that people randomly attributed value to.

Considering the majority of China's power comes from fossil fuel/coal, this can only be good for the planet if they crack down on it.

It might not be as bad in places where the main source of power are renewables... But still, a complete waste of power for arbitrary reasons that could result in massive spending of tax payers' money to build new power generators that wouldn't have been needed otherwise(not everywhere is like the US with private electricity sector... It's a public utility in many places).

On 3/5/2021 at 10:37 PM, Brooksie359 said:

Well I am entertained by dumping oil in the river. That doesn't mean it's ok for me to do so. If they want to tweak their hardware to run efficiently why not have them actually do something useful with it like folding at home or any other process that isn't a complete waste of resources. And cryptocurrency trading is objectively worse than traditional stock trading because its completely unregulated. If they find trading cryptocurrency entertaining then they can simply do it with stocks because cryptocurrency needs to go. 

On 3/5/2021 at 10:46 PM, Brooksie359 said:

That doesn't justify the existence of cryptocurrency. It is legitimately a problem and doesn't provide anything useful for how much energy its consuming. People can make money by doing all sorts of things that are horrible for the environment but that doesn't mean it's ok and even when they do so most of them at least produce something of value while cryptocurrency doesn't. Its entire worth is based on other people's thoughts and feelings. Its so easily manipulated that it is basically the stock market without any regulations. It could be worth nothing tomorrow and nothing could be done about it. 

On 3/5/2021 at 10:50 PM, Brooksie359 said:

I can't believe I have to explain this for the 100th time. Gaming is for entertainment. Cryptocurrency on the other hand doesn't produce a good or service. Sure you can make money off of it because enough dumb people buy it but that doesn't make it a good or service of value. 

17 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Other places have put regulations on coal power plants a long time ago and for good reason idk how cryptocurrency is any different. They are all regulations made in mind to eliminate unnecessary harm to the environment. Obviously coal power plants wouldn't be regulated if there was no better alternative but there is any they are much better in terms of impact on the environment. The same can be said about cryptocurrency. We have existing systems that do basically all that cryptocurrency does at a far less inefficiency way. It should be illegal imo as its a total waste of energy. 

 

This concludes todays lesson on how to properly debate a topic and the pitfalls to avoid when doing so. If you've made it to the bottom of this wall of text, congratulations, you've earned enough EXP for a level up. Just don't put your points into CON, that's a dump stat.

 

In all seriousness @Brooksie359, I am expecting more thought out responses from you going forward on this topic. We've discussed this long enough that we both know what it's going to take to come to an understanding on this. I am willing to hear you out, but only if you refrain from your dismissive approach and start actually providing data and information for me to reflect on. Less emotional opinions and one-sided moral equivalencies and more objective data to support your claims. If you want to take a step back and take a breather, we can even start this from scratch, but give me something to work with here.

 

[akio123008]

2 hours ago, MageTank said:

Leave them out of conversation unless someone explicitly asks you for your opinion

This wasn't (to me) a debate, this was a thread below a news article and I, like many others shared my personal thoughts (which includes my opinion). Sure no one's explicitly asked for my opinion, but that's kind of what you get below a news post like this.

 

I'm not claiming that I used valid or good arguments or whatever, and to be honest I don't care. I'm perfectly aware I just threw in my personal opinion, because that's exactly what I intended to do. I just don't like crypto mining, and I sort of just well... pointed it out. it's simple as that.

[Moonzy]

23 minutes ago, akio123008 said:

I'm not claiming that I used valid or good arguments or whatever, and to be honest I don't care. I'm perfectly aware I just threw in my personal opinion, because that's exactly what I intended to do. I just don't like crypto mining, and I sort of just well... pointed it out. it's simple as that.

It's fine if you wish to hate on something, even without reason

But I wish that you'd done your research on why you're hating it instead of just hating it, because hating for no good reason is... Y'know

 

Just like liking something, same arguments can be said, do your research on whether you should like or hate on something before you actually do it, that's my two cents.

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, akio123008 said:

This wasn't (to me) a debate, this was a thread below a news article and I, like many others shared my personal thoughts (which includes my opinion). Sure no one's explicitly asked for my opinion, but that's kind of what you get below a news post like this.

 

I'm not claiming that I used valid or good arguments or whatever, and to be honest I don't care. I'm perfectly aware I just threw in my personal opinion, because that's exactly what I intended to do. I just don't like crypto mining, and I sort of just well... pointed it out. it's simple as that.

I agree, this being a tech news post I don't see anything wrong with giving an opinion, except this has gotten derailed into a crypto vs gaming debate and discussing whether or not crypto is a waste of power, some governments seem to be concerned with the amount power mining is using.

21 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

And that's perfectly fine, but that's not what's happening here, have you even read this thread and the few others related to crypto mining criticism ?

Well you saying this thread is just crypto criticism is really showing your bias there.

21 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

Same with anti-crypto peeps painting it as if it's the anti-Chris, again, read what I'm replying to, apparently, crypto mining is the equivalent of dumping oil in rivers ...

 

I've said it multiple times in this thread and others ; crypto mining DOES take a lot of electricity, and IMO, ASIC mining is a huge waste as you can't recover the hardware when it becomes unprofitable (at least with GPUs, they can be resold and reused). With that said, I'm not sure how saying miners are all criminals is going to fix anything ? Coins need to shift away from PoW, it's wasteful and is promoting what we're seeing right now with ASICs farms and GPU shortages. But as long as it's profitable, this isn't going to stop.

In places that use gas or oil as a main power source, then it might as well be the equivalent to dumping oil into rivers. Mining for someone that has 15+ GPUs, which is probably quite a few people on this forum, only makes sense if they are using hydroelectric or have solar from a energy cost standpoint and how wasteful mining is. ASIC mining isn't any more wasteful than companies selling mining designated GPUs or making more GPUs to sell directly to miners, and some of those of those "gaming cards" are going to fail sooner due to failed VRAM because the VRAM constantly running at 100C or hotter on a 3080 or 3090 is definitely worse than running a game for 2-3 hours a day a few times a week.

I didn't say all miners are criminals but the untraceable coins are probably used by criminals, and theres also mining companies hacking into youtube channels, or the cyrptojacking ads that steal CPU cycles to mine for someone elses profit.