Ethereum mining uses as much energy as a small country

[leadeater]

Don't forget people have to mine for the crypto currencies for it to actually work, it's a requirement. People aren't simply wasting energy, the whole currency would stop working if no one was mining as all the blocks would get used then there would be no supply. You could still trade existing currency and you would still need computers in the network to verify transactions etc but the whole system would die pretty fast if no new blocks were being generated.

[Ginger_]

20 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Don't forget people have to mine for the crypto currencies for it to actually work, it's a requirement. People aren't simply wasting energy, the whole currency would stop working if no one was mining as all the blocks would get used then there would be no supply. You could still trade existing currency and you would still need computers in the network to verify transactions etc but the whole system would die pretty fast if no new blocks were being generated.

 I think that why Ether is most likely switching to a proof of stake rather than proof of work, so its still being mined, but not using the insane energy it does now

[pyrojoe34]

I don't get why mining is set up to be basically just useless computing. Why not have the algorithms do something useful like FAH (or any other scientific simulation or deep learning) and then reward miners with coin. There's such a waste of computing power that can be used for good and still make the miners money.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, pyrojoe34 said:

I don't get why mining is set up to be basically just useless computing. Why not have the algorithms do something useful like FAH (or any other scientific simulation or deep learning) and then reward miners with coin. There's such a waste of computing power that can be used for good and still make the miners money.

I'm guessing I could find out with a simple Google search but I'm lazy lol so what does the computing power even get used for?

[pyrojoe34]

4 minutes ago, Abyss Gaming said:

I'm guessing I could find out with a simple Google search but I'm lazy lol so what does the computing power even get used for?

From what I understand, basically nothing. It is used to solve an algorithm that yields coin when you successfully solve a block but other than that is useless computing.

[Guest]

Just now, pyrojoe34 said:

From what I understand, basically nothing. It is used to solve an algorithm that yields coin when you successfully solve a block but other than that is useless computing.

They really should use it for something like F@H does

[JAKEBAB]

With all that money they make they should invest in some solar panels.

[SurvivorNVL]

Man, I need to get in to mining Ethereum.  Make a few thousand dollars when it crashes down to $13 and then surge back to $316 again.  Volatile things are fun.

[Mooshi]

That's pretty deplorable. Imagine if that same power was used towards aiding the medical community instead of bringing in less a day than a part-time McDonald's employee.

[Mooshi]

19 hours ago, pyrojoe34 said:

I don't get why mining is set up to be basically just useless computing. Why not have the algorithms do something useful like FAH (or any other scientific simulation or deep learning) and then reward miners with coin. There's such a waste of computing power that can be used for good and still make the miners money.

If mining were basically F@H with coins being treated more like reward points for assisting in something greater instead of being generic Bitcoin greed coin #9837848, I'd be 1000% behind it. 

[Clanscorpia]

And this is why our economy is screwed. Making money out of nothing. Seems logical

[Ninetales]

5 hours ago, Clanscorpia said:

And this is why our economy is screwed. Making money out of nothing. Seems logical

Complaining about literally what every government does.

[rn8686]

21 hours ago, pyrojoe34 said:

From what I understand, basically nothing. It is used to solve an algorithm that yields coin when you successfully solve a block but other than that is useless computing.

Its not useless at all, it keep the network running. Without mining, secure transactions wouldnt be possible. 

[Shreyas1]

Just etherium? 

[Shreyas1]

22 hours ago, Abyss Gaming said:

I'm guessing I could find out with a simple Google search but I'm lazy lol so what does the computing power even get used for?

I think it helps transactions flow better because there's no central bank for cryptocurrencies. The mining part is actually a reward for helping.

[themctipers]

hopefully all my mining electricity is covered by hydro electricity

 

 

since we're using

TORONTO HYDRO .. 

[pyrojoe34]

3 hours ago, rn8686 said:

Its not useless at all, it keep the network running. Without mining, secure transactions wouldnt be possible. 

Right but confirmations and data exchange don't take any computing power, they just have to exist. My point is the computations and energy is wasted on useless work. They can instead make the "mining" be scientific simulations or cloud computing of some sort and reward the miners with "coin" based on the work they do. The transaction sustaining network would still exist but the computations would not be wasted on useless number crunching.

[Foxxer]

As long as they have renewable source, it's totally fine.

[vanished]

On 6/29/2017 at 10:32 AM, Ginger137 said:

tWh per year, here's a chart from the Digiconomist’s article, quoted by futurism

Ah, thank you, this is vital information.  After all, no one wants their speedometer to tell them they're travelling at 50 miles per

[leadeater]

On 7/1/2017 at 8:57 AM, Mooshi said:

If mining were basically F@H with coins being treated more like reward points for assisting in something greater instead of being generic Bitcoin greed coin #9837848, I'd be 1000% behind it. 

But reward people with what? Bitcoins aren't created out of thin air at will they need to be mathematically calculated and that is what bitcoin mining or ethereum mining is. F@H is just another mathematical set of calculations being executed on a GPU/CPU that produces a result, one is used for science and one is used for the literal creation of the currency which has to be done.  

[vanished]

On 6/30/2017 at 2:57 PM, Mooshi said:

If mining were basically F@H with coins being treated more like reward points for assisting in something greater instead of being generic Bitcoin greed coin #9837848, I'd be 1000% behind it. 

Look into CureCoin  

[BachChain]

On 07/01/2017 at 4:42 AM, huilun02 said:

Well as long as people can get their gaming cards

I tried to buy a 580 today. Literally everything that isn't sold out has a >100% markup. It would actually be cheaper for me to buy a 580+1700x bundle than to buy the card by itself

[suicidalfranco]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

But reward people with what? Bitcoins aren't created out of thin air at will they need to be mathematically calculated and that is what bitcoin mining or ethereum mining is. F@H is just another mathematical set of calculations being executed on a GPU/CPU that produces a result, one is used for science and one is used for the literal creation of the currency which has to be done.  

one small difference between ethereum and bitcoin: yes bitcoins are created by solving the algorithm and you get a reward when you or the pool your in solves it, ethereum on the other hand rewards you for borrowing your hardware to perform/calculate all transactions achieved in the block chain

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

one small difference between ethereum and bitcoin: yes bitcoins are created by solving the algorithm and you get a reward when you or the pool your in solves it, ethereum on the other hand rewards you for borrowing your hardware to perform/calculate all transactions achieved in the block chain

Yea very similar but both are totally reliant on miners for the system to actually function; create, verify, processes, audit. None of those functions can work without miners in both Eth and BTC and it isn't going to change when moving to Proof of Stake either, but at least with that bucket loads of power won't be used.

 

To say mining is a waste of time and resources is a bit misinformed about how these work. I like the idea of Proof of Work a bit more than Proof of Stake (rich gets richer etc) so getting miners to do more productive computation does sound great but that would make it far too hard to control the difficulty of computation.

 

Quote

How mining works

Today, ethereum's mining process is almost the same as bitcoin’s.

 

For each block of transactions, miners use computers to repeatedly and very quickly guess answers to a puzzle until one of them wins.

More specifically, the miners will run the block’s unique header metadata (including timestamp and software version) through a hash function (which will return a fixed-length, scrambled string of numbers and letters that looks random), only changing the 'nonce value', which impacts the resulting hash value.

 

If the miner finds a hash that matches the current target, the miner will be awarded ether and broadcast the block across the network for each node to validate and add to their own copy of the ledger. If miner B finds the hash, miner A will stop work on the current block and repeat the process for the next block.

http://www.coindesk.com/information/ethereum-mining-works/

 

 

[OJC_GALANT]

On 29.6.2017 at 6:16 PM, Ryan_Vickers said:

To all you complaining, I think it's referring to hardcore users who have like 10+ GPUs steup, but I could be wrong.  Also, there is a glaring issue here:

over what time span?  that's an amount of energy, not power.

For the same time span Cyprus consumes that much energy I guess. But I agree with you, the lack of a time period is a little strange.