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With Bitcoin alone using more electricity than Ireland, is blockchain really a sustainable technology?
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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That's a nonsense-argument; how much energy does SWIFT consume? Or the mining of silver and oil?
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Someone has to pay the electric bill!
The average BC transaction already sucks up as much energy as the average household uses in a month and that will only grow with the length and complexity of its blockchain.
Yes, oil is a filthy, filthy business, the world is being strip-mined and we are drowning in our own non-biodegradable synthetic waste products. Those are entirely different issues. None of these things alter, in any way whatsoever, the unavoidable fact that blockchain is not a viable technology for universal usage - either ecologically or economically. If conventional monetary systems were to use it or be replaced by it, there simply wouldn't be enough energy in the world to sustain it nor would there be enough money to pay for it. Money would soon cost more money to process than it was worth.
I'd call such a lack of scalability a slight flaw in the algorithm, wouldn't you?
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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PeejayAdams wrote: Someone has to pay the electric bill!
Yes, because "mining" requires resources. The difference is that you could mine with electricity from environmentally-friendly options, where traditional mining is always polluting. The miner pays the cost, and it's the miners' risc.
PeejayAdams wrote: The average BC transaction already sucks up as much energy as the average household uses in a month and that will only grow with the length and complexity of its blockchain.
Yes, but only with BC that is touted as a problem. It is not a problem if your normal bank-transactions use electricity, or when gold is mined using a lot of chemicals and oil. Be honest and compare it to something, instead of just pointing out that it uses resources. Wouldn't have much value if you could get a trading-token without using resources, would it?
PeejayAdams wrote: If conventional monetary systems were to use it or be replaced by it, there simply wouldn't be enough energy in the world to sustain it nor would there be enough money to pay for it.
That's a rediculous "if".
PeejayAdams wrote: Money would soon cost more money to process than it was worth.
Now you are doing as if the cost of mining is equal to the cost of processing a transaction. Once mining is no longer economically rewarding, it will stop.
PeejayAdams wrote: I'd call such a lack of scalability a slight flaw in the algorithm, wouldn't you?
And technology does not advance anymore or what?
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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A holy cow rarely wins a horse race.
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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That's more appropriate than I imagined at first reading; BC is not a traditional horse, in a traditional horse-race.
The market is currently pricing it as an unbeatable horse. Some people are going to be very disappointed.
Even more people will be disapointed when they realize that a public blockchain is not as anonymous as they hoped. The taxman is coming, relentlessly.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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PeejayAdams wrote: The average BC transaction already sucks up as much energy as the average household uses in a month and that will only grow with the length and complexity of its blockchain.
That's an ignorant claim. Proof Of Work is only one of available algorithms to mine transactions. Algorithms like Proof Of Stake and Proof of Authority consume virtually no processing power.
PeejayAdams wrote: he unavoidable fact that blockchain is not a viable technology for universal usage - either ecologically or economically
Again, very narrow view of blockchain. Because Bitcoin requires a lot of energy it doesn't mean every other blockchain implementation does.
PeejayAdams wrote: I'd call such a lack of scalability a slight flaw in the algorithm, wouldn't you?
It depends. It can be a flaw or an advantage, depending on the end goal of a specific blockchain implementation
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson
Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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PeejayAdams wrote: With Bitcoin alone using more electricity than Ireland, is blockchain really a sustainable technology?
Yes, blockchain can and already is used on many real world scenarios. Bitcoin is really a very bad example of the potential of blockchain.
There are many types of blockchain implementations, with many types of consensus algorithms beyond Proof Of Work (which, in bitcoin, is a specialized type of Proof of Work). Some of the top alternative consensus algorithms:
- Proof Of Stake
- Proof Of Authority
- Proof Of Elapsed Time
The most power hungry is obviously Proof of Work, which is specially hungry for bitcoin. Other implementations requires much less power. The other ones require virtually no power (except for a few processing cycles) which make them very practical cost-wise.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson
Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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It's not likely that industrial machinery needs it in any conceivable way, especially the ones which perform multidimensional analysis in real time to provide automatised quality control.
GCS d-- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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I'm pretty sure multidimensional real-time analysis for quality control is techno-heresy.
Have you ever tried debugging a system like that, when sh*t goes wrong? The costs involved are insane.
Considering the fact that it should reduce costs, it's a fundamentally flawed concept, in my humble opinion.
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20 years and running of market which is expanding, the costs involved are fairly reasonable and the safety of the customers rocketed sky-high to the point that now it is mandatory to use these machines even in the US, which is the last big nation to have imposed them to food producers (FDA regulations are hard to pass but fortunately not the hardest, that medal goes to French ones, they required only small hardware adjustments).
As for the saving, it's only an expense... but it's better to spend some millions now rather than losing billions because customers don't trust our customers' products anymore (who would feed his/her infant son with foods that may contain undetected glass shards or metal shears? And that goes for other products as well).
GCS d-- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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Huh. That actually makes a lot of sense.
Re-reading my previous reply, I honestly don't know what I was thinking there.
Apologies for being an ass and thank you for being so reasonable.
I'll make sure to drink my coffee before going online in the future.
o/
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No apologies are needed  I admit my field of work is small enough to be virtually unknown, which is half a damnation since I'm out of the mainstream technologies and required knowledge and half a blessing since I can cover jobs most of the new developers aren't prepared to (who ever needs to shave off milliseconds from a function rewriting its core with handcrafted assembler?).
Don't worry about your answer since it is true: it's expensive, and viewed as only an expense, and wouldn't work in fields different from mass food (and pharmaceutical) production, where inspecting each and every product that goes out of the production line is of paramount importance... and it has to be done fast enough (up to 30 products/second) to maintain effective production volumes.
GCS d-- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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I've only seen it employed once, and that was in an industrious setting [vague on purpose here].
The idea was to intentionally create tons and tons of complex operational data, which could then be data-mined by an external company.
The aim was to figure which jobs could be combined or culled all together, in order to save costs.
The entire idea was so mind-boggling stupid, it left a sour taste.
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Blockchain is some security mechanismus which is providing also privacy."E-cash" is a good thing, but I think Bitcoin is some shady hype.
If it is for real the USA will publish its own "Bit-Dollar" and rule all currencies.
I like hard gold coins a lot more, but Visa and Mastercard are real companies to invest in the e-cash business
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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