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+--- Thread: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy (/showthread.php?tid=6213133)
Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - shreder - Jul 12, 2022
PoW is ultimately inefficient and not as resilient as one may think. How can you even call it secure when hashrate vanishes when the central authorities command you to in this case the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Bitcoin will only continue to consume more power as time goes on, imagine what the energy consumption will be in 5-10 years. Sure there are renewable energies, but you will never be as efficient and resilient validators compatible with decade-old consumer-grade hardware that can run off solar energy.
Example of Ethereum validator running off 14 watts on solar. This is what a resilient & secure decentralized p2p network should look like.
![[Image: 4a40012d7b4ac49bfb99248067b7c366.png]](https://i.gyazo.com/4a40012d7b4ac49bfb99248067b7c366.png)
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - shreder - Jul 12, 2022
(Jul 12, 2022 04:24 PM)vvvvvvvvvb Wrote: Time for people to move over to XMR which is mined on consumer grade hardware.
I agree XMR is probably more resilient due to the fact that they allow for consumer-grade hardware. Imagine not being able to contribute to a network because some company is "out of stock" on a certain ASIC. CPU's are readily available and accessible, I mean we are ALL replying to this thread on hardware that can contribute to the XMR network. How many people here have ASIC's and 240v accessible lines in their homes? Little to none.
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - iNviZ - Jul 12, 2022
They own 65% of wind farms in NM, plus in Amarillo TX they have thousands of wind generators, in a month they will be pumping out energy, late August wind always goes nuts in this part of the states.
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - Gary - Jul 13, 2022
(Jul 12, 2022 04:24 PM)vvvvvvvvvb Wrote: Time for people to move over to XMR which is mined on consumer grade hardware.
Is there any good threads here to read up on regarding mining? Currently mine BTC with my 3070TI since I don't pay for electricity.
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - Gary - Jul 13, 2022
(Jul 13, 2022 07:08 AM)vvvvvvvvvb Wrote: Not on the forum specifically to mining, but the community website and monero subreddit has a lot of valuable information.
https://www.getmonero.org/get-started/mining/
reddit.com/r/monero/
Thanks, I wonder if someone could take their time to write something up here as well. Just for an ease of access.
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - Lilith - Jul 13, 2022
(Jul 13, 2022 07:09 AM)Gary. Wrote: Thanks, I wonder if someone could take their time to write something up here as well. Just for an ease of access.
Hm, good idea for a group effort.
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - Marvelous - Jul 13, 2022
Not only is bitcoin using more energy, but the world is using less energy. This is putting a huge target on BTC’s back as being bad for the environment, and no company wants to invest in something that is bad for the environment in todays age.
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - SIM-1169085 - Jul 13, 2022
Bitcoin will probably burn less electricity in the future.
There will be total of 21 million Bitcoins, and every four years there is reward halving. In order to burn the same amount of electricity, the price of bitcoin must double in dollar value every four years.
"It's the same situation as gold and gold mining. The marginal cost of gold mining tends to stay near the price of gold. Gold mining is a waste, but that waste is far less than the utility of having gold available as a medium of exchange.
I think the case will be the same for Bitcoin. The utility of the exchanges made possible by Bitcoin will far exceed the cost of electricity used. Therefore, not having Bitcoin would be the net waste." -Satoshi
CITES
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=721.msg8114#msg8114
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5285295.0
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - Lvl 69 Teemo - Jul 14, 2022
(Jul 13, 2022 07:08 AM)vvvvvvvvvb Wrote: Not on the forum specifically to mining, but the community website and monero subreddit has a lot of valuable information.
https://www.getmonero.org/get-started/mining/
reddit.com/r/monero/
Going to check this out. I personally haven't heard much of Monero at all. Super surprised to see it show up on this site tons
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - MavenGradle - Jul 14, 2022
Sorry shreder but we must be living in a different universe. I see what you wrote, but I can't make any sense of it. Bitcoin is still not down, so what exactly is your point? There is not a single point of failure when it comes to the bitcoin network as it stands today. Transactions are still going strong, the lightning network is still working as intended. So what?
Is bitcoin using a lot of energy? Yes, but less than the traditional banking sector.
Is bitcoin working as intended and are people able to use or not use it according to their choices? Yes.
Is ETH PoS ready and actively used and deployed in production and are transactions going through in production in ETH PoS? No.
Is ETH, today, using a lot of energy? YES.
Nice ETH shilling, I'll give you that but you might want to deal with the fact that the world isn't running on a single currency. It NEVER has and NEVER will and if you like the philosophical concepts the whitepapers of both BTC and ETH tell you, you should accept this fact.. In addition, you might also want to consider the possibility that ETH isn't going to go PoS in production for quite some time and until then, what exactly is the point of you saying it uses less energy whereas in reality ETH is still not a Proof of Stake blockchain?
What you're doing is called pointless shitposting in my opinion or comparing today's space rockets with tomorrows near-light speed rockets and telling everyone to switch to the newer rockets whereas they don't even exist yet. How does that make any sense? Do you have a secret and working time machine you're not telling us about? If so, please bring those terminator machines back..
I'm not even getting started about the fact that today's bitcoin will be very different than tomorrow's bitcoin and many energy optimizing techniques can and will be implemented as well but I can keep talking about the future too.. It's just absolutely pointless given with what we're stuck with TODAY. Complete MOOT.
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - shreder - Jul 14, 2022
(Jul 14, 2022 05:49 AM)MavenGradle Wrote: Sorry shreder but we must be living in a different universe. I see what you wrote, but I can't make any sense of it. Bitcoin is still not down, so what exactly is your point? There is not a single point of failure when it comes to the bitcoin network as it stands today. Transactions are still going strong, the lightning network is still working as intended. So what?
Is bitcoin using a lot of energy? Yes, but less than the traditional banking sector.
Is bitcoin working as intended and are people able to use or not use it according to their choices? Yes.
Is ETH PoS ready and actively used and deployed in production and are transactions going through in production in ETH PoS? No.
Is ETH, today, using a lot of energy? YES.
Nice ETH shilling, I'll give you that but you might want to deal with the fact that the world isn't running on a single currency. It NEVER has and NEVER will and if you like the philosophical concepts the whitepapers of both BTC and ETH tell you, you should accept this fact.. In addition, you might also want to consider the possibility that ETH isn't going to go PoS in production for quite some time and until then, what exactly is the point of you saying it uses less energy whereas in reality ETH is still not a Proof of Stake blockchain?
What you're doing is called pointless shitposting in my opinion or comparing today's space rockets with tomorrows near-light speed rockets and telling everyone to switch to the newer rockets whereas they don't even exist yet. How does that make any sense? Do you have a secret and working time machine you're not telling us about? If so, please bring those terminator machines back..
I'm not even getting started about the fact that today's bitcoin will be very different than tomorrow's bitcoin and many energy optimizing techniques can and will be implemented as well but I can keep talking about the future too.. It's just absolutely pointless given with what we're stuck with TODAY. Complete MOOT.
Woah, take it easy man. ETH validators have been running since December 2020, it's no moot that they are consuming 99.999% less than mining already right now... right this second.
What I'm trying to get at is BTC is not as resilient as it seems and it can be more resilient. This obviously got you triggered because you could only comprehend the surface-level context. Others already realized the thread's deeper understanding, as they branched off talking about XMR, which does allow for running on consumer-grade hardware. You are telling me you did not get it? Everyone else did.
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - MavenGradle - Jul 14, 2022
(Jul 14, 2022 07:36 AM)shreder Wrote: What I'm trying to get at is BTC is not as resilient as it seems and it can be more resilient.
You can literally have a Ledger and/or keep your private keys somewhere safe but a hammer to the face will more than likely make you give up your keys. In addition, if a government really wants to stop BTC or ETH for that matter, it most certainly can. Neither BTC, ETH or any other blockchain is 100% resilient against external factors. It doesn't matter if ETH blockchain runs on your phone, your raspberry pi, your server mainframe, or wherever (but remember, ETH is not a PoS blockchain YET so it doesn't run on your phone the way we would want it to, TODAY).
If tomorrow you get jailed for using or running ETH because of a new law for whatever reason, does it really make a difference? (The answer is no)
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - shreder - Jul 14, 2022
(Jul 14, 2022 07:52 AM)MavenGradle Wrote: You can literally have a Ledger and/or keep your private keys somewhere safe but a hammer to the face will more than likely make you give up your keys. In addition, if a government really wants to stop BTC or ETH for that matter, it most certainly can. Neither BTC, ETH or any other blockchain is 100% resilient against external factors. It doesn't matter if ETH blockchain runs on your phone, your raspberry pi, your server mainframe, or wherever (but remember, ETH is not a PoS blockchain YET so it doesn't run on your phone the way we would want it to, TODAY).
If tomorrow you get jailed for using or running ETH because of a new law for whatever reason, does it really make a difference? (The answer is no)
I'm curious as to how they would figure out I run off consumer-grade hardware that is 10-20 watts capable of running off solar/wind. So I might not even be on the grid, internet I run the node & validator off tor. There is really no way to tell that I am running ETH.
If I had multiple 2400-5000W ASICs they can analyze the grid to see if I am drawing too much power, Or have a large amount of renewable energy equipment. Not only that but ASICs are not easily accessible, I cannot walk to Best buy and buy one. Government can track the supply through imports.
XMR is a great example of a more resilient network as others have said, primarily being the fact that it runs off easily accessible consumer-grade hardware. What are you going to say now that XMR does not exist YET TODAY? 🤣🤣
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - MavenGradle - Jul 14, 2022
(Jul 14, 2022 08:06 AM)shreder Wrote: I'm curious as to how they would figure out I run off consumer-grade hardware that is 10-20 watts capable of running off solar/wind. So I might not even be on the grid, internet I run the node & validator off tor. There is really no way to tell that I am running ETH.
If I had multiple 2400-5000W ASICs they can analyze the grid to see if I am drawing too much power, Or have a large amount of renewable energy equipment. Not only that but ASICs are not easily accessible, I cannot walk to Best buy and buy one. Government can track the supply through imports.
XMR is a great example of a more resilient network as others have said, primarily being the fact that it runs off easily accessible consumer-grade hardware. What are you going to say now that XMR does not exist YET TODAY? 🤣🤣
Power spikes are just one way to theoretically identify illicit users.
People were curious how the FBI etc. caught criminals behind TOR network before cryptocurrency was a thing, but it's very much possible to sniff packets to look for specific patterns or features to identify users or strip certificates etc. Same goes for torrenting networks; there are specific technical ways in which these things can be traced. For torrents, for example, all you need do is simply track the trackers.. DHT network has some inherent design patterns that also make it possible to identify them if you have full control over the network..
TOR is most certainly a safer alternative, but it would be unwise to think that TOR offers ultimate protection when it comes to privacy.
In case of XMR for example, since you brought it up for no reason to be honest, if they really wanted to, how difficult do you think it would be to figure out who's connected to all the mining pools? The bits and bytes of things on a technical level are terribly easy to figure out.. These things have specific design patterns and bit and byte wise it can easily be identified. You send 256 bits with a specific design pattern followed by another 256 bits that conform with what you know to be the ETH network and off we go...
If you don't believe me, try going to China, Russia, North Korea right now and see how they handle their network traffic very differently than most other places do. The internet / TCPIP / UDP / gRPC / etc. are tools that can be manipulated to the core of its existence. The internet as we know it today is the most resilient network that exists, but if you cut a couple of cables under the sea, you can quickly halt its workings, and you can even cut off countries / regions from the global network, like we could clearly see in Ukraine. What makes you think a cryptocurrency that uses the very infrastructure the internet is built upon cannot be entirely shutdown or closed off as well, just like countries can be? If you want to be a real jerk, you could even kill the internet off for humans by killing of the root DNS servers or alter them significantly. Altering DNS is something that is already done in many places to stop, for example, piracy with torrenting networks. In some countries, you simply cannot visit sites like TPB, RRBG, etc. and all it takes is a simple DNS change..
In a realistic sense, neither BTC, XMR, or ETH will be banned in our parts of the world because too many people are invested in it and see the advantages it brings to the table. It would be a politically unwise move to ban cryptocurrency. But yes, technically speaking it is perfectly possible to identify, track and trace people who do illegal things, which is why they don't even require cybercriminal's computers physically to know what they've been up to.. It just requires resources, time and money. Most crimes involving XMR are not worth looking into for police and that's the truth about XMR, nor is XMR banned in most parts of the world.
So since BTC, ETH and XMR aren't banned in most parts of the world, what difference does it make that you can mine XMR on a phone or run an ETH validator on a raspberry pi? The only difference right now is power consumption, but again, ETH is not a PoS blockchain YET and it might take a very long time before PoS goes into production for ETH. These ETH validators you say are running in PoS mode are still in a staging / testing environment and as such ETH is not a PoS blockchain.
RE: Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to conserve energy - shreder - Jul 14, 2022
(Jul 14, 2022 08:29 AM)MavenGradle Wrote: Power spikes are just one way to theoretically identify illicit users.
People were curious how the FBI etc. caught criminals behind TOR network before cryptocurrency was a thing, but it's very much possible to sniff packets to look for specific patterns or features to identify users or strip certificates etc. Same goes for torrenting networks; there are specific technical ways in which these things can be traced. For torrents, for example, all you need do is simply track the trackers.. DHT network has some inherent design patterns that also make it possible to identify them if you have full control over the network..
TOR is most certainly a safer alternative, but it would be unwise to think that TOR offers ultimate protection when it comes to privacy.
In case of XMR for example, since you brought it up for no reason to be honest, if they really wanted to, how difficult do you think it would be to figure out who's connected to all the mining pools? The bits and bytes of things on a technical level are terribly easy to figure out..
In a realistic sense, neither BTC, XMR, or ETH will be banned in our parts of the world because too many people are invested in it and see the advantages it brings to the table. It would be a politically unwise move. But yes, technically speaking it is perfectly possible to identify, track and trace people who do illegal things, which is why they don't even require cybercriminal's computers physically to know what they've been up to..
You want the MOST resilient network that's just how it works and that is how decentralization is going to last plain and simple. Of course, there is always some tiny nitpicking thing that you can do to root me out. But let's face it it's going to fucking HARD to find me running an ETH validator over TOR off-grid on decade-old second-hand consumer-grade hardware. Versus multiple 2400-5000w BTC mining rigs which can be seized at the port.
IT'S FACT that texas miners had to turn off their machines due to power concerns lowering hash rate resulting in lesser overall network security.