What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Whether or not you think bitcoin is a waste of energy based on usefulness is one thing.

What you can't argue though, is that bitcoin was literally designed to waste energy.  That's what proof of work is.  It requires the waste of energy to generate encrypted hex numbers - solving the hash.  Proof of work requires that nodes on a network provide evidence that they have wasted energy through expended computational power in order to achieve (theoretically) decentralized consensus.

A blockchain reward goes to the winner.  The other nodes do not "provide evidence that they have wasted energy".  They lose silently, without providing any evidence they did so.  The energy did not get thrown away, as you keep claiming with the word "waste", but rather went to securing the blockchain.  Bitcoin mining has to run at scale, at full speed, to prevent any smaller set of computers from creating a fake blockchain.

No, waste is an accurate word. Very close to 100% of the energy used by a CPU gets converted to heat. There's no physical end product coming out the end of a computer, just information. The heat generated is considered "waste heat" and it's a huge problem for data centers. A lot has gone into how to move all this waste heat, which is why large data centers are often located near bodies of cold water. Bitcoin's 95.5 TWh of energy consumption in 2022 pretty much all went up in heat. Physically speaking, it's no different than running a huge army of space heaters. Yes, it solved some math problems along the way and secured the block chain, but is that really worth the enormous energy expenditure?

Which is more likely: cpus use 0% energy, or you're confused?

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/what-is-the-average-cpu-power-effeciency.3548098/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power

[FINate]

Whether or not you think bitcoin is a waste of energy based on usefulness is one thing.

What you can't argue though, is that bitcoin was literally designed to waste energy.  That's what proof of work is.  It requires the waste of energy to generate encrypted hex numbers - solving the hash.  Proof of work requires that nodes on a network provide evidence that they have wasted energy through expended computational power in order to achieve (theoretically) decentralized consensus.

A blockchain reward goes to the winner.  The other nodes do not "provide evidence that they have wasted energy".  They lose silently, without providing any evidence they did so.  The energy did not get thrown away, as you keep claiming with the word "waste", but rather went to securing the blockchain.  Bitcoin mining has to run at scale, at full speed, to prevent any smaller set of computers from creating a fake blockchain.

No, waste is an accurate word. Very close to 100% of the energy used by a CPU gets converted to heat. There's no physical end product coming out the end of a computer, just information. The heat generated is considered "waste heat" and it's a huge problem for data centers. A lot has gone into how to move all this waste heat, which is why large data centers are often located near bodies of cold water. Bitcoin's 95.5 TWh of energy consumption in 2022 pretty much all went up in heat. Physically speaking, it's no different than running a huge army of space heaters. Yes, it solved some math problems along the way and secured the block chain, but is that really worth the enormous energy expenditure?

Which is more likely: cpus use 0% energy, or you're confused?

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/what-is-the-average-cpu-power-effeciency.3548098/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power

You do realize that the forum thread you posted proves my point, right?

CPUs are approximately 100% efficient at converting power to heat - practically every watt going under the IHS will ultimately come out as heat, though a small part of it will be dissipated by the PCB, traces and whatever is connected at the end of IO lanes.

Unless the goal of Bitcoin is to be a giant distributed resistive heater, all the "efficient" heat is waste heat.

[LateStarter]

Whether or not you think bitcoin is a waste of energy based on usefulness is one thing.

What you can't argue though, is that bitcoin was literally designed to waste energy.  That's what proof of work is.  It requires the waste of energy to generate encrypted hex numbers - solving the hash.  Proof of work requires that nodes on a network provide evidence that they have wasted energy through expended computational power in order to achieve (theoretically) decentralized consensus.

A blockchain reward goes to the winner.  The other nodes do not "provide evidence that they have wasted energy".  They lose silently, without providing any evidence they did so.  The energy did not get thrown away, as you keep claiming with the word "waste", but rather went to securing the blockchain.  Bitcoin mining has to run at scale, at full speed, to prevent any smaller set of computers from creating a fake blockchain.

No, waste is an accurate word. Very close to 100% of the energy used by a CPU gets converted to heat. There's no physical end product coming out the end of a computer, just information. The heat generated is considered "waste heat" and it's a huge problem for data centers. A lot has gone into how to move all this waste heat, which is why large data centers are often located near bodies of cold water. Bitcoin's 95.5 TWh of energy consumption in 2022 pretty much all went up in heat. Physically speaking, it's no different than running a huge army of space heaters. Yes, it solved some math problems along the way and secured the block chain, but is that really worth the enormous energy expenditure?

It's obviously true that Bitcoin mining results in some waste heat. That's true for all computing processes** - whether CPU, abacus or synapse, etc. In fact, it's true for every aspect of the entirety of human action since the dawn of time. EVERYTHING we do results in some waste energy. The point you are making is a truism, it's a non-point.

The only interesting question is whether Bitcoin nets out as 'a waste of energy', ie. whether the output is more valuable than the total energy input -  and that's a subjective question.


Also, compare:
The structure of Fort Knox is the consequence of a big expenditure of energy, and the only reason that much energy was expended was to ensure that no wannabe gold thieves could break in without a correspondingly big expenditure of energy - an amount that's generally out of reach. A simple fence would have cost far less energy to build, but it would also require far less energy to breach - an amount that's widely available. The fact that the construction of Fort Knox required a big expenditure of energy is not a problem, it's not a failing - it's the whole point. Fort Knox is a big wall of security energy that could only be breached by a big force of attack energy.

I'll go out on a limb and state a general rule that:
Only a high energy defence can reliably resist high energy attacks.



**
Electricity generation worldwide in 2022 = 30,000 TWh
Computers, data centers and networks consume 10% of the world's electricity.
3,000 TWh 'wasted' on "just information".

[FINate]

Whether or not you think bitcoin is a waste of energy based on usefulness is one thing.

What you can't argue though, is that bitcoin was literally designed to waste energy.  That's what proof of work is.  It requires the waste of energy to generate encrypted hex numbers - solving the hash.  Proof of work requires that nodes on a network provide evidence that they have wasted energy through expended computational power in order to achieve (theoretically) decentralized consensus.

A blockchain reward goes to the winner.  The other nodes do not "provide evidence that they have wasted energy".  They lose silently, without providing any evidence they did so.  The energy did not get thrown away, as you keep claiming with the word "waste", but rather went to securing the blockchain.  Bitcoin mining has to run at scale, at full speed, to prevent any smaller set of computers from creating a fake blockchain.

No, waste is an accurate word. Very close to 100% of the energy used by a CPU gets converted to heat. There's no physical end product coming out the end of a computer, just information. The heat generated is considered "waste heat" and it's a huge problem for data centers. A lot has gone into how to move all this waste heat, which is why large data centers are often located near bodies of cold water. Bitcoin's 95.5 TWh of energy consumption in 2022 pretty much all went up in heat. Physically speaking, it's no different than running a huge army of space heaters. Yes, it solved some math problems along the way and secured the block chain, but is that really worth the enormous energy expenditure?

It's obviously true that Bitcoin mining results in some waste heat. That's true for all computing processes** - whether CPU, abacus or synapse, etc. In fact, it's true for every aspect of the entirety of human action since the dawn of time. EVERYTHING we do results in some waste energy. The point you are making is a truism, it's a non-point.

The only interesting question is whether Bitcoin nets out as 'a waste of energy', ie. whether the output is more valuable than the total energy input -  and that's a subjective question.


Also, compare:
The structure of Fort Knox is the consequence of a big expenditure of energy, and the only reason that much energy was expended was to ensure that no wannabe gold thieves could break in without a correspondingly big expenditure of energy - an amount that's generally out of reach. A simple fence would have cost far less energy to build, but it would also require far less energy to breach - an amount that's widely available. The fact that the construction of Fort Knox required a big expenditure of energy is not a problem, it's not a failing - it's the whole point. Fort Knox is a big wall of security energy that could only be breached by a big force of attack energy.

I'll go out on a limb and state a general rule that:
Only a high energy defence can reliably resist high energy attacks.



**
Electricity generation worldwide in 2022 = 30,000 TWh
Computers, data centers and networks consume 10% of the world's electricity.
3,000 TWh 'wasted' on "just information".

Yes, all computing requires energy. As the number of computations increases, so does the energy consumption. None of this is in dispute.

By definition, then, Proof of Work is designed to consume energy.

Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party (the prover) proves to others (the verifiers) that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended.

What really matters is how efficiently these computational cycles are being used. So it's sensible to compare the energy expenditure per transaction . A single BTC transaction consumes around 703 kWh, whereas 100,000 VISA transactions requires around 149 kWh (source). The efficiency difference is just astounding, with BTC transactions consuming 471,812 times the energy of a VISA transaction. Can you really tell us that you think this isn't horribly wasteful?

ETA: To help put these numbers into perspective, a dishwasher uses around 1.5 kWh per load. Which means a BTC transaction uses around 466 dishwasher loads of electricity. My household does about one load of dishes per day, so a single BTC transaction uses more electricity than my household of 4 uses doing dishes for a year. Com'on, that's grotesque.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Whether or not you think bitcoin is a waste of energy based on usefulness is one thing.

What you can't argue though, is that bitcoin was literally designed to waste energy.  That's what proof of work is.  It requires the waste of energy to generate encrypted hex numbers - solving the hash.  Proof of work requires that nodes on a network provide evidence that they have wasted energy through expended computational power in order to achieve (theoretically) decentralized consensus.

A blockchain reward goes to the winner.  The other nodes do not "provide evidence that they have wasted energy".  They lose silently, without providing any evidence they did so.  The energy did not get thrown away, as you keep claiming with the word "waste", but rather went to securing the blockchain.  Bitcoin mining has to run at scale, at full speed, to prevent any smaller set of computers from creating a fake blockchain.

No, waste is an accurate word. Very close to 100% of the energy used by a CPU gets converted to heat. There's no physical end product coming out the end of a computer, just information. The heat generated is considered "waste heat" and it's a huge problem for data centers. A lot has gone into how to move all this waste heat, which is why large data centers are often located near bodies of cold water. Bitcoin's 95.5 TWh of energy consumption in 2022 pretty much all went up in heat. Physically speaking, it's no different than running a huge army of space heaters. Yes, it solved some math problems along the way and secured the block chain, but is that really worth the enormous energy expenditure?

Which is more likely: cpus use 0% energy, or you're confused?

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/what-is-the-average-cpu-power-effeciency.3548098/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power

You do realize that the forum thread you posted proves my point, right?

CPUs are approximately 100% efficient at converting power to heat - practically every watt going under the IHS will ultimately come out as heat, though a small part of it will be dissipated by the PCB, traces and whatever is connected at the end of IO lanes.

Unless the goal of Bitcoin is to be a giant distributed resistive heater, all the "efficient" heat is waste heat.

You missed that poster being corrected:

You are confusing TDP with power
...
I think you are mixing up TDP (Thermal Design Power ) with power usage (Watts).
TDP is not a measure of power power consumption....even though TDP is correlated with power consumption. The more power CPU uses the higher the TDP.

Comparing the electrical and thermal energies doesn't tell you much either.
Take a FX8350, probably 100W of electrical and thermal power output.
Take an i5-3570k, probably 65W of electrical and maybe 90w of thermal power
...
Comparing Electrical to thermal power ratings just tells electrically how efficient it is great if you are looking at a heater, but it could bare no relationship to it's computational effectiveness, it's more likely to tell you how they measure TDP.

Cpus do not run on zero energy, nor do they generate free energy (65W vs 90W).  That's why I linked to the wikipedia entry for TDP, which also shows who was correct in that discussion.

[FINate]

Whether or not you think bitcoin is a waste of energy based on usefulness is one thing.

What you can't argue though, is that bitcoin was literally designed to waste energy.  That's what proof of work is.  It requires the waste of energy to generate encrypted hex numbers - solving the hash.  Proof of work requires that nodes on a network provide evidence that they have wasted energy through expended computational power in order to achieve (theoretically) decentralized consensus.

A blockchain reward goes to the winner.  The other nodes do not "provide evidence that they have wasted energy".  They lose silently, without providing any evidence they did so.  The energy did not get thrown away, as you keep claiming with the word "waste", but rather went to securing the blockchain.  Bitcoin mining has to run at scale, at full speed, to prevent any smaller set of computers from creating a fake blockchain.

No, waste is an accurate word. Very close to 100% of the energy used by a CPU gets converted to heat. There's no physical end product coming out the end of a computer, just information. The heat generated is considered "waste heat" and it's a huge problem for data centers. A lot has gone into how to move all this waste heat, which is why large data centers are often located near bodies of cold water. Bitcoin's 95.5 TWh of energy consumption in 2022 pretty much all went up in heat. Physically speaking, it's no different than running a huge army of space heaters. Yes, it solved some math problems along the way and secured the block chain, but is that really worth the enormous energy expenditure?

Which is more likely: cpus use 0% energy, or you're confused?

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/what-is-the-average-cpu-power-effeciency.3548098/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power

You do realize that the forum thread you posted proves my point, right?

CPUs are approximately 100% efficient at converting power to heat - practically every watt going under the IHS will ultimately come out as heat, though a small part of it will be dissipated by the PCB, traces and whatever is connected at the end of IO lanes.

Unless the goal of Bitcoin is to be a giant distributed resistive heater, all the "efficient" heat is waste heat.

You missed that poster being corrected:

You are confusing TDP with power
...
I think you are mixing up TDP (Thermal Design Power ) with power usage (Watts).
TDP is not a measure of power power consumption....even though TDP is correlated with power consumption. The more power CPU uses the higher the TDP.

Comparing the electrical and thermal energies doesn't tell you much either.
Take a FX8350, probably 100W of electrical and thermal power output.
Take an i5-3570k, probably 65W of electrical and maybe 90w of thermal power
...
Comparing Electrical to thermal power ratings just tells electrically how efficient it is great if you are looking at a heater, but it could bare no relationship to it's computational effectiveness, it's more likely to tell you how they measure TDP.

Cpus do not run on zero energy, nor do they generate free energy (65W vs 90W).  That's why I linked to the wikipedia entry for TDP, which also shows who was correct in that discussion.

I did not address TDP because it's not relevant to this discussion. From the Wikipedia you linked:

The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point, is the maximum amount of heat generated by a computer chip or component (often a CPU, GPU or system on a chip) that the cooling system in a computer is designed to dissipate under any workload.

TDP is about the capacity of cooling systems, and the maximum amount of heat they can remove to keep the CPU from overheating. I was being nice by skipping over this, because, frankly, it shows that you don't really know what you're talking about and are just grasping at whatever you can find online.

The fact is, almost 100% of the electricity consumed by CPUs (and GPUs, most of this stuff is actually using GPU farms), ends up as waste heat.

I spent a good amount of my career building large scale distributed systems at Google. I managed a service that ran on 100k CPU cores. TDP is absolutely essential because all those CPUs consume so much energy, and that energy ends up as heat. I became friends with a guy on the Google Bus who was a Thermal Engineer, and his entire job was designing industrial heat exchangers. Why did Google hire this guy and his team? Because some of our huge data centers were cooled by river water.

So when I reference a BTC transaction consuming 703 kWh (estimates vary, so I picked on one the lower end), which you conveniently ignored, I'm talking actual power consumption by the BTC ecosystem, not the TDP. This is actual used energy per transaction, which is converted to heat and dissipated by individual cooling systems. 

[Telecaster]

Still focused on 'means of exchange' ? Speculation on growth - leading to Store of Value and Unit of Account is where it's at, especially for us fortunate ones in the wealthier nations.
The 'means of exchange' will start, and is starting, in the poorer places - they need something better than their weak currencies asap. I haven't tried to track progress recently and a quick look revealed the usual vague 'crypto' references and lots of both-ways bias. Actual progress being made in this area ? I don't know.

Thus far, Bitcoin is a story.    For Bitcoin to grow in a meaningful way, it needs to move beyond the story and provide utility <insert you idea of utility here> that's better than current alternatives.    We know objectively that Bitcoin is a worse payment system than the traditional finance system.     It is definitely not a unit of account.    Store of value is a little bit of a question mark.   It works if you time your entry points correctly.  However, most people don't have that ability.  I know I don't.   So there remains the chicken and egg problem.  For it Bitcoin to increase in value, more people need to want to own it than currently want to own it.   And beyond the story, there is no real reason for most people to own it. 

[LateStarter]

Whether or not you think bitcoin is a waste of energy based on usefulness is one thing.

What you can't argue though, is that bitcoin was literally designed to waste energy.  That's what proof of work is.  It requires the waste of energy to generate encrypted hex numbers - solving the hash.  Proof of work requires that nodes on a network provide evidence that they have wasted energy through expended computational power in order to achieve (theoretically) decentralized consensus.

A blockchain reward goes to the winner.  The other nodes do not "provide evidence that they have wasted energy".  They lose silently, without providing any evidence they did so.  The energy did not get thrown away, as you keep claiming with the word "waste", but rather went to securing the blockchain.  Bitcoin mining has to run at scale, at full speed, to prevent any smaller set of computers from creating a fake blockchain.

No, waste is an accurate word. Very close to 100% of the energy used by a CPU gets converted to heat. There's no physical end product coming out the end of a computer, just information. The heat generated is considered "waste heat" and it's a huge problem for data centers. A lot has gone into how to move all this waste heat, which is why large data centers are often located near bodies of cold water. Bitcoin's 95.5 TWh of energy consumption in 2022 pretty much all went up in heat. Physically speaking, it's no different than running a huge army of space heaters. Yes, it solved some math problems along the way and secured the block chain, but is that really worth the enormous energy expenditure?

It's obviously true that Bitcoin mining results in some waste heat. That's true for all computing processes** - whether CPU, abacus or synapse, etc. In fact, it's true for every aspect of the entirety of human action since the dawn of time. EVERYTHING we do results in some waste energy. The point you are making is a truism, it's a non-point.

The only interesting question is whether Bitcoin nets out as 'a waste of energy', ie. whether the output is more valuable than the total energy input -  and that's a subjective question.


Also, compare:
The structure of Fort Knox is the consequence of a big expenditure of energy, and the only reason that much energy was expended was to ensure that no wannabe gold thieves could break in without a correspondingly big expenditure of energy - an amount that's generally out of reach. A simple fence would have cost far less energy to build, but it would also require far less energy to breach - an amount that's widely available. The fact that the construction of Fort Knox required a big expenditure of energy is not a problem, it's not a failing - it's the whole point. Fort Knox is a big wall of security energy that could only be breached by a big force of attack energy.

I'll go out on a limb and state a general rule that:
Only a high energy defence can reliably resist high energy attacks.



**
Electricity generation worldwide in 2022 = 30,000 TWh
Computers, data centers and networks consume 10% of the world's electricity.
3,000 TWh 'wasted' on "just information".

Yes, all computing requires energy. As the number of computations increases, so does the energy consumption. None of this is in dispute.

By definition, then, Proof of Work is designed to consume energy.

Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party (the prover) proves to others (the verifiers) that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended.

Aah, we're getting closer. At least we've progressed from 'designed to waste energy'.

However, your link text badly misquotes the source. Here's what it says (my bold): "The purpose of proof-of-work algorithms is not proving that certain work was carried out or that a computational puzzle was "solved", but deterring manipulation of data by establishing large energy and hardware-control requirements to be able to do so."

PoW was not designed to consume energy. PoW was designed to provide security - and reliable security unavoidably requires a lot of energy - just like Fort Knox as described above.

What really matters is how efficiently these computational cycles are being used. So it's sensible to compare the energy expenditure per transaction . A single BTC transaction consumes around 703 kWh, whereas 100,000 VISA transactions requires around 149 kWh (source). The efficiency difference is just astounding, with BTC transactions consuming 471,812 times the energy of a VISA transaction. Can you really tell us that you think this isn't horribly wasteful?

ETA: To help put these numbers into perspective, a dishwasher uses around 1.5 kWh per load. Which means a BTC transaction uses around 466 dishwasher loads of electricity. My household does about one load of dishes per day, so a single BTC transaction uses more electricity than my household of 4 uses doing dishes for a year. Com'on, that's grotesque.

I think you know as well as I do that the Bitcoin vs Visa comparison is a completely lame and irrelevant comparison.

A Bitcoin transaction is an all-encompassing final settlement, it's the entire story, the end.

A Visa transaction is a small part of a complete transaction - it is not final settlement. Furthermore, Visa sits on top of a multitude of other banking, currency, security, etc. systems - it is very far from 'the entire story'. Aside from the obvious additional transaction elements leading to final settlement, Visa is dependent on the legitimacy of currency which is, in turn, dependent on Gov power which is, in turn, dependent on military power, etc. etc. etc. I doubt it's possible to calculate the true cost of a Bitcoin_equivalent_fully_accounted_to_final_settlement_Visa_transaction as it's distributed far and wide in a thousand pieces.

A Lightning transaction is probably a good-enough equivalent to a Visa transaction.

[LateStarter]

Still focused on 'means of exchange' ? Speculation on growth - leading to Store of Value and Unit of Account is where it's at, especially for us fortunate ones in the wealthier nations.
The 'means of exchange' will start, and is starting, in the poorer places - they need something better than their weak currencies asap. I haven't tried to track progress recently and a quick look revealed the usual vague 'crypto' references and lots of both-ways bias. Actual progress being made in this area ? I don't know.

Thus far, Bitcoin is a story.    For Bitcoin to grow in a meaningful way, it needs to move beyond the story and provide utility <insert you idea of utility here> that's better than current alternatives.    We know objectively that Bitcoin is a worse payment system than the traditional finance system.     It is definitely not a unit of account.    Store of value is a little bit of a question mark.   It works if you time your entry points correctly.  However, most people don't have that ability.  I know I don't.   So there remains the chicken and egg problem.  For it Bitcoin to increase in value, more people need to want to own it than currently want to own it.   And beyond the story, there is no real reason for most people to own it.

Bitcoin is a worse payment system than the traditional finance system ?
Probably, for buying a coffee in the US - and will probably remain so for a long time.
Maybe not for larger amounts and/or less developed places.
And Lightning is developing quickly - watch this space.

It is definitely not a unit of account ?
Not currently for most people in any practical sense, no.
Some are using it as such but Bitcoin needs to be much larger (and hence, more stable) for wider recognition as a UoA.
Note that the USD is a pretty poor UoA too - it's hardly a stable datum.

Store of value is a little bit of a question mark. It works if you time your entry points correctly. ?
Not so. It works reliably if your timescale is appropriate. Especially, if you DCA, ie. don't try to time your entry points at all.
Some are using it as such but Bitcoin needs to be much larger (and hence, more stable) for wider recognition as a SoV.

Again, the reason (for a wealthy person in a stable country) to own Bitcoin is mainly speculation on it becoming a general SoV and general UoA and more widely used as general MoE. If Bitcoin reaches it's full potential, we will all individually decide when it becomes a SoV and UoA for us, and maybe MoE too.

The chicken and egg problem is mostly a myth imo.
No telephones without telephone lines but no telephone lines without telephones. It'll never happen. etc. etc.

Looking at the broad trend - regardless of your dim view, Bitcoin is growing - and it's interested_audience is broadening. There's plenty of reasons to think it will continue to grow - probably at an accelerating rate as it becomes more understood and more attractive to more and more people. We're quite low on the potential S-curve.

[seattlecyclone]

Note that the USD is a pretty poor UoA too - it's hardly a stable datum.

It's way more stable than Bitcoin ever has been or shows any sign of ever being. If I promise to give you US$1,000 a year from now or a decade from now I have a pretty good sense for what I'm getting into. Due to consistent inflation I can expect I won't be giving up quite as much value as I would be giving up if I gave you US$1,000 today, but the error bars around what US$1,000 will be worth in the short to medium term aren't actually that big. Compare that to if I promise to give you 0.1 BTC in ten years. I have literally no idea what I just promised. If you're right about BTC's long-term trajectory I might owe you a car or even a house. If I'm right I might owe you a pizza.

Store of value is a little bit of a question mark. It works if you time your entry points correctly. ?
Not so. It works reliably if your timescale is appropriate.

There is far from sufficient data on this point. BTC has trended upward so far, but the track record just isn't there for most people to have any confidence it will stay that way in the long run. I have reason to expect an ounce of gold will hold its value pretty well over my lifetime because it has already done so for most of human history. BTC is a comparative blip in the timeline.

[FINate]

Whether or not you think bitcoin is a waste of energy based on usefulness is one thing.

What you can't argue though, is that bitcoin was literally designed to waste energy.  That's what proof of work is.  It requires the waste of energy to generate encrypted hex numbers - solving the hash.  Proof of work requires that nodes on a network provide evidence that they have wasted energy through expended computational power in order to achieve (theoretically) decentralized consensus.

A blockchain reward goes to the winner.  The other nodes do not "provide evidence that they have wasted energy".  They lose silently, without providing any evidence they did so.  The energy did not get thrown away, as you keep claiming with the word "waste", but rather went to securing the blockchain.  Bitcoin mining has to run at scale, at full speed, to prevent any smaller set of computers from creating a fake blockchain.

No, waste is an accurate word. Very close to 100% of the energy used by a CPU gets converted to heat. There's no physical end product coming out the end of a computer, just information. The heat generated is considered "waste heat" and it's a huge problem for data centers. A lot has gone into how to move all this waste heat, which is why large data centers are often located near bodies of cold water. Bitcoin's 95.5 TWh of energy consumption in 2022 pretty much all went up in heat. Physically speaking, it's no different than running a huge army of space heaters. Yes, it solved some math problems along the way and secured the block chain, but is that really worth the enormous energy expenditure?

It's obviously true that Bitcoin mining results in some waste heat. That's true for all computing processes** - whether CPU, abacus or synapse, etc. In fact, it's true for every aspect of the entirety of human action since the dawn of time. EVERYTHING we do results in some waste energy. The point you are making is a truism, it's a non-point.

The only interesting question is whether Bitcoin nets out as 'a waste of energy', ie. whether the output is more valuable than the total energy input -  and that's a subjective question.


Also, compare:
The structure of Fort Knox is the consequence of a big expenditure of energy, and the only reason that much energy was expended was to ensure that no wannabe gold thieves could break in without a correspondingly big expenditure of energy - an amount that's generally out of reach. A simple fence would have cost far less energy to build, but it would also require far less energy to breach - an amount that's widely available. The fact that the construction of Fort Knox required a big expenditure of energy is not a problem, it's not a failing - it's the whole point. Fort Knox is a big wall of security energy that could only be breached by a big force of attack energy.

I'll go out on a limb and state a general rule that:
Only a high energy defence can reliably resist high energy attacks.



**
Electricity generation worldwide in 2022 = 30,000 TWh
Computers, data centers and networks consume 10% of the world's electricity.
3,000 TWh 'wasted' on "just information".

Yes, all computing requires energy. As the number of computations increases, so does the energy consumption. None of this is in dispute.

By definition, then, Proof of Work is designed to consume energy.

Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party (the prover) proves to others (the verifiers) that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended.

Aah, we're getting closer. At least we've progressed from 'designed to waste energy'.

However, your link text badly misquotes the source. Here's what it says (my bold): "The purpose of proof-of-work algorithms is not proving that certain work was carried out or that a computational puzzle was "solved", but deterring manipulation of data by establishing large energy and hardware-control requirements to be able to do so."

PoW was not designed to consume energy. PoW was designed to provide security - and reliable security unavoidably requires a lot of energy - just like Fort Knox as described above.

What really matters is how efficiently these computational cycles are being used. So it's sensible to compare the energy expenditure per transaction . A single BTC transaction consumes around 703 kWh, whereas 100,000 VISA transactions requires around 149 kWh (source). The efficiency difference is just astounding, with BTC transactions consuming 471,812 times the energy of a VISA transaction. Can you really tell us that you think this isn't horribly wasteful?

ETA: To help put these numbers into perspective, a dishwasher uses around 1.5 kWh per load. Which means a BTC transaction uses around 466 dishwasher loads of electricity. My household does about one load of dishes per day, so a single BTC transaction uses more electricity than my household of 4 uses doing dishes for a year. Com'on, that's grotesque.

I think you know as well as I do that the Bitcoin vs Visa comparison is a completely lame and irrelevant comparison.

A Bitcoin transaction is an all-encompassing final settlement, it's the entire story, the end.

A Visa transaction is a small part of a complete transaction - it is not final settlement. Furthermore, Visa sits on top of a multitude of other banking, currency, security, etc. systems - it is very far from 'the entire story'. Aside from the obvious additional transaction elements leading to final settlement, Visa is dependent on the legitimacy of currency which is, in turn, dependent on Gov power which is, in turn, dependent on military power, etc. etc. etc. I doubt it's possible to calculate the true cost of a Bitcoin_equivalent_fully_accounted_to_final_settlement_Visa_transaction as it's distributed far and wide in a thousand pieces.

A Lightning transaction is probably a good-enough equivalent to a Visa transaction.

Nope! Not letting you just make that semantic shift. What part of "certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended" don't you understand. The reason it's called Proof of Work is that it's designed to be computationally intensive. And the competitive nature of Bitcoin mining means that around 99.99% of this computational work is discarded (source). In very real, physical terms, computational effort == work == energy consumption. It is indeed quite accurate to say Bitcoin is designed to waste energy.

And the Bitcoin vs VISA comparison is absolutely fair. We're talking about monetary transactions. I enter my CC number, and the VISA transaction completes the order. Yes, there is some other overhead associated with these transactions. But the same is true for Bitcoin. Mining operations require buildings, and server infrastructure to manage and monitor the mining.

[LateStarter]

Note that the USD is a pretty poor UoA too - it's hardly a stable datum.

It's way more stable than Bitcoin ever has been or shows any sign of ever being. If I promise to give you US$1,000 a year from now or a decade from now I have a pretty good sense for what I'm getting into. Due to consistent inflation I can expect I won't be giving up quite as much value as I would be giving up if I gave you US$1,000 today, but the error bars around what US$1,000 will be worth in the short to medium term aren't actually that big. Compare that to if I promise to give you 0.1 BTC in ten years. I have literally no idea what I just promised. If you're right about BTC's long-term trajectory I might owe you a car or even a house. If I'm right I might owe you a pizza.

Well, yeah. I didn't claim otherwise (except for "or shows any sign of ever being" which is just an opinion).

My point was simply that the USD is not a stable datum. We generally measure things against a stable datum - and the USD ain't one, not even close.

Store of value is a little bit of a question mark. It works if you time your entry points correctly. ?
Not so. It works reliably if your timescale is appropriate.

There is far from sufficient data on this point. BTC has trended upward so far, but the track record just isn't there for most people to have any confidence it will stay that way in the long run. I have reason to expect an ounce of gold will hold its value pretty well over my lifetime because it has already done so for most of human history. BTC is a comparative blip in the timeline.

That, again, is a matter of opinion. Existing history + BitcoinUnderstanding is enough for some. It's enough for me.

And I clearly said it's currently too small and volatile for most people in the sentence following where you chopped me off in your 'quote'.

If you prefer to wait for a longer time period, maybe even one equivalent to 'human history' to gather sufficient data, that's your choice. Knock yourself out.

[seattlecyclone]

Note that the USD is a pretty poor UoA too - it's hardly a stable datum.

It's way more stable than Bitcoin ever has been or shows any sign of ever being. If I promise to give you US$1,000 a year from now or a decade from now I have a pretty good sense for what I'm getting into. Due to consistent inflation I can expect I won't be giving up quite as much value as I would be giving up if I gave you US$1,000 today, but the error bars around what US$1,000 will be worth in the short to medium term aren't actually that big. Compare that to if I promise to give you 0.1 BTC in ten years. I have literally no idea what I just promised. If you're right about BTC's long-term trajectory I might owe you a car or even a house. If I'm right I might owe you a pizza.

Well, yeah. I didn't claim otherwise (except for "or shows any sign of ever being" which is just an opinion).

My point was simply that the USD is not a stable datum. We generally measure things against a stable datum - and the USD ain't one, not even close.

We use the units we have. USD is a better unit of account than BTC because even though it is not a perfectly "stable datum" it's miles closer to being one than BTC ever has been or shows any signs of being. Yes, that's an opinion, but it's an informed one. Bitcoin has been much more volatile than all major fiat currencies for its entire existence. What evidence is there that this is at all likely to change going forward?

Store of value is a little bit of a question mark. It works if you time your entry points correctly. ?
Not so. It works reliably if your timescale is appropriate.

There is far from sufficient data on this point. BTC has trended upward so far, but the track record just isn't there for most people to have any confidence it will stay that way in the long run. I have reason to expect an ounce of gold will hold its value pretty well over my lifetime because it has already done so for most of human history. BTC is a comparative blip in the timeline.

That, again, is a matter of opinion. Existing history + BitcoinUnderstanding is enough for some. It's enough for me.

And I clearly said it's currently too small and volatile for most people in the sentence following where you chopped me off in your 'quote'.

If you prefer to wait for a longer time period, maybe even one equivalent to 'human history' to gather sufficient data, that's your choice. Knock yourself out.

If I'm looking for something to serve as a store of value I will indeed base my decision on whether that thing has a reasonable history of being a store of value, yes. Thanks for your approval.

[LateStarter]

Whether or not you think bitcoin is a waste of energy based on usefulness is one thing.

What you can't argue though, is that bitcoin was literally designed to waste energy.  That's what proof of work is.  It requires the waste of energy to generate encrypted hex numbers - solving the hash.  Proof of work requires that nodes on a network provide evidence that they have wasted energy through expended computational power in order to achieve (theoretically) decentralized consensus.

A blockchain reward goes to the winner.  The other nodes do not "provide evidence that they have wasted energy".  They lose silently, without providing any evidence they did so.  The energy did not get thrown away, as you keep claiming with the word "waste", but rather went to securing the blockchain.  Bitcoin mining has to run at scale, at full speed, to prevent any smaller set of computers from creating a fake blockchain.

No, waste is an accurate word. Very close to 100% of the energy used by a CPU gets converted to heat. There's no physical end product coming out the end of a computer, just information. The heat generated is considered "waste heat" and it's a huge problem for data centers. A lot has gone into how to move all this waste heat, which is why large data centers are often located near bodies of cold water. Bitcoin's 95.5 TWh of energy consumption in 2022 pretty much all went up in heat. Physically speaking, it's no different than running a huge army of space heaters. Yes, it solved some math problems along the way and secured the block chain, but is that really worth the enormous energy expenditure?

It's obviously true that Bitcoin mining results in some waste heat. That's true for all computing processes** - whether CPU, abacus or synapse, etc. In fact, it's true for every aspect of the entirety of human action since the dawn of time. EVERYTHING we do results in some waste energy. The point you are making is a truism, it's a non-point.

The only interesting question is whether Bitcoin nets out as 'a waste of energy', ie. whether the output is more valuable than the total energy input -  and that's a subjective question.


Also, compare:
The structure of Fort Knox is the consequence of a big expenditure of energy, and the only reason that much energy was expended was to ensure that no wannabe gold thieves could break in without a correspondingly big expenditure of energy - an amount that's generally out of reach. A simple fence would have cost far less energy to build, but it would also require far less energy to breach - an amount that's widely available. The fact that the construction of Fort Knox required a big expenditure of energy is not a problem, it's not a failing - it's the whole point. Fort Knox is a big wall of security energy that could only be breached by a big force of attack energy.

I'll go out on a limb and state a general rule that:
Only a high energy defence can reliably resist high energy attacks.



**
Electricity generation worldwide in 2022 = 30,000 TWh
Computers, data centers and networks consume 10% of the world's electricity.
3,000 TWh 'wasted' on "just information".

Yes, all computing requires energy. As the number of computations increases, so does the energy consumption. None of this is in dispute.

By definition, then, Proof of Work is designed to consume energy.

Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party (the prover) proves to others (the verifiers) that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended.

Aah, we're getting closer. At least we've progressed from 'designed to waste energy'.

However, your link text badly misquotes the source. Here's what it says (my bold): "The purpose of proof-of-work algorithms is not proving that certain work was carried out or that a computational puzzle was "solved", but deterring manipulation of data by establishing large energy and hardware-control requirements to be able to do so."

PoW was not designed to consume energy. PoW was designed to provide security - and reliable security unavoidably requires a lot of energy - just like Fort Knox as described above.

What really matters is how efficiently these computational cycles are being used. So it's sensible to compare the energy expenditure per transaction . A single BTC transaction consumes around 703 kWh, whereas 100,000 VISA transactions requires around 149 kWh (source). The efficiency difference is just astounding, with BTC transactions consuming 471,812 times the energy of a VISA transaction. Can you really tell us that you think this isn't horribly wasteful?

ETA: To help put these numbers into perspective, a dishwasher uses around 1.5 kWh per load. Which means a BTC transaction uses around 466 dishwasher loads of electricity. My household does about one load of dishes per day, so a single BTC transaction uses more electricity than my household of 4 uses doing dishes for a year. Com'on, that's grotesque.

I think you know as well as I do that the Bitcoin vs Visa comparison is a completely lame and irrelevant comparison.

A Bitcoin transaction is an all-encompassing final settlement, it's the entire story, the end.

A Visa transaction is a small part of a complete transaction - it is not final settlement. Furthermore, Visa sits on top of a multitude of other banking, currency, security, etc. systems - it is very far from 'the entire story'. Aside from the obvious additional transaction elements leading to final settlement, Visa is dependent on the legitimacy of currency which is, in turn, dependent on Gov power which is, in turn, dependent on military power, etc. etc. etc. I doubt it's possible to calculate the true cost of a Bitcoin_equivalent_fully_accounted_to_final_settlement_Visa_transaction as it's distributed far and wide in a thousand pieces.

A Lightning transaction is probably a good-enough equivalent to a Visa transaction.

Nope! Not letting you just make that semantic shift. What part of "certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended" don't you understand. The reason it's called Proof of Work is that it's designed to be computationally intensive. And the competitive nature of Bitcoin mining means that around 99.99% of this computational work is discarded (source). In very real, physical terms, computational effort == work == energy consumption. It is indeed quite accurate to say Bitcoin is designed to waste energy.

Nope. No, it's not accurate to say Bitcoin is designed to waste energy.

Did I not make it sufficiently clear that the sentence I quoted was also directly from your linked Wikipedia source ? It's just a few sentences below the sentence you quoted.

Look more closely, the 2x sentences do not contradict each other. This is hardly surprising given that they come from the same source. The sentence you quoted describes what PoW is. The sentence I quoted clarifies the purpose of PoW, ie. what it is designed to achieve.

Yes, Bitcoin does indeed consume a lot of energy. It was NOT designed with that as it's objective. It's an unavoidable consequence of what it is trying to achieve.

And please check your sources. Your latest source mainly quotes Paul Brady from EY. Here's what Google says: "Paul Brody is Global Blockchain Leader for EY (Ernst & Young). Under his leadership, EY is established a global presence in the blockchain space with a particular focus on public blockchains, assurance, and business application development in the Ethereum ecosystem."
An Ethereum guy hating on Bitcoin / PoW ? Not exactly impartial.

And the Bitcoin vs VISA comparison is absolutely fair. We're talking about monetary transactions. I enter my CC number, and the VISA transaction completes the order. Yes, there is some other overhead associated with these transactions. But the same is true for Bitcoin. Mining operations require buildings, and server infrastructure to manage and monitor the mining.

Good grief. Is that what you really think ? LOL

[LateStarter]

Note that the USD is a pretty poor UoA too - it's hardly a stable datum.

It's way more stable than Bitcoin ever has been or shows any sign of ever being. If I promise to give you US$1,000 a year from now or a decade from now I have a pretty good sense for what I'm getting into. Due to consistent inflation I can expect I won't be giving up quite as much value as I would be giving up if I gave you US$1,000 today, but the error bars around what US$1,000 will be worth in the short to medium term aren't actually that big. Compare that to if I promise to give you 0.1 BTC in ten years. I have literally no idea what I just promised. If you're right about BTC's long-term trajectory I might owe you a car or even a house. If I'm right I might owe you a pizza.

Well, yeah. I didn't claim otherwise (except for "or shows any sign of ever being" which is just an opinion).

My point was simply that the USD is not a stable datum. We generally measure things against a stable datum - and the USD ain't one, not even close.

We use the units we have. USD is a better unit of account than BTC because even though it is not a perfectly "stable datum" it's miles closer to being one than BTC ever has been or shows any signs of being. Yes, that's an opinion, but it's an informed one. Bitcoin has been much more volatile than all major fiat currencies for its entire existence. What evidence is there that this is at all likely to change going forward?

It's entire existence ? 15 years from a niche cypherGeek project to a $700B monster. Yes, unsurprisingly, that's been pretty volatile.

Evidence? Well, in general terms, big things tend to be less volatile than small things. As Bitcoin grows it is reasonable to expect that it should also become less volatile. That said, I'm as certain as I can be that there will be more major shocks to come along the way - it won't be a smooth passage.

There's a few Bitcoin volatility charts around. Don't know how good any of them are, but this one is fairly clear and covers the full lifetime:

https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/volatility-index/

Store of value is a little bit of a question mark. It works if you time your entry points correctly. ?
Not so. It works reliably if your timescale is appropriate.

There is far from sufficient data on this point. BTC has trended upward so far, but the track record just isn't there for most people to have any confidence it will stay that way in the long run. I have reason to expect an ounce of gold will hold its value pretty well over my lifetime because it has already done so for most of human history. BTC is a comparative blip in the timeline.

That, again, is a matter of opinion. Existing history + BitcoinUnderstanding is enough for some. It's enough for me.

And I clearly said it's currently too small and volatile for most people in the sentence following where you chopped me off in your 'quote'.

If you prefer to wait for a longer time period, maybe even one equivalent to 'human history' to gather sufficient data, that's your choice. Knock yourself out.

If I'm looking for something to serve as a store of value I will indeed base my decision on whether that thing has a reasonable history of being a store of value, yes. Thanks for your approval.

You're welcome :-)

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Whether or not you think bitcoin is a waste of energy based on usefulness is one thing.

What you can't argue though, is that bitcoin was literally designed to waste energy.  That's what proof of work is.  It requires the waste of energy to generate encrypted hex numbers - solving the hash.  Proof of work requires that nodes on a network provide evidence that they have wasted energy through expended computational power in order to achieve (theoretically) decentralized consensus.

A blockchain reward goes to the winner.  The other nodes do not "provide evidence that they have wasted energy".  They lose silently, without providing any evidence they did so.  The energy did not get thrown away, as you keep claiming with the word "waste", but rather went to securing the blockchain.  Bitcoin mining has to run at scale, at full speed, to prevent any smaller set of computers from creating a fake blockchain.

No, waste is an accurate word. Very close to 100% of the energy used by a CPU gets converted to heat. There's no physical end product coming out the end of a computer, just information. The heat generated is considered "waste heat" and it's a huge problem for data centers. A lot has gone into how to move all this waste heat, which is why large data centers are often located near bodies of cold water. Bitcoin's 95.5 TWh of energy consumption in 2022 pretty much all went up in heat. Physically speaking, it's no different than running a huge army of space heaters. Yes, it solved some math problems along the way and secured the block chain, but is that really worth the enormous energy expenditure?

Which is more likely: cpus use 0% energy, or you're confused?

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/what-is-the-average-cpu-power-effeciency.3548098/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power

You do realize that the forum thread you posted proves my point, right?

CPUs are approximately 100% efficient at converting power to heat - practically every watt going under the IHS will ultimately come out as heat, though a small part of it will be dissipated by the PCB, traces and whatever is connected at the end of IO lanes.

Unless the goal of Bitcoin is to be a giant distributed resistive heater, all the "efficient" heat is waste heat.

You missed that poster being corrected:

You are confusing TDP with power
...
I think you are mixing up TDP (Thermal Design Power ) with power usage (Watts).
TDP is not a measure of power power consumption....even though TDP is correlated with power consumption. The more power CPU uses the higher the TDP.

Comparing the electrical and thermal energies doesn't tell you much either.
Take a FX8350, probably 100W of electrical and thermal power output.
Take an i5-3570k, probably 65W of electrical and maybe 90w of thermal power
...
Comparing Electrical to thermal power ratings just tells electrically how efficient it is great if you are looking at a heater, but it could bare no relationship to it's computational effectiveness, it's more likely to tell you how they measure TDP.

Cpus do not run on zero energy, nor do they generate free energy (65W vs 90W).  That's why I linked to the wikipedia entry for TDP, which also shows who was correct in that discussion.

I did not address TDP because it's not relevant to this discussion. From the Wikipedia you linked:

The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point, is the maximum amount of heat generated by a computer chip or component (often a CPU, GPU or system on a chip) that the cooling system in a computer is designed to dissipate under any workload.

TDP is about the capacity of cooling systems, and the maximum amount of heat they can remove to keep the CPU from overheating. I was being nice by skipping over this, because, frankly, it shows that you don't really know what you're talking about and are just grasping at whatever you can find online.

The fact is, almost 100% of the electricity consumed by CPUs (and GPUs, most of this stuff is actually using GPU farms), ends up as waste heat.

I spent a good amount of my career building large scale distributed systems at Google. I managed a service that ran on 100k CPU cores. TDP is absolutely essential because all those CPUs consume so much energy, and that energy ends up as heat. I became friends with a guy on the Google Bus who was a Thermal Engineer, and his entire job was designing industrial heat exchangers. Why did Google hire this guy and his team? Because some of our huge data centers were cooled by river water.

So when I reference a BTC transaction consuming 703 kWh (estimates vary, so I picked on one the lower end), which you conveniently ignored, I'm talking actual power consumption by the BTC ecosystem, not the TDP. This is actual used energy per transaction, which is converted to heat and dissipated by individual cooling systems.

Your anecdotal experience suggests you're more familiar with cpus and heat than I am, so do you have a high quality source stating that nearly 100% of electrical energy used by cpus is turned into heat?

This thread began with GuitarStv's post and my reply, and was focused on the use of the word "waste" in reference to heat vs energy usage.  You did not "reference a BTC transaction consuming 703 kWh" in this series of replies.

If your sole concern is proof of work and wasted energy, do you like Ethereum and dislike Bitcoin?

[GuitarStv]

If your sole concern is proof of work and wasted energy, do you like Ethereum and dislike Bitcoin?

PoS should be much less wasteful than PoW, which is designed to be wasteful.  It's a step in the right direction.

[Juan Ponce de León]

If your sole concern is proof of work and wasted energy, do you like Ethereum and dislike Bitcoin?

PoS should be much less wasteful than PoW, which is designed to be wasteful.  It's a step in the right direction.

I'll chime in here.  PoS are the actual scams, where you are purely exit liquidity for 'founders' who created the coin out of thin air at no cost to themselves, then pay a yield to the largest holders ie/ themselves.   Proof of work is what gives Bitcoin it's decentralization and value.  The largest holders are not the beneficiaries of the supply issue, those who do the work are.

IMO energy usage for bitcoin is not 'wasted' energy, it is the goal of just about any industry to take input energy and turn it into economic value.  Bitcoin mining is driving forward cleaner and cheaper energy adoption and monetizing it.  Small countries with natural resources to develop like hydro and volcanic thermal energy will be able to use Bitcoin mining income to help pay for developing these energy sources for the benefit of their societies.  Making electricity in remote places is very inefficient, to get the electricity to where it's needed.  Think of Bitcoin as like a giant battery, you can turn energy into hard currency and then later use that currency as you see fit.  It's like finding oil or gold.

[GuitarStv]

Think of Bitcoin as like a giant battery, you can turn energy into hard currency and then later use that currency as you see fit.  It's like finding oil or gold.

What the actual fuck?

Bitcoin is nothing like a giant battery.  The wasted energy from bitcoin is never recovered or available to do real work.  Assuming bitcoin even has value in the future the best you can hope for is to use it to pay someone to generate more energy in the future.

[Juan Ponce de León]

Think of Bitcoin as like a giant battery, you can turn energy into hard currency and then later use that currency as you see fit.  It's like finding oil or gold.

What the actual fuck?

Bitcoin is nothing like a giant battery.  The wasted energy from bitcoin is never recovered or available to do real work.  Assuming bitcoin even has value in the future the best you can hope for is to use it to pay someone to generate more energy in the future.

Yep about the kind of response I figured I would get.  I'll be leaving now LMAO

[FINate]

Your anecdotal experience suggests you're more familiar with cpus and heat than I am, so do you have a high quality source stating that nearly 100% of electrical energy used by cpus is turned into heat?

How about the Laws of Physics, specifically the First Law of Thermodynamics and the conservation of energy. Energy can be converted to mass, and vice versa, but mass and energy as a whole cannot be created or destroyed. That is, energy and mass are conserved.

A CPU has no moving parts (no kinetic energy). Nor does it store up energy for later use* (potential energy). It produces no sound (sound waves are really another kind of kinetic energy), nor does it produce any physical byproduct (mass).

For the sake of simplicity, consider a computer with no fans or hard disk drives (the last vestiges of moving parts in modern computers). Install a Watt meter to measure energy consumption and run a computationally intensive task such as Bitcoin mining or benchmark test or whatever you prefer, and observe the Watt meter spike. Where did this energy go, since (as mentioned above) there are no moving parts, no battery, energy isn't somehow being recycled back to the grid, and no physical product is being produced, then it has to be asked... how is energy and mass conserved? The answer is waste heat.

Or, as Scientific American puts it (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-do-computers-use-so-much-energy/):

There are several reasons, but one of the most important is that it is far cheaper to keep computer servers cool when they’re on the seafloor. This cooling is not a trivial expense. Precise estimates vary, but currently about 5 percent of all energy consumption in the U.S. goes just to running computers—a huge cost to the economy as whole. Moreover, all that energy used by those computers ultimately gets converted into heat. This results in a second cost: that of keeping the computers from melting.

*While there may be some small capacitors and CMOS batteries, these have very little capacity and aren't storing up for later use.

[LateStarter]

Think of Bitcoin as like a giant battery, you can turn energy into hard currency and then later use that currency as you see fit.  It's like finding oil or gold.

What the actual fuck?

Bitcoin is nothing like a giant battery.  The wasted energy from bitcoin is never recovered or available to do real work.  Assuming bitcoin even has value in the future the best you can hope for is to use it to pay someone to generate more energy in the future.

Yep about the kind of response I figured I would get.  I'll be leaving now LMAO

TBH, I'm struggling a bit with the battery analogy.

I agree with the benefit Bitcoin can bring to electricity generation in remote places. Bitcoin in this context is a Store of Value, and I think everyone here understands the concept of Store of Value - no analogy required.

Maybe, to a less financially savvy audience, the analogy of a 'value battery' (as opposed to a conventional 'energy battery') might be helpful. Here on MMM, I think it confuses more than it clarifies - and invites (wilful?) misinterpretation.

[Telecaster]

Small countries with natural resources to develop like hydro and volcanic thermal energy will be able to use Bitcoin mining income to help pay for developing these energy sources for the benefit of their societies.  Making electricity in remote places is very inefficient, to get the electricity to where it's needed.  Think of Bitcoin as like a giant battery, you can turn energy into hard currency and then later use that currency as you see fit.  It's like finding oil or gold.

The thing about Bitcoin is that it is always going to do something great...someday.   If this is a good idea, how come no one has done it?  And before you can say "El Salvador" they've only talked about doing it someday.

I suspect the reason is that Bitcoin mining is a shit business.   US-based Bitcoin miners have lost epic amounts of money the last few years.   I'm not aware of any publicly traded US Bitcoin miners who are profitable.   Maybe the recent runup in prices will change that.   Regardless, it is at best a marginal business.   In the meantime, the miners are locked in a global arms race trying up their hashrates or be eliminated by somebody else who does.   All the while starting down the barrel of the halving.   

[Glenstache]

Small countries with natural resources to develop like hydro and volcanic thermal energy will be able to use Bitcoin mining income to help pay for developing these energy sources for the benefit of their societies.  Making electricity in remote places is very inefficient, to get the electricity to where it's needed.  Think of Bitcoin as like a giant battery, you can turn energy into hard currency and then later use that currency as you see fit.  It's like finding oil or gold.

A less generous interpretation of the quote is that small countries can be exploited for BTC mining. Would they spend the money for excess energy or enough to support the mining CPUs? This is only castable as a public good once the energy is diverted from the BTC mining and assuming that the energy generation is constructed such that it does not cause other harms. How many people were displaced to build the hypothetical hydroelectric plant? What were the environmental controls on the drilling program and massive water use associated with the volcanic geothermal plant? I feel like we have heard this script before from the East India Company.

[LateStarter]

Small countries with natural resources to develop like hydro and volcanic thermal energy will be able to use Bitcoin mining income to help pay for developing these energy sources for the benefit of their societies.  Making electricity in remote places is very inefficient, to get the electricity to where it's needed.  Think of Bitcoin as like a giant battery, you can turn energy into hard currency and then later use that currency as you see fit.  It's like finding oil or gold.

The thing about Bitcoin is that it is always going to do something great...someday.   If this is a good idea, how come no one has done it?  And before you can say "El Salvador" they've only talked about doing it someday.

I suspect the reason is that Bitcoin mining is a shit business.   US-based Bitcoin miners have lost epic amounts of money the last few years.   I'm not aware of any publicly traded US Bitcoin miners who are profitable.   Maybe the recent runup in prices will change that.   Regardless, it is at best a marginal business.   In the meantime, the miners are locked in a global arms race trying up their hashrates or be eliminated by somebody else who does.   All the while starting down the barrel of the halving.

It's, at least, started :  https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/04/17/gridless-mining-extends-power-in-africa/

But I guess, like everything else new, these things take time.


As for general Bitcoin Mining: what you're describing is a free market, ie. a tough world where only the best, fittest and most efficient survive. That's a good thing - right ?

[LateStarter]

Small countries with natural resources to develop like hydro and volcanic thermal energy will be able to use Bitcoin mining income to help pay for developing these energy sources for the benefit of their societies.  Making electricity in remote places is very inefficient, to get the electricity to where it's needed.  Think of Bitcoin as like a giant battery, you can turn energy into hard currency and then later use that currency as you see fit.  It's like finding oil or gold.

A less generous interpretation of the quote is that small countries can be exploited for BTC mining. Would they spend the money for excess energy or enough to support the mining CPUs? This is only castable as a public good once the energy is diverted from the BTC mining and assuming that the energy generation is constructed such that it does not cause other harms. How many people were displaced to build the hypothetical hydroelectric plant? What were the environmental controls on the drilling program and massive water use associated with the volcanic geothermal plant? I feel like we have heard this script before from the East India Company.

A more generous interpretation of the quote is that small countries could benefit massively and experience immediate and everlasting prosperity, but groundless speculation has little value imo.

Alternatively, we could look at what's actually proposed and is starting to happen - albeit in a small way to date.  https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/04/17/gridless-mining-extends-power-in-africa/

[Scandium]

The latest latecomers to Bitcoin will lose zero purchasing power in the act of transferring their fiat to Bitcoin. Example: You have $1M in 2030, and $1M could buy a Ferrari - you transfer it to Bitcoin - your Bitcoin will buy that same Ferrari (even if $1M = just 1BTC).
You will have missed out on the purchasing power gains you could have made by buying that 1BTC today for $35k, but Bitcoin hasn't taken anything away from you. You just made a bad decision today.
Of course, I could be wrong, it could all go to zero. In which case, you made a good decision today.

If inflation/debasement continues to be a problem, your $1M (and equivalent BTC) might only buy a Prius in 2030. Again, Bitcoin hasn't taken anything away from you - the $ took it.

So it's basically just a bet that this will happen, in this specific way, and you'd end up astronomically wealthy. While everyone else who do nothing just see no significant change, just switch to BTC when it happens. Well, then the worst case scenario doesn't really sound that bad to me. I think i'll take my chances (mostly because I think this is completely idiotic and will never happen, but even if it does; "eh, whatever").

And more important; I obviously don't keep all my wealth in "debased fiat"! Duh, that's why we all here have stocks; the value will grow faster than inflation (what you call debasing..). So like your example I might have 1BTC worth today in stocks, and in the future when that 1BTC buy a ferrari, I might be able to sell the same number of stocks and buy the same ferrari. So what did I loose?! I don't see that being any less likely than the same trajectory for BTC (ok, I see it as more likely obvi, or I'd buy BTC as well..). So comparing BTC vs cash in the mattress is disingenuous; nobody is saying that won't loose value. Even the most finance illiterate person knows inflation exists (and then they buy gold..).

You're saying: BTC value will grow faster than inflation, faster then the market, "everyone" will switch to crypto in the future (even though it's a huge PIA), AND; that crypto will be exactly the one you've put your value into, rather than the gazillion other shitcoins out there! Sorry, that seems like a really far-fetched bet, especially when as we discussed, worst case is you end up about the same as I would have anyway! There is extremally little reason to hoard BTC now! What about ether? or any of the others??

[LateStarter]

The latest latecomers to Bitcoin will lose zero purchasing power in the act of transferring their fiat to Bitcoin. Example: You have $1M in 2030, and $1M could buy a Ferrari - you transfer it to Bitcoin - your Bitcoin will buy that same Ferrari (even if $1M = just 1BTC).
You will have missed out on the purchasing power gains you could have made by buying that 1BTC today for $35k, but Bitcoin hasn't taken anything away from you. You just made a bad decision today.
Of course, I could be wrong, it could all go to zero. In which case, you made a good decision today.

If inflation/debasement continues to be a problem, your $1M (and equivalent BTC) might only buy a Prius in 2030. Again, Bitcoin hasn't taken anything away from you - the $ took it.

So it's basically just a bet that this will happen, in this specific way, and you'd end up astronomically wealthy. While everyone else who do nothing just see no significant change, just switch to BTC when it happens. Well, then the worst case scenario doesn't really sound that bad to me. I think i'll take my chances (mostly because I think this is completely idiotic and will never happen, but even if it does; "eh, whatever").

The first sentence, pretty much, yes. I should clarify that 'astronomical wealth' is not my main nor only objective. I believe that Bitcoin is a force for good, and fairness, and honesty - and I'm happy that every £GBP I transfer to BTC is pushing it forward a little more.

I don't know why you say "everyone else" will "switch" "when it happens". I clearly described my expectation as a gradual transition, people gradually get on board, gradually allocate a little more to BTC, etc. I made no mention of "everyone" or a "switch" and I have no concept of a time "when it happens" -  it's been happening for years, it's happening now and I expect it to continue to happen for some considerable time.

And more important; I obviously don't keep all my wealth in "debased fiat"! Duh, that's why we all here have stocks; the value will grow faster than inflation (what you call debasing..). So like your example I might have 1BTC worth today in stocks, and in the future when that 1BTC buy a ferrari, I might be able to sell the same number of stocks and buy the same ferrari. So what did I loose?! I don't see that being any less likely than the same trajectory for BTC (ok, I see it as more likely obvi, or I'd buy BTC as well..). So comparing BTC vs cash in the mattress is disingenuous; nobody is saying that won't loose value. Even the most finance illiterate person knows inflation exists (and then they buy gold..).

Well yes, I get that of course - I was trying to be concise. The point was just that if the $ has less purchasing power in 2030, the value was lost to the $, and not lost to Bitcoin.
I hope your confidence that stock values will grow faster than inflation comes good for you (and me).

I refer to 'debasing' as that is the problem that Bitcoin addresses. Inflation isn't the root problem - it's a symptom. Also, inflation has other causes, eg. supply shortages, that Bitcoin does not address.

You're saying: BTC value will grow faster than inflation, faster then the market, "everyone" will switch to crypto in the future (even though it's a huge PIA), AND; that crypto will be exactly the one you've put your value into, rather than the gazillion other shitcoins out there! Sorry, that seems like a really far-fetched bet, especially when as we discussed, worst case is you end up about the same as I would have anyway! There is extremally little reason to hoard BTC now! What about ether? or any of the others??

My expectation is that Bitcoin will grow waaaay more than inflation and the market.
No, again, I didn't say "everyone" and I don't know why you keep insisting on a "switch". See above.
Bitcoin is very different. The briefest, generalised, approximate description of the difference = decentralised and network effect.
"worst case is you end up about the same as I would have anyway!" ?  I don't know what this means.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

If your sole concern is proof of work and wasted energy, do you like Ethereum and dislike Bitcoin?

PoS should be much less wasteful than PoW, which is designed to be wasteful.  It's a step in the right direction.

I'll chime in here.  PoS are the actual scams, where you are purely exit liquidity for 'founders' who created the coin out of thin air at no cost to themselves, then pay a yield to the largest holders ie/ themselves.   Proof of work is what gives Bitcoin it's decentralization and value.  The largest holders are not the beneficiaries of the supply issue, those who do the work are.

Is Ethereum a scam because it uses proof of stake?

[Scandium]

No, again, I didn't say "everyone" and I don't know why you keep insisting on a "switch". See above.
Bitcoin is very different. The briefest, generalised, approximate description of the difference = decentralised and network effect.
"worst case is you end up about the same as I would have anyway!" ?  I don't know what this means.

I keep saying "everyone" because BTC will only increase (significantly) in value if enough/large number of people adopt it as means of exchange. I don't know what the number of people, or percentage is. And clearly BTC can incase in "value" to stupid levels despite this. But right now that is only a greater fool game, to have real value BTC has to be useful for something. Right now only being useful to buy heroin and receive ransomware extortion is not very applicable to the general populace.

Agree my last sentence was poorly phrased. I think I meant worst case I end up about the same level of wealth I would have with stocks, I don't see that as a very high risk. Not enough to gamble on BTC.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Your anecdotal experience suggests you're more familiar with cpus and heat than I am, so do you have a high quality source stating that nearly 100% of electrical energy used by cpus is turned into heat?

How about the Laws of Physics, specifically the First Law of Thermodynamics and the conservation of energy. Energy can be converted to mass, and vice versa, but mass and energy as a whole cannot be created or destroyed. That is, energy and mass are conserved.

A CPU has no moving parts (no kinetic energy). Nor does it store up energy for later use* (potential energy). It produces no sound (sound waves are really another kind of kinetic energy), nor does it produce any physical byproduct (mass).

For the sake of simplicity, consider a computer with no fans or hard disk drives (the last vestiges of moving parts in modern computers). Install a Watt meter to measure energy consumption and run a computationally intensive task such as Bitcoin mining or benchmark test or whatever you prefer, and observe the Watt meter spike. Where did this energy go, since (as mentioned above) there are no moving parts, no battery, energy isn't somehow being recycled back to the grid, and no physical product is being produced, then it has to be asked... how is energy and mass conserved? The answer is waste heat.

A user named "FINate" on this forum isn't a "high quality source" for me.

Or, as Scientific American puts it (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-do-computers-use-so-much-energy/):

There are several reasons, but one of the most important is that it is far cheaper to keep computer servers cool when they’re on the seafloor. This cooling is not a trivial expense. Precise estimates vary, but currently about 5 percent of all energy consumption in the U.S. goes just to running computers—a huge cost to the economy as whole. Moreover, all that energy used by those computers ultimately gets converted into heat. This results in a second cost: that of keeping the computers from melting.

*While there may be some small capacitors and CMOS batteries, these have very little capacity and aren't storing up for later use.

A random article from Scientific American might not be high quality source, but the author of that article is a subject expert.  I'm not sure why he needed to use the qualifier "ultimately" in that sentence, but he stated that the electrical energy all comes out as waste heat.  So you are right to say all energy from computers is emitted as heat - waste heat.

"David Wolpert is resident faculty at the Santa Fe Institute where he uses nonequilibrium statistical physics to analyze the thermodynamics of computing systems."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/david-wolpert/

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Is Ethereum a scam because it uses proof of stake?

Absolutely.  I think like ~70% was premined for Vitalik and his mates and now they changed it so the large holders get the lions share of the yield (ie/ themselves) instead of PoW miners.  And they get to do this under the guise of 'saving energy' LMAO.  Bitcoin is the only real asset IMO, apart from a select few other PoW projects the rest are fairly obvious grifts/scams created out of thin air to dump on retail for huge profit when the bull market comes around.

Ethereum and all the other 'defi' chains like it are also the enabler coins that enable all the more obvious scams.  99% of defi I would say is ponzi schemes and scams for founders to dump on retail or rug pull them.  That said I have made a lot of money in defi the last few years LMAO.

You need to be more specific.  Vitalik owns 0.2% of circulating Ethereum (0.284M out of 120.251M ETH), which I would not call "the lion's share" of anything, and you haven't specified who these "mates" are.
https://coinpaper.com/2255/vitalik-buterin-net-worth-the-complete-breakdown-of-ethereum-founder-s-on-chain-holdings

"guise of saving energy. LMAO" doesn't convince me of anything.  It's your opinion, not evidence of a scam.

Do you blame the fake coin scammers, or the Ethereum blockchain they used?  By the same "token" (ha!), Bitcoin is responsible for ransomware attacks.  That said, I would agree with you Ethereum bears some responsibility for providing a platform on which other crypto currencies can be built.  But on the flip side, that also fosters innovation.

I think crypto needs to be weighed on "market cap", the number of coins times their price (on publicly traded markets).  Some of the large successes of tokens based on Ethereum (like Axie Infinity) outweigh the tiny market caps of the many scam coins.
https://www.coindesk.com/learn/which-crypto-projects-are-based-on-ethereum/

[FINate]

Your anecdotal experience suggests you're more familiar with cpus and heat than I am, so do you have a high quality source stating that nearly 100% of electrical energy used by cpus is turned into heat?

How about the Laws of Physics, specifically the First Law of Thermodynamics and the conservation of energy. Energy can be converted to mass, and vice versa, but mass and energy as a whole cannot be created or destroyed. That is, energy and mass are conserved.

A CPU has no moving parts (no kinetic energy). Nor does it store up energy for later use* (potential energy). It produces no sound (sound waves are really another kind of kinetic energy), nor does it produce any physical byproduct (mass).

For the sake of simplicity, consider a computer with no fans or hard disk drives (the last vestiges of moving parts in modern computers). Install a Watt meter to measure energy consumption and run a computationally intensive task such as Bitcoin mining or benchmark test or whatever you prefer, and observe the Watt meter spike. Where did this energy go, since (as mentioned above) there are no moving parts, no battery, energy isn't somehow being recycled back to the grid, and no physical product is being produced, then it has to be asked... how is energy and mass conserved? The answer is waste heat.

A user named "FINate" on this forum isn't a "high quality source" for me.

Or, as Scientific American puts it (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-do-computers-use-so-much-energy/):

There are several reasons, but one of the most important is that it is far cheaper to keep computer servers cool when they’re on the seafloor. This cooling is not a trivial expense. Precise estimates vary, but currently about 5 percent of all energy consumption in the U.S. goes just to running computers—a huge cost to the economy as whole. Moreover, all that energy used by those computers ultimately gets converted into heat. This results in a second cost: that of keeping the computers from melting.

*While there may be some small capacitors and CMOS batteries, these have very little capacity and aren't storing up for later use.

A random article from Scientific American might not be high quality source, but the author of that article is a subject expert.  I'm not sure why he needed to use the qualifier "ultimately" in that sentence, but he stated that the electrical energy all comes out as waste heat.  So you are right to say all energy from computers is emitted as heat - waste heat.

"David Wolpert is resident faculty at the Santa Fe Institute where he uses nonequilibrium statistical physics to analyze the thermodynamics of computing systems."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/david-wolpert/

I tried ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I didn't quote myself as an authority, but rather the laws of science. This is really basic stuff, covered in my high school physics class. I'm not going to waste my time and energy arguing about fundamental reality.

If you're genuinely curious about the topic I recommend starting with some web searches, something like "do computers convert electricity to heat." You'll mostly find people weighing in (StackExchange, Quora, Reddit, etc.), so really a "wisdom of the crowds" thing, because there's no debate about the science.

[LateStarter]

No, again, I didn't say "everyone" and I don't know why you keep insisting on a "switch". See above.
Bitcoin is very different. The briefest, generalised, approximate description of the difference = decentralised and network effect.
"worst case is you end up about the same as I would have anyway!" ?  I don't know what this means.

I keep saying "everyone" because . . .

But you were supposedly 'quoting' my words back at me, so I corrected you - I did not say it.

[Scandium]

No, again, I didn't say "everyone" and I don't know why you keep insisting on a "switch". See above.
Bitcoin is very different. The briefest, generalised, approximate description of the difference = decentralised and network effect.
"worst case is you end up about the same as I would have anyway!" ?  I don't know what this means.

I keep saying "everyone" because . . .

But you were supposedly 'quoting' my words back at me, so I corrected you - I did not say it.

using "quotes" doesn't mean I quote you, that's

quote

.

That just means "air quotes", IE not actually. As in "value" of BTC, since it doesn't actually have any value, and using the phrase is stupid.
"everyone", just means a lot of people adopts BTC (and it will finally be useful.). A number somewhere between laterally everyone, and a sufficiently high number that it makes BTC actually useful. Shortened to everyone in mocking quotes.. 

See definition of "air quotes, capture it pretty well, though maybe I didn't use it 100% correctly every time;

indicate that what is being said is ironic or mocking,

[Glenstache]

I keep saying "everyone" because . . .

But you were supposedly 'quoting' my words back at me, so I corrected you - I did not say it.

using "quotes" doesn't mean I quote you, that's

quote

.

That just means "air quotes", IE not actually. As in "value" of BTC, since it doesn't actually have any value, and using the phrase is stupid.
"everyone", just means a lot of people adopts BTC (and it will finally be useful.). A number somewhere between laterally everyone, and a sufficiently high number that it makes BTC actually useful. Shortened to everyone in mocking quotes.. 

See definition of "air quotes, capture it pretty well, though maybe I didn't use it 100% correctly every time;

indicate that what is being said is ironic or mocking,

When a conversation gets to this level of quoteback, it has usually run it's course.

[Scandium]

I keep saying "everyone" because . . .

But you were supposedly 'quoting' my words back at me, so I corrected you - I did not say it.

using "quotes" doesn't mean I quote you, that's

quote

.

That just means "air quotes", IE not actually. As in "value" of BTC, since it doesn't actually have any value, and using the phrase is stupid.
"everyone", just means a lot of people adopts BTC (and it will finally be useful.). A number somewhere between laterally everyone, and a sufficiently high number that it makes BTC actually useful. Shortened to everyone in mocking quotes.. 

See definition of "air quotes, capture it pretty well, though maybe I didn't use it 100% correctly every time;

indicate that what is being said is ironic or mocking,

When a conversation gets to this level of quoteback, it has usually run it's course.

Definitely true. My post is clearly devoid of any value.

I do appreciate that latestarter actually responds and explain their reasoning, it's interesting at least. And more than we usually get from crypto fans

[ChpBstrd]

Remember when Binance was held up as one of the legitimate exchanges? Zhao pleads guilty to money laundering and will probably be fined somewhere around $50M. The government is going to regulate crypto into the shadows.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/21/binance-ceo-changpeng-zhao-to-plead-guilty-to-federal-charges-step-down.html

[GuitarStv]

It turtles all the way down.




But the turtles are fraud and environmental destruction.

[clifp]

To me the best reason to add crypto to your portfolio is it gives you an opportunity to patronize such fine, upstanding organizations as FTX and these folks.

https://apnews.com/article/cryptocurrency-exchange-binance-justice-department-settlement-sec-8314e9697b98cfe3a9827c78e5720914,

No mere 50 million dollar fine, no sir 4 BILLION dollars.  Couldn't happen to a nicer group of folks.

[ChpBstrd]

To me the best reason to add crypto to your portfolio is it gives you an opportunity to patronize such fine, upstanding organizations as FTX and these folks.

https://apnews.com/article/cryptocurrency-exchange-binance-justice-department-settlement-sec-8314e9697b98cfe3a9827c78e5720914,

No mere 50 million dollar fine, no sir 4 BILLION dollars.  Couldn't happen to a nicer group of folks.

And where will they get those funds, other than from customers?

[Scandium]

It turtles all the way down.




But the turtles are fraud and environmental destruction.

I agree, it's clearly the way of the future!
It's not a shell game
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/turtlecoin/

Hey, at least it's stable now, at 3/1000 of a penny.

[LateStarter]

Remember when Binance was held up as one of the legitimate exchanges?

 . . .

Not really, no. Held up by whom ?

[Glenstache]

I do appreciate that latestarter actually responds and explain their reasoning, it's interesting at least. And more than we usually get from crypto fans

Absolutely. I think the conversation has been really useful in increasing understanding, even if there was not convergene on agreement on adding a low % crypto allocation. The willingness to respond and provide info is why I like these forums. There is usually some pretty clever snark, which I have an artistic appreciation for.

[LateStarter]

I do appreciate that latestarter actually responds and explain their reasoning, it's interesting at least. And more than we usually get from crypto fans

Absolutely. I think the conversation has been really useful in increasing understanding, even if there was not convergene on agreement on adding a low % crypto allocation. The willingness to respond and provide info is why I like these forums. There is usually some pretty clever snark, which I have an artistic appreciation for.

Thanks, appreciated.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Your anecdotal experience suggests you're more familiar with cpus and heat than I am, so do you have a high quality source stating that nearly 100% of electrical energy used by cpus is turned into heat?

How about the Laws of Physics, specifically the First Law of Thermodynamics and the conservation of energy. Energy can be converted to mass, and vice versa, but mass and energy as a whole cannot be created or destroyed. That is, energy and mass are conserved.

A CPU has no moving parts (no kinetic energy). Nor does it store up energy for later use* (potential energy). It produces no sound (sound waves are really another kind of kinetic energy), nor does it produce any physical byproduct (mass).

For the sake of simplicity, consider a computer with no fans or hard disk drives (the last vestiges of moving parts in modern computers). Install a Watt meter to measure energy consumption and run a computationally intensive task such as Bitcoin mining or benchmark test or whatever you prefer, and observe the Watt meter spike. Where did this energy go, since (as mentioned above) there are no moving parts, no battery, energy isn't somehow being recycled back to the grid, and no physical product is being produced, then it has to be asked... how is energy and mass conserved? The answer is waste heat.

A user named "FINate" on this forum isn't a "high quality source" for me.

Or, as Scientific American puts it (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-do-computers-use-so-much-energy/):

There are several reasons, but one of the most important is that it is far cheaper to keep computer servers cool when they’re on the seafloor. This cooling is not a trivial expense. Precise estimates vary, but currently about 5 percent of all energy consumption in the U.S. goes just to running computers—a huge cost to the economy as whole. Moreover, all that energy used by those computers ultimately gets converted into heat. This results in a second cost: that of keeping the computers from melting.

*While there may be some small capacitors and CMOS batteries, these have very little capacity and aren't storing up for later use.

A random article from Scientific American might not be high quality source, but the author of that article is a subject expert.  I'm not sure why he needed to use the qualifier "ultimately" in that sentence, but he stated that the electrical energy all comes out as waste heat.  So you are right to say all energy from computers is emitted as heat - waste heat.

"David Wolpert is resident faculty at the Santa Fe Institute where he uses nonequilibrium statistical physics to analyze the thermodynamics of computing systems."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/david-wolpert/

I tried ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I didn't quote myself as an authority, but rather the laws of science. This is really basic stuff, covered in my high school physics class. I'm not going to waste my time and energy arguing about fundamental reality.

If you're genuinely curious about the topic I recommend starting with some web searches, something like "do computers convert electricity to heat." You'll mostly find people weighing in (StackExchange, Quora, Reddit, etc.), so really a "wisdom of the crowds" thing, because there's no debate about the science.

I think you missed my second paragraph, specifically this quote:
"So you are right to say all energy from computers is emitted as heat - waste heat."

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Remember when Binance was held up as one of the legitimate exchanges? Zhao pleads guilty to money laundering and will probably be fined somewhere around $50M. The government is going to regulate crypto into the shadows.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/21/binance-ceo-changpeng-zhao-to-plead-guilty-to-federal-charges-step-down.html

A decade ago, was the government trying to regulate traditional finance into the shadows?  BNP Paribas was fined $9 billion in 2014, which would be closer to $12 billion in today's dollars.

HSBC's case was symptomatic of a decade in which major players in the international banking community were fined significantly for processing illegal transactions for criminal enterprises and sanctioned governments, including Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria. Credit Suisse settled for $536 million in 2009; Barclays agreed to pay $298 million in 2010; ING was fined $619 million in 2012; Standard Chartered was fined $330 million in 2012 (and another $1.1 billion in 2019); BNP Paribas was fined $8.9 billion in 2014; and Deutsche Bank paid $258 million in 2015. Each fine was for abetting illegal transactions with countries such as Iran and Libya, blatantly disregarding the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) guidelines.

https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-news-for-jan-29-hsbcs-money-laundering-scandal-hbc-scbff-ing-cs-rbs0129.aspx

[ChpBstrd]

Remember when Binance was held up as one of the legitimate exchanges? Zhao pleads guilty to money laundering and will probably be fined somewhere around $50M. The government is going to regulate crypto into the shadows.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/21/binance-ceo-changpeng-zhao-to-plead-guilty-to-federal-charges-step-down.html

I suppose my point is this: Where is a legitimate, law-abiding way to trade or transact in cryptocurrency? What is the advice for a noob who is interested in buying their first whatevercoin? Our prospective noob doesn't want to do a google search and find some fly-by-night operation that's going to disappear with their money. They want a mainstream firm that follows applicable laws. PayPal?

[maizefolk]

Coinbase.

Higher fees, but incorporated in the USA, based in the USA, and regulated in the USA. Eleven year history, which counts as ancient in the crypto world.*

And to pre-empt the obvious report, yes the SEC has sued Coinbase. The lawsuit is about which crypto tokens count as securities and which don't. Based on the recent outcome of the Ripple case, it seems likely, though not certain, the SEC is on the losing end of developing case law and precedent here. If the SEC does wins, Coinbase will have to pay a settlement, which will hurt their profits. Just like when the SEC wins a lawsuit against any major bank, hedge fund, or other company.

No allegations of misuse of customer funds. No complex derivatives markets. No issues with the DoJ.

*For context, FTX went from founding to bankruptcy in just over three years. Mt. Gox lasted roughly 4.

[GuitarStv]

Coinbase?  The money launderers?

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/4/23538731/coinbase-fine-crypto-money-laundering-laws-new-york