Bitcoin on Janik von Rotz

Twitter Stories: Environmental cost of Bitcoin

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 09:16:05 +0100

On Twitter people share stories that go beyond 280 characters. By replying the to their own tweet, they create ongoing threads. Instead of sharing another link, I concatenate these threads and present them here.

Todays thread is about the environmental cost of Bitcoin by Stephen Diehl.

Let’s discuss the environmental cost of bitcoin. Because despite all the push for sustainable and green investment in the tech sector, there’s a giant smoldering Chernobyl sitting at the heart of Silicon Valley which a lot of investors would prefer you remain quiet about. (1)

TLDR on bitcoin economics: It’s a pyramid-shaped investment scheme backed by the collective delusion that value can created out of nothing by convincing greater fools to buy it after you do. (2)

That alone is sufficiently awful on its own merits, but on top of this the environmental damages of bitcoin are enough to make even Greta Thunberg weep at the pointless waste of it all. (3)

The underlying technology of bitcoin is based on the notion of “mining”, a technical term for a process that keeps the network running and processing transactions. (4)

I won’t cover the details of the algorithm, suffice it to say the premise of bitcoin mining is to prove how much power you can waste, and the more power you can waste, the more tokens you can probabilistically secure in exchange for your energy waste. (5)

And so people have set up entire warehouses of computer hardware dedicated to run 24/7 consuming power and performing the trial computations required by the protocol. Globally this consumes “nation state” levels of energy to keep it all running. (6)

Bitcoin mining is essentially a fucked up version of Candy Crush where you solve puzzles for coins, except the coins go to buy darknet fentanyl, launder money for warlords and provide gambling for hedge fund managers. (7)

And the scale of this waste has some scary numbers attached to it. A single bitcoin transaction alone consumes 621 KWh, or half a million times more energy consumption than a credit card payment. (8)

The bitcoin network annually wastes 78 TWh (terrawatt hours) annually or the energy consumption of several “million” US households. WolframAlpha gives some scary comparisons to help you relate to how much energy this is (think nuclear weapons). (9)

Unlike other economic activities, the bitcoin scheme produces absolutely nothing for all this waste. It is a pure speculative activity of people gambling on the random movements of prices and the only output is simply shuffling numbers around in a computer at insane cost. (10)

In addition to the energy waste and CO2 emitted, the mining process itself requires constant replacement of hardware and produces a steady stream of waste from broken and exhausted computer parts. All of which are full of toxins and rare earth metals. (11)

The network produces 11.27 kilotons of waste annually or 96 grams of electronic waste per transaction. This is the equivalent annual e-waste as several small countries and equivalent to the waste of 482,456 people living at the German standard. (12)

Try to imagine a future where paying for your morning coffee involved smashing an iPhone and burning enough fossil fuels to run your entire household for 60 days. That’s the environmental cost of the “revolutionary” technology behind Bitcoin in a nutshell. (13)

Climate scientists have estimated that Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C. And this is just one of “hundreds” of other cryptocurrency networks that run on this apocalyptically wasteful set of ideas. (14)

Climate change is not some abstract threat happening elsewhere, it is very real, and is happening everywhere we chose to invest in unsustainable and wasteful technology. The absurd waste of bitcoin is a simultaneously both an environmental and a moral disaster. (15)

Stephen, this is really bad, how can I help change this?

Don’t buy bitcoins.
Tell friends not to buy bitcoins.
Consider ethics of holding dirty companies $MSTR, $S, $SQ, $PYPL, Coinbase) in your portfolio.
… and products (funds, ETFs, etc) with crypto exposure. (16)

My Dogecoin experience part 1 - Mining Hardware

Thu, 08 May 2014 09:24:46 +0000

Based on a internet meme and funded as a joke the Dogecoin crypto currency is getting really serious about their business.

Just for fun I’ve bought some computer hardware to mine some doges.

Here’s a list of hardware I’ve bought in case you’re also interest in this crypto currency mining stuff.

Digitec is my local retailer in switzerland, the type of hardware is almost the same.

Hardware

GPU

Cgminer is the simplest and most effective miner to use. That’s why you should buy a AMD GPU.

MSI Computer Corp. Video Graphics Card R9 270 GAMING 2G
This is a good GPU with an average performance. A good thing to start.
Amazon $184
Digitec 186.–

CPU

Processing speed of the CPU makes no difference for mining. We just need something that can run the operating system. Plus this CPU is actually good because it uses less power.

AMD Sempron 145 Processor (SDX145HBGMBOX)
Amazon $30

AMD Athlon II X3 455 (AM2+, AM3, 3.30GHz, Unlocked)
Digitec 67.-

CPU Cooler

Arctic Freezer 13 PRO (120mm)
Digitec 48.-

Power Supply

SeaSonic Platinum SS-860XP2 Power Supply
This is a really high quality power supply. The main benefit this has over other power supplies that are a little cheaper, is that the energy efficiency is much better than what others recommend (Being Platinum Rated). This will mean your electricity is much cheaper, and over the long run it will pay for itself.
Amazon $180
Digitec 200.–

Cooler Master V850 - 850W Power Supply with Fully Modular Cables and 80 PLUS Gold Certification
Amazon $169
Digitec 187.-

Motherborad

ASUS M5A97 R2.0 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
This motherboard is a good choice for being cheap and able to handle the 3 graphics cards (Up to 4 actually). But you will need powered extenders.
Amazon $88

ASUS M5A99X EVO R2 (AM3+, AMD 990X, ATX)
Digitec 138.–

Hard Drive

Just big enough for the OS. Since we are just using it for mining this will be fine.

ADATA USA Premier Pro SP600 2.5-Inch 64 GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive ASP600S3-64GM-C
Amazon $49
Digitec 57.-

Ram

All we need is 4gigs or so of ram. RAM has no impact on mining, we just need enough to run the OS. You might be able to pick up a stick for slightly cheaper, but this one is good and more consistently in stock.

Kingston Hyper X Blu 4 GB 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL9 Desktop Memory (KHX1600C9D3B1/4G)
Amazon $49

Corsair XMS3 (1x, 4GB, DDR3-1333)
Digitec 44.–

Riser Cables for Graphics Cards

The motherboard has 2 PCI-Express x16 and 2 1x slots. So you can go with 2 PCIE “1x-16″ risers and 1 PCIE “16x-16x” Riser or vice versa. I went with 1- x16 riser and 2 x 1 to 16 riser to reduce power usage through the motherboard. It is important for the 1x to 16x ones are powered, so that your motherboard isn’t overloaded. Risers are also necessary to help disperse heat.

Qody PCI-E Extension Cable: 1X to 16X (powered)
Amazon 5$

Micro SATA Cables - PCI-E Express 16X Riser Card with Flexible Cable
Amazon 8$

Case

Most miners go with a simple milk crate to hold their components.

Sterilite 16929006 Storage Crate, Black
Amazon $12

Wireless Card (optional)

Make sure the wireless card is PCI, not PCIE, so if you want to add another graphics card later, you won’t be using a PCIE slot by your wireless card.

TP-LINK TL-WN951N Wireless N300 Advanced PCI Adapter, 2.4GHz 300Mbps, Include Low-profile Bracket
Amazon $28

TP-LINK TL-WN851ND, n300 (PCI) Digitec 22.-

Software

I’ll recommand to install a Windows 7. Everything else required is opensource.

Source

http://www.minedogecoin.com/building-a-nice-dogecoin-mining-rig-for-1000-dollars/
http://www.minedogecoin.com/top-graphics-cards-in-stock/

Get the latest version of this list here: https://gist.github.com/447c906e16c2c8be5719