#9 – Mining Is Out Of Control And The Use Of Resources To Solve Purposeless Math Problems Is Inherently Wasteful And Difficult To Justify
This post is part of a larger series of post titled
The Top 10 Cryptocurrency & Bitcoin Misconceptions | Misunderstandings | Concerns | Perceptions | Criticisms in 2017
This topic dropped my rankings over the year, but I still encounter people that like/try to use it.
In July, cryptocurrency mining used more electricity than Iceland and the digiconomist.com does a good job at tracking mining consumption here. Thus, this criticism isn’t exactly unfounded.
However, I think the cryptocurrency community is aware of the added pollution/waste and I have observed that traditional Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining has declined for more environmentally friendly options such as Proof-of-Stake (PoS) or variations thereof.
In addition, there are several industries/areas within the economy with the one goal to make more money without producing tangible value. Arguing against Bitcoin for its technical or practical deficiencies makes sense, but I don’t support the notion that Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency should be discounted just because it’s a “waste” of resources. After all, cryptocurrency is nothing without miners and they need an incentive to manage the blockchain so it’s not a complete waste of resources.
I don’t think this will exit the rankings anytime soon because the market is still rapidly growing and I’m sure that headlines naturally hit the media when certain levels are achieved. However, I hope the argument diminishes as the value of blockchain technology becomes more apparent.
Traversing the Cryptosphere,
Kryptonaut
@kryptonaut,
I agree.
The Mining Mafia is both the bottleneck and the ruling body in the Bitcoin space. Ironically, it represents a significant form of centralization - the antihesis of the original Bitcoin philosophy.
Satoshi didn't envision advanced GPU's, then ASIC mining, no?
The Mining Mafia has always had Bitcoin by the balls. And their huge carbon footprint is ridiculous.
Why do you think most mining pools are against off-chain transactions (payment channels)? Those schemes disintermediate the miners - e.g., the lightning network and Raiden.
And non-mining cryptocurrencies like, Ripple, Stellar, IOTA, etc. have already demonstrated that mining can be deleted from the picture.
Some of my views about mining were in this:
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@jaichai/devil-s-advocate-response-to-an-excellent-video-post-from-boxmining-bitcoin-gold-demystified
Namaste, my friend.
JaiChai
Thanks for your thoughts!
That title tho :D
Proof-of-work is wasteful, however it provides an immense security level to the bitcoin blockchain. The effort one would need to make to launch a 51% attack and the resources one would have to spend are astronomical, and incentivize the attacker to rather participate and reap the rewards instead of blowing billions of dollars on the attempt.
Great article.
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