[FRIAM] murder offsets

[Steve Smith]

I don't endorse POW (proof of work) cryptocurrency and barely POS(proof
of statke).   Really what I might endorse is the underlying distributed
ledger and potential for Smart Contracts...  

However- this is an interesting example of less than fully egregious
bitcoin mining contexts:

https://www.oceanfallsblockchain.com

Conservation of energy would suggest that the extraction of electrical
power from flowing water, subsequent negEntropy extraction and then
re-introduction of the same energy back into the flowing water (as heat)
is *relatively* benign.   The very fact of the hydro-dam (built there
some big part of  a century ago) has it's own ecological impacts
(salmon, the bear who eat them, the rainforest that likes those
nutrient-rich gifts the bears leave on the forest floor), but no net
energy or CO2 challenges?   In principle, this hydro power *could* have
been sent a hundred miles or more over copper power lines (including
resistive load losses) to feed our *other* power-hungry appetites? 

It seems like energy-flow changes are fairly localized (the energy
dissipated from an unimpeded river flow would have also been converted
almost exclusively to heat to be carried away in the water?

What of the Entropy?   Was useful negEntropy somehow extracted and
effectively "wasted" by dumping it into a Proof of Work distributed
ledger representing BitCoin value?

One could argue that there are much better uses of this negEntropy than
inflating a strange Ponzi Bubble?

My Father used to make the apology/excuse for his relative's moonshining
as the most efficient way for folks on the inland side of the Cumberland
Gap to monetize their ability to produce, process and deliver crops
(i.g. corn) to market.    Where farmers on the seaboard side could sell
their corn, it was prohibitively expensive to haul corn to the Virginia
Markets from W.VA and KY,  but distilled "corn squeezin's" represented
concentrating the "value" out of the sun falling on the corn, etc.   The
hydropower from the Great Bear waterhsed,  would seem to be mined of
it's negEntropy to create "value" in the form of BitCoin.

I don't expect POW to continue much longer in the shadow of POS.   I
also wonder if when/if/as BitCoin value is maxed if the energy use will
drop radically.  Absent mining new coin, doesn't BitCoin operation
degenerate to the  same energy cost (covering transactions only) as
other (POS) blockchain implementations?


On 4/14/21 1:45 PM, Prof David West wrote:
> Just read: in 2024, when it is expected to peak, Bitcoin mining in China alone will consume more power than the country of Italy.
>
> Known server farms (excluding NSA, military, etc.) in the US use more energy per year than the country of England.
>
> But I am sure they are all "net zero."
>
> davew
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 14, 2021, at 1:31 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
>> https://youtu.be/PQbYk1p2cn8
>>
>> -- 
>> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
>>
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