Nothing is strictly true except truisms, but I still disagree. Unless bitcoin consensus rules necessitated energy source that is harmful for environment, it is not fair to blame energy consumer for environment impact. Energy producer is the villain and spineless politicians that won’t enforce punishment for harmful energy sources.

I disagree, just as in the food example. Consumers are also to blame. If you know that your induced demand will be filled in the same way that current demand is being filled, then creating more demand is irresponsible, if it can be avoided. What benefit does wasting so much energy have? At least Siberian homes using mining to heat their house in the winter have a good side effect.

> If you know that your induced demand will be filled in the same way that current demand is being filled, then creating more demand is irresponsible, if it can be avoided. What benefit does wasting so much energy have?

I think you misunderstand PoW. Energy is not wasted, energy is spent to provide the security level that is demanded by the market. Nobody will spend a joule mining bitcoin unless it is profitable.

> At least Siberian homes using mining to heat their house in the winter have a good side effect

This is actually a bad thing, because it means mining is inefficient. Primary purpose of mining is to convert energy into PoW, if you get heat doing that - you’re not getting as much PoW as you could’ve got.

You always create heat. That’s where the energy goes. Google “reversible computing” for theoretical approaches for computations that release zero heat.

Look, I can come up with a terrible sorting algorithm and get everyone using it as a requirement to participate a network protocol that will never change and then say look, it’s useful, it’s sorting stuff.

People have long invented far better things than PoW to secure distributed BFT systems. The transcations they can handle even scale with the number of machines, which is the case with the vast majority of applications on the Internet. If there was no alternative then MAYBE it wouldn’t be a waste (I think it would still be a bad trade-off). But you can literally just have a coin on another protocol which doesn’t use PoW arms race.

You always create heat but at different efficiency levels. If you create enough heat with your miner to keep your siberian home warm it’s fair to say you’re not being very efficient at computing.

I don’t know if a single system where mutually untrusting parties can find consensus in distributed ledger other than PoW or it’s energy (but not complexity) equivalent PoS. If you do - make a money out of it and be a trillionaire, nobody is stopping you.

So far the only thing that probably works is PoW.

Tell me again what’s wrong with Ripple or Stellar? How are they centralized?

So rather than addressing my points you start the cycle again by suggesting implementations of PoS coins? What’s wrong with Ripple and Stellar is that they are PoS coins. PoS doesn’t address any existing issues but adds layers of complexity. And both are centralized pre-mine scams anyway.

You made a pretty bold statement saying that no Proof of Stake systems are not immune to grinding, although they're are some currently major ones in existence, EOS, Carsano, etc. If you can grind away at these systems, why don't you do that and make a trillion dollars yourself?

Just because something can be attacked doesn’t mean it can be attacked cheaply.

Besides, your argument cuts both ways - if you think PoS are so much better and PoW will eventually be worthless, show me how much BTC you shorted today or ever. I bet it’s zero.

I think PoS is much more environmentally friendly than PoW. That's not the same as whether I think either will increase or decline in the short term, which is a different question entirely.

Anyway, you have yet to prove the core of your argument, that any current PoS system can be defeated by an equivalent amount of work as a PoW system through grinding. Again, this is a bold statement. Can you at least begin to try to defend it?

First, talking of environmental impact of PoW is misguided. It’s producers of energy that do harm, not consumers.

Second, stake grinding is an attack. You’re the one who has to prove your PoS system is not affected by it. As far as I’m concerned cost of attack is the same as in PoW except PoS shifts costs into political spectrum via totally redundant layer of complexity.

No, it's the chemical reaction that the oil plants use, not the owners of the said plants. See how silly that sounds?

You can't assert that every PoS system is vulnerable to a grinding attack without specifying what the attack is. Every PoW system has a centralization of mining problem due to economy of scale. Now prove that isn't true.

> No, it's the chemical reaction that the oil plants use, not the owners of the said plants

poor attempt, try again.

> without specifying what the attack is

stake grinding, long range and other attacks are widely known. all complexities that deviate from trivial PoS system exist solely to address these attacks. are you really pretending they don't exist?

> Every PoW system has a centralization of mining problem due to economy of scale. Now prove that isn't true.

the only centralizing factor is energy subsidies. it's still a far cry from issues with PoS systems.

>> No, it's the chemical reaction that the oil plants use, not the owners of the said plants

> poor attempt, try again.

I like how you deleted the "See how silly that sounds?" part, which is what I'm getting at. Anyway, who to blame is philosophical question and has no absolute truth, we might as well blame God for making humans greedy and shortsighted. I think we have to agree to disagree here. The fact remains though that in today's world if BTC switched over to PoS, we'd save about 1% energy usage today and the corresponding co2 production to go along with it. If BTC continues to grow, this number will go up correspondingly. Are you denying this?

> stake grinding, long range and other attacks are widely known. all complexities that deviate from trivial PoS system exist solely to address these attacks. are you really pretending they don't exist?

I'm saying they've been solved. You can see their justifications against the attacks you talk about in the white papers. If you have a specific attack against a specific coin, then we have something to talk about. Otherwise, just repeating over and over, "But there are attacks!" doesn't disprove anything they are saying.

> the only centralizing factor is energy subsidies. it's still a far cry from issues with PoS systems.

Again, economies of scale. Please at least try to address my arguments.

Who is to blame for environmental harm is not a philosophical question. Act of consumption is not harmful, act of production is harmful. The fact that demand creates incentive to produce from shitty sources doesn’t change the actor that is doing harm.

And it’s not 1%, so you’re wrong about that too.

If BTC switched over to PoS it would cost the world exactly the same amount of resources, shifting some energy consumption into political plane. Fiat money is 100% political plane. Going towards fiat money is antithetical to bitcoin.

You’re saying attacks have been solved without citing any sources. There is no solution to PoS attacks that doesn’t make the system less trustless or less decentralized and introduces a layer of attackable complexity.

> Again, economies of scale. Please at least try to address my arguments.

I haven’t seen an argument so far, only a buzzword.

Ripple and Stellar are NOT based on PoS. They use a different consensus called PoC. Have you looked at their design at all?

oh yeah, ofc, those two are just centralized pre-mine scams. that's even worse than PoS imho. the biggest question is why do people even consider them cryptocurrencies.

Ripple and Stellar are completely centralized. It's simply a web of trust. If one of your peers that have given you “trust”, such as a bank in which you have an account, decides they want to freeze your funds and prevent you from spending your money on the Ripple network, they can do so. With Bitcoin, this can't be done.

That’s totally false though. Only if the majority of your peers colludes, then you don’t make progress, but then you just change your peers and make progress.

I haven't looked at ripple in awhile, but I thought the idea was that if Alice agrees that she can float Bob $5 and Bob agrees that he can float Charles $5 then as long as you trust Alice with a $5 debt, you can trust Charles with a $5 debt, even though you don't know Charles.

And in practice it's usually that Alice and Bob are banks, and Charles is just a customer of Bob's bank. So, Bob can freeze Charles' money.

What you're talking about sounds more like EOS, Cardano, Ethereum Proof of Stake, etc.

I think you are thinking of RipplePay, which was like 10 years ago. Since then Ripple introduced the XRP distributed ledger which is what we’re talking about