| HN Mirror

>>What exactly about the current state of crypto is incompatible with this critique?

Ethereum is by far the most widely used cryptocurrency network, and while it consumes a lot of energy relative to the number of transactions in processes, and a lot of energy in absolute terms, it consumes on the order of a thousandths (0.1%) of the world's energy output.

It will have switched to Proof of Stake long before it grows large enough for it to account for a materially significant portion of global energy consumption. So the rhetoric used above, which makes the generalization that "Crypto is a planet-destroying ponzi-scheme", is entirely hyperbolic with respect to the environmental criticism (and a blatant mischaracterization with respect to the ponzi-scheme allegation).

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1265897/worldwide-ethere...

Ethereum is now estimated to consume energy equivalent to or greater than mid-sized countries like Greece[1]. You can paint it as tiny, but 0.1% of world energy output is still enormous, for providing what is for the most part a highly speculative set of financial instruments to a limited audience.

It's been "about to go PoS" for several years now. The fact is it hasn't. When it does, you can tell people their concerns are out of date. About Ethereum. Bitcoin isn't even going there and its consumption is as bad or worse.

everfree 1568 days ago

I don't disagree with most of your comment, but I do want to point out that the code to power Ethereum's switch to PoS is actually built out now and is in its final stages of testing. The latest Kiln test network is effectively a release candidate. At no point in the past several years has that been true, so it's comparing apples to oranges to say it's been "about to go" for that long.

I will welcome it when it does, don't get me wrong. That honestly removes a major issue I have with cryptocurrency (at least with Ether, anyway). There are a host of more theoretical reasons I'm not buying into the ecosystem, but remove that negative externality and hey - you do you, not my bag but you aren't hurting others.

I'm sure it is closer than ever, if it wasn't then there's something wrong with the development process! I sincerely wish the various people involved good luck in this venture and a speedy success in moving it to production. In the mean time I'm still going to get pissed off at people saying that energy concerns are outdated, especially when they're referring to the whole cryptocurrency ecosystem.

pinephoneguy 1568 days ago

Don't forget that traditional banks consume lots of energy as well. Their armies of employees and tellers are required to drive an hour or so every day, they maintain tons of physical buildings, truck around piles of physical currency etc. Traditional fiat is given legitimacy based on government's monopoly on violence inside their borders which often result in wars. Nothing is free and I'm fairly certain that crypto will end in less energy consumption, not more.

> Don't forget that traditional banks consume lots of energy as well.

This is a spurious comparison, traditional banks provide orders of magnitude more services to orders of magnitude more people.

> Nothing is free and I'm fairly certain that crypto will end in less energy consumption, not more.

One day, could, will.

But still isn't and doesn't. With a background of a world scrambling for cleaner power to mitigate climate change. That's the problem.

Exactly. Proof of work is costly in energy and affordable in labor. The energy consumption of labor-intensive industries obfuscates the real energy requirements of those industries, by effectively outsourcing the energy consumption to the workers.

I still prefer Ethereum's variation of Proof of Stake over Proof of Work, but it's by no means clear to me that Proof of Work based blockchains are less resource-efficient than traditional financial systems, and I would wager a comprehensive analysis would show in fact that they have the potential to be vastly more efficient, if they're allowed to scale up their transaction throughput to amortize their energy consumption across more numerous transactions.

lottin 1568 days ago

> Ethereum is now estimated to consume energy equivalent to or greater than mid-sized countries like Greece[1].

While providing 1/700,000 of the computing power of a Raspberry Pi.

It's substituting for the state, and the social organization it provides, not personal computers.

lottin 1568 days ago

No offence, but it would probably be a good idea for you to study some theory of the state, before making such outlandish remarks.

CryptoPunk 1566 days ago

No offence, but for you to see zero parallels between the contract enforcement that decentralized blockchain-based networks conduct, and the function of traditional legal systems, suggests to me you would benefit from taking your own advice.

No offence.

https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/12/20/kintsugi-merge-testnet/

0.1% is huge, but in no reasonable terms can it be called "planet destroying", when it's slated to be mostly eliminated within 6 months with the transition to Proof of Stake. The characterization is hyperbole.

As for the transition to PoS, the first phase of the transition was implemented on December 1st, 2020, with the launch of the Proof of Stake Beacon Chain. The Beacon Chain has been running without problems for over a year now.

The testnet for the second phase of ETH2 - which is when the execution chain is merged into the Beacon Chain so that Ethereum can fully switch from PoW to PoS and reduce its energy consumption by 99.95% - was launched on December 20th, 2021:

The second phase is expected to be completed before the end of 2022.

> when it's slated to be mostly eliminated within 6 months

Ethereum, maybe, it's been six months away for years. BTC, nope.

CryptoPunk 1566 days ago

The difference between now and then is that now Ethereum has had the Proof of Stake Beacon in operation for over a year, and the next phase, which merges the execution chain into the PoS chain already, has a running testnet.

The projections on the completion date of the switch to PoS is now far less speculative / more reliable.