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If climate activists wanted to crash Bitcoin, what could they do? e.g., is it possible to DDoS the miners, trigger unintended forks by splitting the network, etc.
The goal here is not something on the scale of a 51% attack. Rather to create sufficient disruption that BTC as an investment strategy becomes untenable.
This is not particularly hard, I think—at some point, the price of BTC is too low to subsidize the miners. When mining stops, so do transactions.
This could also be done by randomly targeting individual miners for an intensive DDoS, and proceeding strategically against different mining pools.
Agreed! The most obvious answer is that it’s massively illegal. Nobody should try to do this, even though at this point knocking out BTC is probably the simplest way to help the planet. https://twitter.com/funicular1/status/1385628441291149315?s=20
Seems like an obvious thing to pressure the Biden administration on, given their current climate goals. https://twitter.com/jancorazza/status/1385628266153787392?s=20
The ecoterrorists can stay crazy longer than the hodlers can stay solvent? https://twitter.com/grantadever/status/1385629362439942147?s=20
Let’s get the band back together. https://twitter.com/scootyherming/status/1385630128890281992?s=20
Energy consumption of mining pools is literally insane. The scale of a medium-sized member of the EU. https://twitter.com/CarnunMP/status/1385630365759557636?s=20
Not quite! A carbon tax helps reduce the amount of carbon being put *into* the sky. I don't see why you would think it takes it out—this seems to be a basic misunderstanding? https://twitter.com/ostrophonics/status/1385637815787180036?s=20
But the carbon tax *doesn't* suck carbon out of the sky. Why do you keep asserting this? https://twitter.com/ostrophonics/status/1385641055509483524?s=20
I’ve thought about this. Almost certainly the software used to interface with the chain has vulnerabilities. Is it possible to hide a Chernobyl packet in a transaction—some input that triggers a buffer overflow in a popular piece of BTC software? https://twitter.com/rplevy/status/1385636097825247233?s=20
The claim that any increased efficiency in one sector will always be wiped out by another seems absurd to me. Put another way, these arguments seem to suggest that the only way to reduce energy consumption is a carbon tax! https://twitter.com/AVMiceliBarone/status/1385646463292788737?s=20
As much as I’m coming around to cryptocurrency-as-Ponzi scheme view, it’s certainly the case that Proof of Stake cryptocurrency would eliminate nearly all of the waste. https://twitter.com/TFisherson/status/1385676008053936132?s=20
Yes! Already vulnerable to nation-state scale attack. I brought this up on my LindyChat with @PaulSkallas. I’ve stopped talking about it because every time I do I get completely mobbed by the 4HL/BTC is my ticket out crowd. https://twitter.com/DanielleFong/status/1385656335325442048?s=20
(1) BTC is not unseizable; (2) if a government wants you dead, owning BTC won’t help you; (3) clothes dryers dry clothes and shutting them down would hurt people; (4) BTC is a Ponzi scheme and we don’t have a social obligation to maintain it. https://twitter.com/wheatpond/status/1385677816633696265?s=20
BTC mining increases pressure for energy, not renewable energy. Even worse, because mining can be located anywhere, can skirt emissions caps and pollution regulations. https://twitter.com/techceopepe/status/1385633183002202114?s=20
Can cringe save the world? https://twitter.com/laserboat999/status/1385679662924242944?s=20
“BTC won’t prevent the government from killing you” is a vital piece of information. If you’re worried, keep $10k in C-notes under the bed. People will actually take them in an emergency, accepting BTC will prove to the govt they helped you. https://twitter.com/wheatpond/status/1385680547012390913?s=20
Any data on this? https://twitter.com/thechaz/status/1385682143137861636?s=20
More on known attacks. https://twitter.com/AchimLittlepage/status/1385682763332812805?s=20
I support a new PoW system that involves Mardi Gras beads. https://twitter.com/NamesakeMark/status/1385683811254538240?s=20
A lot of people promoting a strong-Luddite view here. I think this misses the point that computers do an enormous amount of good, most notably Topic Modeling. We should not, contrary to this suggestion, halt all computer use. https://twitter.com/LyddonB/status/1385684352483217410?s=20
Strong disagree. BTC is the last thing you want when trying to make a quick escape. Anyone who takes it is traceable back to you. https://twitter.com/mekarpeles/status/1385684814368448513?s=20
No, it’s a universal Kantian thing. https://twitter.com/LyddonB/status/1385685411620556800?s=20
Yes. I wonder if it’s possible to create a race condition where forks run much longer than usual, and waste more hash. https://twitter.com/AnthonyDessauer/status/1385686939290935299?s=20
Absolutely a point at which mining stops: when the price is low enough that the cost to compute the next hash isn’t worth the reward. (Probably an earlier point, which is when so few people are working on it that the transaction time becomes too long.) https://twitter.com/meme_bitcoin/status/1385686983087775744?s=20
Yes, there is a weird equilibrium: very large numbers of people investing very small amounts of computer power to solve a very simple hash. (You need large N to get the necessary common knowledge.) https://twitter.com/karimhelpme/status/1385689047721521163
