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Comment by ForHackernews | Hacker News Reader

Don't flatter yourself: wasting electricity running sha256 a billion times is not "fighting" for anything.

Yea agreed. I’m definitely a bitcoin maximalist moreso now. I mean if I were to receive a remittance I rather receive bitcoin than lumens.

Interesting with bitcoin though, when I first heard of it, I remember hearing they use that computational power to help (eg. Hospitals) run various computational heavy simulations in exchange for btc. Kind of like how Seti@home works. Always wondered where I heard that from. Unfortunately it’s just wasting energy rehashing sha256 a billion times :$

“Useful” PoW never really took off (primecoin and riecoin were prime number discovery POW functions that did not sustain long term value).

it’s possible that general purpose and usable proof of work system might exist but I dont think we have found it.

I have always said knowledge of the silicon capability of SHA256 and the integrity of ECDSA is itself of immense value.

I’m definitely not super knowledgeable in cryptography, from the outside, the integrity of BTC is what makes me a bitcoin maximalist when it comes to Crypto lol.

However, the high energy consumption as the tradeoff is definitely like the elephant in the room.

One way to think of it as energy spend on activism for integrity. Many governments, tyrants and thieves would stop at nothing to corrupt the integrity of the chain. By sacrificing energy we make it very difficult for them to do so. It is not the energy or work itself that is valuable, but the requirement that an adversary outwork in order to inflict a negative outcome.

Better to spill the electrons of the enemy than their blood. We can only hope that future warfare is computational, rather than kinetic.

> We can only hope that future warfare is computational, rather than kinetic

Why would this hypothetical enemy agree to participate? Even if they wanted coins (instead of say, land, subjects, or natural resources), it's cheaper and easier to steal or extort them from you than mine them.

If this was true, in it was easier to steal or extort; the miners would be stealing or extorting. Such is the nature of the Bitcoin game.

There are plenty of reasons not to steal and extort, like personal ethics or a fear of getting caught. If it were easier to mine than steal or extort, gangs would be running mining operations instead of wasting their time with theft and ransomware. A hostile cyber army would need mining to be twice as effective at raising funds as theft or ransomware, since stealing 1 BTC drains your reserves and adds to theirs, whereas mining only adds to theirs.

> Such is the nature of the Bitcoin game.

I assume from this sentence in your comment and from your bio ("Character account — I only play a Bitcoin maximalist on the internet") that this is just performance art/trolling for you, so I'll wrap up my end of the discussion here.

And I’ll leave you with “yes, the game theory intensifies”. Thank you for playing.

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