Re: Sustainability of Bitcoin and Blockchain

> On 27 Jan 2016, at 21:42, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 27 January 2016 at 11:09, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net <mailto:henry.story@bblfish.net>> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>   I'd be very interested in research on the sustainability of bitcoin and blockchain.
> This should be a very good initial research topic for this group, as it is a protocol
> that works on the internet and is most directly of interest to economists, and so
> will get their direct interest too. There are also many claims that the block chain can
> be the underpinning for a new internet.
> 
> Here is an initial article claiming that bitcoin is not sustainable:
> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-is-unsustainable <http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-is-unsustainable>
> It claims that 1 transaction uses up the energy of 1.5 households per
> day and that this is 5 thousand times less energy efficient than a credit
> card transaction. The article also points to another study that claims that
> the blockchain is 99% more efficient than the banking sector, though that
> one takes the whole banking sector into account, including if I read correctly
> the bank branches, ATM, employees, etc...
> 
> Of course the bitcoin algorithm is perhaps not the last word.
> Tony Arciery in "The death of bitcoin" points to a number of other alogrithms in
> this space:
>   https://tonyarcieri.com/the-death-of-bitcoin <https://tonyarcieri.com/the-death-of-bitcoin>
> 
> The Blockchain technology is getting a lot of attention recently. See for example
> the UK Government's Office of Science report just released
> "Distributed Ledger Technology: beyond block chain"
> https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/492972/gs-16-1-distributed-ledger-technology.pdf <https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/492972/gs-16-1-distributed-ledger-technology.pdf>
> 
> The issues here are clearly complex. But if a methodology can be found to answer this question
> in the blockchain world, where it will certainly get a lot of review and inspection, and if
> after getting this review and inspection it succeeded at achieving consensus, then that process
> could certainly be used to look at sustainability in other areas of the web.
> 
> Isnt a problem, bitcoin can handle all the transactions on the planet.  You just move them from on block to off block. 

You mean remove the bitcoins from the blockchain?

But what consensus protocol do you use then, to avoid people paying x number of people with the same coin? 
It is the bitcoin consensus protocol that is so consumptive in CPU according to Tony Arcieri's post and those who wish to compete. Stellar has a little table of the advantages of different such protocols:
https://www.stellar.org/blog/stellar-consensus-protocol-proof-code/ <https://www.stellar.org/blog/stellar-consensus-protocol-proof-code/>

And if you remove it from the bitcoin blockchain, do you still have bitcoins? I mean you can refer to the blockchain, of course and publish information elsewhere but that won't mean your usage of that bitcoin in
a transaction won't use up CPU.

Henry


> Fees are affordable.  Storage will get cheaper, as will computing power.
> 
> It's waaaaaaay cheaper than the current banking system.  
>  
> 
> Henry