Kazakhstan Internet Shutdown Deals Blow To Global Bitcoin Mining Operation (theguardian.com) 51
The global computing power of the bitcoin network has dropped sharply as the shutdown this week of Kazakhstan's internet during a deadly uprising hit the country's fast-growing cryptocurrency mining industry. From a report: Kazakhstan became last year the world's second-largest centre for bitcoin mining after the United States, according to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, after China clamped down on crypto mining activity. Russia sent paratroopers into Kazakhstan on Thursday to help put down the countrywide uprising after violence spread across the tightly controlled former Soviet state. Police said they had killed dozens of rioters in the main city, Almaty, while state television said 13 members of the security forces had died. The internet was on Wednesday shut down across the country in what monitoring site Netblocks called "a nation-scale internet blackout." The move would have probably prevented Kazakhstan-based miners from accessing the bitcoin network.
way 525 that bitcoin can not be used for day to da (Score:3)
way 525 that bitcoin can not be used for day to day usage.
Re:way 525 that bitcoin can not be used for day to (Score:5, Interesting)
way 525 that bitcoin can not be used for day to day usage.
Or for many of the other purported reasons people state -- like freedom from the government. Crypto isn't very useful for that when the government can simply shut off a few routers on a whim (w/o any legal recourse for you) and prevent your access to any/all of your funds or from using them.
The global computing power of the bitcoin network has dropped sharply as the shutdown this week of Kazakhstan's internet during a deadly uprising hit the country's fast-growing cryptocurrency mining industry.
Even worse if one entity can do this and negatively affect the entire crypto network. How many more would it take to make things practically unusable for everyone.
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You need satellite or dialup or StarLink or whatever and you have your access,
And no, they did nothing to the global network. China shutting down 50% of miners back in May did nothing. Kazakhstan shutting off 12% sure as heck didn’t do anything.
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Indeed. As this was glaringly obvious before, the morons will just come up with more invalid excuses though.
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Well no online payment system is currently usable in kazakhstan, not just bitcoin.
Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, because when there is a brutal crackdown on political demonstrators by a repressive regime, aided by Russian troops in a replay of cold-war era Warsaw pact style military crackdown reminiscent of Prague 1968 or Budapest 1956, my concern should be whether the crypto-techno-elite can still carry out their pyramid-bitcoin scheme....
Exactly. It's like the old saying: Oh no! Anyway . . .
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Wasn't it:
" Oh no! You Bastards! " ?
Nope [9cache.com].
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Clearly you don't believe in Supply Side Jesus
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Two sides of the same (bit)coin. You approve crackdown on crypto, you are approving other kinds of oppression. Putin would be so proud of many of the comments here.
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Seriously? A situation can have more than one aspect that deserves attention. Are you _this_ limited in your perception of reality?
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Yes, because when there is a brutal crackdown on political demonstrators by a repressive regime, aided by Russian troops in a replay of cold-war era Warsaw pact style military crackdown reminiscent of Prague 1968 or Budapest 1956, my concern should be whether the crypto-techno-elite can still carry out their pyramid-bitcoin scheme....
Why do you visit a tech site then? Go to CNN or whatever, and resume feeling morally superior over us, by being outraged by the right things and not the wrong things.
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Informative)
DO YOUR HOMEWORK. You are so full of gas coming out of your rear opening that you need to be careful around open sources of fire. Danger of explosion.
1. Kazakhstan up to this week had a weird form of "dual" rule where the old dictator went into the shadows, but did not relinguish power to his designated successor. Want to know what is going in Kazahstan? Search the news for Nazarbayev (the name of the old dictator). You will find NIL. NADA. F*ck all. ZILCH. Nobody even knows if the "president of the security council for life" which supposedly supervises the elected president is even dead or alive.
2. The Russian troops moved in late this evening and they are nowhere near any action. They have their own objects to defend and the situation is that they need defending. This includes - Baykonur spaceport, two ICBM and missile defence test ranges and the old nuclear arms testing grounds at Semipalatinks where in storage lays enough radioactive materials to kill all life of earth. In addition to that, Kazahstan is the site where the Eu gets most of its Uranium. In fact, even USA buys some - that is the biggest active U mining operation on the planet. That (and its storage) also needs defending. Just keeping these sites will fully occupy the few thousands of Russian + Belorussian + Armenian + Kyrgizian contingent (that is the actual mix).
3. The crackdown started BEFORE that and AFTER the current president successfully deposed all the remnants of the Nazarbayev clan including his nephew. While in other countries the joke "Oh, you are a general, your dad must be a general too" is a joke, in Kazakhstan it is a reality. As a result of the weird dual rule the country at all levels - ministries, cities, assets, etc was split between the two clans with a long line of nephews taking all key positions.
4. The "peaceful demonstrators" before the crackdown were given without a fight the whole arsenal of the local equivalent of the KGB in Alma Aty as well as the arsenal of the local police (for a city of one million) as well as some of the weapons and munitions of the national guard as well as the contents of all weapons shops in a place with the most liberal gun laws in the ex-Soviet block. By yet another nephew of Nazarbayev - all of this is part of the clan war. That is enough armament to arm the army in some of the smaller NATO countries.
5. So the executive summary is that at present the "peaceful demonstrators" from the clans opposing the current president already have at their disposal the arsenal of a small army, some are well trained (police, local equivalent of KGB from opposing clans as well as members of ISIS coming from neighbouring Afghanistan). They know how to use it and do we like it or not the list of sites in point 2 are under threat. This includes threat to us from someone making the mother of all dirty bombs from a couple of containers in the Semipalatinsk storage.
So to come back to your bucket of "intoxicated on Guardian overdose" sh*t - the crackdown is 100% local clans fighting for supremacy. Foreign troops are busy enough guarding the assets which Kazakhstan has leased to their countries on long term (or eternal) lease.
So, next time, before you suffer from nearly terminal intoxication on anti-russian xenophobia (happens to those who read the Guardian and believe it), do your homework. And do not apply "democratic criteria" to a fight without rules between two mob clans in a foreign country which is about 1000 years away from democracy. The democratic rules simply do not belong.
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my concern should be whether the crypto-techno-elite can still carry out their pyramid-bitcoin scheme....
Not your concern, but rather a reflection that not everything coming out of this crackdown is bad.
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True, there’s a huge tragedy behind this event. Crypto is the least we should consider.
But inspecting the reminiscence — were the protestors of old in Prague and Budapest peaceful? Given reports, many of the more recent Kazakh demonstrations involved violent elements: several police dead, some beheaded; public building burnt.
"Computing power" (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems wrong to describe the Bitcoin network as "computing power," more like "energy wasting capacity" since it's doing the computing equivalent of pulling a one-armed bandit a septillion times until someone hits the jackpot by predicting the hash for the next block.
I also recently learned that the total cumulative computing power of the Ethereum "world VM" to run distributed applications is in the ballpark of something like a C64 or a low-end Arduino...that sucks down more electricity than any one cloud-hosting megacorp.
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I hope this is written by an artificial intelligence. Intrinsic value due to the proof of work done by mining it? You mean the same work that's horrendously wasteful and ultimately achieves less than Visa does in a fraction of a second with far less energy? Followed up with a "pays the bills" defense and a wealth = merit fallacy. People who traffic in the body parts of endangered animals are paying the bills and drive better cars than us too. Same with genocidal dictators and illegal toxic waste disposers.
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I hope this is written by an artificial intelligence.
nope, that's clearly a human blockchain believer.
or someone posing as one, which is less likely simply because it would be totally silly to do so, however humanity's potential for silliness should not be underestimated.
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I mean the Ethereum "world VM" has roughly the computing power of a C64 or Arduino, while using more electricity than a cloud-hosting megacorp. Ultra low computing power and ultra high energy usage at the same time.
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I also recently learned that the total cumulative computing power of the Ethereum "world VM" to run distributed applications is in the ballpark of something like a C64 or a low-end Arduino...that sucks down more electricity than any one cloud-hosting megacorp.
Interesting. Distributed computations without trust have a tendency to have extremely low performance. Got a reference for that? (Not criticizing, but interested in the details.) That would put a major limit on what can be done with smart contracts.
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https://www.usenix.org/publica... [usenix.org]
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Thank you. And something from USENIX too. Nice!
Could be worse (Score:1)
Can we shutdown all crypto then? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Let's start with proof of work [wikipedia.org] based ones.
Don't know if non PoW-based crypto currencies have similar energy consumption problem. That is: ignoring the multitude of other problems with (most? all existing?) crypto coins.
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clearly some minds think otherwise.
Satellite internet? (Score:2)
and when they cut the power to your farm? and cut (Score:2)
and when they cut the power to your farm? and cut fuel for your on side generator
Gaming and so on (Score:3)
What occurs to me sometimes is that, in the case of GPU mining, (not ASIC bitcoin mining, mind you), if those GPUs weren't being used by miners, they'd be used by gamers. And modern gaming, while not as bad as cryptomining, is in the habit of p***ing away a few hundred watts just so that you can play CSGO in 4k/120fps rather than say 720p/60fps. (Of course, unlike cryptomining, gamers play for only a fraction of a day, rather than 24/7, so that is another thing, but I wonder where this line of thinking leads: how much power is wasted in chasing performance beyond what is needed in various areas of life.)
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how much power is wasted in chasing performance beyond what is needed in various areas of life
You're begging the question. Start by justifying why you think 4K/120fps is "performance beyond what is needed". Given that high resolution displays given you an edge in detecting the opposition and high frame rates benefit in accuracy I would say it's a better use of computing power than pissing away a whole weeks worth of power to confirm that someone bought an NFT.
And while you are playing CSGO in 4k/120fps, that puts you in the kind of territory where you're not even able to sustain minimum required fra
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I think the largest factor is that, as you mention, the most dedicated gamer is still going to be using their GPU far less than a crypto miner.
Another factor is efficiency. I recently upgraded to a GPU that is by some rough measure has double the performance of my previous card, but only consumes 10% more power at peak load. I'm now able to run some games at just 50-60% utilization that would have pegged my old GPU at 100% constantly. Even in those games where I am taking full advantage of my new card'
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One good thing (Score:2)
Beneficiaries of ponzi scheme will fight back (Score:3)
Who do you think benefits from using government subsidized power to run large crypto farms?
It's clearly people with VERY close ties to the government. corruption I suspect those industries will be "back online" before very long even if general internet access isn't.
Best,