As a snap shot of today this argument holds. But it is only the near term picture. Chia is just getting started, the NetSpace growth curve has shown no sign of slowing down so these numbers will likely be considerably different in a month or two or six. The curve will have to slow down some because the availability of large drives is getting scarce. Finding drives larger than 8 TB right now is becoming difficult. But ultimately the netspace will continue to grow until the cost of farming is close to the return(i.e. until it is no longer profitable to add more drives). With XCH over $1000+ I suspect when this equilibrium is found Chia may not look any greener than the POW based coins.
@Kwyjibo Think of all the costs in the banking system to keep it running. I donāt have numbers in front of me, so I donāt have a real argument, but I wonder what that cost is compared to Chia or other cryptos?
Arguing carbon footprint due to electrical cost which is (currently) largely derived from coal is one argument. Arguing that crypto is more or less expensive is a another argument and requires us to look at the total costs of the competing options.
How much money do banks consume every year? Buildings, salaries of all employees (tellers, IT, security, compliance, management) and more.
Itās the same with the Helium cryptocurrency which now focuses on IoT, but soon will be moving into 5G. AT&T and other telecoms have to put up towers, maintenance, engineers, etc. What if we distributed those costs to individuals? Could it be a cheaper more efficient 5G option? Thatās one major idea behind crypto: decentralization is better.
Chia has a cost. Every solution will. The question is which solution is BEST. I think Chia beats the banks. Heck, even a PoW crypto may beat the banks.
This also becomes an intangible and subjective valuation.
- What is the cost of HONEST money? Honest money meaning money that cannot be printed ENDLESSLY to debt spend on silly things.
- What is the value of full control of your own money? It cannot be confiscated or controlled by governments or institutions.
- What is the cost an innovative financial ecosystem that can be built on without burdensome regulation by governments and large companies that conspire with regulators to put up unnecessary barriers to entry?
I think Chia wins on the dollars and cents comparison of hard numbers. It wins even more if you believe the above ideas as well.
Cryptocurrency philosophy very much aligns with the agorist philosophy behind seasteading and other similar ideas: youāre free to enter and free to leave. This allows people to vote with their dollars and ideas. This is one big reason why cryptocurrencies are so attractive and will succeed: good ideas win in the end when people are free to choose and change their minds.
@casualChia Iāve read and heard that the scarcity is short-term in the consumer sector because it was unexpected, but the depth of production is much greater than current demand by Chia enthusiasts. Weāll see.
As far as not being greener than PoW coins, Iād be happy to hear what numbers are making you think that. The numbers we have in front of us right now make it obvious Chia is much greener than PoW coins. Itās 15-22x more Green on electricity (farming vs mining.) If it grows to be 15-22x the market of PoW coins, then they will break even. But then itās not a 1:1 comparison any way. Itād be like comparing the compliance costs of JP Morgan with a local bank in a small town.
As always, cost only makes sense when itās attached to value. What if tens of millions of unbanked are finally able to bank because Chia coin became an accepted crypto by governments, which got second and third world countries on board?
I see a lot of talk about cost in threads about how āgreenā Chia is or isnāt. Not a lot of talk about value. Nothing is free.
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Soā¦
Iām going to start a new lottery and all you have to do is buy some tickets (plots)
If you buy 20 tickets you are going to win in a monthā¦
In a month, what you havenāt won yetā¦
But if you buy another 20 tickets you are going to win in 3 monthsā¦
What! You havenāt wonā¦
Tell you whatā¦ if you buy another 20 tickets you are probably going to win in 6 months
Ohā¦ no win
Another 20 ticketsā¦ what??? 3 yearsā¦
Omgā¦
BUT WE ALL STILL DO ITā¦LOL
It would be funny if it wasnāt true 
Farming status: Farming
Total chia farmed: 0.0
Plot count: 1231
Expected time to win: 1 week and 2 days
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Dude I checked the debugger file - it had this ādouble spendā error and the entire file was 90% filled with it. From what they explain and I understand of this error, the chances of winning become randomness x infinity squared - almost seeming like the program having been pre-optimised for pools. Like you will never win outside of the pool in about much much worse a ratio of probability of all the worlds lotteries multiplied - thatās my interpretation of it.
If you look at Chia Status you notice repeat winners more often - these pools are taking all the winnings because the system is designed for the pool 
perhapsā¦
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Noooot quite - if there is a bias towards pooling it is likely to be more about prioritization of development towards features that suit larger miners or configuration that they developed for and fragile software. For example i am seeing a repeated crash of the Harvester - how/why i donāt know yet but it is SILENT and enough to stop me gaining rewards as my harvester is dropping out constantly. There have been a number of such flaky scenarios which probably means the system works but only in quite rigid configurations - those tested by the larger farmers, developers
A pool would help identify these problems coz you simple donāt get rewards rather than simply attributing the flaky software to ābad luckā
Of course your proposition could be true but iād like to see some evidence rather that supposition before assuming that - meanwhile i have evidence as to why i am failing to get rewards
Pools where always part of the design.
The thing is that the developers just never expected it to kick off and grow this fast and thought pools where not in a big hurry. Without this insane growth, it would have been fine for ppl to solo-farm.
But to answer your statement there is no way to ascertain whether people are getting the correct number of rewards unless we get a āsurveyā of miners with plots, rewards etc so we can check the statistics - unfortunately it is so difficult to get a reward now that it is difficult to get enough volunteers submitting their progress. The protocol does not KNOW how many plots you have (at least in theory) directly - it can only assume based on how often you get hit statistically. I havenāt studied the protocol to see if that information has been uploaded in any way so take it at face value that the protocol does not know
So apart from supposition, how would you try to confirm you hypothesis ?
I have found that my harvester will run anywhere between 1 and 6 hours before failing - i now receive alerts when it does and my phone is pretty busy
There are over 979 issues on git - its a bit of a shit show to be honest ā¦
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Shit show it isā¦ Agreeed!
They need to implement a percentage reduction in profit or chance for extremely large farms in similar locations, this will help with decentralisation and keep the smaller guys in.
Not possible because one large farmer can pretend to be many small ones. Look up Sybil Attacks for more info.
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Hello everyone I did a search I came across this
I am not so optimistic right now.Thnking that home users is here just to build money for big players.I am thinking to sell my new pc and buy 2 more gpu for ETH.
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I ve sort of decided my final solo farmer commitment - 300-350 plots - however many the usb hub can support without dropping offā¦ That will be my passive farmer for a period of two years, given the electricity bill is reasonableā¦ Beyond that I will try to commit a 700-750 to an official pool. Sort of 70-30 split and let it beā¦but maybe not that much, maybe go half thatā¦
On a totally unrelated note - who shorted BTC here? And there is lots of room still, sell that sucker every time itās greenā¦assuming XCH has seen its historical high, letās venture a guess as to where it will eventually goā¦ I say it touches $56-60 when the Elon spaceship lands in its traditional fashion on the crypto indexā¦ A Crash!
Annnd just like that I have a new theoryā¦ With the crash of the cryptophoria XCH will follow suit, eventually, the value of Chia will not be justified by the network payout, so, in order to make the network seem interesting, they will have to fire out more and more and figure out a way to make it a bit more evenly spreadā¦patience will pay, just stick aroundā¦ One more thing to follow-up on would be quarterly developments, if this team is stagnant over a six month period, then I would start getting skeptical, yes, right now I am in my enthusiastic modeā¦
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Are they in RAID 0? - I have a load of smaller SAS HDD drives (3TB) , 3x HP Fusion ioDrive and a pair of Sabrent 1TB for main plotting. I have just started plotting direct to the SAS i havenāt filled yet to see if i can add a few plots per day -
These have decent CPU - hardly touching it and plenty of RAM
1 machine has 7x3TB in Raid 0 (plotting 6 in parallel - 24-30h each - ball park - 6-7 a day)
1 machine has 6x3TB in Raid 0 (plotting 4 in parallel - 18-24h each - ball park - 5-6 a day)
I was considering āniceā them to lowest property and farming direct off the same SAS as plotting to as 20TB is a bit of a waste for 6 plots/ day - i was hoping that it wouldnāt skew the eligibility timing checks if the plotter backs off each time a check comes in
Only been plotting on SAS HDD for a day so no clues on an ideal setup yet for direct SAS HDD plotting - you any hints ?
I got 24 10K sas drive and performance is much better in non-raid configure. Had to flash perc card to IT mode to see drives as non raid drives. getting 38 plots a day now bt could get more if save to a local HD instead of destination being network
Hmm - mine are all 3TB/7K and given your experience ill switch 1 to plot per disk on 1 machine - its an H700 so i canāt flash to IT-mode, and it doesnāt have passthru but i can set each up as a RAID 0
I might also have a 512GB cheap SAS around - its pants for plotting because it canāt sustain but it might be ok for a destination and then network copy off in background
I tried setting up 24 x raid disks but it was around 18 plots a day. only IT mode got me the full she bang but each system is different.
I am going to quote my point here, and do not consider me rude or even some crazy conspiracy theorist.
I donāt know Bramās point of view, but I can give an opinion after watching practically 90% of the projectās lives, read the initial articles on the concept and the algorithm.
Do I trust the founding team? No, I donāt trust them, theyāre guys looking for a new technology vibe and making money from itā¦ if I think itās wrong? No, they are totally right, because the best revolutions are born from predatory captalism and not from any pseudo-utopic-social idea 
I put a few tens of hundreds of dollars into the game with a focus on winning some money in the same way, and I guarantee that the vast majority who are here think the same.
The big question is how balanced is the Chia model to serve the community, because from the beginning the pools of Chinese DCs have won 1/3 of the farms, and the community that is investing in the project and suffering from constant bugs and problems in the the complaint grows only.
I for example have a 300TB RIG stopped because the sync shit is bugging every day ā¦ and all comments about problems are received very harshly by the developers hired by the company Chia.
So, how to think differently if the facts take us to the negative side of the force? 