It's the other way around: the mining revenue (that miners are incentivized to spend nearly entirely on equipment and electricity to maintain the network) is tied to its current price, as the...
It's the other way around: the mining revenue (that miners are incentivized to spend nearly entirely on equipment and electricity to maintain the network) is tied to its current price, as the global mining revenue is fixed and denominated in Bitcoin. Bitcoin's price isn't directly derived from or limited by the value spent mining it; the price isn't caused to go down when some technical reason causes less to be spent on mining it (like when more efficient mining chips are made, or a scheduled halving event reduces the mining proceeds). If something changed with Bitcoin so suddenly it was maintained without needing significant power to be spent on mining it (like what happened with Ethereum when it switched to proof-of-stake away from mining last year, decreasing Ethereum's total energy use by over 99.9%), this wouldn't collapse its price. Bitcoin's price comes from supply and demand, and changes in the amount of mining done don't impact the supply because there's a fixed global minting schedule (that miners are essentially competing to be a part of). The direction of the causation is that if Bitcoin's price doubled, then mining revenue would also double and lead to more electricity being used for mining.
Bingo. The price of Bitcoin is what makes the energy costs worth it, and why miners move to where energy costs are lower. This is why renewable/nuclear energy plants that need flexible demand to...
Bingo. The price of Bitcoin is what makes the energy costs worth it, and why miners move to where energy costs are lower. This is why renewable/nuclear energy plants that need flexible demand to curtail over-generation risk are colocating bitcoin miners. When demand for energy goes down (such as in off-peak hours), the miners can then step in to continuously buy cheap energy from the plants, and then step out when demand from general population is too high. I think some machines breakeven at $0.146 kWh but ideally they want to be below $0.07 kWh.
Bitcoins price is comes from Tether pumps printed out of this air.... The actual fiat money comes gullible true believers and slowly dying investor hype trains. It's not a solution to anything....
Bitcoins price is comes from Tether pumps printed out of this air.... The actual fiat money comes gullible true believers and slowly dying investor hype trains.
It's not a solution to anything. It's a deflationary "currency" that early adopters hope can be legitimized so they can be the new masters of the universe.
Bitcoin, like most any other currency, has value because people give it value. There are other fundamental reasons, but the fundamentals don’t mean anything if people don’t give it value. Not...
Bitcoin, like most any other currency, has value because people give it value. There are other fundamental reasons, but the fundamentals don’t mean anything if people don’t give it value. Not really an endorsement one way or another.
That's kind of the point. Gold as a material for electronics, etc has value, but that's not what it's value it's really derived from. Humans have used it as currency for millenia based off nothing...
That's kind of the point. Gold as a material for electronics, etc has value, but that's not what it's value it's really derived from. Humans have used it as currency for millenia based off nothing besides its value for being pretty and rare and difficult to counterfeit.
Crypto has basically the same things going for it. Yes, it's artificial, but there is forced scarcity, and difficult to counterfeit. And no practical value.
So yeah, pretty reasonable to compare to gold. Just because it can't be held in your hand doesn't mean it's stupid to value it like something you can. Most gold just sits in lumps doing nothing practical.
Except for not. It's "pretend scarcity" or "pseudo scarcity" or whatever you wanna call it. If I can buy you "scarce" resource with an unlimited supply of manipulated internet fun bucks (Tether,...
Except for not. It's "pretend scarcity" or "pseudo scarcity" or whatever you wanna call it. If I can buy you "scarce" resource with an unlimited supply of manipulated internet fun bucks (Tether, Busd, terra/Luna) it's not really secure or scarce or anything. It's Disney Dollars you hope are gonna go up in value.
Bitcoins best parallel, for me, is beanie babies or tulip mania or baseball cards. Are there people who have large sums of money invested in these things ? Yeah. Is that something everyone should do ? Certainly not. Humans can assign value to anything. Doesn't mean they should or it's a good idea.
I'm not trying to be rude, but I don't think gold is a great investment either. I can see it being used as a store of value in some very specific situations, but that only works because of the near universal consensus that gold is valuable. If you wanna talk about it in modern terms, gold has "first mover" status that bitbugs definitely try to align themselves with, specifically for that favorable comparison. It's like saying "yeah me and Michael Jordan are basketball players" that statement might be true but there is a pretty wide margin there. So much so that itd be pretty disingenuous to present them in the same statement. (Possibly even deceitful)
It fails at everything.
It's a terrible currency. With wild price swings it isn't anywhere near stable enough to used on a regular basis.
It's a terrible investment because it produces nothing, and when you combine it's deflationary status with fees and lost wallets it actually negative sum.
Your entire argument seems to be based on your subjective opinion of value of each of these commodities. I'm just pointing out that the comparison between gold and crypto is apt. They are both...
Your entire argument seems to be based on your subjective opinion of value of each of these commodities.
I'm just pointing out that the comparison between gold and crypto is apt. They are both valued for their perceived value that's not based on the actual applicable usefulness of the material or bits on a ledger.
I personally don't invest in either beyond what I may hold in an index fund.
It's my subjective opinion that I am better at basketball than Michael Jordan. If I make custom, one off, cutting boards at my house, they are unique, scarce and difficult to duplicate. Doesn't...
It's my subjective opinion that I am better at basketball than Michael Jordan.
If I make custom, one off, cutting boards at my house, they are unique, scarce and difficult to duplicate. Doesn't mean they deserve the comparison gold.
Yes, an increase in the price of Bitcoin should encourage more mining, but that should eventually put downward pressure on the price as negative feedback. Mining expenses should be a drag on the...
Yes, an increase in the price of Bitcoin should encourage more mining, but that should eventually put downward pressure on the price as negative feedback. Mining expenses should be a drag on the market, all other things being equal, because they result in Bitcoin being sold.
Miners have expenses to pay. If they are true believers who are self-funding, they pay expenses themselves and aren't paid back. That's equivalent to investing money in Bitcoin, but without having to trade. (And that's possibly a useful way to do money laundering.)
But eventually they will want to cash out rather than continuing to increase their exposure to Bitcoin. To do that, they need to trade with someone who is buying Bitcoin. This would cause the price to go down if nobody took the other side of the trade. In equilibrium (if miners aren't increasing their Bitcoin investments), someone is putting in enough outside money (that's not Bitcoin) to pay the miners. (Maybe Tether, maybe someone else.)
There's nothing requiring it to be in equilibrium, but to whatever extent they're cashing out, that's going to be downward pressure on the market. The timing is up to the miners.
Latest analysis has it at 296 g/kWh, far lower than banking, industrial, agriculture, and gold. Bitcoin uses like 17 bips of the worlds energy, with over half being from renewables and nuclear...
Latest analysis has it at 296 g/kWh, far lower than banking, industrial, agriculture, and gold.
Bitcoin uses like 17 bips of the worlds energy, with over half being from renewables and nuclear (note the renewables side of the energy mix is increasing month over month because it gives power generators flexible demand and miners cheap energy.)
We can then ask if this energy spend is too high of a security budget? But for comparison:
Alternative points of view: CNBC: Ukrainian refugee flees to Poland with $2,000 in bitcoin on a USB drive Journal of Cleaner Production: "Bitcoin mining has substantial potential for becoming an...
But if one sees these uses as meaningless, there is no convincing otherwise. The question I would ask is, if the growth loop that Bitcoin incentivizes is for nothing, why does that loop already have PMF?
There is nothing there that shows PoW is better on the whole than PoS. People can delude themselves all they want, I won't be part of it. Bitcoin mining is a massive waste of resources and all of...
There is nothing there that shows PoW is better on the whole than PoS.
People can delude themselves all they want, I won't be part of it. Bitcoin mining is a massive waste of resources and all of the slight efficiency gains in the world don't offset the damage it does. It uses more power doing nothing useful (because PoS exists) than most countries.
Bitcoin mining is a cancer on this planet and ideally it's traffic would be blocked at the ISP level for the good of mankind.
I think there is room for both consensus mechanisms, but there is no incentive to generate cheaper electricity with PoS, its not a hard asset. Ultimately make negligible difference to run a PoS...
I think there is room for both consensus mechanisms, but there is no incentive to generate cheaper electricity with PoS, its not a hard asset. Ultimately make negligible difference to run a PoS validator at $0.12 kWh at home or colocated data center. It makes a huge difference to vertically integrate a miner at a renewables plant to get under $0.07 kWh or cap methane vents (that would otherwise be flared and worse for the environment) or other forms of stranded energy capture.
But I definitely think other (PoS) cryptocurrency technologies has their pros, I just see them as different asset classes from PoW:
You posted a bunch of articles about crypto currency, not necessarily Bitcoin. And like I said in my other reply, small pros in one area do not justify the large negative externalities in another....
You posted a bunch of articles about crypto currency, not necessarily Bitcoin.
And like I said in my other reply, small pros in one area do not justify the large negative externalities in another.
Bitcoin internet traffic should be interdicted and banned for the good of humanity.
FWIW I listed those articles for highlighting PoS, not PoW. Regardless, I've talked with enough people around the world that Bitcoin has helped to be convinced that it is a good of humanity, so I...
FWIW I listed those articles for highlighting PoS, not PoW.
Regardless, I've talked with enough people around the world that Bitcoin has helped to be convinced that it is a good of humanity, so I think we're going to have to agree to disagree.
Sorry, I think there might be confusion in my intent. I am bringing up PoS because you brought it up here: I have nothing to debate about PoS, I think technologies that build on it as a census...
Sorry, I think there might be confusion in my intent. I am bringing up PoS because you brought it up here:
There is nothing there that shows PoW is better on the whole than PoS.
People can delude themselves all they want, I won't be part of it. Bitcoin mining is a massive waste of resources and all of the slight efficiency gains in the world don't offset the damage it does. It uses more power doing nothing useful (because PoS exists) than most countries.
I have nothing to debate about PoS, I think technologies that build on it as a census mechanism are also good and solve different parts of the security/scalability/decentralization trilemma better than PoW in some aspects.
I only brought PoS up to demonstrate that Bitcoin is massive net negative. It brings no value that a PoS currency doesn't also bring. My crusade is against PoW currencies, not PoS. People are free...
I only brought PoS up to demonstrate that Bitcoin is massive net negative. It brings no value that a PoS currency doesn't also bring.
My crusade is against PoW currencies, not PoS. People are free to join in ponzi schemes all they want, just don't destroy the planet while doing so.
The real way to remove bitcoin miners is to greatly improve battery technology. Once electricity over-generation curtailment is no longer an issue (thus no longer a risk), power plants and OTEC...
ideally it's traffic would be blocked at the ISP level for the good of mankind
The real way to remove bitcoin miners is to greatly improve battery technology. Once electricity over-generation curtailment is no longer an issue (thus no longer a risk), power plants and OTEC platforms will have no need to integrate miners.
You're grasping at straws there. Just because it's currently the easiest route to doing something doesn't mean it should be done. The other negative externalities of Bitcoin is justification...
You're grasping at straws there. Just because it's currently the easiest route to doing something doesn't mean it should be done. The other negative externalities of Bitcoin is justification enough to ban it, being a PoW currency.
It's also cheaper for coal power plants to run without scrubbers, but we mandate they do that even at a cost to energy efficiency and profit. Simply having a single pro in your category does not justify anything without taking the whole into account.
The opportunity cost of doing literally anything else useful with that energy. The massive amount of carbon dumped in our atmosphere from Bitcoin mining to date and continuing. There is no such...
The opportunity cost of doing literally anything else useful with that energy.
The massive amount of carbon dumped in our atmosphere from Bitcoin mining to date and continuing.
There is no such thing a free energy. Even renewable energy is not free.
This isn't about any other currency besides Bitcoin. Even though they all have other problems beyond just PoW being a massive energy waste.
I understand it fine, I just refuse to argue pedantics around Bitcoin. It's a massive negative on humanity and the coat of Bitcoin, being a PoW currency, far outstrips any positives it has.
I understand it fine, I just refuse to argue pedantics around Bitcoin. It's a massive negative on humanity and the coat of Bitcoin, being a PoW currency, far outstrips any positives it has.
Bitcoin burns energy as a way to economise trust. It's not clear to me whether this is ultimately a good idea or not—I suspect maybe not—but it's not valueless. (You might argue that it has...
Bitcoin burns energy as a way to economise trust. It's not clear to me whether this is ultimately a good idea or not—I suspect maybe not—but it's not valueless. (You might argue that it has negative value—for example, that there should be trust, or that there should be oversight—but that is not nothing either.)
The net negative value of Bitcoin on humanity more than weighs down whatever positive it may offer. PoS currencies exist, so PoW currencies should quite literally be banned at the ISP level for...
The net negative value of Bitcoin on humanity more than weighs down whatever positive it may offer. PoS currencies exist, so PoW currencies should quite literally be banned at the ISP level for the good of humanity.
We're burning energy for nothing. There is no good reason to keep a proof of work currency active (besides the sunk cost of mining rigs, but that would serve them right imo, it's a great reason to get rid of Bitcoin.)
You may fairly argue that. But it's not what you said; hence my refutation. Proof-of-stake is oligarchic; hence, it economises trust in a different way than proof-of-work does. You may argue that...
The net negative value of Bitcoin on humanity more than weighs down whatever positive it may offer.
You may fairly argue that. But it's not what you said; hence my refutation.
PoS
Proof-of-stake is oligarchic; hence, it economises trust in a different way than proof-of-work does. You may argue that it is better, but it is in either event not monotonically better.
I was slightly hyperbolic originally, but mostly accurate none the less. PoW currencies should literally be banned and interdicted Internet providers. The negative externalities are too large and...
I was slightly hyperbolic originally, but mostly accurate none the less.
PoW currencies should literally be banned and interdicted Internet providers. The negative externalities are too large and there is not enough upside to justify them, end of story.
Bitcoin is a net negative value to humanity, so it's worse than my original statement of no value, it activity removes value.
It seems silly to even consider a digital currency based on energy intensive proof of work. Especially one with a footprint designed to escalate. I'm not sure if proof of stake will turn out to be...
It seems silly to even consider a digital currency based on energy intensive proof of work. Especially one with a footprint designed to escalate.
I'm not sure if proof of stake will turn out to be the best alternative solution, but proof of work should be a deal breaker.
And even if it were absolutely true, it wouldn't make it that much better. Every watt of renewable energy that is spent on mining bitcoin is a watt that isn't being used elsewhere, on something...
And even if it were absolutely true, it wouldn't make it that much better. Every watt of renewable energy that is spent on mining bitcoin is a watt that isn't being used elsewhere, on something that actually has a tangible benefit or produces something of value.
More reporting on Bitcoin's sustainable energy mix and this paper found that "adding Bitcoin to a diversified equity portfolio can both enhance the risk–return relationship of the portfolio and...
I think Monero's proof of work solution is reasonable. AFAIK they keep changing the algorithms to keep it ASIC resitant. And if it ever comes to the point that running a computer server for Monero...
I think Monero's proof of work solution is reasonable. AFAIK they keep changing the algorithms to keep it ASIC resitant. And if it ever comes to the point that running a computer server for Monero is worth it, I think the community will be able to come with some workaround.
Isn't this proof that cryptocurrency is a failed concept? If the very people you're supposedly providing an alternative to jump on board, it's not much of an alternative anymore.
Isn't this proof that cryptocurrency is a failed concept? If the very people you're supposedly providing an alternative to jump on board, it's not much of an alternative anymore.
Eh, it's more proof that idealists don't understand how things work, but are often the source of innovation. I'm not sure what the future of crypto is, there's a lot to discuss there, but I was...
Eh, it's more proof that idealists don't understand how things work, but are often the source of innovation.
I'm not sure what the future of crypto is, there's a lot to discuss there, but I was sure that if it ever did blow up, then it wasn't going to "free us from the rich/powerful/whatever" that so many claimed. Quite simply those institutions either exist because of natural economic forces, or they're often entrenched enough to do unthinkable and just...you know...hire someone who gets it and tells them "yeah this is a smart thing to throw money at".
In short, if every person who ever wanted an alternative jumped on board, it would still be worth less than it already has hit. For there to be mass adoption you're eventually going to get the larger players involved, and anyone thinking otherwise was just following a pipe dream.
Yup. The underlying asset will always work the same. If I want Bitcoin I can spin up a wallet and hold it without any institutional intermediaries. But expanding and deepening the liquidity pool...
Yup. The underlying asset will always work the same. If I want Bitcoin I can spin up a wallet and hold it without any institutional intermediaries. But expanding and deepening the liquidity pool in reality just makes Bitcoin more widely available to people. Like how the gold ETF at the end of 2004 made it way easier for people to get exposure to gold, but if they wanted physical gold they could have gone out to buy it.
Bitcoin ETF is a similar idea. The reality is that larger players don't want to learn how to use wallets. They want to call up their asset manager or family office on the phone and ask for a position.
And all eight spot Bitcoin ETFs filings have been resubmitted. Blackrock has had 575 out of their 576 filed ETFs accepted, with the only rejection being one where they wanted to keep assets within...
The CEO of the largest asset manager in the world, Larry Fink, just called Bitcoin 'digital gold' and an 'international asset': "The role of crypto is digitizing god, instead of investing in gold...
The CEO of the largest asset manager in the world, Larry Fink, just called Bitcoin 'digital gold' and an 'international asset':
"The role of crypto is digitizing god, instead of investing in gold as a hedge against inflation, a hedge against the onerous problems of any one country or the devalution of your currency, Bitcoin is an international asset."
Meh, https://twitter.com/RealVision/status/1676948339344961536?s=20 This isn't the win crypto thinks it is. Its a lukewarm response at best... sounds more like he is regurgitation PR talking...
This isn't the win crypto thinks it is. Its a lukewarm response at best... sounds more like he is regurgitation PR talking points from his team, then any foundation belief of the underlying.
Reminds me of the moment in the "Big Short" movie where the bank calls the doctor turned investor guy, after a long time of dismissing his claims about the value of his short position, saying that...
Reminds me of the moment in the "Big Short" movie where the bank calls the doctor turned investor guy, after a long time of dismissing his claims about the value of his short position, saying that yeah, in fact they were now interested in purchasing them at a tremendous premium.
Dude was like "so you're saying you now have enough of these yourselves, so clearly now they're worth something". Sounds like the same thing here.
We need no such bounty, we already have SSL. Now if you collect logs for SSL they are worthless, but if you hold on to them for a couple of decades until quantum computing comes around and finally...
We need no such bounty, we already have SSL.
Now if you collect logs for SSL they are worthless, but if you hold on to them for a couple of decades until quantum computing comes around and finally cracks that nut open, All of those private logs have suddenly become public as if they were sent in http.
So, I believe it's kind of important that we switch to quantum secure algorithms yesterday.
As long as its value is tied to power requirements to mint it, it's going nowhere.
It's the other way around: the mining revenue (that miners are incentivized to spend nearly entirely on equipment and electricity to maintain the network) is tied to its current price, as the global mining revenue is fixed and denominated in Bitcoin. Bitcoin's price isn't directly derived from or limited by the value spent mining it; the price isn't caused to go down when some technical reason causes less to be spent on mining it (like when more efficient mining chips are made, or a scheduled halving event reduces the mining proceeds). If something changed with Bitcoin so suddenly it was maintained without needing significant power to be spent on mining it (like what happened with Ethereum when it switched to proof-of-stake away from mining last year, decreasing Ethereum's total energy use by over 99.9%), this wouldn't collapse its price. Bitcoin's price comes from supply and demand, and changes in the amount of mining done don't impact the supply because there's a fixed global minting schedule (that miners are essentially competing to be a part of). The direction of the causation is that if Bitcoin's price doubled, then mining revenue would also double and lead to more electricity being used for mining.
Bingo. The price of Bitcoin is what makes the energy costs worth it, and why miners move to where energy costs are lower. This is why renewable/nuclear energy plants that need flexible demand to curtail over-generation risk are colocating bitcoin miners. When demand for energy goes down (such as in off-peak hours), the miners can then step in to continuously buy cheap energy from the plants, and then step out when demand from general population is too high. I think some machines breakeven at $0.146 kWh but ideally they want to be below $0.07 kWh.
Bitcoins price is comes from Tether pumps printed out of this air.... The actual fiat money comes gullible true believers and slowly dying investor hype trains.
It's not a solution to anything. It's a deflationary "currency" that early adopters hope can be legitimized so they can be the new masters of the universe.
Bitcoin, like most any other currency, has value because people give it value. There are other fundamental reasons, but the fundamentals don’t mean anything if people don’t give it value. Not really an endorsement one way or another.
That's kind of the point. Gold as a material for electronics, etc has value, but that's not what it's value it's really derived from. Humans have used it as currency for millenia based off nothing besides its value for being pretty and rare and difficult to counterfeit.
Crypto has basically the same things going for it. Yes, it's artificial, but there is forced scarcity, and difficult to counterfeit. And no practical value.
So yeah, pretty reasonable to compare to gold. Just because it can't be held in your hand doesn't mean it's stupid to value it like something you can. Most gold just sits in lumps doing nothing practical.
Except for not. It's "pretend scarcity" or "pseudo scarcity" or whatever you wanna call it. If I can buy you "scarce" resource with an unlimited supply of manipulated internet fun bucks (Tether, Busd, terra/Luna) it's not really secure or scarce or anything. It's Disney Dollars you hope are gonna go up in value.
Bitcoins best parallel, for me, is beanie babies or tulip mania or baseball cards. Are there people who have large sums of money invested in these things ? Yeah. Is that something everyone should do ? Certainly not. Humans can assign value to anything. Doesn't mean they should or it's a good idea.
I'm not trying to be rude, but I don't think gold is a great investment either. I can see it being used as a store of value in some very specific situations, but that only works because of the near universal consensus that gold is valuable. If you wanna talk about it in modern terms, gold has "first mover" status that bitbugs definitely try to align themselves with, specifically for that favorable comparison. It's like saying "yeah me and Michael Jordan are basketball players" that statement might be true but there is a pretty wide margin there. So much so that itd be pretty disingenuous to present them in the same statement. (Possibly even deceitful)
It fails at everything.
It's a terrible currency. With wild price swings it isn't anywhere near stable enough to used on a regular basis.
It's a terrible investment because it produces nothing, and when you combine it's deflationary status with fees and lost wallets it actually negative sum.
Your entire argument seems to be based on your subjective opinion of value of each of these commodities.
I'm just pointing out that the comparison between gold and crypto is apt. They are both valued for their perceived value that's not based on the actual applicable usefulness of the material or bits on a ledger.
I personally don't invest in either beyond what I may hold in an index fund.
It's my subjective opinion that I am better at basketball than Michael Jordan.
If I make custom, one off, cutting boards at my house, they are unique, scarce and difficult to duplicate. Doesn't mean they deserve the comparison gold.
Yes, an increase in the price of Bitcoin should encourage more mining, but that should eventually put downward pressure on the price as negative feedback. Mining expenses should be a drag on the market, all other things being equal, because they result in Bitcoin being sold.
Miners have expenses to pay. If they are true believers who are self-funding, they pay expenses themselves and aren't paid back. That's equivalent to investing money in Bitcoin, but without having to trade. (And that's possibly a useful way to do money laundering.)
But eventually they will want to cash out rather than continuing to increase their exposure to Bitcoin. To do that, they need to trade with someone who is buying Bitcoin. This would cause the price to go down if nobody took the other side of the trade. In equilibrium (if miners aren't increasing their Bitcoin investments), someone is putting in enough outside money (that's not Bitcoin) to pay the miners. (Maybe Tether, maybe someone else.)
There's nothing requiring it to be in equilibrium, but to whatever extent they're cashing out, that's going to be downward pressure on the market. The timing is up to the miners.
An international disaster more than an asset really. How much energy has been wasted mining Bitcoin? How much CO2 spewed?
Latest analysis has it at 296 g/kWh, far lower than banking, industrial, agriculture, and gold.
Bitcoin uses like 17 bips of the worlds energy, with over half being from renewables and nuclear (note the renewables side of the energy mix is increasing month over month because it gives power generators flexible demand and miners cheap energy.)
We can then ask if this energy spend is too high of a security budget? But for comparison:
If Bitcoin is an international disaster, most other digital things are cataclysmic.
Those other things have value.
Bitcoin is literally burning energy for nothing.
Alternative points of view:
small-scale bitcoin data centers: An open-source blueprint for advancing power
infrastructure in Africa and beyond.
But if one sees these uses as meaningless, there is no convincing otherwise. The question I would ask is, if the growth loop that Bitcoin incentivizes is for nothing, why does that loop already have PMF?
There is nothing there that shows PoW is better on the whole than PoS.
People can delude themselves all they want, I won't be part of it. Bitcoin mining is a massive waste of resources and all of the slight efficiency gains in the world don't offset the damage it does. It uses more power doing nothing useful (because PoS exists) than most countries.
Bitcoin mining is a cancer on this planet and ideally it's traffic would be blocked at the ISP level for the good of mankind.
I think there is room for both consensus mechanisms, but there is no incentive to generate cheaper electricity with PoS, its not a hard asset. Ultimately make negligible difference to run a PoS validator at $0.12 kWh at home or colocated data center. It makes a huge difference to vertically integrate a miner at a renewables plant to get under $0.07 kWh or cap methane vents (that would otherwise be flared and worse for the environment) or other forms of stranded energy capture.
But I definitely think other (PoS) cryptocurrency technologies has their pros, I just see them as different asset classes from PoW:
You posted a bunch of articles about crypto currency, not necessarily Bitcoin.
And like I said in my other reply, small pros in one area do not justify the large negative externalities in another.
Bitcoin internet traffic should be interdicted and banned for the good of humanity.
FWIW I listed those articles for highlighting PoS, not PoW.
Regardless, I've talked with enough people around the world that Bitcoin has helped to be convinced that it is a good of humanity, so I think we're going to have to agree to disagree.
This is a conversation about the usefulness of Bitcoin. Why do you want to drag it into a debate about PoS?
Sorry, I think there might be confusion in my intent. I am bringing up PoS because you brought it up here:
I have nothing to debate about PoS, I think technologies that build on it as a census mechanism are also good and solve different parts of the security/scalability/decentralization trilemma better than PoW in some aspects.
I only brought PoS up to demonstrate that Bitcoin is massive net negative. It brings no value that a PoS currency doesn't also bring.
My crusade is against PoW currencies, not PoS. People are free to join in ponzi schemes all they want, just don't destroy the planet while doing so.
The real way to remove bitcoin miners is to greatly improve battery technology. Once electricity over-generation curtailment is no longer an issue (thus no longer a risk), power plants and OTEC platforms will have no need to integrate miners.
You're grasping at straws there. Just because it's currently the easiest route to doing something doesn't mean it should be done. The other negative externalities of Bitcoin is justification enough to ban it, being a PoW currency.
It's also cheaper for coal power plants to run without scrubbers, but we mandate they do that even at a cost to energy efficiency and profit. Simply having a single pro in your category does not justify anything without taking the whole into account.
It is more than nothing.
A PoW currency has mountains of negatives compared to a PoS currency. Bitcoin is a cancer on this planet.
What mountains? There are also PoW blockchains as Monero which is ASIC resistant and is efficient, even Bitcoin also uses free energy.
The opportunity cost of doing literally anything else useful with that energy.
The massive amount of carbon dumped in our atmosphere from Bitcoin mining to date and continuing.
There is no such thing a free energy. Even renewable energy is not free.
This isn't about any other currency besides Bitcoin. Even though they all have other problems beyond just PoW being a massive energy waste.
Saying doing literally nothing means you don't understand it at all.
I understand it fine, I just refuse to argue pedantics around Bitcoin. It's a massive negative on humanity and the coat of Bitcoin, being a PoW currency, far outstrips any positives it has.
Bitcoin burns energy as a way to economise trust. It's not clear to me whether this is ultimately a good idea or not—I suspect maybe not—but it's not valueless. (You might argue that it has negative value—for example, that there should be trust, or that there should be oversight—but that is not nothing either.)
The net negative value of Bitcoin on humanity more than weighs down whatever positive it may offer. PoS currencies exist, so PoW currencies should quite literally be banned at the ISP level for the good of humanity.
We're burning energy for nothing. There is no good reason to keep a proof of work currency active (besides the sunk cost of mining rigs, but that would serve them right imo, it's a great reason to get rid of Bitcoin.)
You may fairly argue that. But it's not what you said; hence my refutation.
Proof-of-stake is oligarchic; hence, it economises trust in a different way than proof-of-work does. You may argue that it is better, but it is in either event not monotonically better.
I was slightly hyperbolic originally, but mostly accurate none the less.
PoW currencies should literally be banned and interdicted Internet providers. The negative externalities are too large and there is not enough upside to justify them, end of story.
Bitcoin is a net negative value to humanity, so it's worse than my original statement of no value, it activity removes value.
It seems silly to even consider a digital currency based on energy intensive proof of work. Especially one with a footprint designed to escalate.
I'm not sure if proof of stake will turn out to be the best alternative solution, but proof of work should be a deal breaker.
70% of Bitcoin mining comes from renewal-energy.
Source
You state it like a fact but your source is much less confident:
And even if it were absolutely true, it wouldn't make it that much better. Every watt of renewable energy that is spent on mining bitcoin is a watt that isn't being used elsewhere, on something that actually has a tangible benefit or produces something of value.
More reporting on Bitcoin's sustainable energy mix and this paper found that "adding Bitcoin to a diversified equity portfolio can both enhance the risk–return relationship of the portfolio and reduce the portfolio's aggregate carbon emissions." - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1544612321005262
Where does it say that?
I think Monero's proof of work solution is reasonable. AFAIK they keep changing the algorithms to keep it ASIC resitant. And if it ever comes to the point that running a computer server for Monero is worth it, I think the community will be able to come with some workaround.
Isn't this proof that cryptocurrency is a failed concept? If the very people you're supposedly providing an alternative to jump on board, it's not much of an alternative anymore.
Eh, it's more proof that idealists don't understand how things work, but are often the source of innovation.
I'm not sure what the future of crypto is, there's a lot to discuss there, but I was sure that if it ever did blow up, then it wasn't going to "free us from the rich/powerful/whatever" that so many claimed. Quite simply those institutions either exist because of natural economic forces, or they're often entrenched enough to do unthinkable and just...you know...hire someone who gets it and tells them "yeah this is a smart thing to throw money at".
In short, if every person who ever wanted an alternative jumped on board, it would still be worth less than it already has hit. For there to be mass adoption you're eventually going to get the larger players involved, and anyone thinking otherwise was just following a pipe dream.
Yup. The underlying asset will always work the same. If I want Bitcoin I can spin up a wallet and hold it without any institutional intermediaries. But expanding and deepening the liquidity pool in reality just makes Bitcoin more widely available to people. Like how the gold ETF at the end of 2004 made it way easier for people to get exposure to gold, but if they wanted physical gold they could have gone out to buy it.
Bitcoin ETF is a similar idea. The reality is that larger players don't want to learn how to use wallets. They want to call up their asset manager or family office on the phone and ask for a position.
People don't have to agree on ideology to advocate for the same thing. See: Bootleggers and Baptists.
And all eight spot Bitcoin ETFs filings have been resubmitted.
Blackrock has had 575 out of their 576 filed ETFs accepted, with the only rejection being one where they wanted to keep assets within the ETF a secret.
The CEO of the largest asset manager in the world, Larry Fink, just called Bitcoin 'digital gold' and an 'international asset':
"The role of crypto is digitizing god, instead of investing in gold as a hedge against inflation, a hedge against the onerous problems of any one country or the devalution of your currency, Bitcoin is an international asset."
Meh,
https://twitter.com/RealVision/status/1676948339344961536?s=20
This isn't the win crypto thinks it is. Its a lukewarm response at best... sounds more like he is regurgitation PR talking points from his team, then any foundation belief of the underlying.
They are releasing Bitcoin ETF.
Reminds me of the moment in the "Big Short" movie where the bank calls the doctor turned investor guy, after a long time of dismissing his claims about the value of his short position, saying that yeah, in fact they were now interested in purchasing them at a tremendous premium.
Dude was like "so you're saying you now have enough of these yourselves, so clearly now they're worth something". Sounds like the same thing here.
Pump and dump?
That's old.
Here we fucking go again.
Think of crypto as one giant bug bounty to accelerate quantum computing development.
We need no such bounty, we already have SSL.
Now if you collect logs for SSL they are worthless, but if you hold on to them for a couple of decades until quantum computing comes around and finally cracks that nut open, All of those private logs have suddenly become public as if they were sent in http.
So, I believe it's kind of important that we switch to quantum secure algorithms yesterday.