The original creator of bitcoin had a lot of amazing ideas that solved some really hard problems but left others unsolved. Proof of work was a simple solution to a hard problem of distributing...
The original creator of bitcoin had a lot of amazing ideas that solved some really hard problems but left others unsolved. Proof of work was a simple solution to a hard problem of distributing voting power in a trustless network. Unfortunately bitcoin is a tech demo that has been taken too far. It really needs to be stopped until real solutions come out that solve these issues.
Large energy consumption is easy to track. If governments decide to ban mining and/or cryptocurrencies gain bad public image (possibly with the targeted help of media), mining will reduce. Or...
Large energy consumption is easy to track. If governments decide to ban mining and/or cryptocurrencies gain bad public image (possibly with the targeted help of media), mining will reduce. Or course mining isn't good for environment, but, fortunately, too bad predictions have high chance to be like 18th century predictions of London getting covered in feet of horse waste in the 21st century.
Is bitcoin usage even picking up? Since last December, when most "normal" people heard about it because of the ridiculously huge bubble, I haven't heard much about it, besides stories now and...
Is bitcoin usage even picking up? Since last December, when most "normal" people heard about it because of the ridiculously huge bubble, I haven't heard much about it, besides stories now and again about some idiot losing thousands of dollars on it. I think to most people it was probably just a short lived fad. Are there any indications of it actually gaining widespread use?
Miners not only get transactions fees which are less when there's no such high demand, but they also compete for the newly mined coins all the time, and that depends on time schedule (year), not...
Miners not only get transactions fees which are less when there's no such high demand, but they also compete for the newly mined coins all the time, and that depends on time schedule (year), not demand. Even if 90% of miners shut down, the rest will just get all scheduled coins instead of 10%, and each of them will still want to install more computing power to get a bigger share of a whole. It's roughly like Fortnite: in the morning less people play, so fewer buses carry them to game map, but anyone still wants to play better than others to win and the skills grow.
Use is hard to determine because a lot of transactions are just shifting money around without actually buying anything but you can see a chart of the hashrate of the bitcoin network which fairly...
Use is hard to determine because a lot of transactions are just shifting money around without actually buying anything but you can see a chart of the hashrate of the bitcoin network which fairly perfectly matches up with power usage from the network
I’ve seen this argument foisted against crypto-currencies that require proof-of-work for transactions. One question this opens to my mind is what is the environmental impact of running traditional...
I’ve seen this argument foisted against crypto-currencies that require proof-of-work for transactions. One question this opens to my mind is what is the environmental impact of running traditional financial transactions? I.e., what is the carbon footprint of a corporation such as Mastercard or Visa? I don’t know enough about credit cards, or validating credit card transactions, but is it sufficient to count only the credit card companies? Or do you also need to consider, holistically, network providers, and a host of other providers that allow the credit card companies to operate? Regardless, I have to imagine that the total footprint of traditional transactions is significant, and potentially greater than cryptocurrency miners.
It's not scientific or anything, but I think this article is a decent discussion of the topic: https://prestonbyrne.com/2018/10/05/bitcoin_hippo/ I'll quote one paragraph that's particularly relevant:
I'll quote one paragraph that's particularly relevant:
The UK’s Faster Payments system, operated by Vocalink, illustrates the other end of that equation; except, rather than assets, Vocalink more or less blows away any other payment services provider on the planet in terms of performance. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that nearly every payment in the UK runs through Vocalink. Its revenue per year is £195 million. Even assuming £0 profit, that system runs an entire country’s retail banking transactions – and it does so today at 1/20th the annual cost of mining the Bitcoin network, which (maxing out at 7 transactions per second) might be able to compete with a single branch of a high street bank in London’s West End.
That's potentially correct, but it's also correct that even if BTC was less harsh on the environment, it'll still take a lot of time for it to replace a significant amount of traditional...
That's potentially correct, but it's also correct that even if BTC was less harsh on the environment, it'll still take a lot of time for it to replace a significant amount of traditional transactions, let alone totally replace them, so it will not be able to help. In fact, the only way it can help is to stop. Or else it'll be adding to the environmental disaster and substracting none.
I’m not sure what the fallacy is here, but let’s call it the 'straw that broke the camel’s back' fallacy. We should curtail green-house gas emissions, period. Starting with the most recent thing...
I’m not sure what the fallacy is here, but let’s call it the 'straw that broke the camel’s back' fallacy. We should curtail green-house gas emissions, period. Starting with the most recent thing and working backwards is one option, but I don’t think it’s going to gain momentum. You need to get governments on board to make real, significant change. What do you think is going to happen if you just ask the Chinese miners to stop?
I had a talk with a family member of mine this weekend who work at a large bank in Switzerland and he said that the general consensus among bankers is that crypto currency is solely for criminal...
I had a talk with a family member of mine this weekend who work at a large bank in Switzerland and he said that the general consensus among bankers is that crypto currency is solely for criminal purposes (that's the whole reason it was invented) and they will not touch it. Imagine a large bank suddenly taking the high road...Hypocrisy aside it reminded me of the challenges torrents have faced and still do. The legitimately use for it seem to drown in bad press and stupid misconceptions.
But unlike torrents, in the case of cryptocurrencies that's not a misconception at all... they really do have very few legitimate real-world uses right now and are still primarily used for...
But unlike torrents, in the case of cryptocurrencies that's not a misconception at all... they really do have very few legitimate real-world uses right now and are still primarily used for untraceable black market purchases, money laundering and other illicit purposes. That's very, very slowly changing, with some legitimate big-name companies starting to accept them for payments, but those companies are still very much in the minority.
And all of that gradual progress towards legitimacy for cryptocurrencies could also be undone in a heartbeat if the major world governments decide to shut it all down by preventing the banks operating in their countries from exchanging crypto for real currency.... as India recently did.
Although I completely agree with everything you said this sentence brings me to something else I discussed with my wife the other day. When we start out by saying this or "I got nothing to hide...
Not that I do anything illegal, or even want to
Although I completely agree with everything you said this sentence brings me to something else I discussed with my wife the other day. When we start out by saying this or "I got nothing to hide so..." we're already accepting the premise is something illegal and/or shady and that if you have a different stance on the subject you're automatically saying that you are doing something criminal or at least support illegal activity. I think we need to think about how we talk about these things if we want the perception from the general public to change.
Don't cryptocurrencies like Monero, DASH, and ZCash fulfill your requirements? To my knowledge, the first is completely anonymous and untraceable by default while the latter two are optionally so....
Don't cryptocurrencies like Monero, DASH, and ZCash fulfill your requirements? To my knowledge, the first is completely anonymous and untraceable by default while the latter two are optionally so. Once acquired, all three can be sent to another party without leaving any evidence of the transaction; world governments are none the wiser. As is the case with most cryptocurrencies, their decentralized nature makes them uncensorable as well.
These are just the three I'm most familiar with. I'm certain there are already many other technologies that fulfill your requirements, and there will be plenty more that do it better. The increasing popularity of decentralization on the Internet, beyond cryptocurrencies, is making it ever easier to subvert world governments, to operate without and in spite of them. Bitcoin may have been among the first, but it certainly isn't the last.
Sure it may be bad but I have to think that printing money / cash is more detrimental to the environment. This article (in compiled form accounting for most processes of making cash) is the only...
Sure it may be bad but I have to think that printing money / cash is more detrimental to the environment.
I think when you reach the point where pretty much anything is bad to the environment; you have to step back and think about the reasons why. Generally you learn eating anything in moderation is...
I think when you reach the point where pretty much anything is bad to the environment; you have to step back and think about the reasons why. Generally you learn eating anything in moderation is good for your health. When we're unable to do otherwise reasonable things without causing environmental damage, we have to look at why.
It's not the action itself; it's the scale it's being performed at. The root problem is that there's too many people, and actually we're a massively overpopulated species. I don't think we have a hope in hell of solving the environment catastrophe that's walking towards our front door without seriously considering the absolute environmental footprint we have on the planet.
Virtual currency can be a lot better for the environment than cash if you use them with green energy but there's other issues with virtual currency that are not present with cash too (tracking,...
Virtual currency can be a lot better for the environment than cash if you use them with green energy but there's other issues with virtual currency that are not present with cash too (tracking, monopolies et all). I don't believe a system can be perfect and expecting one to be is certainly foolish.
Overpopulation is certainly a problem but it's a really hard problem to fix hence why it's still a problem. But yeah, we definitely need to reconsider and make things better for the environment in many areas.. if only change was easy.
It's a shame, people trying to revolutionize one thing while simultaneously destroying the other
The original creator of bitcoin had a lot of amazing ideas that solved some really hard problems but left others unsolved. Proof of work was a simple solution to a hard problem of distributing voting power in a trustless network. Unfortunately bitcoin is a tech demo that has been taken too far. It really needs to be stopped until real solutions come out that solve these issues.
Large energy consumption is easy to track. If governments decide to ban mining and/or cryptocurrencies gain bad public image (possibly with the targeted help of media), mining will reduce. Or course mining isn't good for environment, but, fortunately, too bad predictions have high chance to be like 18th century predictions of London getting covered in feet of horse waste in the 21st century.
Is bitcoin usage even picking up? Since last December, when most "normal" people heard about it because of the ridiculously huge bubble, I haven't heard much about it, besides stories now and again about some idiot losing thousands of dollars on it. I think to most people it was probably just a short lived fad. Are there any indications of it actually gaining widespread use?
Miners not only get transactions fees which are less when there's no such high demand, but they also compete for the newly mined coins all the time, and that depends on time schedule (year), not demand. Even if 90% of miners shut down, the rest will just get all scheduled coins instead of 10%, and each of them will still want to install more computing power to get a bigger share of a whole. It's roughly like Fortnite: in the morning less people play, so fewer buses carry them to game map, but anyone still wants to play better than others to win and the skills grow.
Use is hard to determine because a lot of transactions are just shifting money around without actually buying anything but you can see a chart of the hashrate of the bitcoin network which fairly perfectly matches up with power usage from the network
https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate?timespan=2years
The data is fairly grim for the environment.
I’ve seen this argument foisted against crypto-currencies that require proof-of-work for transactions. One question this opens to my mind is what is the environmental impact of running traditional financial transactions? I.e., what is the carbon footprint of a corporation such as Mastercard or Visa? I don’t know enough about credit cards, or validating credit card transactions, but is it sufficient to count only the credit card companies? Or do you also need to consider, holistically, network providers, and a host of other providers that allow the credit card companies to operate? Regardless, I have to imagine that the total footprint of traditional transactions is significant, and potentially greater than cryptocurrency miners.
It's not scientific or anything, but I think this article is a decent discussion of the topic: https://prestonbyrne.com/2018/10/05/bitcoin_hippo/
I'll quote one paragraph that's particularly relevant:
That's potentially correct, but it's also correct that even if BTC was less harsh on the environment, it'll still take a lot of time for it to replace a significant amount of traditional transactions, let alone totally replace them, so it will not be able to help. In fact, the only way it can help is to stop. Or else it'll be adding to the environmental disaster and substracting none.
I’m not sure what the fallacy is here, but let’s call it the 'straw that broke the camel’s back' fallacy. We should curtail green-house gas emissions, period. Starting with the most recent thing and working backwards is one option, but I don’t think it’s going to gain momentum. You need to get governments on board to make real, significant change. What do you think is going to happen if you just ask the Chinese miners to stop?
I had a talk with a family member of mine this weekend who work at a large bank in Switzerland and he said that the general consensus among bankers is that crypto currency is solely for criminal purposes (that's the whole reason it was invented) and they will not touch it. Imagine a large bank suddenly taking the high road...Hypocrisy aside it reminded me of the challenges torrents have faced and still do. The legitimately use for it seem to drown in bad press and stupid misconceptions.
But unlike torrents, in the case of cryptocurrencies that's not a misconception at all... they really do have very few legitimate real-world uses right now and are still primarily used for untraceable black market purchases, money laundering and other illicit purposes. That's very, very slowly changing, with some legitimate big-name companies starting to accept them for payments, but those companies are still very much in the minority.
And all of that gradual progress towards legitimacy for cryptocurrencies could also be undone in a heartbeat if the major world governments decide to shut it all down by preventing the banks operating in their countries from exchanging crypto for real currency.... as India recently did.
Yeah your right, they are less compatible than I initially thought. I guess I was thinking potential and not current use.
Although I completely agree with everything you said this sentence brings me to something else I discussed with my wife the other day. When we start out by saying this or "I got nothing to hide so..." we're already accepting the premise is something illegal and/or shady and that if you have a different stance on the subject you're automatically saying that you are doing something criminal or at least support illegal activity. I think we need to think about how we talk about these things if we want the perception from the general public to change.
Don't cryptocurrencies like Monero, DASH, and ZCash fulfill your requirements? To my knowledge, the first is completely anonymous and untraceable by default while the latter two are optionally so. Once acquired, all three can be sent to another party without leaving any evidence of the transaction; world governments are none the wiser. As is the case with most cryptocurrencies, their decentralized nature makes them uncensorable as well.
These are just the three I'm most familiar with. I'm certain there are already many other technologies that fulfill your requirements, and there will be plenty more that do it better. The increasing popularity of decentralization on the Internet, beyond cryptocurrencies, is making it ever easier to subvert world governments, to operate without and in spite of them. Bitcoin may have been among the first, but it certainly isn't the last.
Sure it may be bad but I have to think that printing money / cash is more detrimental to the environment.
This article (in compiled form accounting for most processes of making cash) is the only one I found after a quick glance about the carbon footprint of cash though so take this with a grain of salt : https://slate.com/technology/2009/04/is-cash-better-for-the-environment-than-a-credit-card.html
I think when you reach the point where pretty much anything is bad to the environment; you have to step back and think about the reasons why. Generally you learn eating anything in moderation is good for your health. When we're unable to do otherwise reasonable things without causing environmental damage, we have to look at why.
It's not the action itself; it's the scale it's being performed at. The root problem is that there's too many people, and actually we're a massively overpopulated species. I don't think we have a hope in hell of solving the environment catastrophe that's walking towards our front door without seriously considering the absolute environmental footprint we have on the planet.
Virtual currency can be a lot better for the environment than cash if you use them with green energy but there's other issues with virtual currency that are not present with cash too (tracking, monopolies et all). I don't believe a system can be perfect and expecting one to be is certainly foolish.
Overpopulation is certainly a problem but it's a really hard problem to fix hence why it's still a problem. But yeah, we definitely need to reconsider and make things better for the environment in many areas.. if only change was easy.