191–200 of 361 posts
All I can think of is the careless environmental impact of all that dirty electricity consumption. For, let's be honest, a mostly speculative activity. One cryptocurrency crashes, another gets hyped up, and the computational cycle repeats. When will it end.
2) Green energy demand increases
3) More green energy
4) Save the world
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A cryptocurrency enthusiast would tell you that the energy consumed is not "wasted" because it is necessary to secure the block chain. Personally I find this argument unconvincing and somewhat tautological. 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this and 2) why should we assume that securing the block chain is a actually good use for the energy spent? Especially if you consider that the process of…
If you knew the technical details of blockchains, you would not think that. And yes, the process IS much more than wasing massive amounts of energy. > 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this You are welcome to try. If you do come up with a less waisful solution you will be able to create your own altcoin and will make billions worth of dollars on it. Some very smart people have tried in the pas…
Feel free to elaborate...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A cryptocurrency enthusiast would tell you that the energy consumed is not "wasted" because it is necessary to secure the block chain. Personally I find this argument unconvincing and somewhat tautological. 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this and 2) why should we assume that securing the block chain is a actually good use for the energy spent? Especially if you consider that the process of…
> 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this 10 years ago people would have told you there is no possible solution to this. Proof-of-work cryptocurrency is a tremendous breakthrough. It will certainly be surpassed one day, but it's currently our best available option for a system of money.
What are the benefits of thousands of different systems keeping a record of every single transaction, and how is this not a hindrance to widespread use of our best available option?
Crypto-currencies have utility and uses but they are rather niche and specialized. Crypto-currencies aren't a mass market system. And they're not structured in a way that they can be.
I see an ebay buy it now for four 8GB RX 480s for $360. $90 a piece seems pretty crazy low - does that mean there's a high likelyhood of hardware failure after these things were used for mining?
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1) No there is no other way. (An alternative, proof-of-stake, is still an active research area. Even Ethereum abandoned the idea of completely switching away from proof-of-work because they realized PoS isn't completely workable.) 2) Because a permission-less censorship-resistant decentralized financial system has the potential to truly improve society, hence worth spending energy on it. I have presented multiple arg…
I read your arguments and unfortunately most don't hold water. > 1. Miners currently use approximately only 0.0012% of the energy consumed by the world. This doesn't change the fact that you're using energy. The second argument is basically the same, just extrapolating into the future. > 3. Mining would be a waste if there was another more efficient way to implement a Bitcoin-like currency without proof-of-work. This…
Actually if that number is accurate, is quite shocking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A cryptocurrency enthusiast would tell you that the energy consumed is not "wasted" because it is necessary to secure the block chain. Personally I find this argument unconvincing and somewhat tautological. 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this and 2) why should we assume that securing the block chain is a actually good use for the energy spent? Especially if you consider that the process of…
1) No there is no other way. (An alternative, proof-of-stake, is still an active research area. Even Ethereum abandoned the idea of completely switching away from proof-of-work because they realized PoS isn't completely workable.) 2) Because a permission-less censorship-resistant decentralized financial system has the potential to truly improve society, hence worth spending energy on it. I have presented multiple arg…
It is dependent on a huge amount of cheap energy
I wouldn't call it censorship resistant yet
Raise the cost of the energy and only the ones with deep pockets can decide what is true
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Call me naive, but am I the only one who looks at mining as one of the worst inventions for consuming energy possible? Almost all of society functions on energy, some of the largest breakthroughs in society have been on sudden abundance of cheap energy and the machines, vehicles products they can create. Entire economies can be crippled by rising costs in energy (oil shocks of the 70s) and boom by sudden drops in cos…
The energy isn't wasted, it is converted. The closest analogy I can come up with is that gold used to back currency isn't wasted because it is stored in an underground vault rather than being used for jewelry or as a component in electronics. If you are creating a currency, then it has to be backed by something: gold, silver the cost of electricity, people's faith that the currency is worth something. A currency not…
And then they'll buy back at horrendous prices when the Price goes up again? Seems like shortsighted people do this. At least they could play some tremendous video games in the mean time ;)
Econ 101 obviously says the price of shovels will now go down...
All I can think of is the careless environmental impact of all that dirty electricity consumption. For, let's be honest, a mostly speculative activity. One cryptocurrency crashes, another gets hyped up, and the computational cycle repeats. When will it end.
Think of all the SF/SV pollution caused by wastefully funded startups building the next Uber for ice cream or whatever.