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China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

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31–40 of 94 posts

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#31

As to mining farms owned by smaller players, especially those in the mountainous areas of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, simply locating the miners is a near impossible task. A growing number of private owners of hydropower plants in the two regions have begun to operate mining machines themselves as the price of bitcoin has surged, Du Jun, founder of Node Capital, a Beijing-based venture-capital firm focusing on the…

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Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#32

I am personally of the opinion that China swiftly killing off its cryptocurrency mining industry overnight would be to the great benefit of humanity. The sheer amount of electricity it wastes is an environmental disaster.

I don't get winging about mining crypto currency and "wasting power", it's not really a waste, it's proof of work. Besides, we humans waste energy on way worse things than mining Bitcoin.

What about running Facebook, the tens of thousands of high end servers running globally just to figure out what useless junk to feed people, in a way that is detrimental to their health. I don't hear many people complaining about that side of it personally and it's a way bigger waste of electricity IMO.

The other issue is the fact that electricity is produced using fossil fuels, again, not enough protesting about that issue.

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#33

I am personally of the opinion that China swiftly killing off its cryptocurrency mining industry overnight would be to the great benefit of humanity. The sheer amount of electricity it wastes is an environmental disaster.

I don't get winging about mining crypto currency and "wasting power", it's not really a waste, it's proof of work. Besides, we humans waste energy on way worse things than mining Bitcoin. What about running Facebook, the tens of thousands of high end servers running globally just to figure out what useless junk to feed people, in a way that is detrimental to their health. I don't hear many people complaining about th…

> it's not really a waste, it's proof of work

Every kind of waste I can think of is a proof of some kind of work. That doesn't make it a good thing.

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#34

I am personally of the opinion that China swiftly killing off its cryptocurrency mining industry overnight would be to the great benefit of humanity. The sheer amount of electricity it wastes is an environmental disaster.

I don't get winging about mining crypto currency and "wasting power", it's not really a waste, it's proof of work. Besides, we humans waste energy on way worse things than mining Bitcoin. What about running Facebook, the tens of thousands of high end servers running globally just to figure out what useless junk to feed people, in a way that is detrimental to their health. I don't hear many people complaining about th…

Ugh.

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is what a pyramid scheme is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme Bitcoin is a distributed database that solves the "Two Generals Problem". Please don't spread misinformation on things you do not understand.

Sigh. The only sense in which it "solves" the Two Generals Problem is the sense in which it will, over the course of decades, create a rainbow table for it. None of the work being done is in any way socially useful (a crypto coin based on, say, folding proteins actually produces a social good and so could be equity based). Decentralized proof of a transaction having occurred is in principle valuable, but the token it…

> Sigh. The only sense in which it "solves" the Two Generals Problem is the sense in which it will, over the course of decades, create a rainbow table for it. None of the work being done is in any way socially useful (a crypto coin based on, say, folding proteins actually produces a social good and so could be equity based).

That is by design. Doing useful work would hurt the network's security.

> Decentralized proof of a transaction having occurred is in principle valuable, but the token itself is not the store of value. The reason it is accurately described as a pyramid scheme is because holding bitcoin for the purpose of reselling it is exactly like holding a baseball card, or a share in Bernie Madoff's hedge fund: it is based on the premise that someone will come along and pay you more for it than you paid, despite no actual appreciation in any fundamental value.

What you described more closely fits the definition of a "bubble", not a "pyramid scheme". I agree that Bitcoin could be qualified as a "bubble" in the way you describe it. That is, similarly to paper money or gold, its price is completely disconnected from its "intrinsic" value.

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#36
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Shutting down participation in the planet's largest pyramid scheme doesn't have a lot of downside.

Here is what a pyramid scheme is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme Bitcoin is a distributed database that solves the "Two Generals Problem". Please don't spread misinformation on things you do not understand.

I'm amazed at how BTC supporters don't even know who invented BTC and the blockchain (Satoshi), yet champion it to no end.

If I was to tell you to invest in a company whose founder is 'invisible', yet controls a large chunk of the company's stock, would you do it?

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#37

As to mining farms owned by smaller players, especially those in the mountainous areas of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, simply locating the miners is a near impossible task. A growing number of private owners of hydropower plants in the two regions have begun to operate mining machines themselves as the price of bitcoin has surged, Du Jun, founder of Node Capital, a Beijing-based venture-capital firm focusing on the…

That's a naive view of networking. The physical location of an IP address can be very difficult to track down (and of course IP addresses aren't part of the bitcoin protocol).

Bitcoin is also super low bandwidth, and it would be very easy to build a custom proxy to circumvent the firewall. We are effectively talking about 3 megabytes (or even less) every 10 minutes (5 kBps). It could also be obfuscated with stengraphy rather than encryption (e.g. a valid webpage, where the spacing, or css properties are the (also encrypted) bitcoin blocks).

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is what a pyramid scheme is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme Bitcoin is a distributed database that solves the "Two Generals Problem". Please don't spread misinformation on things you do not understand.

I'm amazed at how BTC supporters don't even know who invented BTC and the blockchain (Satoshi), yet champion it to no end. If I was to tell you to invest in a company whose founder is 'invisible', yet controls a large chunk of the company's stock, would you do it?

First, I am not asking anyone to invest in Bitcoin, I'm just stating facts.

Second, it would depend on whether I believed the stock was currently under valued.

Third, Satoshi is likely dead, lost access to his early coins or has little interest in spending them (given he disappeared and hasn't touched them in years).

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get winging about mining crypto currency and "wasting power", it's not really a waste, it's proof of work. Besides, we humans waste energy on way worse things than mining Bitcoin. What about running Facebook, the tens of thousands of high end servers running globally just to figure out what useless junk to feed people, in a way that is detrimental to their health. I don't hear many people complaining about th…

> it's not really a waste, it's proof of work Every kind of waste I can think of is a proof of some kind of work. That doesn't make it a good thing.

The value provide by these systems is trust, which literally requires proof of work to establish.

Facebook news feeds don't require proof of work in the same sense.

Re: China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining

#40

I am personally of the opinion that China swiftly killing off its cryptocurrency mining industry overnight would be to the great benefit of humanity. The sheer amount of electricity it wastes is an environmental disaster.

Many newer cryptocurrencies use Proof of Stake vs. Proof of Work. PoS is much more efficient than PoW.

https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/118/whats-the-d...

So if electricity is the only reason to combat Bitcoin, many other cryptocurrencies should be fine.

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