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A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

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Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#291

Post by SkyMarshal »

woah wrote: post #271
SkyMarshal wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original use case for cryptocurrency (eg digital sound money, not world computers and the like) is as a long-term (and hopefully independent and uncorrrelated enough) hedge against mis-management and failure of national currency regimes. That remains a legit use case but will take years or decades to materialize. Given that the tech is still in the early stages of its maturity curve and needs more time to robusti…

That wasn't the original use case for crypto. In the bitcoin white paper he mostly talks about micropayments, which bitcoin has ironically failed at.

He covered his bases and talked about everything, but micropayments don’t need expensive decentralization to implement. Incorruptible digital money does.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#292

Post by cjbprime »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #280
good-idea wrote: post #242

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those) But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems abov…

Most* Bitcoin mining is done with renewables. Mostly hydro. Hydro power is often remote from cities and other main electricity consumers, and too weak to transfer over long distances. So they’re a natural place to set up Google data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations on-site, which is pretty much what’s happened with Bitcoin. *Don’t have a citation but there may be some research on this being published soon…

I don't have a citation either, but you can empirically determine this to be likely by just comparing the reward per kW spent and noticing that it has become less than the cost per kW of non-renewable energy.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#293

Post by seanyesmunt »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #274
seanyesmunt wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In that sense, the coin would create an economic incentive to pollute I think if anything it creates an incentive to use renewable energy. If miners are able to pay less for power, they make more money. As the cost of renewables continue to drop, more miners will move to it.

Irrelevant. Renewable energy could be used to replace other sources, instead of peed away on this. A larger demand for energy likely means more polluting forms of energy will come back into service/stay in service to meet the demand.

It's not being "peed away". It is being used to help people send money to each other.

That's like saying the energy used to run the security system in a bank is being peed away.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#294

Post by omarchowdhury »

jayd16 wrote: post #162
Semaphor wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loans, money transfer, storing your money are all things that can be replaced. Seems like a decent chunk.

Loans no, not at all. Money transfer for coin is extremely inefficient. Volatility makes crypto a terrible place to keep money. Besides, you're paying for the legal and institutional protection anyway. If crypto made money transfer more efficient, they'd use it and still have the value add of a large institution backing transactions.

> Loans no, not at all.

https://makerdao.com/dai/

$80M DAI issued so far...

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#295

Post by brazzy »

packet_nerd wrote: post #187
jayd16 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>actually banks have failed in the past, this infrastructure not yet Man, what are you talking about? There's a new "$100 million in coins go missing" story every 6 months.

Crypto 101: never let anyone have your private key. No-one who religiously followed that rule has ever had their crypto stolen. Coins go missing from exchanges, which break the basic private key rule. People use exchanges for convenience because as clever as cryptocurrency is, it has no answer to the exchange problem.

> never let anyone have your private key. No-one who religiously followed that rule has ever had their crypto stolen.

Bullshit. No "religious" following of rules can protect you against a zero day exploit somewhere in your system.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#296

Post by yarrel »

good-idea wrote: post #242

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those) But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems abov…

It's weird how many people only want to talk about the environment when it's Bitcoin.

Anyway - https://medium.com/coinshares/beware-of-lazy-research-c828c9...

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#297

Post by yqx »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #280
good-idea wrote: post #242

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those) But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems abov…

Most* Bitcoin mining is done with renewables. Mostly hydro. Hydro power is often remote from cities and other main electricity consumers, and too weak to transfer over long distances. So they’re a natural place to set up Google data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations on-site, which is pretty much what’s happened with Bitcoin. *Don’t have a citation but there may be some research on this being published soon…

Independent of whether this is true (and I'm sceptical), Bitcoin mining requires computation (and lots of it). Computation requires power. Even if that power is renewable and would be difficult to use for things other than computation, there is still a huge demand for computation. Hence it's still a choice to spend that power on Bitcoin mining rather than other computation tasks such as simulations for scientific research.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#298

Post by trophycase »

astazangasta wrote: post #193
sametmax wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think bitcoin started ? You'd had to be crazy to believe in it 9 years ago, and spend time and energy in the community, nlt to lention monney, to foster the project. My family and friends said i was stupid, utopist, being conned, wasting my time, and so lany things. Btc was banana money at first, and only people believing it would be a great thing as a concept made it work. We didn't expect to make banks,…

Bitcoin doesn't work in any meaningful sense. It can't be used for purchases in most contexts and you can't use it as a stable store of value. It is also controlled by dubious actors and mining is a horribly destructive practice, both in terms of environmental waste and the constant nuisance of people stealing CPU time. But you were saying?

If you're saying "Bitcoin doesn't work in any meaningful sense" you simply just haven't used Bitcoin. It works absolutely fine, even great most of the time, and accomplishes what I personally see as its purpose.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#299

Post by omarchowdhury »

School-Cotton wrote: post #151
solotronics wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

absolute control over your money

Again, nothing stops you from keeping gold under your bed. The reason people don’t do this is because most people don’t actually need, want, or care about having absolute control over their money. And the probability of your home being robbed is much higher than that of your bank (and the FDIC) becoming insolvent.

> Again, nothing stops you from keeping gold under your bed.

Can I transmit my gold in any quantity that I want to anyone in the world with an Internet connection for a few dollars in fees?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#300

Post by mihaifm »

throwaway415415 wrote: post #264
mihaifm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would name Nano, a very underrated cryptocurrency. Uses DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) instead of Proof of Work, so it doesn't do mining, also it has zero fees and minimal transaction times. I've ran a full node for some time to support the network, the whole blockchain size was about 5GB, but the downside of zero transaction fees is that there is less incentive for people to run full nodes. I stopped mine out of…

If no fees, what are the incentives to accept transactions in a block?

The stake in the network. Each transaction is validated by representatives whose votes are proportional to their stake in the network. An attacker would need to gain 50% of the network value to be able to do some damage.
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