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A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

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Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#351

Post by sametmax »

kadendogthing wrote: post #324
trophycase wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep. Perfectly fine as tech beanie babies.

As a POC of an alternative medium of paiement.

As an idea, a hope, the starting point for iterating on the future of money.

As a way to make the society think and debate.

And as all that, I think it had been successful.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#352

Post by root_axis »

dnautics wrote: post #118
root_axis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How?

Typically, states control the money supply, and typically in the direction of impoverishing laborers to fill the pockets of privileged interests. Diminishing this power alone could be transformative.

Cryptocurrency doesn't cause a government to lose control of its money supply.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#353

Post by EthanHeilman »

throwaway415415 wrote: post #238
thesausageking wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the network goes down completely, as it's coming back up, groups of nodes will start adding blocks before all of the other nodes are back online. When connectivity is completely restored, you end up with different parallel chains, each of which thinks it's the main chain. With Bitcoin, there's a simple, deterministic way to decide which chain to trust: the one which has had the most work done it. With Algorand, it…

False. Algorand has safety, unless you get confirmation from 2/3 of the "money", you don't go forward. The best you can get here is a denial of service.

The CAP theorem [0] states that during a network partition a consensus system must either lose availability or consistency.

* Bitcoin loses consistency

* Algorand loses availability

I'm glad Algorand exists so that systems which value consistency over availability can be built.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#354

Post by rspeer »

r1b wrote: post #269
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…

I feel the same way about the amount of energy used to serve advertisements & send marketing emails.

That's not very much.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#355

Post by akrymski »

ericol wrote: post #74
malloreon wrote: post #16

I have long wondered how cryptocurrency fans would answer the question: ‘Would you be happy if the crypto-utopia you bring up happens in the next 10 years, and all value is stored/transacted through a cryptocurrency, but it was a coin that you do not possess now, nor could you transfer any of you current currencies into it?’ Say tomorrow someone releases the one true coin, but no one notices. All other cryptocurrenci…

I'm into cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, actually) because it solves a very specific problem that might apply only to my country. So, anecdote: I live in Argentina, work for an UK based company. been doing that for the last 10 years. Before I could trade bitcoin in an almost frictionless way (I.e., before I discovered Localbitcoin.com) my routine was to go to the ATM after the payment got into my european bank account, do…

Are you sure Argentina isn't part of SWIFT? That's insane if true. A quick google search suggests otherwise:

https://www.theswiftcodes.com/argentina/

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#356

Post by celticninja »

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…

I dont think we have any real evidence that cryptocurrencies are predominantly using polluting methods of power generation. The entire argument falls over if it is all renewable energy.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#357

Post by good-idea »

darawk wrote: post #323
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…

> 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) You know that one of the major motivations for Proof of Stake is environmental, right? Proof of stake eliminates the energy waste…

yes, definitely, and that's why I'm excited about it. What I was writing about when I posted that comment was more about how the environmental impact is often just left out of the conversation - and I was surprised that the original article didn't even give it a mention.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#358

Post by buzzdenver »

cjbprime wrote: post #284
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…

I'm not sure whether this is true, but I expect that electricity-from-coal for Bitcoins isn't a massive problem because doing so is simply unprofitable: the electricity costs more than the value of the Bitcoins, so it would be irrational to do. I would expect that mining has become an arbitrage market that narrows in on the cheapest possible electricity anywhere in the world, and as such is dominated by excess "free"…

That might be the case in some countries, but in China for example much of the mining is done with stolen electricity, or bribing officials for an unreasonably low rate.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#359

Post by Scarblac »

seanyesmunt wrote: post #293
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it uses many orders of magnitudes more energy per transaction than all the existing ways of people sending money to each other, it's being peed away.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#360

Post by beiller »

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…

Since many people including me compare bitcoin to gold in terms of it as an investment that is not based on any real-world usage, how does the environmental impact of mining bitcoin compare to the environmental impact of the total amount of gold mined from the earth that is only used for investment purposes?
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