Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

news.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 839 posts

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#441

Post by ForHackernews »

malvosenior wrote: post #421
orthecreedence wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An enormous amount of energy used to support a tiny minority of people participating in a highly-manipulated wealth redistribution mechanism is, objectively, a complete fucking waste. You cannot look at bitcoin by any measure and say that it's a practical success for any of its goals. And given the amount of energy it uses to perpetuate its own failure, it's nearly sinful to keep it going. That said, I do support som…

" it's possible to solve without using a country's-worth of energy to support a pathetic ~10 transactions per second." I think it's more accurate to talk about the amount of value the Bitcoin network is storing than the transactions per second. Bitcoin currently has a market cap of $68B. I'm not aware of any other distributed system that's worth that much money. It's definitely interesting that a fully distributed sy…

If bitcoin users went to make withdrawals en masse, I suspect they'd quickly find it's not "storing" anything like USD 68 billion of value.

Market cap is a farcical number to look at for a thinly-traded asset on unregulated markets. If I make my own new cryptocurrency, print 100 million tokens, and then talk my friend into buying one for $10, does that mean my token has $1 billion market cap?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#442

Post by keymone »

root_axis wrote: post #396
ttoinou wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when comparing crypto and our current banking system. We all want a faster, more efficient, cheaper cryptocurrency, and those features are linked to its ecological efficiency.

There is simply no comparison. The banking system is many many, many orders of magnitude more efficient and to suggest otherwise is frustratingly disingenuous.

No it isn’t, banking system is idiotically expensive using much more raw energy but also is open for corruption, is run by greedy bankers that governments have to bail out all the time for taxpayers money, etc, etc. current financial system is many orders of magnitude more expensive and dangerous.

Suggesting otherwise is not just disingenuous - it is malicious.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#444

Post by keymone »

Scarblac wrote: post #361
celticninja wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then it's still using up renewable energy that could have been used on something else. Electricity is mostly fungible.

Energy is a product on the market. Whoever wants to pay for it is free to do it, what’s your problem?

Besides you seem to be missing one important fact about energy - it is very expensive to store much of it, which is why many bitcoin farms use up available excessive energy because that way it makes them more profitable and the grid more stable.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#445

Post by root_axis »

keymone wrote: post #442
root_axis wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is simply no comparison. The banking system is many many, many orders of magnitude more efficient and to suggest otherwise is frustratingly disingenuous.

No it isn’t, banking system is idiotically expensive using much more raw energy but also is open for corruption, is run by greedy bankers that governments have to bail out all the time for taxpayers money, etc, etc. current financial system is many orders of magnitude more expensive and dangerous. Suggesting otherwise is not just disingenuous - it is malicious.

> banking system is idiotically expensive using much more raw energy

It uses much more raw energy because it services the financial needs of most of the planet. Bitcoin dubiously services the needs of a handful. This is so obvious that I suspect you're not arguing in good faith.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#447

Post by 0x262d »

cryptocurrency is and always has been a useless technology in the best tradition of useless technologies: a combination of libertarian aesthetics and a pyramid scheme.

the complaints people have with state currency are basic political problems that cryptocurrencies are not going to resolve. the basic feature that gives state currencies reliability is the backing of the state. without that, and states will never want to give that to cryptocurrencies, they will always be commodities with no stability and no real use value. and all the people who have bought in already will need to sell to a new generation of suckers, regardless of if they conceptualize it like that or not.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#448

Post by darawk »

keymone wrote: post #438
darawk wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Proof of stake may not involve energy costs directly but it has far worse consequences - costs are just shifted into political plane. Which is essentially what bitcoin was designed to avoid. You do know that idea of pos is older than PoW, yet nobody cared for it exactly because you end up with financial system run by politicians - exactly where you started.

I see people say this sometimes, and then provide no real evidence that it is at all true. PoS systems exist now, they don't have political problems to speak of any moreso than PoW coins. I see no reason to think that PoS would induce any sort of great political struggle that PoW wouldn't.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#449

Post by c22 »

root_axis wrote: post #440
c22 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it increases the trust of the system. Is it the best solution? Perhaps not, but it is not without utility.

"Increasing trust" doesn't add value if the system is already sufficiently trustworthy for the task of processing transactions. Based on that reasoning the cost should ('should' meaning: it is beneficial) increase forever because an infinite amount of energy burned is infinitely trustworthy.

Is bitcoin sufficiently trustworthy without proof of work? I'm not a bitcoin expert, but my understanding was that this is an integral part of the trust model. If so then we're just back to talking about inefficiencies.

I can't imagine the processing being done by my computer right now is all strictly necessary to read and post these comments, and I'd wager this site is more efficient than most these days. Still I accept reality and pay these costs in order to talk with you on the internet because this is the world we live in. It looks like these nice people at MIT are working on some of the inefficiencies of cryptocurrencies, so let's rejoice.

Post reply on HN