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A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

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Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#451

Post by keymone »

root_axis wrote: post #445
keymone wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, way to miss the point. Bitcoin is money where security is expressed in terms of energy. Banking system uses energy and military to achieve the same job. Do i really need to elaborate further?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#452

Post by ilaksh »

It seems most of this is already covered by Ethereum, but Ethereum also has much more in the way of functionality and already has very significant resources behind it. Can we incorporate the vaulting concept also into Ethereum? Since it seems like they are trying to steal their thunder I wonder if someone from that camp will come out with a reason vaulting can't work.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#453

Post by malvosenior »

ForHackernews wrote: post #441
malvosenior wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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?

While I agree that the valuation can rapidly fluctuate. Bitcoin is successfully storing a large amount of value in a distributed manner. More than any other system that exists. There is a huge incentive to create transaction fraud with that much money on the line and Bitcoin is working and intended and acting as a distributed, transaction fraud free public ledger with a trade-able currency.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#454

Post by dwighttk »

orthecreedence wrote: post #399
SilasX wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we don't. Bitcoin is one way to use energy. There are hundreds of thousands of other ways. When you say Bitcoin "hurts the environment", what, concretely do you mean? Presumably, you mean it in a stronger sense than "using energy to produce food hurts the environment" or "using energy to run an ER hurts the environment". That is, you think that relative to the benefit provided , the use of (harmful) energy to run…

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…

>...transact without overly-censorious middle-men who take a cut while adding nearly no value. We have the internet, now. Payment networks should have died years ago.

nearly no value = many more transactions per second for much less energy cost.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#455

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#456

Post by sjeohp »

koonsolo wrote: post #435
sjeohp wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “However, it's possible to solve without using a country's-worth of energy to support a pathetic ~10 transactions per second.” Great! I look forward to seeing your solution in action.

Nano does it in action.

Nano claims to do it in action. So do others. Some of them might even be proven right, the vast majority will not, so acting like it's some kind of trivial solved problem is disingenuous. Ethereum's PoS has been in development for years and there is still no consensus that it will be a better mechanism than PoW.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#457

Post by kragen »

DenisM wrote: post #122
lixtra wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks are highly regulated and risk averse. They won’t transfer 100 USD to some country when it takes them more than some percentage of the transfer to do compliance for it. So the transfer is legal but banks can not do it compliant and efficient. I know of Ukrainian developers being paid in ETH for that reason. Adult cam models in some countries are another example.

Your use case #1 is money transfer where no centralized database can not be bothered because the overall volume is so small. Long tail of sorts. I think that's a good use case, not sure how much volume overall.

Hopefully not more than 7–10 transactions per second.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#458

Post by vb6lives »

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…

What is the environmental cost of building and running physical banks?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#460

Post by root_axis »

c22 wrote: post #449
root_axis wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 ac…

> 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.

Yes, that's exactly the point. Bitcoin is insanely inefficient because PoW is insanely inefficient. Unlike other "inefficiencies" where there is a logical relationship between "energy spent" and "useful work accomplished", with PoW there is no such relationship since the energy isn't spent doing useful work (i.e. processing transactions). Yes, more power into the network makes it "more secure" by making it "more expensive" to perform a 51% attack. The increased expense is distributed across the network in the form of increased difficulty. If a 51% attack was already implausible (which most bitcoin enthusiasts would say is true), then making it even more expensive doesn't actually do anything useful.

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