Vault is based on proof of stake, which is much less energy intensive than PoW...
A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
491–500 of 839 posts
Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin is wasteful because of its energy profile not because of an arbitrary value judgement regarding how energy should be used. Rendering images is useful work. Processing transactions is useful work. With gaming computers, increasing energy costs means increasing detail and complexity in the images that can be processed. Bitcoin is wasteful because the increasing energy costs does not increase the total number of…
No, it increases the trust of the system. Is it the best solution? Perhaps not, but it is not without utility.
Run that one by me again? If tomorrow, a manufacturer announced the new Super Duper Quantum ASIC for Bitcoin that can perform hashes at 10 times less energy cost, everybody would switch over to it, and the total hashrate would increase 10x. Neither the number of miners, the proportion of mining held by each person, the distribution of mining rewards accumulated, or the total power consumption would be affected at all. Therefore, the amount of trust in the system would not be changed at all.
Cryptocurrencies are not secured by the hashrate, but by the cost of exceeding the hashrate of the network.
Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
#493I'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…
In the greater scheme of things, how much energy use is mining bitcoin responsible for? 0.000000000001% of the world's energy use?
I used to be very skeptical of bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but I'm even more skeptical of the recent anti-crypto propaganda all over social media.
3 years ago, crypto was going to save the world. Now, we are talking about environment? What gives? What's with the relentless anti-crypto propaganda?
Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not missing the point, you're moving the goalposts You: "the banking system is idiotically expensive using much more raw energy" Me: "it uses much more raw energy because it services the financial needs of most of the planet".
No goalposts have moved. Banking system involves politics and military in securing your finances. It is therefore many orders of magnitude more expensive than bitcoin even if you normalize by market cap of transaction volume or pick your own metric. Edit: typos
Politics and the military are the foundation of all society. Those things won't go away because of cryptocurrency, so repeatedly bringing them up doesn't help your point at all.
Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> "Bitcoin is successfully storing a large amount of value in a distributed manner. More than any other system that exists."
No it isn't. The market cap of bitcoin, which is a bullshit number anyway as already explained, is dwarfed by other forms of distributed wealth storage such as (but certainly not limited to) old fashioned pieces of gold. Gold is distributed. If you revise your assertion to be distributed and digital then perhaps you're correct. But the more qualifications you tack on, the less impressive your claims to fame become.
Don't bother mistaking me for some sort of gold bug either. Real Estate is another form of distributed wealth storage that blows bitcoin's pathetic market cap out of the water.
Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
#496I'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…
In the greater scheme of things, how much energy use is mining bitcoin responsible for? 0.000000000001% of the world's energy use? I used to be very skeptical of bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but I'm even more skeptical of the recent anti-crypto propaganda all over social media. 3 years ago, crypto was going to save the world. Now, we are talking about environment? What gives? What's with the relentless anti-crypto pro…
Way off. 32TWh last year in the US. As much energy as Denmark. Its huge and growing alarmingly. That's what this whole conversation is about.
Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it increases the trust of the system. Is it the best solution? Perhaps not, but it is not without utility.
Run that one by me again? If tomorrow, a manufacturer announced the new Super Duper Quantum ASIC for Bitcoin that can perform hashes at 10 times less energy cost, everybody would switch over to it, and the total hashrate would increase 10x. Neither the number of miners, the proportion of mining held by each person, the distribution of mining rewards accumulated, or the total power consumption would be affected at all…
I'm probably way out of my element here (I don't own bitcoin or play video games). Are you telling me that the power consumption of the bitcoin network is constant and based solely on the most popular bitcoin mining hardware?
Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In what way?
* Mining has become highly centralized, the opposite of its original intent.
* Transaction fees are too high to justify its use in every day transactions and small transfers.
* Very few merchants accept it for every day transactions, and the number has decreased over time.
Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
#499Earlier 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…
> 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.
Objectively? No, I'm pretty sure that isn't "a complete fucking waste" to the people who are benefitting from it. Which is literally the definition of "subjective."
Removing externalities of electricity pricing solves this. That's the point. If a kilowatt of electricity usage costs enough to offset its environmental impact, then who cares if a tiny minority of people are doing some wacky confusing things with their computers?
Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also why would I trust them, when there is no need to? Because your alternative is to trust the crypto infrastructure, which is far less trustworthy.
what do you mean by crypto infrastructure? you mean the code or the miners? actually banks have failed in the past, this infrastructure not yet
I don't understand you are talking about theft? like what happens to banks and jewelry stores? like what was happening every day with dollars on far west? and somehow this invalidated the cryptocurrency narrative? how?