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A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

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Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#581

Post by eeZah7Ux »

dpacmittal wrote: post #487
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…

How much energy does our collective banking infrastructure use? I'm pretty sure the number would be far bigger.

I'd like to see comparison with energy VS monetary volumes VS risk...

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#582

Post by DINKDINK »

darkpuma wrote: post #547
DINKDINK wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[Bitcoin] is dwarfed by other forms of distributed wealth storage such as [S.A.] old fashioned pieces of gold Hi can you let me how I can immigrate out of my country with $10e6 without thieves at the airport taking my wealth? If we can figure this out, man bitcoin is totally KIA. Also can you let me how how I can costlessly assay gold when I accept it as payment? or make the supply of gold only dependent only on tim…

> Hi can you let me how I can immigrate out of my country with $10e6 without thieves at the airport taking my wealth? If we can figure this out, man bitcoin is totally KIA. You're supposing that the vast majority of people using bitcoin are using it to exfiltrate money out of countries. That niche application is very far from the reality of what most bitcoin advocates are doing. But yes, digital exfiltration may be e…

>You're supposing

It's a single example of the value of decentralized property rights. Say I'm an alcohol maker in Sharia-law country, I want to be able to make wine but prevent the state from expropriating my wealth because they ban alcohol. Say I live in a country which mandates that all business ventures with returns less than 2% a year will have their profits stolen (read: inflation) I can use bitcoin to escape that oppression.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#583

Post by 0db532a0 »

comboy wrote: post #541
darkpuma wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 d…

Real estate is likely the best storage of value there is. It's only distributed across governments though. When you own a piece of land you actually trust your government to protect your right to it. Gold is fantastic. Apart from its physical properties, we all agreed to assign value to it and it's been working for thousands of years. But wouldn't it be great to have gold in a digital form? Something easily divisible…

You may be interested to learn about the commodity derivatives market.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#585

Post by baddox »

orthecreedence wrote: post #557
baddox wrote: post #499

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. 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…

> If a kilowatt of electricity usage costs enough to offset its environmental impact The day that markets actually price externalities into the costs of goods and services, whether by benevolent owners or force of regulation, I'll gladly declare Bitcoin useful.

The point is that the environmental argument is completely irrelevant if externalities are removed, which they absolutely should be.

It doesn’t make sense to make the environmental argument for things that you consider wasteful, but not for other things that other people may consider wasteful.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#586

Post by hndamien »

orthecreedence wrote: post #557
baddox wrote: post #499

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. 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…

> If a kilowatt of electricity usage costs enough to offset its environmental impact The day that markets actually price externalities into the costs of goods and services, whether by benevolent owners or force of regulation, I'll gladly declare Bitcoin useful.

That is the point you should declare Governments useful. Bitcoin is already useful.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#587

Post by throwaway415415 »

thesausageking wrote: post #555
throwaway415415 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes people can duck with a network by cutting cables. This works with all internet protocols.

If 99% of Bitcoin's hashrate gets taken off the internet, it keeps going without any problem. That's the beauty of a decentralized cryptocurrency. There's no central node and it's supremely fault tolerant. Algorand has a lot of interesting technology and may have some use cases. But it's more like a distributed database / voting system than a true cryptocurrency.

That is not true. If network partitions happen in bitcoin you are utterly ducked. The system will fork and good luck to recover from that with all the double spendings.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#588

Post by throwaway415415 »

PaulBGD_ wrote: post #505
throwaway415415 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not answering the question.

Users with high stakes generally want the network to run so their stakes aren't worthless. At least, that's the theory behind PoS.

PoS by itself doesn't incentivize you to include transactions. That's called the "nothing at stake" problem.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#589

Post by hndamien »

root_axis wrote: post #428
c22 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think bitcoin is bad? https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1s8219SGDIjMnkzdFI2QjhwNm8... My gut instinct is that the vast majority of all computing cycles used by humanity are completely wasted on irrelevant tasks and inefficiencies.

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…

Is the American military wasteful because it provides too much security? How much should it be reduced to provide sufficient security? This is a legitimate question/ I don't have an opinion either way - but it seems to be a fair corollary.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#590

Post by zhoujianfu »

DenisM wrote: post #87

This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not: - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is) - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA) - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a t…

Think of crypto as outsourced anti-fraud. If you run a web hosting business, easily >50% of your attempted signups are with stolen identities/credit cards. It’s hard work catching them before the chargebacks come in. With crypto you know with 100% certainty when you receive a payment that you at least have the money!
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