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A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

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Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#651

Post by briatx »

tomglynch wrote: post #608
orthecreedence wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can memorize 20 words and cross whatever border I want with $100 million in my brain, and full confidence that that money is mine. That's pretty damn cool. No, you can have 30K BTC in your brain, but unfortunately the USD value fluctuates so wildly that as a store of value, it's useless. > It sounds like you're projecting what you think Bitcoin should be. Probably, yes. Bitcoin is a failed project. It spawned man…

> No, you can have 30K BTC in your brain, but unfortunately the USD value fluctuates so wildly that as a store of value, it's useless. From an outside perspective, I don't think it's worth continuing the discussion as is. Perhaps you should both come back in a few hours when everyone is a bit calmer.

> No, you can have 30K BTC in your brain, but unfortunately the USD value fluctuates so wildly that as a store of value, it's useless.

No, this is an important distinction. Bitcoin isn't liquid enough to count as actual money and proponents of the idea that sending bitcoin is the same as sending money are glossing over the cost to buy bitcoin, and the cost of transferring it back to actual money on the other side.

Having access to 30K BTC doesn't do you much good if nobody is willing to trade you goods or real money for it on the other side.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#652

Post by foxrob92 »

johnisgood wrote: post #642
foxrob92 wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying that we just need to make fusion a reality in order for bitcoin to be environmentally friendly?

I am saying it will not be an issue in terms of environmental impact after fusion becomes a reality, as far as electricity goes.

I mean that's a bit of a tautology isn't it?

Once we have clean energy production for everything, bitcoin will have minimal environmental impact?

That's ignoring the fact that fusion is still a very long way from commercial availability.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#653

Post by pandapower2 »

rspeer wrote: post #354
r1b wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's not very much.

Serving advertisements is certainly very bandwidth and energy intensive at least when talking about news/media sites.

The majority of the data that is getting pushed around during a page load is ad delivery or tracking code to inform the ad delivery. That is a lot of servers, load balancers etc etc working hard pushing around ad code. The actual text of a news article is a tiny part of the whole workload.

Once the site is being loaded by your browser (ie you have downloaded all the JS and your machine has parsed a few MB of ad/tracking code), depending on the site's ad provider(s) there is potentially a real time auction going on for every ad slot on every page load. Multiple ad networks hold automated auctions within themselves which are rolled up into an auction between the winner of each of those auctions. There are literally banks of big beefy servers scattered around the world bidding on ad slots 24/7.

A breath-taking amount of energy and bandwidth get used up to display an annoying 'sweater for dogs' ad next to a news article.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#654

Post by briatx »

darawk wrote: post #634
woolvalley wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A PoS that actually matters will turn into a political game as large stakeholders play negotiation games of where the project goes next. Much like stockholder corporations today.

How is that different from PoW?

It's not.

Bitcoin has a history of huge factional schisms over changes that should have been a no brainer (increase block size to increase tx throughput).

Instead political wars have been fought as the Core dev governance gridlocked and stagnated leading to the Bitcoin Cash fork (amongst others).

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#655

Post by naasking »

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…

> But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems above). This is something that literally affects every human being.

How much energy was used to establish and perpetuate the existing fiat currency infrastructure? Has any such comparative analysis been done? Without such an analysis, it seems a little premature to unilaterally declare that bitcoin is a real problem by comparison.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#656

Post by tluyben2 »

orthecreedence wrote: post #574
ecwilson wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot look at bitcoin by any measure and say that it's a practical success for any of its goals. I can memorize 20 words and cross whatever border I want with $100 million in my brain, and full confidence that that money is mine . That's pretty damn cool. > I do support some form of decentralized currency. Not because people are ever going to be smart enough to be their own bank or because I think some currenc…

> I can memorize 20 words and cross whatever border I want with $100 million in my brain, and full confidence that that money is mine. That's pretty damn cool. No, you can have 30K BTC in your brain, but unfortunately the USD value fluctuates so wildly that as a store of value, it's useless. > It sounds like you're projecting what you think Bitcoin should be. Probably, yes. Bitcoin is a failed project. It spawned man…

> No, you can have 30K BTC in your brain, but unfortunately the USD value fluctuates so wildly that as a store of value, it's useless.

Yes, for those amounts. But for several purposes, unfortunately most of them 'evil' (money laundering / terrorism), this works fine. I know it's used a lot for people in countries where getting currency out above a certain threshold is very hard unless you are at the highest level of corruption with great success. They are not so bothered with losing a few 1000$ by fluctuation as their goal is getting it out and converted to something else (safer) (USD/EUR) asap.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#657

Post by wolco »

creato wrote: post #599
DINKDINK wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even if you could somehow do this...That simply will never be possible You already can: bitcoin. >I doubt you would actually really want to do this even if you had the capability If I'm a Jew in 1930s Germany or a grocery store owner in Venezuela and I see the writing on the wall that my government is constantly deriding me, saying I'm the scourge of and leach on society, I'm going to immigrate out of the country. T…

> If I'm a Jew in 1930s Germany or a grocery store owner in Venezuela and I see the writing on the wall that my government is constantly deriding me, saying I'm the scourge of and leach on society, I'm going to immigrate out of the country. They've banned all institutions from services me, I benefit from having access to a means to store wealth that's independent from a government. To disagree is to be excessively my…

Here is a great article. The size of the /growth of market is interesting.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-venezuela-came-to-be-one-...

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#658

Post by darkpuma »

topmonk wrote: post #568
darkpuma wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> But yes, digital exfiltration may be easier than physical smuggling. That's supposing a lot about what forms of control are implemented in that country at at it's borders. Given that some forms of cryptocurrency can be stored using only a memorized passphrase and nothing else, (ie. a brain wallet), it's pretty much guaranteed that getting cryptocurrency put of the country would be easier.

You're supposing the government doesn't know you bought those bitcoins (or at the least doesn't know that you are somehow hiding a lot of money without knowing the details) and isn't willing to beat it out of you.

Most cryptoanarchists are deluded nerds who would fold in less than 5 minutes of waterboarding. Do you think these thugs who are willing to look up your ass for a few pieces of gold aren't willing to violate you in other ways? Of course you don't believe that, you've merely failed to seriously consider that possibility.

The only reason smuggling BTC sometimes works right now is because they're not looking for it.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#659

Post by orthecreedence »

baddox wrote: post #635
orthecreedence wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is that the environmental argument is completely irrelevant if externalities are removed, which they absolutely should be. Yes, I agree that my argument would be completely irrelevant if only something that will never happen happens. Until then, I'd rather see some form of distributed currency that doesn't rely on pissing finite resources away to function. I get where you're coming from, but our planet is…

I don’t think anyone disagrees that reducing the energy requirements of cryptocurrency without any capability loss would be great. The trouble is when people who don’t like cryptocurrency for other reasons, or just don’t care about it, focus specifically on complaining about its energy usage. Say you don’t care much about professional sports. Of course you would think that any innovation that reduces the energy requi…

Yeah, this makes sense.

I guess the issue I have is such a tiny minority of people are using such an excess of energy to do something that adds very little value to society. Even if the value of bitcoin is subjective, there's still a tiny minority of people consuming vast amounts of energy to derive what value it does bring them.

It just feel disproportionately harmful at a time when our top scientists are blue in the face from telling us to reduce carbon emissions.

I understand that it's not my place to judge what people derive value from. I also would argue that energy should be neutral (similar to my views on internet access). I guess my biggest gripe is probably something you and me share in common: the understanding that market mechanisms allowed this waste to happen in the first place. So you're definitely not wrong, and your argument about externalities is well-taken.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#660

Post by robertAngst »

briatx wrote: post #651
tomglynch wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, you can have 30K BTC in your brain, but unfortunately the USD value fluctuates so wildly that as a store of value, it's useless. From an outside perspective, I don't think it's worth continuing the discussion as is. Perhaps you should both come back in a few hours when everyone is a bit calmer.

> No, you can have 30K BTC in your brain, but unfortunately the USD value fluctuates so wildly that as a store of value, it's useless. No, this is an important distinction. Bitcoin isn't liquid enough to count as actual money and proponents of the idea that sending bitcoin is the same as sending money are glossing over the cost to buy bitcoin, and the cost of transferring it back to actual money on the other side. Ha…

Give it a few years.

Seeing how Americans Elected Trump, I can't imagine the USD being better than BTC over 10 years.

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