Earlier quoted context omitted.
France who uses nuclear.
Nuclear is not generally seen as a renewable is it? It’s a really efficient extraction based source.
Who cares if it's renewable when it's inexhaustible.
China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
181–190 of 325 posts
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, Bitcoin won't raise global average temperatures by 2°C. This Nature article was debunked by other researchers. I too was asked to review it (recently, post-publication) and the gist of what they did wrong in their analysis is: * They overestimate (probably by 3x-5x) the present power consumption of miners because they assume the distribution of types of mining machine is homogenous in this table: https://github.c…
You're debating numbers you don't like by making up other numbers. Whatever. The point is that it's a massive waste of energy and emissions, and that's undeniable.
Who says? People want money that isn't controlled by the government.
Is moving gold lower cost?
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#183Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8
Luckily, proof of stake research seems to be going really well. We can have decentralized blockchains without the climate impact.
POS hasn't been proven to work without centralization.
It's why alt coins have stayed basically irrelevant.
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
" You're quibbling over details " CO2 emissions being wrong by a factor of a thousand is a "detail" to you? ;) My point is that the impact of proof-of-work, although real, is grossly exaggerated and appears to be more manageable than what eye-catching press titles suggest. Another example: journalists like to claim Bitcoin emits as much CO2 as an entire country. But in fact current emissions are comparable to what a…
Thanks for taking the time to point this out, especially since you're swimming upstream. > I think a more intellectually interesting debate to have is whether or not Bitcoin is useful to society Exactly.
I don't think it's at all useful to society conceived of as the best a society could be, but there's no doubt it's useful to capital. Either way, I'm not sure if merely being useful to society is sufficient to justify that level of energy usage.
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really see how protection against invasion helps you maintain a fiat currency. I don't think an army is either necessary or sufficient. These just seem like two different issues.
Do you have an example of a nation failing to repel an invasion yet maintaining the integrity of its currency?
You're shifting the goalposts. Lack of protection against invasion doesn't mean you're going to get invaded. Maintaining a standing army isn't protection against invasion either.
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#186I think bitcoin has been really overhyped (and manipulated in many different ways), and would be happy to see it fade into history (if not some of the technologies and ideas it's based on).
However, I'm not happy to see an outright ban on it, for all sorts of reasons. Not only are there fundamental freedom of speech issues involved, but it sets a dangerous precedent with regard to decentralized computing in general. I also believe that the best way forward in a bitcoin-free future is to leave things be, expose rather than suppress, and to let people do what they want so as to encourage transition.
I'm surprised to see so many comments supportive of this move here. First they come for bitcoin, then they come for Matrix?
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have an example of a nation failing to repel an invasion yet maintaining the integrity of its currency?
You're shifting the goalposts. Lack of protection against invasion doesn't mean you're going to get invaded. Maintaining a standing army isn't protection against invasion either.
Do you agree that if a nation is successfully invaded its currency will lose its integrity?
Do you agree that defense against invasion requires an adequate military or agreements with nations with adequate militaries?
If we agree on those two claims, it seems we must agree that militarily robust sovereignty is necessary but not sufficient for the integrity of a fiat currency.
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#188Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8
Funny and sad to see how, instead of seeing opportunities, the forum with the most open minded tech people will rather go with "SHUT IT DOWN"
Yeah, and I'm closed minded for refusing to try crystal healing.
Open-mindedness is a virtue only if it helps you find the truth. Often it is more useful to judiciously discard ideas which have been debunked.
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#189Because they finally realized everyone is using bitcoin to exfiltrate currency?
This is clearly the main motivation. If the CPC was so serious about curbing emissions they would put a high environmental tax on coal power plants and the bitcoin mining would quickly wind down as a result of higher electricity prices. The CPC requires a firm grip on monetary policy (and capital flows) in order to stay in power (and prevent a yuan devaluation).
Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
You ignored it - there are middlemen and your claims are ridiculous fantasy. Miners are the middlemen, complete with fees. Bitcoin is not pure energy any more than any other electronic currency. Proof of work is energy already used, not somehow carried in a bitcoin. The whole "pure energy" thing is just air-headed utopianism AFAICT
> there are middlemen and your slaims are ridiculous fantasy this is an assertion from your previous message. > Miners are the middlemen this is an elaboration for your assertion, that was missing from your previous message. you don't have to lie, it's fine if you admit your mistake and fix it. > Miners are the middlemen, complete with fees this is false. middlemen have control over the process. miners don't control…
> this is an elaboration for your assertion, that was missing from your previous message.
Not really. Who else was it going to be, it's not like I'm the first to point this out.
> miners don't control who can transact with whom
Of course they do. It's up to them which transactions to include in a block.
> transaction fees are still orders of magnitude lower than the actual flat block reward
People who like bitcoin like to talk about inflation and QE as theft from their pockets. The block reward is a fee extracted from the ecosystem in the same way.
> bitcoin is not pure energy and i never claimed it was
"it's the first time in history we've been able to express and implement monetary value and security thereof in terms of pure energy"
So yeah, you did, you said it was monetary value expressed as pure energy, which is meaningless. It's not a measure of joules, and it's not the hashing which gives it value. Quite the opposite - the speculative value is what attracts the hashpower.