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China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

reuters.com

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Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#221

Post by arcticbull »

flatfilefan wrote: post #220
plutonorm wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have half a suspicion that it's the fact that it's burning through lots of fuel that is driving it's adoption. Processes in general seem to be driven by a kind of 'pressure' between low entropy and high entropy regions. This includes life itself. If life has a purpose it is to increase the flow across these low/high entropy regions. I don't think it's too outlandish to suppose some kind of hidden process that drive…

Replacing an oppressive apparatus that is relying on proof of military/police power to establish trust in banking with some form of an algorithm that is relying on proof of work/energy may be energy saving at the end. Just compare how much police/military has to be maintained and related resources spent to the naked energy for mining/transactions.

Both of those will remain. Even if we fully adopted Bitcoin there's no world in which we tell the army and the police to go home and thank them for their service. They do other things. It's not particularly effective to tell ISIS "you can't hurt me -- I've got Bitcoins!" You can't double-spend this energy budget.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#222

Post by flatfilefan »

arcticbull wrote: post #219
plutonorm wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have half a suspicion that it's the fact that it's burning through lots of fuel that is driving it's adoption. Processes in general seem to be driven by a kind of 'pressure' between low entropy and high entropy regions. This includes life itself. If life has a purpose it is to increase the flow across these low/high entropy regions. I don't think it's too outlandish to suppose some kind of hidden process that drive…

95% of transaction data is fake. We have no idea what adoption actually looks like. [1] The bitcoin price is "based on a true story" in true Hollywood fashion. Its design makes it impossible to stop the rampant and obvious manipulation. The game is rigged. No amount of technical analysis or philosophy is going to help you predict the outcome of a rigged game. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/cbovaird/2019/03/22/95-of…

We shouldn’t confuse trading for fiat money with on-chain transactions.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#223

Post by riffraff »

peteradio wrote: post #181
kasey_junk wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

is fission material inexhaustible?

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#224

Post by village-idiot »

keymone wrote: post #207
jcranmer wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said "do these calculations take into account energy equivalent of running all the armies in the world, funding their wars and conflicts?" That's not "at least some chunk", that's the entire cost that you're trying to wedge in there.

ok, feel free to only include partial cost. how does that change my point?

The premise of “no fiat, less war” is just asserted without any proof, and is actually quite ahistorical.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#225

Post by mikestew »

kaolti wrote: post #118
mercer wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing opportunities doesn't mean plucking out and leaving your critical eye at the door.

Agree, point still stands though. There's pros and cons to everything. Why focus on the latter?

Thalidomide [0] has been demonstrated to reduce morning sickness in pregnant women. Oh, and it also produces a high rate of birth defects. But let's not focus on the latter, shall we?

I'm sure there are pros to cryptocurrency. One of the cons is that it contributes to climate change. We've all heard plenty of cryptocurrency drum-beating over the years, it's not like "focusing on the latter" is some crazy imbalance of criticism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#227

Post by arcticbull »

flatfilefan wrote: post #222
arcticbull wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% of transaction data is fake. We have no idea what adoption actually looks like. [1] The bitcoin price is "based on a true story" in true Hollywood fashion. Its design makes it impossible to stop the rampant and obvious manipulation. The game is rigged. No amount of technical analysis or philosophy is going to help you predict the outcome of a rigged game. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/cbovaird/2019/03/22/95-of…

We shouldn’t confuse trading for fiat money with on-chain transactions.

I'm curious why they should get a pass. They're a first-class part of the ecosystem, and pretending exchanges don't exist to goose the numbers feels dishonest. Further, it's the exchanges that set the "price" of bitcoin relative to fiat, which in turn sets the exchange rate for BTC to goods in on-chain transactions. Unless you're suggesting there's an "exchange" price for goods and a "black market" price for goods that each value Bitcoin differently?

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#228

Post by GenericsMotors »

tudorizer wrote: post #94
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #79

As a techie and a math lover, I was initially excited with Bitcoin, and did a bit of mining, transactions, etc. But after learning about the environmental impact, I no longer support Bitcoin. It's just not worth the cost, a very beautiful idea but with a serious flaw (which I hope can be fixed in the future). So this sounds quite sensible to me.

As a techie, you should still apprectiate the fact that Bitcoin mining is the first financial system that can be measured in terms of energy impact. Existing systems, banks and all adjacent institutions and companies, are close to impossible to track and measure.

Existing financial systems process many orders of magnitude more transactions than Bitcon does. There's no acceptable excuse for its current consumption VS the throughput it provides.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#229

Post by arcticbull »

peteradio wrote: post #181
kasey_junk wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

640K should be enough for anybody(tm).

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#230

Post by flatfilefan »

ForHackernews wrote: post #146
wickoff wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not quibbling over details. Bitcoin miners often place their mining farms near power plants and consume electricity that would've been wasted otherwise. A lot of it comes from renewable sources. At the present moment network users are collectively paying about $700 000 a day in tx fees, so clearly the network itself creates value.

> consume electricity that would've been wasted otherwise [citation needed] But even if that were true, it would be disincentivizing the deployment of grid-scale storage technologies, so still hurting the battle against climate change.

It seems there are no grid-scale storage technologies that wouldn’t already be integrated into the current designs. Hydropower dams are ones for example. Engineers are not stupid.
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