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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

#301

Post by mrpopo »

mrb wrote: post #299
mrpopo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* They assume the proportion of CO2 emissions per kWh never improves over the next 100 years (great progress of renewables coming to a sudden stop?) I mostly agreed with the first two bullet points, but please show me a significant country that managed to reduce their CO2 emissions with renewables. For instance, in China, where a lot of Bitcoin mining happens, the share of renewables increases in many countries, but…

France emits 90% less CO2/kWh than Germany (they didn't even need renewables to achieve that, just nuclear): http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/11/german-e... And according to https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=801297 CO2 emissions per kWh have already decreased 2.58%/year between 2005 and 2016 (-25% over 11 years). That's already far better than the 1.60%/year I assumed (-80% over 100 years), further s…

In the US, that was mostly due to gas replacing coal. France is not using renewables. This is great, but not due to renewables as you initially claimed. Also, I don't think the share of bitcoin mining is significant in these examples.

I was asking for a country that managed to reduce their CO2 emissions significantly with renewables. It may happen in the future, and I'm certainly hoping for it, but we don't have a large-scale concrete example yet.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#302

Post by trickstra »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #205
trickstra wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Waste" means you have no use for it. Yet some people are willing to pay for the Bitcoin, they obviously see some use for it... the fact that you don't or can't even imagine what use that might be doesn't make it a "waste". Let's say you go to such place with cheap electricity, start your own business, use that cheap electricity and produce something. If you cannot generate the same profit with your product as the bi…

Humans are not rational beings. They do not always purchase things they need. Fentanyl and Heroin are obvious examples. Obesity is a problem in the united states and represents the over purchasing of food. - Let's say you go to such place with cheap electricity, start your own business, use that cheap electricity and produce something. If you cannot generate the same profit with your product as the bitcoin miners, th…

> Mining a bitcoin without doing "work"

yeah, that's why miners do work. They validate transactions, for which they are rewarded. Those who want their transactions validated see value in that, so they pay them. Therefore it's not like printing money. Therefore it's not a form of theft. Your simple logic breaks there.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#303

Post by once_inc »

claudiawerner wrote: post #184
kaolti wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bitcoin is censorship-free, permissionless money. It is sound money (the single soundest money ever conceived) and this allows for an age of monetary freedom where citizens are no longer forced to fight an uphill battle against centrally planned 2% inflation that is gradually transforming the working class into a position reminiscent of indentured servant.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#304

Post by once_inc »

jfk13 wrote: post #175
atrus wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you need to spend some sort of resource to ensure the integrity of your money supply. The dollar is backed by a few million troops. Bitcoin is backed by a few million tons of coal.

And armies. Why doesn't some gang just march into a few of the big hydro-powered ASIC mining centres and take over control, thus enabling them to steal all the bitcoins. What prevents that? The armed power of nation-states to enforce a generally-agreed order on societies.

All that would accomplish is taking control of the revenue generated while they are in control. If the big mining centre is working with private keys that are unknown to the operators, then they would not be able to spend the coins previously mined. If they gain control of more than 51% of the hash rate in this way, they would be able to censor transactions or reorg the chain. That would still leave most of the blockchain in tact. A deep reorg might even get forked away from by the rest of the network, leaving them alone in a situation analogous to Ethereum Classic.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#305

Post by once_inc »

modzu wrote: post #194
mrb wrote: post #82

Earlier 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…

can you please cite your source? was the refutation also published in a peer reviewed journal?

The refutation (https://medium.com/coinmonks/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environm...) is a medium article.

Please try not to let that influence your opinion about the article though, because it does rightly point out the flaws in the original calculations, and the validity of the peer review of the original article.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#306

Post by once_inc »

flatfilefan wrote: post #232
drak0n1c wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a billion people living under authoritarianism who are stuck with an increasingly devalued Yuan and steadily losing the ability to obtain other currencies. Is that not also a problem that can result in humanitarian disaster? It certainly has before. I don’t think we should be comfortable with blanket bans just because they are accompanied by government greenwashing PR.

Why would a devaluing Yuan be bad for working class Chinese? What are they buying that’s getting disproportionately more expensive? We assume you call devaluation lower FX to dollar, don’t you? Because dollar is also subject to inflation obviously.

Bread. Look at the Arab spring. All countries that revolted did so in a period when the price of bread exploded. That price explosion was caused by financial mismanagement of the leaders of the country.

The dollar has lost 98% of its purchasing power over the past 100 years, and in recent years has been watered down enormously with QE. That money had to go somewhere, which is why stocks and corporate debt is currently at record highs. QE isn't possible in Bitcoin, and the coin itself is deflationary to 0 in about 2140.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#307

Post by arcticbull »

mrb wrote: post #300
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…

What Forbes reports as mostly fakes are exchange trades , not on-chain transactions . These are two completely different things...

Yes and no. They’re not on-chain but so what? Exchanges are the sole fiat gateways, which in turn determines the exchange rate between BTC and fiat, which in turn determined the exchange rate between BTC and goods and services. These off-chain transactions determine how many apples a bitcoin gets you. The net is then settled onto the blockchain. They’re relevant. As relevant as any Lightning transaction, or is LN not “real bitcoin” either?

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#308

Post by johnisgood »

village-idiot wrote: post #247
keymone wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's up to them which transactions to include in a block. and "them" is not a single entity or even small number of entities. miners compete for block rewards and every transaction with a fee contributes to the profit - whatever malicious miners choose to leave out will be included by non-malicious miners making them more profitable. calling miners middlemen when they would only have actual control over which trans…

I love how quoting you is a “manipulative tactic”.

I think he implied that quoting him incorrectly is a manipulative tactic.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#309

Post by Fnoord »

clarky07 wrote: post #260
Fnoord wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure anything regarding Bitcoin hasn't been discussed to death. In this case, perhaps because there's no easy yes/no answer to it. I'm an opponent of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. I find the environment important. However, I can attest there are valid use cases for cryptocurrency. I don't think there are valid use cases for me (a European utilizing the EUR who's not interested in tax avoidance or buying…

Not sure if you are aware, but not all crypto is based on proof of work (mining). There are other algorithms that don't waste tons of energy and still provide the benefits of crypto. Also, they can be useful for things other than tax avoidance and illegal utilities.

Excluding the use cases of tax avoidance and illegal utilities how is it more useful than EUR? They're all more volatile / less stable than EUR.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#310

Post by keymone »

village-idiot wrote: post #277
keymone wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let “has fiat currency” be A, and “has a large army” be B. You’re asserting “If A then B; therefore if not A then not B”. those are incorrect presumptions and therefore incorrect conclusion. A is "has fiat currency", B is "needs an army or other means to maintain fiat value". of course army is not the only thing, but it's one of the things in many of the countries. whatever other things other countries have to asse…

You can change the definition of B all you want, it's still a formal fallacy, meaning the argument is literally worthless. You have to structure a very different argument from what you've shown to assert that bitcoin would reduce national military expenditures, not just tweak the details.

it's not about definition of A and B, it's about structure of the sentence. if maintaining fiat value requires spending resources then not having to maintain fiat value means there is no need to spend resources to maintain fiat value. it's really a truism, there is no need to do this dance of yours with logic and fallacies unless you are trying to confuse people and/or push some agenda.
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