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Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

bbc.com

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Re: Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

#61

Post by ubersync »

googlemike wrote: post #57
ubersync wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bitcoin "bubble" has "burst" at least 6 times now. Which one were you refering to? Every time it recovers and reaches another all time high in a couple of years. Being the nascent but potentially world changing technology, it might take a few years to realize its true market cap. And along the way, we will see a few pumps and dumps. Its just normal.

I've yet to see a single legal use case for bitcoin.

Well then you need to start looking more. You are just sore that you didn't buy in at $10 or $100, aren't you?

Re: Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

#62

Post by H8crilA »

igravious wrote: post #46
jmauritz wrote: post #32

https://medium.com/@hillpot/bitcoin-vs-gold-which-hurts-the-... gold vs btc, at least BTC energy expenditure can be patched / limited to only renewables.

Neat! I wonder how they arrive at these numbers though? I had a conversation with a non-techie friend the other day about cryptocurrencies and she expressed scepticism about the technology because of its immateriality or intangibility. Something about cryptocurrencies being artificially constructs doesn't sit well with some non-techies. I mean, when you think about it it's just as arbitrary that precious metals and g…

Eh, try to explain to people that money (as in USD) is the same thing as Bitcoin, except in centralised databases (plus a very small portion in portable pieces of paper/metal). There's a database in the FED that tracks who has how many dollars (it's coarse grained, banks subdivide it into accounts themselves). And new dollars are minted all the time when someone is issued credit, ending their life when the credit is paid back.

This is not to defend Bitcoin, but it is mind boggling how few people ask themselves "where does money come from, exactly?".

Re: Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

#64

Post by michaelscott »

googlemike wrote: post #57
ubersync wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bitcoin "bubble" has "burst" at least 6 times now. Which one were you refering to? Every time it recovers and reaches another all time high in a couple of years. Being the nascent but potentially world changing technology, it might take a few years to realize its true market cap. And along the way, we will see a few pumps and dumps. Its just normal.

I've yet to see a single legal use case for bitcoin.

An alternative form of payment in countries with hyperinflated currencies, a means to make fast international payments (far faster than Swift), an investment (debatable) vehicle that exists outside the control of the finance sector, certainly an upward social mobility tool for many miners in developing countries, and a general store of wealth vehicle (in no way different to gold in this regard).

Re: Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

#65

Post by H8crilA »

michaelscott wrote: post #59
igravious wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neat! I wonder how they arrive at these numbers though? I had a conversation with a non-techie friend the other day about cryptocurrencies and she expressed scepticism about the technology because of its immateriality or intangibility. Something about cryptocurrencies being artificially constructs doesn't sit well with some non-techies. I mean, when you think about it it's just as arbitrary that precious metals and g…

There's definitely an emotional component to investment (a line I often hear from property investors vs equity investors is "I can touch and feel my investment, what about you?"). The tangibility gives a much stronger sense of ownership and is also probably one of the reasons why hardware wallets are so popular in the crypto community. That said, most people who buy gold as investments these days do so through ETFs o…

Hardware wallets are popular because so many exchanges were hacked and coins stolen. Keeping crypto on exchanges for a long period of time is simply stupid, there's no upside (except saving 100 USD on a wallet).

Re: Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

#66

Post by supergilbert »

gingabriska wrote: post #53

But how much energy does a bank serving as many customers as bitcoin consumes?

That's the right question, how much energy does the current financial system use, solely for our "basic" transactional needs (store/retrieve/send payments).

Did anyone come up with an estimate?

Re: Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

#67

Post by lumberjack »

stuffbyspencer wrote: post #37

Someone created Bitcoin. It was a neat idea and people played with it. When the first pizza was bought with Bitcoin, I wonder how the creator felt? "Oh cool, real world use!" Then Bitcoin bubbled. People panicked and jumped on board without researching, Bitcoin went up a bazillion %. I wonder how the creator felt? "Oh wow... Lots of people want this!" Then the bubble burst, price went down, people got mad, but, most…

> The intense desire for personal wealth that one truly owns.

Not at all. It's the desire to get rich quick without lifting a finger. Also philosophically speaking, "wealth that one truly owns" as in "wealth that is not dependent on others" is not a thing. If your wealth is in Bitcoin, you are trusting in fellow Bitcoin users and your wealth is entirely dependent on their feelings about the cryptomarket. That is hardly a better safer store for your wealth.

Re: Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

#69

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

zaarn wrote: post #44
paulmd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without this "feature" it would be trivial to double-spend transactions. The entire concept of Nakamoto consensus (upon which Bitcoin security rides) relies upon provable waste of electricity to a degree that the average transaction is impossible (or at least financially unviable) to reverse within some widely accepted timespan. And yes, this implicitly makes Bitcoin a bad idea, as well as blockchain in general.

Well, any blockchains that uses this amount of energy for it's consensus, though there are plenty of blockchains that don't really need that much energy (Git doesn't use much to run a commit either)

But git also doesn't solve a distributed consensus problem. The problem of reaching consensus on the official HEAD commit is externalized to traditional PKI methods, e.g. GitHub.
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