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But how much energy does a bank serving as many customers as bitcoin consumes?
[1]https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/other/2016-p...
Oh I see it is that time of the year - People upvoting Bitcoin has breached $X or Bitcoin energy consumption is equal to Y country stories. And the discussions are also same old - People criticizing bitcoin, others defending and then a small majority who feel quite smug about buying at $10. Can we really stop upvoting stories which add zero value to what we already know?
On the other hand, the climate crisis is more urgent than ever. Is a huge waste of precious resources by something as useless as today's bitcoin really tolerable by society?
My hope is that bitcoin is soon abandoned in favor of something more eco friendly, scalable, usable and with better privacy. With a low bitcoin value there will be fewer miners and less waste of resources.
Bring it on. The net benefit of Bitcoin existing outweighs the energy consumption. If we really care about the planet and all of that, then let's start by cutting down our use of internal combustion engines first.
Says who? The laughable number of transactions and the huge energy required per transaction are saying quite the opposite.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 hard…
I prefer depending on the market instead of the state dictating how much my money is worth.
Sure the Tesla makes mistakes and kills someone every now and then, but I’d take that over the brick.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
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 hard…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I prefer depending on the market instead of the state dictating how much my money is worth.
Why? The market is dumb (in a technical sense). The state is constantly monitoring and adjusting. It’s like saying you trust a car with a brick on the accelerator over a self drive Tesla. Sure the Tesla makes mistakes and kills someone every now and then, but I’d take that over the brick.
An unfounded objection, the market is the sum of the deeds of all market participants, dumb does not make sense here.
> The state is constantly monitoring and adjusting
It does not regulate but only interferes, and should only supervise that the contracts be respected.
>It’s like saying you trust a car with a brick on the accelerator over a self drive Tesla.
This analogy does not make sense.
Bring it on. The net benefit of Bitcoin existing outweighs the energy consumption. If we really care about the planet and all of that, then let's start by cutting down our use of internal combustion engines first.
> The net benefit of Bitcoin existing outweighs the energy consumption. Says who? The laughable number of transactions and the huge energy required per transaction are saying quite the opposite.
Another day, another anti-bitcoin article on HN.
It looks like HN has to be anti-Bitcoin while the adoption rate of Bitcoin is tiny. As more people adopt it, they will probably be less afraid of it / against it.