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Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

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221–230 of 463 posts

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#221
The idea that bitcoin is 'wasteful' is entirely missing the solution that bitcoin is. Byzantine Generals Problem.

This network is unmatched in it's provability and security.

There is a turing complete machine, operating that can be trusted. Seriously, the possibilities are limitless but guess what, they do have a cost. And there are too many con-artists around. But an industry that is changing the entire monetary policy around world is very impactful. It's changing it and you'll notice in the coming years how much monetary policy is going to change. The grand experiment is about to happen. Are we going back to gold? Are we going to innovate a replacement that's better than crypto? How is 'money' going to function in the 21st century?

P.S. Proof of Stake is terrible in it's economics. If you think rent-seeking is good, then PoS is for you. It's not for me and I think it's terrible based on the game theory of it. Remember the 'We are the 99%' chants? Yeah, not going to go over well.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries that don't have reliable currencies are countries like South Sudan and Somalia. Do you really expect illiterate people (3 in 4 women in Somalia are illiterate, 1 in 2 men) to use Blockstream? You can tell that Bitcoin, and its advocates, are from developed countries. No one who has lived in a developing country and seen crushing poverty would make such arguments.

Given the choice would you suggest a person from somewhere such as Venezuela keep their personal savings in Bitcoin or Venezuelan bolívars?

This is a false dichotomy, since USD are very widely spread on South America.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#223
post #132

The energy consumption of Bitcoin isn't new news. What continues to disappoint me, however, is how many people immediately jump to its defense with arguments based on the value it provides, as if that offset its cost. What gets neglected is that the Bitcoin algorithm is inherently wasteful . By its very design, it results in an insane amount of duplicated, pointless computation. The question isn't whether something l…

I don't even know what problem Bitcoin is solving anymore. I haven't seen a single website accepting Bitcoin as a payment in the last whole year.

Bitcoin's main function is store of value, with the additional benefit of being relatively easy to transfer. It is basically a more convenient form a gold.

After all these years of growth, Bitcoin's market cap becomes its own unique edge. One simply cannot transfer significant amount, say tens of millions of dollars, easily in any other crypto currency.

The cost of energy is minuscule compared to alternative means of achieving the same: vaults, guards, banks, lawyers, etc.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries that don't have reliable currencies are countries like South Sudan and Somalia. Do you really expect illiterate people (3 in 4 women in Somalia are illiterate, 1 in 2 men) to use Blockstream? You can tell that Bitcoin, and its advocates, are from developed countries. No one who has lived in a developing country and seen crushing poverty would make such arguments.

Given the choice would you suggest a person from somewhere such as Venezuela keep their personal savings in Bitcoin or Venezuelan bolívars?

I'd suggest keeping it in USD or other hard currency. Bitcoin provides no advantages in obtaining/transacting hard currency relative to other currencies, nor any stability while holding it. Either way you are going to a black market, and you are paying real, unaffordable conversion rates compared to transacting in (worthless) hyperinflationary currency.

The bitcoin guy is not going to accept 1 Zimbabwe dollar to 1 USD any more than your black market dealer who has USD. The real currency conversion rate is the problem, not the act of obtaining actual hard currency.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue all currencies are unreliable ,because they go down in value due increase of supply. Throwing 2-4% every year sounds awful

This gets repeated over and over again, but the causality of this has never been proven, as incredible as that may sound. Yes, the causality of "create too much money -> inflation" is plausible (but note the emphasis on "too much"). However, we live in a world of endogenous money, where money is largely created by commercial banks in the form of loans to private entities. When prices increase, those loans get bigger.…

bingo, money is enormously more complicated than microecon suggests. Micro-econ thinks Keynesian economics are full of shit, yet they stimulated us right out of a micro-economic hole during the 30s.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#226

The most powerful supercomputer in the world reaches 143 petaflops, bitcoin network in comparison reaches 80704290.84 Petaflops. Granted that a majority of this computing power is in the form of custom ASIC's, but the figure is really staggering. And all of the 80704290.84 Petaflops, consume 73.12 TWh to repeatedly calculate SHA256 ! What could be the world's most powerful network does absolutely nothing but crunch h…

Yes but the bitcoin network computers don't _really_ coorperate (well they do, with a bandwidth of the order of 2MB/15mins), unlike supercomputers, so hard to compare. But yes, lots of waste.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#227
post #165
post #132

The energy consumption of Bitcoin isn't new news. What continues to disappoint me, however, is how many people immediately jump to its defense with arguments based on the value it provides, as if that offset its cost. What gets neglected is that the Bitcoin algorithm is inherently wasteful . By its very design, it results in an insane amount of duplicated, pointless computation. The question isn't whether something l…

I am really surprised that Bitcoin (or cryptocurrencies in general) hasn't solved its energy use yet and is still legal. I thought the world would switch to proof-of-stake coins and gradually make bitcoins harder to use.

vlad whatever was full of shit 4 years ago when he said that he thought proof of work would be eliminated within 6 months. I bought hardware on the basis that he was wrong and it paid out.

I dunno why anyone still has faith in eth as a concept, it's a garbage programming model, it's a garbage developer, who has failed for an inordinate period of time as measured by the crypto community. he's just trying to pump up his holdings.

(many of these deficiencies would have resulted in monetary losses for the developer himself, had he not used his central authority to roll back the blockchain. Literally anti-"crypto as a philosophy". So much for "code is law" and all that.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14691212

He's 2 years beyond his 2 year worst case scenario and he has zero progress. And in the crypto community 4 years is a ridiculous period of time to be behind schedule. It's time to state the obvious: he fixed the broken script model that Bitcoin refused to fix, but he is incapable of adding anything significantly novel.

4 years of failed promises? With at least one rollback from a central authority? time to look elsewhere.

Otherwise, the obvious question: where is the Proof of Stake that he promised literally 4 years ago? How many more years out is it right now?

(nor is the "never increase past X amount of currency" even a good model. real currencies need to match issuance the amount of demand for currency... potentially even negative at times. And someone needs to do that. Otherwise, the currency will be subject to a wild amount of inflation/deflation... just like all previous hard currencies.)

Gosh, we could call that a "central bank". And electing an unresponsive 17-year-old as central banker is just about as dumb as it gets.

He is already making central banking decisions... just ones that the majority of the community (ridiculously) agrees with (throttling the amount of currency issued) because the community is centered around deflationary gold-bugs rather than actual maximalists.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#228

Clarifications (this website perpetuates some common misconceptions): - A single bitcoin "transaction" can actually have thousands of inputs and thousands of outputs. So energy "per transaction" or "transactions per second" is not analogous to a typical monetary transaction. - Bitcoin does not compete with literal credit card transactions (although some use it like that today). I'd compare Bitcoin on-chain transactio…

Are you comparing Bitcoin to settlement with gold to make Bitcoin seem less inefficient? This seems like a misleading comparison, because which significant central banks still physically move gold around for settlement? Either they don't move gold or it is only moved virtually, and in either case Bitcoin is vastly less efficient.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#229
post #158
post #132

The energy consumption of Bitcoin isn't new news. What continues to disappoint me, however, is how many people immediately jump to its defense with arguments based on the value it provides, as if that offset its cost. What gets neglected is that the Bitcoin algorithm is inherently wasteful . By its very design, it results in an insane amount of duplicated, pointless computation. The question isn't whether something l…

>trust-based models (like Stellar) What you're describing is basically Libra with slightly better entities backing it. Transactions can be reversed by those "trusted entities" with no recourse by you and at no cost to them. At least with PoW and PoS (to an extent), attempting to reverse transactions has a cost. Speaking of PoS, were the issues with PoS ever solved? Specifically the "nothing at stake" problem. The Wik…

I'd argue that people generally want systems where you can revert transactions that you made by mistake at almost no additional cost.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#230
post #132

The energy consumption of Bitcoin isn't new news. What continues to disappoint me, however, is how many people immediately jump to its defense with arguments based on the value it provides, as if that offset its cost. What gets neglected is that the Bitcoin algorithm is inherently wasteful . By its very design, it results in an insane amount of duplicated, pointless computation. The question isn't whether something l…

I have yet to see any POS that doesnt devolve into centralization or obfuscated POW. You say pointless computation. I say layers on layers of security protecting the most sound monetary policy in human history

> protecting the most sound monetary policy in human history

That's a political opinion. But regardless of its validity, I'm not convinced that this justifies a single Bitcoin transaction producing as much CO2 as 700,000 Visa transactions.

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