A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day • Hacker News Board

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#61

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 11:51 PM UTC

MadSudaca wrote: post #60

jessaustin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't the less "wasteful" currencies compete with bitcoin? (serious question; I've never owned it and though the crypto seems straightforward enough I don't feel I understand the market in general)

Several reasons. There have been to many scam projects so it’s hard for most people to separate wheat from shaft. Bitcoin is oldest and therefore the most accessible one, with more ways to buy it and trade it. Finally, there’s vested interests that help keep the status quo as it is. For example, miners who have invested capital in mining equipment and who wish to keep making a profit.

The first several reasons seem plausible; the last one does not. It isn't clear why the cryptocurrency community would care about others' investments in mining equipment. If I had made such investments, I would use bitcoin, but that wouldn't force anyone else to use it.

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#62

Post by RichardHeart » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 1:05 AM UTC

cmer wrote: post #59

RichardHeart wrote: post #34

Imagine how much pollution Bitcoin would create a day if it became 10x more valuable. Roughly 10x. This is because the cost to mine a resource trends towards the value of a resource. Disclaimer. I invented a cryptocurrency that pays stakers inflation instead of miners.

https://thedailychain.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-hex-the-quick...

You probably want to delete that link lol. Check the facts.

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#63

Post by AnimalMuppet » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 1:15 AM UTC

MadSudaca wrote: post #60

jessaustin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't the less "wasteful" currencies compete with bitcoin? (serious question; I've never owned it and though the crypto seems straightforward enough I don't feel I understand the market in general)

Several reasons. There have been to many scam projects so it’s hard for most people to separate wheat from shaft. Bitcoin is oldest and therefore the most accessible one, with more ways to buy it and trade it. Finally, there’s vested interests that help keep the status quo as it is. For example, miners who have invested capital in mining equipment and who wish to keep making a profit.

It's normally "separate the wheat from the chaff". But "from the shaft" seems particularly appropriate, given that you were talking about scams...

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#64

Post by kemonocode » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 4:10 AM UTC

HN is very Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general-hostile so I'm not going to debate about how bad it is or isn't for the environment or set up a strawman with gold mining. However, I'll say this: in a world where Bitcoin did not exist, I don't really think that power plant would have remained idle.

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#65

Post by thebean11 » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 4:52 AM UTC

DagAgren wrote: post #28

fermienrico wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I told you that you can use this "useless" BTC to purchase carbon offsets, invest in renewable energy (which otherwise would have no funding), etc? Sure, money has no value when you're stuck on an island, but a bow and arrow does. Similarly, a bow and arrow has little value in Tokyo city and money does. Money is the engine that drives motivation - it can be used to compel others to do good things. Also, peopl…

Not only is nobody using bitcoin for that, bitcoin is also a negative-sum game, and no actual new wealth is created. If you were going to buy those credits, you would get more if you cut bitcoin out of the equation entirely.

That's assuming it never creates any utility, which might be a fair assessment now but the same argument could have been made about many early stage innovations

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#66

Post by thebean11 » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 4:55 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #46

MadSudaca wrote: post #17

Reminder: not all cryptocurrencies are this wasteful. Don’t disregard cryptos in general for the pitfalls of the first one.

Why can't the less "wasteful" currencies compete with bitcoin? (serious question; I've never owned it and though the crypto seems straightforward enough I don't feel I understand the market in general)

In short I would say it's network effect. Those networks are less secure because they have fewer participants, and have fewer participants because they are less secure.

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#67

Post by londons_explore » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 5:49 AM UTC

paulgb wrote: post #44

throwaway894345 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin hardly created the perverse incentive; pollution has always been an externalized cost in most parts of the world. We really need a carbon tax (or similar) so that pollution costs aren't externalized.

Unless buyers of the coins were charged based on the carbon footprint of the coins they bought, this would just cause mining to move to places where there was no carbon tax.

Unless copyrighted works couldn't cross borders, copyright infringement would just happen in countries which don't enforce copyright...

The US having worldwide enforcement of IP rules a primary foreign policy goal for the past 50 years has mostly closed that loophole, despite most other countries not having a direct financial incentive to enforce copyrights. The same could be done with worldwide environmental costs.

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#68

Post by OGWhales » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 6:00 AM UTC

dhosek wrote: post #27

zozbot234 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn't power that would otherwise be wasted: they are emitting more pollution and greenhouse gasses This isn't obvious to me. Natural gas is often a byproduct of extracting other resources like oil, coal etc. If it isn't used for electricity, heat, chemical feedstocks etc. it either gets flared (resulting in zero revenue) or else ends up in the atmosphere as such, with a vastly higher GHG potential compared to…

But it doesn't have to be flared or emitted immediately. There's nothing keeping them from generating less electricity now and burning the natural gas later.

Storage cost vs bitcoin profits. Ezpz

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#69

Post by OGWhales » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 6:01 AM UTC

DagAgren wrote: post #26

gruez wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not any different than dumping massive amounts of cyanide into the environment so we can get some shinny yellow rocks.

Gold has not been the basis of any economic system for about a hundred years.

A hundreds years?

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#70

Post by OGWhales » Sun, Apr 05, 2020, 6:09 AM UTC

speedgoose wrote: post #37

zozbot234 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, this "waste" of energy enables a sizeable amount of decentralized positive-sum transactions by actors who don't necessarily trust each other, and cannot always use existing (centralized) systems for this purpose. This is a socially-positive development overall.

Thankfully Bitcoin isn't the only solution to answer this problem. By the way, the world economy isn't centralized and thankfully doesn't rely on a single database with a shitty and super slow consensus algorithm that destroy the environment, by design.

By design, bitcoin favors the miners with the most efficient equipment and naturally adjusts to advances in these technologies.

I think the other concepts are quite interesting as well. But it’s not fair to say bitcoin is design to destroy the environment as it can also drive people to design ever more efficient ways to produce energy.