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Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

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Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#81

Post by paulgb »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #62
centimeter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The amount of energy being wasted (reportedly more than seven nuclear power plants worth) on what is essentially an unproductive project is quite absurd. Orders of magnitude less than the amount of energy being "wasted" sustaining the millions of employees of the banking industry. I use scare quotes because the energy is being spent , not wasted. > I mean what would be left except for just buying into the pyramid s…

I think most people would agree that finance is too large in most developed countries, but it is also important. It's not like the large companies that pay investment banks to help them with their IPOs or with issuing bonds just want to waste money.

Also, it's not like the functions that banks currently do would become unnecessary in a Bitcoin maximalist world. It's an apples to oranges comparison.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#82

Post by lawn »

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #70
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The permissionless nature does enable some use cases where the overhead associated with the classical solutions makes them impractical. With Bitcoin, anyone can start a cash-to-bitcoin/bitcoin-to-cash office. All you need is a phone with Internet. Could Western Union solve the same problem? In theory, yes, in practice, the overhead cost of joining the network means the guy with a phone in some remote village isn't go…

The remote African Village use case is already solved by mobile money solutions like M-Pesa, which are cheap and easy to use via SMS or low-end feature phones. The cost of buying a smartphone with data plan to use a BTC wallet is prohibitively expensive for most people in developing countries.

Naturally you don't verify the blockchain yourself, but use a light wallet that uses very little data.

And you don't use BTC as the fees are way too expensive.

This is what people are doing in Venezuela for example.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#83

Post by milkytron »

leet_thow wrote: post #51

I have always been a bitcoin skeptic, but after reading the recent papers by Ark Invest (see ARKK etf) and listening to their CEO Cathie Wood I started adding it to my portfolio.

What points were made that changed your mind?

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#84

Post by CJefferson »

ISL wrote: post #56
crumbshot wrote: post #29

Bitcoin and other compute-intensive cryptocurrencies should be banned or taxed so heavily that it's financially infeasible to use them. The amount of energy being wasted (reportedly more than seven nuclear power plants worth) on what is essentially an unproductive project is quite absurd. In a world where we should all be increasingly concerned about the looming climate catastrophe, it's wholly irresponsible for Bitc…

The resources consumed by Bitcoin should be compared with those consumed by other transaction-clearing and store-of-value methods. Credit-card companies consume a few percent of revenue for a large chunk of consumer transactions. Gold mining is an environmental catastrophe [1]. Bitcoin is far from perfect, but it is important to place it in context with other systems that achieve the same ends. As bitcoin-mining tech…

Bitcoin costs about 6$ per transaction (based on block reward). That is more than many transactions I make. Also, if you are using electricity to heat a house, heat pumps are about 4x more effective than bitcoin mining. This "mine for heat" meme has no real basis in fact.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#85

Post by gruez »

arcticbull wrote: post #64
ISL wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The resources consumed by Bitcoin should be compared with those consumed by other transaction-clearing and store-of-value methods. Credit-card companies consume a few percent of revenue for a large chunk of consumer transactions. Gold mining is an environmental catastrophe [1]. Bitcoin is far from perfect, but it is important to place it in context with other systems that achieve the same ends. As bitcoin-mining tech…

Energy consumption in the classical model is substantially lower because if you scaled up Bitcoin to the size of Visa alone it would exceed the amount of energy generated on earth a few times over and the amount of ewaste generated on earth too. This is a classic pro Bitcoin argument that’s trivially falsifiable. The fact folks here think their transactions in the online economy should heat their homes is so bananas…

>Energy consumption in the classical model is substantially lower because if you scaled up Bitcoin to the size of visa alone it would exceed the amount of energy generated on earth a few times over and the amount of ewaste generated on earth too.

This seems to be a misunderstanding of how mining works. The amount of energy used for mining is largely disconnected from transaction volume. Mining a block with one transaction takes about the same amount of energy (within a few watts) as mining a block with 10000 transactions.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#86

Post by dahdum »

centimeter wrote: post #53
str33t_punk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would love Eth 2.0 then! The idea of proof of stake is to remove waste from the equation

Proof of stake does not have the same security properties as proof of work. The arguments are too complicated for me to usefully communicate them in a short HN post, but as a heuristic just keep in mind that most cryptocurrencies haven't adopted PoS despite it facially seeming better/"less wasteful".

You're right, but that's only the case right now. Incredible effort has been and continues to be made on making PoS secure, scalable, and distributed.

I'm not aware of any insurmountable problems having been found. With Eth2.0 steadily approaching launch and other networks in various stages of progression, it seems increasingly unlikely we'll find one.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#87

Post by arcticbull »

ISL wrote: post #76
arcticbull wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy consumption in the classical model is substantially lower because if you scaled up Bitcoin to the size of Visa alone it would exceed the amount of energy generated on earth a few times over and the amount of ewaste generated on earth too. This is a classic pro Bitcoin argument that’s trivially falsifiable. The fact folks here think their transactions in the online economy should heat their homes is so bananas…

It depends upon the scaling algorithm -- as volume goes up, there may be efficiencies that allow the (competing!) miners to reduce their transaction fees. In theory, since there is no notion of a Bitcoin chargeback and no need to extend credit to any party in the transaction, the intrinsic cost of a bitcoin transaction should be lower.

The intrinsic cost of a transaction is basically zero, the cost associated with Bitcoin is Smaug-style keeping people off your coins. There is no scaling algorithm and no scaling to date.

Believe it or not chargebacks and credit are good things. This you can find out if you ask literally anyone why they use their credit card instead of their debit card.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#88

Post by flignats »

fwr wrote: post #57
flignats wrote: post #52

Been waiting a couple years for crypto to be a topic on HN again. People still don't get it. I learned a new term used on HN yesterday, 'bikeshedding'. It perfectly applies to bitcoin/blockchain.

How?

How is there bikeshedding? Almost all arguments people make against bitcoin are pointless. I.e. the fees being high, transaction time being low, transactions per second, ect

Blockchain is a disruptive technology on the same level as the invention of the Internet. It is the first global, transparent, immutable ledger. We are only just beginning discovery on what we can do/improve from here.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#89

Post by arcticbull »

gruez wrote: post #85
arcticbull wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy consumption in the classical model is substantially lower because if you scaled up Bitcoin to the size of Visa alone it would exceed the amount of energy generated on earth a few times over and the amount of ewaste generated on earth too. This is a classic pro Bitcoin argument that’s trivially falsifiable. The fact folks here think their transactions in the online economy should heat their homes is so bananas…

>Energy consumption in the classical model is substantially lower because if you scaled up Bitcoin to the size of visa alone it would exceed the amount of energy generated on earth a few times over and the amount of ewaste generated on earth too. This seems to be a misunderstanding of how mining works. The amount of energy used for mining is largely disconnected from transaction volume. Mining a block with one transa…

There’s no misunderstanding. To the extent that the cap remains 7tx/sec and saturated at that level then my point remains valid. There’s no plan to change it so let’s stay away from hypotheticals.
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