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Bitcoin is a disaster

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Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#661

Post by Fti »

cambalache wrote: post #304

I agree with most of the points raised by the author but as a Venezuelan Bitcoin is a godsend. If you live abroad and want to send remittances to your friends and family it can be pretty easy in a normal country , with wire transfers,western union and so on. If your family lives in Venezuela your options are extremely more limited. These are some of the options Venezuelans have had to use: 1. Ask the money to be sent…

Check out Stellar, it’s been created for that, Faster than bitcoin and really lows fees.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#662

Post by davidgerard »

syshum wrote: post #583
cool_dude85 wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When confronted with relatively concrete studies on Bitcoin's wasteful energy use, are you going to point to the fact that physical money printer energy use has not been studied to muddy the waters? The reason it hasn't been studied is that it doesn't use a huge amount of electricity. Anyway, as another way of answering your question, physical money printing and transfers require no electricity at all, predating the…

Pretty sure the modern machines that 1. Print the money 2. Harvest the Cotton and other raw materials 3. Transport the money 4. Secure the money (even in electronic form) 5. and about 100 other things All use "energy" the point of the OP's comment was about "wasted energy" which i would image is tied to climate change The idea that "printed money uses no energy because it is old tech" is just ignorant

Zero bitcoiners going "BUT WHAT ABOUT CONVENTIONAL MONEY HUH" provide numbers.

Since you're too lazy to, I will:

* Bitcoin: 0.1% of all electricity in the world, 7tps.

* THE ENTIRE REST OF HUMAN CIVILISATION, EVERYONE IN IT AND EVERYTHING THEY DO: 99.9% of electricity, a hell of a lot more than 6,993tps.

Bitcoin is the most inefficient payment system in history.

Bitcoiners' usual objection at this point is to claim that transactions per second is a bad measure, for some reason - though if you're comparing how much each system achieves for the resources it uses, it's precisely the obvious and correct measure.

But if tps doesn't matter, then the entire bitcoin ecosystem should be replaced with a small rock. A whole country's less electricity use, and only 7tps less! Also, it'd be hard currency.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#663

Post by opendomain »

My problem with bitcoin is the fees just to use it.

Coinbase charges 4% plus a fee to exchange to another crypto currency, plus 1% for the buy/sell spread and then even more fees to put the money back in my bank.

Western Union is much more competitive and is actually used.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#665

Post by [deleted] »

dleslie wrote: post #645
OOPMan wrote: post #631

People here talking about Venezuela seem to be ignoring the fact that maybe if that country wasn't such a disaster politically bottom-of-barrel solutions like Bitcoin wouldn't be needed. If the best excuse for Bitcoin is that it's the only thing that works when a governed society has broken down almost completely then maybe it's better to think about how we can avoid that kind of breakdown than it is to invest energy…

> the best excuse for Bitcoin is that it's the only thing that works when a governed society has broken down almost completely It's no coincidence that the loudest voices supporting Bitcoin are very often stubbornly zealous libertarians. The total collapse of functioning Government is kind of a libertarian folk dream. They want the proverbial barrel to be empty, and to have basic services paid for through user fees a…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#666

Post by rockstardev »

dleslie wrote: post #645
OOPMan wrote: post #631

People here talking about Venezuela seem to be ignoring the fact that maybe if that country wasn't such a disaster politically bottom-of-barrel solutions like Bitcoin wouldn't be needed. If the best excuse for Bitcoin is that it's the only thing that works when a governed society has broken down almost completely then maybe it's better to think about how we can avoid that kind of breakdown than it is to invest energy…

> the best excuse for Bitcoin is that it's the only thing that works when a governed society has broken down almost completely It's no coincidence that the loudest voices supporting Bitcoin are very often stubbornly zealous libertarians. The total collapse of functioning Government is kind of a libertarian folk dream. They want the proverbial barrel to be empty, and to have basic services paid for through user fees a…

Looking back on the last year - didn't this already happened without Bitcoin?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#667

Post by phaemon »

graeme wrote: post #510
DeafSquid wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much electricity do you think traditional money printing and transfers consume?

Much less? Bitcoin currently powers almost none of the world’s transactions, yet consumes all that energy. The entire us consumes 75 twh in a year, the same as bitcoin’s global energy use. Of that, the entire commercial sector is about 12 twh. That’s not just banks. That’s every company. Banks alone are surely far less. Maybe 2-3 twh? And the us is 15% of global gdp. So, global finance might consume about 14-32 twh.…

Your numbers are totally wrong. The fact your own link suggests that bitcoin uses as much electrical energy as Chile should tell you it's not close to the USA. Recheck?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#668

Post by Kinrany »

cesarb wrote: post #598
majewsky wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we have "cash you can email" that doesn't consume as much electricity as several nation states combined?

Here in Brazil, we have that since last month. The new money transfer system (Pix) allows anyone to send money to a key, which can be a person's CPF (the tax ID number nearly everyone has), a phone number, an email, or a randomly-generated number. These all map to a bank account (you can also use Pix to send directly to a bank account number); the directory with these mappings is kept by the Brazilian Central Bank, a…

From this description it sounds like just name resolution that still uses the regular banking system.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#669

Post by rthomas6 »

cambalache wrote: post #304

I agree with most of the points raised by the author but as a Venezuelan Bitcoin is a godsend. If you live abroad and want to send remittances to your friends and family it can be pretty easy in a normal country , with wire transfers,western union and so on. If your family lives in Venezuela your options are extremely more limited. These are some of the options Venezuelans have had to use: 1. Ask the money to be sent…

Yeah but, why BTC specifically? Why not ETH or ETH tokens, or any of the hundreds of other cryptocurrencies that are faster and have lower fees?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#670

Post by jimmaswell »

graeme wrote: post #545
jimmaswell wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rideshare industry had a clear impact on local laws in every first world country for one example.

Right, because it was hard to control and ridesharing was clearly better. My point was the experience in functioning countries has not shown this to be true of bitcoin. It has been easy enough for govts to enforce tax and security laws where they’ve tried. What laws have been changed for bitcoin?

The IRS issued official guidance on it but there's no need for new laws around it.
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