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Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

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Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#111

Post by pharmakom »

gorgoiler wrote: post #92
317070 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With barter is meant (in the context of Graeber's book) trading tit for tat, without having a currency to go between. E.g. a farmer buying a book and paying with apples. The book says that this barter method is almost never used, and instead people tend to keep track of favors and things they owe in a more vague way. And every now and then, these debts are settled in a communal fashion. But barter is not used. So the…

Right. I feel like that’s nit picking (your parent; not you.) Of course I (teacher) don’t buy potatoes by teaching the farmer’s children Dijkstra. Instead of bartering we chooses to track our debts. Using Bitcoin as a cryptographically secure distributed debt tracker sounds great. But Bitcoin right now feels like a bunch of technology enthusiasts have blessed the world with such a debt tracker while also saying ”btw…

Bitcoin does not track debt, it tracks Bitcoin assets.

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#112

Post by dandanua »

tappio wrote: post #96
hombre_fatal wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like crusading against people using their clothes dryer, driving when they don't absolutely need to, turning on A/C when they could just put on a sweater, not to mention all the industrial and commercial energy expenditures producing bullshit we don't need. From where you sit, look around your room and contemplate the incredible energy expended to get these items where they are. If your concern is about avoid…

None of the things you listed are on the same scale if that 621KWh is true. What you should say is: "crusading against people who leave their a/c on for 2 months when they are away, people who drive 2500 miles for fun every day, people who run their clothes drier for a month non-stop even though it's empty". Regardless, I would be sceptical about that 621 KWh. Does not sound realistic...

It's in the design. Higher price -> more miners -> increased mining difficulty (due to design goal – 1 block per 10 min) -> more energy waste. Bitcoin was a fun prototype idea, but humans made it just evil. As usual, though.

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#113

Post by [deleted] »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #99
gorgoiler wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think I really understand money, no. What makes much more sense to me is agreeing on a central authority (or a distributed one, if we have the math to be able to do that securely) to track the exchange of things with actual value. Bitcoin-the-tech feels like it’s partly that, but also it’s partly some side-wheeze for the initial Bitcoin folks to print their own money. Bitcoin would make sense if the inflation…

Well a bank account provides all the functions of money, and to a much greater level of functionality. But the whole reason cryptocurrency exists is to avoid some of the issues you get when dealing with centralized financial institutions. If you want to decentralize that role, you need a new way of managing scarcity. Proof of work is one way to do that. Whether that’s wasteful or not would be a personal judgement, bu…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#114

Post by gorgoiler »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #99
gorgoiler wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think I really understand money, no. What makes much more sense to me is agreeing on a central authority (or a distributed one, if we have the math to be able to do that securely) to track the exchange of things with actual value. Bitcoin-the-tech feels like it’s partly that, but also it’s partly some side-wheeze for the initial Bitcoin folks to print their own money. Bitcoin would make sense if the inflation…

Well a bank account provides all the functions of money, and to a much greater level of functionality. But the whole reason cryptocurrency exists is to avoid some of the issues you get when dealing with centralized financial institutions. If you want to decentralize that role, you need a new way of managing scarcity. Proof of work is one way to do that. Whether that’s wasteful or not would be a personal judgement, bu…

Thanks for explaining, it’s very helpful.

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#115

Post by yunohn »

disruptalot wrote: post #84
XorNot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reply to that thread addresses the better comparison of power usage I've seen ( https://twitter.com/ipvkyte/status/1350922562935681024 ): (in response to a single BTC transaction consuming 621 kwh) A Tesla gets 4.1 miles per KWh. So one transaction costs 2,546 miles. Seattle to Boston is 3k miles. Paying for a burger with bitcoin has the same environmental cost as driving that burger to you from the other coast.

This is not how it works at all. A bitcoin block can have 0 transactions and still need the same energy to produce. a) Sending payments is not the only purpose of the network, it's issuance, it's security, it's to make the ledger immutable. b) No one's buying a burger with bitcoin. Bitcoin's production is a monetary base. Using the same block space you can have an infinite number of economic transactions happen with…

> No one's buying a burger with bitcoin.

That’s exactly the point being made, isn’t it? No one uses Bitcoin as a currency for real transactions.

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#116

Post by tappio »

illustriousbear wrote: post #95
tappio wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional banks pay their electricity bill, so they naturally need to account for that. On the other hand, bitcoin network pays for that collectively. No single entity pays the bill. If a single entity had to pay for 621KWh for every transaction, I don't think that bitcoin could exists. That is the main difference here: multiple parties are doing small contribution to the energy consumption, instead of a single ent…

Traditional banks are not accountable for all the electricity their services consume. One example alone is considering all the clients, pos and other systems that operate. Banks are also a very different model with different overheads compared to Bitcoin. I'd argue that banking infrastructure is quite wasteful with their physical skyscrapers and vaults. Executives at banks would argue otherwise. Bitcoin aims to disru…

Oh yes. I agree, there is probably ton of waste in the entire banking sector. I just wanted to clarify why each transaction most likely costs more in blockchain compared to one transaction in the traditional network.

I wonder how much energy we would consume if bitcoin would replace the whole banking sector? Back-of-an-envelope calculation: If it would be powering billion transactions per day, it would need 400 nuclear power plants to provide required energy.

I don't know if we should ban bitcoin or not. I don't have any strong sentiment towards it. But if the numbers here are right, I don't think it is a viable main stream currency.

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#117

Post by yunohn »

cloudhead wrote: post #60
esimov wrote: post #37

I cannot recommend enough for everyone who has a minimal sensibility towards the climate impact to read this thread: https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1350869944888664064 . Since we are inevitable heading over to a climate catastrophe it's really the time to advocate against bitcoin.

This guy has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about unfortunately. There is no evidence of any environmental impact.

What do you mean by “no evidence”? Could you expand your argument further, or are you just dismissing the reality of large amounts of energy being used to run Bitcoin?

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#118

Post by b10c »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #110

People like this shouldn't be leading a project that threatens to upend multi-trillion dollar institutions. If it weren't for his timidity, Bitcoin would have hard forked in 2015 to raise the block size limit to allow for mass-adoption.

There is no single leader in Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#119

Post by tappio »

dandanua wrote: post #112
tappio wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the things you listed are on the same scale if that 621KWh is true. What you should say is: "crusading against people who leave their a/c on for 2 months when they are away, people who drive 2500 miles for fun every day, people who run their clothes drier for a month non-stop even though it's empty". Regardless, I would be sceptical about that 621 KWh. Does not sound realistic...

It's in the design. Higher price -> more miners -> increased mining difficulty (due to design goal – 1 block per 10 min) -> more energy waste. Bitcoin was a fun prototype idea, but humans made it just evil. As usual, though.

Does this lead to the energy consumption increasing over time? I'm not too familiar with the technology.

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#120

Post by vincnetas »

illustriousbear wrote: post #95
tappio wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional banks pay their electricity bill, so they naturally need to account for that. On the other hand, bitcoin network pays for that collectively. No single entity pays the bill. If a single entity had to pay for 621KWh for every transaction, I don't think that bitcoin could exists. That is the main difference here: multiple parties are doing small contribution to the energy consumption, instead of a single ent…

Traditional banks are not accountable for all the electricity their services consume. One example alone is considering all the clients, pos and other systems that operate. Banks are also a very different model with different overheads compared to Bitcoin. I'd argue that banking infrastructure is quite wasteful with their physical skyscrapers and vaults. Executives at banks would argue otherwise. Bitcoin aims to disru…

But if you calculated energy expenses per transaction or per customer, i think that classic banking would look very efficient compared to bitcoin.
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