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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

#131

Post by atweiden »

meheleventyone wrote: post #106
disruptalot wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread is nothing new. This exact sentiment has been repeated over and over for the last 10 years. From the angle that bitcoin is useless, it's easy to dismiss it as waste. The reality is that you live in world where people have different understandings and values than you may have. So advocating against Bitcoin is no different than advocating against air travel. You see no issue in the huge amounts of energy co…

The last sentence is the entire problem. It ignores the externalities of whatever it is you’re doing. Which in turn (amongst other things) makes the claim of efficient distribution questionable. Huge energy consumption would be much less of an issue if it wasn’t also causing huge long term problems.

> Huge energy consumption would be much less of an issue if it wasn’t also causing huge long term problems.

Humanity's reliance on fossil fuels and animal products are two far larger, far more pressing issues than Bitcoin's carbon footprint.

I would additionally rank “bullshit jobs” far above Bitcoin's carbon footprint in a ranking of things causing widespread social ills.

If Bitcoin became global reserve currency, all things would decrease in absolute price, disincentivizing consumerism. As the pace of technological innovation increases, and vendor competition increases along with it, absolute prices in BTC terms will go down even assuming everyone already transacts in BTC exclusively. Higher amount of available products/services, same amount of money, equals lower absolute prices. Assuming 1% annual "growth", that's 1% you gain. This isn't outside the bounds of inflation policies today, and keep in mind those inflation targets skim off the top after haircutting GDP growth — a 1% inflation in an economy expanding by 2% equals the central bank skims the 2% growth plus expands by 1%. In a Bitcoin world, that would be 3% gains for simply holding onto your coins.

As such a deflationary global currency could cause a global economic slowdown, which might be completely necessary to save the planet's natural ecosystems.

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#132

Post by solresol »

saberience wrote: post #124
mtrycz2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That thread is assuming that BTC runs on fossil, non-renewable energy, which was mostly correct ten to five years ago, but will be mostly wrong onwards. BTC runs mostly on surplus hydroelectric power. This may change based on what's locally available and the local cost of oil gas and coal, but when renewables will become cheaper than fossil (which will never be soon enough) it will not make any sense to mine on fossi…

Citation please.

I can't offer a citation, but I can observe that electricity prices in wholesale markets regularly go negative during times when renewables are operating at peak output. Since people overprovision solar to have enough power at non-peak times, during peak generation times, there's too much energy.

This doesn't happen with fossil fuels, since the plant operator will of course reduce output as far as possible by reducing fuel consumption.

So it seems entirely reasonable that the bulk of bitcoin mining in the future is going to be done at times when the electricity price is exceptionally low (or negative), and mostly be powered by renewables. It's an economically rational thing to do and as a bonus it will provide some grid stability.

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#134

Post by ericb »

runeks wrote: post #85
kaonashi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of things can be used as stores of value that don't require the electrical output of a medium sized country.

I disagree. The only asset that falls into this category is credit. And credit is not a good -- it's a promise that someone will deliver a good to you when you demand it. And this type of promise tends to be broken just when you need it the most.

Proof of stake coins exist and work just fine. Tezos. Ethereum.

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#135

Post by dosenbrot »

vincnetas wrote: post #120
illustriousbear wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The only thing is, with Bitcoin we have the numbers. The classic banking system look like a few thousend banks with thousends of buildings with hundreds of thousend computers and million of emloyees. The employees again need to eat, sleep, drive around. They have money that needs to be designed, to be printed, to be distributed. All this cost ressources too, but this really hard to put in numbers.

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#136

Post by [deleted] »

tappio wrote: post #116
illustriousbear wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nucle…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#137

Post by robjan »

tappio wrote: post #119
dandanua wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you have more hashing power you have more chance of earning a block reward to it's effectively a competition for each entity to get as much hashing power as quickly as possible. You can either make the hardware more efficient (and throw away old hardware) or increase the amount of hardware and therefore energy consumption.

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#138

Post by Thorentis »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #63
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 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…

This depends on your moral framework. A large part of moral culpability is proximity. How close are you to the issue at hand, and how easy is it for you to take/not take some action. For example, worrying about poverty in a country on the other side of the world, when there are homeless people sleeping on a bench on your street. I can't possibly convince a mega corp to stop wasting energy, but I can try and waste less myself. I can't stop people from using Bitcoin, but I can try and develop/advocate for better alternatives. When all is said and done, is it better to have shrugged and done nothing, or done what was within your power to do? "All we have to decide, is what to do with the time that is given to us".

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#139

Post by ilammy »

saberience wrote: post #127
yamrzou wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it should seen as more similar to gold than to money. We don't use gold to buy goods either, but it has a value, because people believe it has. The value of Bitcoin is disputed because not everyone believes in it yet. So it's either a gold in the making or nothing, depending on whether those who believe in it will succeed at convincing the others of its merits.

Gold has a value because it can also be used for legitimate industrial applications, plus it has the other physical qualities of being attractive to look at and doesn't corrode (i.e. useful for making jewellery). So yes, while it does have value because people believes it has value. Even if no person wanted gold for its "imagined" value, it would still have value because it's used by many actual companies in actual p…

Bitcoin can be used for making transactions on the Bitcoin network, and to store information permanently on the Bitcoin blockchain. Here are examples of applications.

Industrial applications of gold as imaginary as those applications of Bitcoin are. You can use other metals as conductors, and the whole notion of a specific arrangement of molecules being called “an appliance” or “a jewellery piece” is just human imagination.

Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization

#140

Post by space_rock »

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.

Let's have a discussion...

And then blocks replies

Otherwise people would point out the errors in that thread

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