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Earlier quoted context omitted.
It won't and even BTC enthusiasts have given up on that. They narrative is now that BTC is a "store of value".
It won't It won't for small transactions . Buying a car or a house with BTC could still be viable in the future.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It won't and even BTC enthusiasts have given up on that. They narrative is now that BTC is a "store of value".
Exactly. Here's VC and prominent cryptocurrency enthusiast Fred Wilson saying exactly that: https://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/ While I agree with him that Bitcoin is a terrible currency, I think the "store of value" thing is nonsense as well. Stores of value need to have relatively stable value. Bitcoin is hugely volatile. That's great for speculation, but nobody with any sense would use it as…
I'm tired of this BS about Bitcoin and pollution. So tired that yesterday I wrote this [0]. Of course you might be in complete disagreement with me, but please read it and let me know what you think. Be kind. I am trying to have a good conversation about it, not to impose my view. [0]: https://simon.medium.com/bitcoin-and-pollution-the-definitiv...
You ask commenters to be kind and say you want to have a good conversation but start your comment by declaring the viewpoint you disagree with as BS. I would suggest that is not an effective way of starting a conversation.
And as Bitcoins get more scarce and get adopted by more and more banks and companies as reserves, the value of mining rewards is only going to continue rising, until Bitcoin will consume more electricity than the rest of the world combined. (Around the time it is worth $1.2 Million a coin.) Change my mind. Bitcoin rewards miners in Bitcoin, which is the ultimate deflationary “store of value”, and has the world mindsh…
"How would governments even begin to stop it" - I don't thing that governments will choose to try it, but if they did want to do so, a simple ban on all sale and barter in BTC would work. It wouldn't stop all trade, but making exits difficult would reduce investment interest sufficiently to get a huge decrease in price, especially since current price seems mostly defined by "store of value" i.e. investment arguments, not based on usefulness for transactions. If many investors can't exit, then it ceases to be a good store of value for them, reducing the demand.
For example, Tesla $1.5B purchase was a big pressure upwards; but if it's known that no such purchases are ever coming again, and that Tesla's holding is now worthless (unlike some small-scale drug trader, a US company like Tesla can't really use a black market or person-to-person transactions to exhange it for anything), that would kill the short-term price; this would mean that the mining costs much more than their electricity costs (there is an inherent lag in block difficulty adjustments that's potentially huge in case of a rapid slowdown in mining rate) which may cause many miners to cease mining.
From what I understand bitcoin currently has a $20+ transaction fee with a transaction time takes 60 minutes+ With these issues in addition to the high power consumption, how will Bitcoin become a usable currency?
> how will Bitcoin become a usable currency It won't, it's just a speculative asset.
Because of that, banning bitcoin ownership and trading seems to be overkill or missing the point... Just regulate/limit mining, or even better put a capacity on electricity usage or have tiers where the more you use, the more expensive it is, making mining not worth it after a certain point.
All that said, government regulation will be extremely challenging here as it would require cooperation of nearly every country on Earth, and we've seen how difficult that is.
This is a rehash of a previous post of mine regarding electricity consumption: Back in the days where all our electricity came from fossil fuels, I completely agree that marginal electricity usage was bad for the environment. However I think that thought has persisted with us even though it is no longer true 100% of the time. With renewables sometimes the marginal cost of electricity to our environment is near 0 or e…
I'm tired of this BS about Bitcoin and pollution. So tired that yesterday I wrote this [0]. Of course you might be in complete disagreement with me, but please read it and let me know what you think. Be kind. I am trying to have a good conversation about it, not to impose my view. [0]: https://simon.medium.com/bitcoin-and-pollution-the-definitiv...
You ask commenters to be kind and say you want to have a good conversation but start your comment by declaring the viewpoint you disagree with as BS. I would suggest that is not an effective way of starting a conversation.
The whole shift of calling it a store of value as opposed to currency that Bitcoin supporters have started over the past couple of years is very clearly a post hoc justification for its existence.
The problem, however, is that BTC isn’t even a very good store of value. Golds pricing has never collapsed 10x over the matter of months and nor has it risen 5-10x over the matter of months. As a result BTC isn’t even a very good store of value.
It’s currently, at best, a pure speculative asset. It’s like the GME trading from a week ago taken to its logical extreme. A speculative asset that has no relationship to its underlying fundamentals. Much like how GME’s price was completely divorced from any fundamentals of the company, BTC is like saying let’s do that thing, but why even bother with tethering GME the stock to an underlying company. Let it just exist on its own.
That’s what BTC is at the moment. GME if GameStop didn’t exist.
This is a rehash of a previous post of mine regarding electricity consumption: Back in the days where all our electricity came from fossil fuels, I completely agree that marginal electricity usage was bad for the environment. However I think that thought has persisted with us even though it is no longer true 100% of the time. With renewables sometimes the marginal cost of electricity to our environment is near 0 or e…
This is a rehash of a previous post of mine regarding electricity consumption: Back in the days where all our electricity came from fossil fuels, I completely agree that marginal electricity usage was bad for the environment. However I think that thought has persisted with us even though it is no longer true 100% of the time. With renewables sometimes the marginal cost of electricity to our environment is near 0 or e…
1) Peak power usage is when people are awake - this is when you want transactions to happen.
2) This wouldn't reduce the need of peak plants, since you aren't generating power when mining for bitcoin. How would increasing overall energy consumption require less energy generation? If renewables could ramp up/down quickly and not be dependent on external factors - that would remove the need for current peak plants - which is usually nat gas.