161–170 of 1001 posts
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".
But it doesn't have any value. Except that some people think it has. In times of truly global trouble, nobody will accept bitcoins as payment for bread.
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".
But it doesn't have any value. Except that some people think it has. In times of truly global trouble, nobody will accept bitcoins as payment for bread.
That is true for gold as well. (Ofc not 'nobody', just 'almost nobody'.)
If I understand the system correctly, the vast majority of bitcoin energy consumption comes from the mining process, which is not strictly required (at least not anymore, with 18+ million BTC now mined and in circulation). I can spin up the bitcoin software on my home PC to participate in the network, sending and receiving bitcoin, and confirming some transactions, and the power consumed would be low. Much less than…
It's designed to be unregulatable.
It already uses the model where you can decide not to mine if it will cost you too much electricity.
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…
> or even negative
I can see no way that consuming more energy can result in an improvement to the environment (unless that energy usage was directly related to improving the environment). There is absolutely no time where you can say "the more lights I leave on, the better the climate will be," no matter what your energy source is.
In general the rest of your argument can be summed up as "if there is more demand for electricity, more utilities will build renewable plants." The problem with this argument is that there is already far more electricity being used than renewables can supply, so there is already all the incentive needed to build more plants.
As for the present-day, a BitCoin mining rig consumes whatever proportion of fossils are inputs to that grid. If a grid is 50% renewable and 50% fossil, you can't pretend that you're consuming only the renewable portion. Indeed, the opposite may be true: renewables generally just produce their max output, the fossils can ramp up and down to meet higher demand. So it's best to think of the fossils as the ones that are rising to supply any "unnecessary" usage.
> where you turn off and effectively provide the grid with more power
This is again pretty striking motivated reasoning. Yes, if we turn off all non-essential lights during peak hours we are kind of "supplying the grid" with more energy, but if we build a huge energy-suck, and then occasionally turn it off, we don't get to pretend we are actually energy suppliers. If I set fire to $1000 of my company's money every day, I don't get to pretend I earned them $1000 on the days when I don't.
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?
I use it as a currency for years. Especially for large transactions internationally, where my bank asks me+the other party to fees like $30 and it takes 3 days if everything goes well. In comparison with that, BTC for those years, gave me on average 40 minutes and $1 fee. This is thirty times better than what my bank provides.
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…
Consider the classic store of value asset: gold. It's up 17% compared to a year ago, and down 11% compared to its peak last august. Sure, it's less volatile as bitcoin, but it's hugely more volatile compared to t-bills or a FDIC insured bank account. Does that mean gold also isn't a good store of value?
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?
I use it as a currency for years. Especially for large transactions internationally, where my bank asks me+the other party to fees like $30 and it takes 3 days if everything goes well. In comparison with that, BTC for those years, gave me on average 40 minutes and $1 fee. This is thirty times better than what my bank provides.
Crypto is a huge environmental issue.
Question that came to mind after reading the headline: could this become a future reason for governments to criminalise the trading / use of Bitcoin because of negative environmental effects? On the surface it seems the value of Bitcoin is directly tied to its energy consumption and thus environmental harm. I get that Bitcoin itself is decentralised and cannot be banned outright. But could it be neutered in such a wa…
Will anyone criminalise the US army because they use lots of energy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_Sta... The answer: they might try, but good luck with that.