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Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

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Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#311

Post by k2enemy »

Rallerbabs wrote: post #292
baxtr wrote: post #265

Ok, I have to admit that I am one of those people who knew about BTC very, very early but never bought any. Now, of course I should have mined at least 100 back in the days, but anyways. The reason I have never mined nor bought into it is that I still, to this day struggle to come up with a real reason to do so. Am I getting too old? Do I not see the "huge potential" what it may become? Don't I want to get freaking r…

Follow the big money. Michael Saylor from Microstrategies: $1B. Elon Musk from Tesla: $1.5B. GrayScale: not sure how many dollars, but they own >550,000 bitcoins. Big money is of the opinion that bitcoin is an excellent store of value. Only a matter of time before it becomes a medium of exchange. And later on, a unit of account. By that time, you won't be asking yourself what 1 bitcoin is worth anymore. Things will b…

Follow the big money? The total "market value" of bitcoin is a rounding error in the global economy. Many individual companies have a larger market cap.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#312

Post by Wowfunhappy »

EGreg wrote: post #110
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Change my mind. Well, personally , I'm still convinced Bitcoin is going to crash at some point. It doesn't work well as an actual currency because transfer times/fees are too high. I don't know if that will happen in one year or 20 years though.

But that’s not it use anymore. Yes it was called a Peer to Peer cash system but it failed at that. Somewhere around 2013 the narrative shifted to it being a store of value. And that has stuck. It is the ultimate store of value. You think people will let governments destroy their store of value so that the world can use electricity for other uses? Let’s explore that shall we. One third of the world farmland is deserti…

> But that’s not it use anymore. Yes it was called a Peer to Peer cash system but it failed at that. Somewhere around 2013 the narrative shifted to it being a store of value. And that has stuck.

Yep, a "store of value" created out of thin air, just like tulip petals! I don't expect it to last myself.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#313

Post by doctorwho42 »

baxtr wrote: post #265

Ok, I have to admit that I am one of those people who knew about BTC very, very early but never bought any. Now, of course I should have mined at least 100 back in the days, but anyways. The reason I have never mined nor bought into it is that I still, to this day struggle to come up with a real reason to do so. Am I getting too old? Do I not see the "huge potential" what it may become? Don't I want to get freaking r…

I'm in your boat, when it was first explained to me in a hacker space at college when it was first growing and priced at a few cents per 100++ Bitcoin. All I could see was a waste of energy and resources (time, energy, hardware).

It will always be a drain on society, and it scares me that it hasn't failed because we see it draining our GPU industry to the point that market prices have gone insane and availability is practically non-existent / all left up to chance.

It does take a rocket science to see the trends, as long as it's tied to needing hardware to compute arbitrary calculations to work... It's going to waste computer resources and energy. Both which are finite resources... Yes finite, solar cells aren't free to make, they don't last forever after you make them. Same with any other green technology. Maybe if fusion was our only power source it would be less of a concern, but we still haven't cracked Q=1, so... Yes it is a waste of finite resources.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#314

Post by sygma »

doctorwho42 wrote: post #293
px43 wrote: post #254

Please put on your critical thinking hat for a minute. Using electricity is not the same as contributing to carbon emissions. Bitcoin is mostly mined in areas overflowing with excess green energy, and thus contributes negligibly to carbon emissions. The idea that all electricity generation is bad and therefore all electricity usage is bad is completely ridiculous. Instead of working so hard to figure out how to hate…

(1) power is not free, even green energy. It has production, labor, and material costs. (2) using the term 'excess' green energy is a false statement. There is no such thing as excess green energy while a bulk of the grid is still coal/gas/etc. (3) Bitcoin has led to a drain on GPU availability and in turn on the finite capacity of our semiconductor fabs. Arguably for nothing.

(3) reveals that you are not as well informed as you make it sound. Bitcoin hasn’t been mined on GPUs for years.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#315

Post by corobo »

dstick wrote: post #7

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…

The Bitcoin guy is going to be the second place after Thomas Midgley Jr [1][2] in terms of most damage done to Earth by an individual I reckon.

Is there no way to slim down the resource requirements to cut electrical use? (without breaking everything Bitcoin of course)

-

[1] He played a major role in developing leaded gasoline (Tetraethyllead) and some of the first chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)

[2] Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.#Legacy

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#316

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ucha wrote: post #92
Jonnax wrote: post #23

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?

Buying US stocks takes 2 days to settle. Sending simple wires in the US takes hours. Last time I tried to send significant funds from France to the UK, it took me a whole week of back and forth with the bank to complete all the AML/KYC paperwork. Let's not even talk about how long it would take to move gold from one part of the world to another cf. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-30/iran-is-h... You c…

> Sending simple wires in the US takes hours

What? No. It happens instantly at a protocol level. Practically, about thirty minutes. Most people don’t send and receive wires and so don’t choose bank accounts that prioritise them.

Practically speaking, Venmo and Apple Pay and Zelle are frictionless and instantaneous and more widely adopted than Bitcoin. For heavy users of international transfers, there are usually better solutions.

There are absolutely edge cases, and so a legitimate use case for a cryptocurrency there, but that’s not enough use to sustain Bitcoin’s value. To say nothing of the transactional motivation having been long since abandoned when inconvenient for the current store of value one.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#317

Post by blondie9x »

This is disgusting. Why is this stupid useless asset allowed to proliferate without regulation?

Why are we not concerned about harvesting this blockchain at the cost of the planet? This is silly. Bitcoin needs to be regulated like other industries. It’s polluting just the same. Regulation now please.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#318

Post by majewsky »

Rallerbabs wrote: post #292
baxtr wrote: post #265

Ok, I have to admit that I am one of those people who knew about BTC very, very early but never bought any. Now, of course I should have mined at least 100 back in the days, but anyways. The reason I have never mined nor bought into it is that I still, to this day struggle to come up with a real reason to do so. Am I getting too old? Do I not see the "huge potential" what it may become? Don't I want to get freaking r…

Follow the big money. Michael Saylor from Microstrategies: $1B. Elon Musk from Tesla: $1.5B. GrayScale: not sure how many dollars, but they own >550,000 bitcoins. Big money is of the opinion that bitcoin is an excellent store of value. Only a matter of time before it becomes a medium of exchange. And later on, a unit of account. By that time, you won't be asking yourself what 1 bitcoin is worth anymore. Things will b…

> Big money is of the opinion that bitcoin is an excellent store of value. Only a matter of time before it becomes a medium of exchange.

By that same logic, I should be able to pay for my groceries with Apple stocks by now.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#319

Post by mnx »

janvanbergen wrote: post #302
Rallerbabs wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Follow the big money. Michael Saylor from Microstrategies: $1B. Elon Musk from Tesla: $1.5B. GrayScale: not sure how many dollars, but they own >550,000 bitcoins. Big money is of the opinion that bitcoin is an excellent store of value. Only a matter of time before it becomes a medium of exchange. And later on, a unit of account. By that time, you won't be asking yourself what 1 bitcoin is worth anymore. Things will b…

Bitcoin will never become a standard currency, it's slow, it has zero privacy (if I send you money once you can see ALL my transactions), it is EXTREMELY energy inefficient. Even if you believe crypto will one day become the standard (which I dont), it won't be bitcoin because there are better alternatives; proof of work is dumb, bitcoin has a finite supply of bitcoins, etc.

The finite supply is a feature, not a bug. I agree there are many aspects of bitcoin that suck, but not this one. We are right now witnessing many governments printing more and more money, which makes it less and less valuable. Bitcoin avoids that.
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