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Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

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Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#331

Post by dkarp »

blhack wrote: post #295
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…

Do you understand what the purpose of money is? It allows you to abstract your work into a (near) universally acceptable intermediary. For instance: I am great at writing web APIs in golang, but unfortunately for me the people coming to my house today to deliver a dumpster (we're doing some spring cleaning) do not accept "golang apis" as a method of payment. So I find somebody wants "golang APIs", agree to exchange w…

This doesn't really answer why bitcoin though. Because we already have money that we've been using for a good long time.

The problem is that money now is issued by governments. Governments are on average only governing one country, although sometimes more as with the Euro. In other words, it is not universal, so if you want to exchange some money for goods and services then you need to find the right money for the country the service is in.

Globalisation means we often want goods and services from other countries. But then we always need to find the right money for that country or use some de facto universal money like USD. But then you're always exchanging money or letting the US government (who control USD) exert some control over you, even though you could be outside the US buying a good/service from a non-US entity.

Bitcoin gives you a universal money. Once you have it, you can exchange it for goods or services without caring about where the recipient is. And you don't have to worry that you've now created a universal money that is controlled by one non-universal entity like the USA.

At least that is the idea

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#332

Post by nickpp »

How much energy does watching porn consume? Playing video games? Watching a movie? Browsing Facebook? Using a ski chair? Visiting an amusement park? Going in vacation? Cooking your favorite type of food? Making ice cream? Driving to your friends? Listening to music? Concerts? Having a party? Banking? Casinos?

As a species we use energy to meet our goals. Those goals may be situated anywhere in our hierarchy of needs. Some are essential, some could be considered trivial. But they are all important for their consumers.

Bitcoin is now considered by some important for our future finance system. While not everybody agrees, this may be more important than countless other ways we use energy, for much more trivial reasons.

Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#333

Post by AnonsLadder »

It's hilarious to see the naysayers about Bitcoin say that BTC is not usable. Now it's worth almost 50 grand and all they can come up with is expensive transaction fees which in hindsight, are really not that expensive, and the energy consumption of maintaining the Bitcoin network.

It sure is a lot better than using human lives, usually & most likely forced labor, to mine real Gold. Right? After all, energy is free when you're using solar power to mine your Bitcoins or any other coins. Does the energy really goes to waste when it provides heating? Etc?

It just seems like people are running out of excuses at this point. I wonder what they'll be saying when BTC hits $100,000.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#334

Post by totalZero »

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…

If everyone were to get excited about Monopoly money as a store of value, it would be wrong to tell you that you fail to see the huge potential. The crowd decided that bitcoin is worth something, and thus it is worth something. That doesn't make you wrong for not being part of the crowd.

Today Elon Musk chooses BTC and it goes up. Tomorrow the US government could crack down on BTC and it could go down. Maybe a technical weakness arises. Maybe the dollar breaks and it goes to a million. That doesn't mean it has potential, nor that it's useful. It just means there's uptake.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#335

Post by kgwgk »

axxxo93 wrote: post #300
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 appreciate an honest question. The negative sentiment around crypto is a bit extreme imo. Bitcoin does have intrinsic value. A trustless P2P payment network has value. Is POW flawed, yes. This is a big reason why I prefer and hold Ethereum. Eth is moving to POS which is vastly more efficient. It also has additional programability in the form of smart contracts that bitcoin does not have. Look into the DeFi space fo…

When even the people who says that Bitcoin has intrinsic value prefer something else it's hard to buy the argument.

What's the intrinsic value of Bitcoin then? $10000? $100? $1?

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#336

Post by pjanoman »

kkarpkkarp wrote: post #198
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?

> how will Bitcoin become a usable currency? Wake up, this question was reasonable in 2010, maybe 2015. :) Today no serious person is still thinking it would be usable :)

Maybe people close to Bitcoin know it won't be a usable currency, but unless you closely follow bitcoin, it sure seems like it is built to be a usable currency. Even the name implies this relationship, and the idea of a 'wallet' does too. Tesla just recently bought $1.5 billion worth for exchange, no?

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#337

Post by Rallerbabs »

majewsky wrote: post #318
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…

> 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.

Nope. That's what a medium of exchange is for.

Bitcoin isn't at that phase yet.

For any new money, it goes like this:

1. Store of value. 2. Medium of exchange. 3. Unit of account.

In that order. Cumulatively.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#338

Post by apexalpha »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #271
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…

> Bitcoin is mostly mined in areas overflowing with excess green energy Source? I thought it’s mostly mined in China?

Yes, and most of the mining in China happens in Sichuan, which has considerable renewable energy from hydro. I think maybe 95%+ of Sichuans electricity is hydro.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#339

Post by noch »

peteretep wrote: post #85
EGreg wrote: post #5

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…

> Bitcoin, which is the ultimate deflationary “store of value” Inflating the supply of bitcoins is a value in a config file + buy-in from miners, who are the ones with all the capital to benefit from inflating the supply. Unsure why you think the miners are just going to go home when it’s all mined and sell off their expensive equipment at firesale prices when they can collaborate to increase the amount of Bitcoin?

> Inflating the supply of bitcoins is a value in a config file + buy-in from miners

Please learn about how consensus rules work.

"The consensus rules are the specific set of rules that all Bitcoin full nodes will unfailingly enforce when considering the validity of a block and its transactions. For example, the Bitcoin consensus rules require that blocks only create a certain number of bitcoins. If a block creates more bitcoins than is allowed, all full nodes will reject this block, even if every other node and miner in the world accepts it." [0]

Because users must consent to run full-node software with a particular version of consensus rules, miners cannot simply change the rules. This was shown in 2017 with Segwit2x and UASF(User Activated Soft Fork).[1]

In other words,

"If securing Bitcoin requires consensus on what Bitcoin is, and Bitcoin is a database of values assigned to keys, and Bitcoin has a protocol for reassignment of keys, then securing Bitcoin can only be done by … your node!" [2]

> [Miners] are the ones with all the capital to benefit from inflating the supply.

You're not thinking clearly about supply and demand. Because bitcoin has a fixed supply (21M), its price movement is a pure result of demand. If someone were to start inflating the supply, the price would drop, devaluing the coins for everyone including those doing the inflation because created coins are instantly visible to everyone. (Incidentally, this also creates a disincentive for Satoshi to ever move his "lost" 1M BTC. Moving them would instantly make them appear available to the market/network and be a massively inflationary event. Prices would immediately drop in response to this perceived increase in supply.)

> Unsure why you think the miners are just going to go home when it’s all mined and sell off their expensive equipment at firesale prices when they can collaborate to increase the amount of Bitcoin?

Miners work for the block reward (which halves every four years) but also for transaction fees (an auction in which you bid for blockspace for your transactions). The question for the distant future is: will transaction fees be sufficient to ensure the security of the network?

[0]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Consensus

[1]: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-independence-da...

[2]: https://medium.com/bitcoinerrorlog/who-secures-bitcoin-95b19...

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#340

Post by Rallerbabs »

k2enemy wrote: post #311
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…

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.

The total market cap of crypto is now larger than Google.

Thanks for playing.

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