Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

cbeci.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 1001 posts

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#361

Post by xur17 »

josalhor wrote: post #298
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 see a huge potential in cryptocurrencies, just not in Bitcoin per se. I can totally see the European Central Bank controlling some kind of CryptoEuro that is tied to the real euro and allows individuals to make transactions without banks. Banks would become an optional frontend on this transaction system, with security features built-in, etc.

If you see something like the CryptoEuro taking off, doesn't it naturally follow that there would be a cryptocurrency that would take off that was global, and not issued by any individual country?

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#362

Post by ForHackernews »

nickpp wrote: post #332

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.…

Mining a single bitcoin block takes way way more energy than every one of the things you listed. Somebody on a different thread estimated you could drive a Tesla down the whole California coastline for the energy used processing a single BTC transaction.

So yes, I absolutely do judge people who leave an SUV idling in their driveway 24/7 because "you never know when I'll need to jump in and run away from government agents"

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#363

Post by MrApathy »

dieortin wrote: post #322
doctorwho42 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s not draining the GPU industry. No one buys GPUs for mining Bitcoin anymore, they use ASICs.

In the specific context of Bitcoin it may be true that the preference is for ASIC, but (1) some Bitcoin is still mined using GPU's and (2) there are several thousand active digital currencies, many of them favoring GPU's.

Grandparent's wider assertion is absolutely true, the GPU market is skewed by miners. Purchasing a 3000 series GPU is not easy right now.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#364

Post by enraged_camel »

AnonsLadder wrote: post #333

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 w…

>>It sure is a lot better than using human lives, usually & most likely forced labor, to mine real Gold. Right?

Bitcoin is purported to be an alternative to fiat money, not gold. And most governments can print fiat money at will, with virtually no energy.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#365

Post by minitoar »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #359
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 tens of thousands of folks like yourself had mined and kept the coins, it wouldn’t be nearly as valuable as it is today. It’s a deflationary asset, meaning the less it gets used the more valuable it is.

I don’t follow your logic here. How would more mining early on have impacted the Bitcoin price?

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#367

Post by throwaway5752 »

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…

No, I agree with you completely. I have missed the whole thing, from $100 up. So a bit later than you, but I have the same questions and some more about viability.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#368

Post by betterunix2 »

golemotron wrote: post #290
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…

Inflation-proof store of value.

Anything of value that is not the currency used in your country meets that definition, and most of those things do not consume vast amounts of electricity.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#369

Post by ucha »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #316
ucha wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bett…

Yes sure, it takes 30 mins to send wires in a best case scenario it is executed immediately when you send it but that's not what happens in practice for most people. I do that regularly and it takes me a couple of hours.

Venmo and co aren't "real" transfers of asset, it's an update to a "permissioned" database. You can make immediate transfers on coinbase too but they could be reversed, or your account could get locked just as with venmo. It is just as easy to have banks hold everyone's bitcoin and instantaneously update a database so that feature is not an advantage of fiat over bitcoin.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#370

Post by lapetitejort »

AnonsLadder wrote: post #333

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 w…

> 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.

At what price will I be able to buy a cup of coffee conveniently?

Post reply on HN