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

441–450 of 1001 posts

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#441

Post by jp555 »

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.…

Even more directly - How much energy does all the world's "legacy" Fintech use?

Banks, exchanges, government tax agencies, accountants, money printing, retail cash machines (ATM, registers, etc) and all the way to gold mining.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#442

Post by onyb »

Shoue wrote: post #387
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.…

When the alternative is simply just using Proof of Stake and lowering the energy consumption by an estimated 99%, yes, we can be judgmental of how others use energy in this specific case. It's not Bitcoin/PoW or no cryptocurrencies at all, that's a false dichotomy, if that's what you're implying.

PoS lacks fairness.

To participate in PoS, you need an existing stash of coins, which is inaccessible for many individuals from countries where cryptocurrencies are outlawed. Not forgetting to mention that participation in consensus would indirectly require going through KYC.

PoW, on the other hand, is akin to buying Bitcoin with electricity - a borderless natural resource.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#443

Post by pdpi »

School-Cotton wrote: post #383
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.…

> Bitcoin is now considered by some important for our future finance system Yeah, but those people are wrong. It's perfectly reasonable to judge them for doing harmful actions in service of a wrong belief.

Why are they wrong? People who consider Bitcoin important are not a homogeneous mass — are you saying all those people are wrong, or some portion of it?

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#444

Post by esotericn »

acdha wrote: post #433
esotericn wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can send me money across the globe without a middleman or anyone being able to block that transfer. That's it. If you don't want that, you don't want that. Some of us do.

That’s ignoring the middlemen who run the mining network, who you pay for every transaction, and the middlemen on both ends who convert to and from the real current which you use to buy and sell the things you actually use. Similarly, any government which wants to can block the network entirely or require everyone exchanging into real currency to avoid transactions involving people who’ve violated local laws. Since B…

Ah yeah, you're right, all of those legally sounding words invalidate actual use.

Yes, I buy things with bitcoin, and no, you can't find it on the blockchain.

(Or do I? :))

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#445

Post by justapassenger »

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.…

Bitcoin isn’t religion (although it has many religious-like followers), so there aren’t dogmas you cannot question.

Energy usage of it is ridiculously high and people are totally allowed to question how wasteful it is, no matter if you allow them to.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#446

Post by tekromancr »

bhupy wrote: post #418
dixego wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If maintaining the infrastructure for something a miniscule percentage of the world's population benefit from requires more energy than entire countries, surely it's worth interrogating whether the benefits outweigh the costs?

> a minuscule percentage This is true right now considering how nascent this is, but what happens if adoption picks up? One thing I’d like to see discussed is what the marginal power cost of Bitcoin is. From where I sit, the vast majority of power consumption is fixed per block, and occurs regardless of whether you have 1 or 10,000 transactions.

Almost, but because of the incentives, the greater the adoption, the more valuable each individual block reward actually is. The more valuable each individual block reward is, the more energy you can afford to spend attempting to mine it.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#447

Post by whoisninja »

dixego wrote: post #372
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.…

If maintaining the infrastructure for something a miniscule percentage of the world's population benefit from requires more energy than entire countries, surely it's worth interrogating whether the benefits outweigh the costs?

let the market decide then, step away- don't mine, don't use Bitcoin if you prefer

gold mining uses tons of energy we knew automobiles will pollute the environment, why didn't we stop using them altogether?

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#448

Post by hummusman »

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.…

When it became blindingly apparent that mining diamonds, gold and rare earth metals was proving harmful to societies (pollution, war etc.) countries put into place regulation to ensure that future mining would be conducted in ways to try and eliminate these harms.

Mining bitcoin is a growing contributor to energy consumption, and subsequently environmental damage and harm.

Similar precedent?

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#450

Post by matsemann »

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.…

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

It's impossible to have a good debate if you from the get-go insult everyone that disagree with you and heighten bitcoin to something not allowed to be criticized because some people believe it can be important in the future. As if that absolves something from all sins.

Post reply on HN