71–80 of 156 posts
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Yeah, that is basically a science themed chucky cheese token - not an independent currency.
Why makes it not an independent currency?
"BOINC superblocks fetch a participant’s BOINC recent average credit, also called researcher RAC. RAC is based on a participant’s earned BOINC credits. !!!>>>*Credits and RAC are defined by BOINC*<<<!!!"
Are there any evaluations of cryptocurrency energy consumption as total usage rather than peak usage, A sort of area-under-the-curve comparison? If Bitcoin is a flash in the pan phenomenon and it one-day collapses into nothing then comparisons against countries like Argentina are inaccurate (Argentina is likely to continue existing). To extrapolate into the future you would have to have some assumptions. Some would b…
1) You can buy or sell a billion dollars of it in a day without moving the price too much. (current transaction volume is 7.6B per day)
2) Given some level of physical security, it's a very difficult asset to seize or freeze. This is useful for anyone who could be affected by government/non-government asset seizure.
3) As an individual you can literally put your entire net worth into BTC wallet on your cellphone, and walk across any border in the world.
4) Overall, while BTC is volatile - it's been a ridiculously good asset to hold long returning ~2000x over the last 8 years.
Considering civil forfeiture laws in the US, politically motivated asset seizures globally, and the general risk of being de-banked and robbed of any savings - we're likely to see more use of BTC as a store of value. It's a useful exercise to understand if we've replaced gold with watts and hashing power.
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Imagine if the government required you to use ice cubes for currency and people wondered why everyone was using some highly inefficient workaround so their money didn’t vanish in between getting paid and paying bills.
Considering the volatility and poor fundamentals of BTC I think your ice cube analogy might be reversed.
Bitcoin is only a problem if you believe the future of energy creation is fossil fuels. This is simply not the case. Solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy for new power plants compared to nuclear, gas peaker (natural gas), and coal. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth 2019 Prices Coal - $109/MWh Solar - $68/MWh On shore wind - $53/MWh Basic economic theory dictates that energy consuming bus…
Missing the point. No matter how you spin it, Bitcoin's energy usage is additive on top of all other energy usage. If Bitcoin wasn't consuming that energy, renewable or otherwise, it would be re-routed to other endeavors. If Bitcoin was using renewable energy, that's still renewable energy that could be used to replace older fossil fuel power stations. Instead, we're burning 121 TWh per year to perform arbitrary proo…
A bitcoin mining operation at a geothermal vent in remote Iceland is not taking away energy units from people in India.
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Why makes it not an independent currency?
Step one, don't do this: "BOINC superblocks fetch a participant’s BOINC recent average credit, also called researcher RAC. RAC is based on a participant’s earned BOINC credits. !!!>>>* Credits and RAC are defined by BOINC* <<<!!!"
Eventually, credit may reflect network transfer and disk storage as well as computation.
Credit has no monetary or other value; it's just a measure of how much work your computers have done.
Total credit: The total number of Cobblestones performed and granted.
Recent average credit: The average number of Cobblestones per day granted recently. This average decreases by a factor of two every week.
Bitcoin is only a problem if you believe the future of energy creation is fossil fuels. This is simply not the case. Solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy for new power plants compared to nuclear, gas peaker (natural gas), and coal. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth 2019 Prices Coal - $109/MWh Solar - $68/MWh On shore wind - $53/MWh Basic economic theory dictates that energy consuming bus…
Missing the point. No matter how you spin it, Bitcoin's energy usage is additive on top of all other energy usage. If Bitcoin wasn't consuming that energy, renewable or otherwise, it would be re-routed to other endeavors. If Bitcoin was using renewable energy, that's still renewable energy that could be used to replace older fossil fuel power stations. Instead, we're burning 121 TWh per year to perform arbitrary proo…
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They will sell off their equipment to the general public, which causes a lot of decentralization, and thus makes a coordinated attack more difficult.
That assumes the general public will buy it and use it which isn't likely if the incentive to do so isn't there.
And we're not talking black or white here.
It's not that miners suddenly will earn zero money.
It will just decrease to the point where it may make sense to sell some of the equipment. That equipment might still be somewhat profitable, just not as insanely high as it is now.
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Imagine if you could just print money to pay your bills and hide the fact that you're bankrupt. - That's what governments do with fiat money.
...There surely is a large overlap between bitcoin enthusiasts and people who don't understand how fiat currency works, isn't it?
If you judge my electricity consumption don’t be angry when I judge yours! Better to have a free market and price in externalities.
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On the other hand, what drives Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the need for certain properties that conventional currencies don't have - this includes properties some might find undesirable as they mainly benefit crime. The definition of "crime" itself is murky - are the citizens of sanctioned countries criminals because they're just trying to survive by participating in the global economy despite a stupid feud…
Yep, crime is all relative. Cryptocurrencies fullfill a very important need - how else would I accept my ransomware payments?