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The Crypto-Chernobyl

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Crypto-Chernobyl

#111

Post by Apocryphon »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #98
Apocryphon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we have the discussions and promotion efforts surrounding bitcoin The best promotion for BTC is simply its price, the ease of setting up a Coinbase account, and mooning memes of $100k/coin. > Why would enthusiasts and bandwagoners sink money into bitcoin in order to support tesla’s stock price? Tesla, currently less than 1% of the global auto market, is worth more than several of the largest automakers combined. Mu…

> The best promotion for BTC is simply its price How is the astronomical price a promotion? People want thing when they can get them for less, not pay a record price for them. If you think bitcoin is a good deal at its current price then you must believe there’s some underlying fundamental that makes it worth tens of thousands of dollars. > the ease of setting up a Coinbase account, and mooning memes of $100k/coin. T…

> How is the astronomical price a promotion?

Because people are expecting it to get to $100k, which means it's a hot commodity in a speculative bubble. Not everyone who buys into a bubble believes that the underlying fundamentals justify the price in the long run- they just believe that there's room to grow, and that there are greater fools to sell to.

> These have little and nothing to do with the cause of the high price.

Just like the ease and lack of fees of Robinhood spur more stock-buying, Coinbase makes trading crypto easy and facilitates more bandwagoners who further pump up the price.

> That explains why Musk would buy it. That does not explain why anyone else would buy it.

I brought up that reason with Musk in mind. And Tesla buying it has direct second order effects- it popularizes and legitimizes BTC and cause more to buy into it, whether they're familiar with the underlying intentions of BTC or not.

> Obviously, if there weren’t fundamentals, now would be a good time to sell.

People buying in now believe there's still room for the price to rise. An asset with solid fundamentals (Tesla stock, GameStop call options) can also be wildly overvalued. I'm sure similar conversations were happening in 2018.

> Animal spirits are an unnecessary hypothesis for this event.

Look at the market. Look at the economy. Everything is animal spirits now in search of yield.

https://themargins.substack.com/p/zirp-explains-the-world

Re: The Crypto-Chernobyl

#112

Post by Apocryphon »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #108
Apocryphon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's by Stephen Diehl, and as much as this community thinks it's above arguments from authority/ad hominem attacks, it will still favor reputable sources as a means of filtering. So ignoring an argument from him will hardly be sufficient.

It being by Stephen only lowers the credibility. This is the same guy who wrote up a big slide deck insulting all the cretin, moron programmers in his eyes who aren’t using functional programming, by saying we are in the “bloodletting and leeches” stage of software at this point of history. (And then he took down the slide deck after getting backlash.) Stephen is bombastic in all the worst ways, while insulting and l…

I mostly know him as the Haskell expert, so good to know.

Re: The Crypto-Chernobyl

#113

Post by chordalkeyboard »

Apocryphon wrote: post #111
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The best promotion for BTC is simply its price How is the astronomical price a promotion? People want thing when they can get them for less, not pay a record price for them. If you think bitcoin is a good deal at its current price then you must believe there’s some underlying fundamental that makes it worth tens of thousands of dollars. > the ease of setting up a Coinbase account, and mooning memes of $100k/coin. T…

> How is the astronomical price a promotion? Because people are expecting it to get to $100k, which means it's a hot commodity in a speculative bubble. Not everyone who buys into a bubble believes that the underlying fundamentals justify the price in the long run- they just believe that there's room to grow, and that there are greater fools to sell to. > These have little and nothing to do with the cause of the high…

> Everything is animal spirits now in search of yield.

Zirp explains exactly why asset prices are inflating, as I said before, animal spirits are an unnecessary hypothesis.

> Because people are expecting it to get to $100k, which means it's a hot commodity in a speculative bubble. Not everyone who buys into a bubble believes that the underlying fundamentals justify the price in the long run- they just believe that there's room to grow, and that there are greater fools to sell to.

When there are underlying fundamentals, as in the case of bitcoin, its not necessary to speculate on why people might buy a thing otherwise. Certainly there are people who buy because its trendy. Thats not really relevant though.

Re: The Crypto-Chernobyl

#114

Post by Apocryphon »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #113
Apocryphon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is the astronomical price a promotion? Because people are expecting it to get to $100k, which means it's a hot commodity in a speculative bubble. Not everyone who buys into a bubble believes that the underlying fundamentals justify the price in the long run- they just believe that there's room to grow, and that there are greater fools to sell to. > These have little and nothing to do with the cause of the high…

> Everything is animal spirits now in search of yield. Zirp explains exactly why asset prices are inflating, as I said before, animal spirits are an unnecessary hypothesis. > Because people are expecting it to get to $100k, which means it's a hot commodity in a speculative bubble. Not everyone who buys into a bubble believes that the underlying fundamentals justify the price in the long run- they just believe that th…

I think it all goes back to your original statement about bitcoin enthusiasts being more likely to have a better understanding of fiat than the average person. Upon closer retrospection, you are probably right, because even if the BTC market might be dominated by bandwagoners who are only preoccupied about asset value and the potential for reselling it for real fiat money once it's at a desired price, the "enthusiasts" probably do in fact understand the technology enough to understand its implications.

Re: The Crypto-Chernobyl

#116

Post by lumost »

sollewitt wrote: post #110
JoshTko wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of Iceland's electricity is already from bitcoin mining so at the very least 1/12 of total bitcoin mining is from geothermal. The first youtube hit for bitcoin mine gives another operation in the US using hydro electricity. Any operations using costly electricity will quickly be put out of business of more efficient operations as mining hardware prices matches demand.

But we could be using that _to be becoming carbon neutral_

On the flip side, the extra grid demand for renewable energy in optimal locations may accelerate renewable adoption. Grids and infrastructure are not free.

Re: The Crypto-Chernobyl

#117

Post by ncmncm »

emteycz wrote: post #68
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We transport electricity all the time, and we get better at it every year. Do you live next to a power plant? Or even in sight of a power plant? No, because we have a power grid to move this electricity around. I can assure you that new power generation plants are built with electricity transportation in mind. Surely you don't think that power plants are being built in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no way to…

> Do you live next to a power plant? Or even in sight of a power plant? No, because we have a power grid to move this electricity around. Of course I do. There are solars and wind turbines all around me , not even talking about the natural gas and coal powerplants I can see right out of my window near the edge of the city. And every year there are many gigawatts of electricity from these exact powerplants right next…

Bitcoin miners are often, instead, stealing the power used to mine. We are more used to this for Monero coins, where the equipment used is fleets of hijacked PCs, but bitcoin miners using custom equipment are not less clever than Monero miners.

People are paying for the power, just not the same people as are getting the bitcoins mined with it.

This is easier to arrange in places with more retail corruption, like China, Russia, and Venezuela, than in (say) the US, where corruption is wholesale, concentrated higher up. But mining on US military bases and naval vessels, by contractors, is probably not negligible; or at commercial nuke plants where the marginal cost of generation is negligible and ratepayers have already been robbed to pay for construction. The variety of ways found to steal abstract property has always been very, very large, and bitcoin miners are not a bit shy.

We cannot assume the stolen power is all or mostly renewable. For example, we may guess that Venezuelan, Nigerian, and Saudi mining uses power from oil, Russian largely from gas, Chinese from coal.

The fraction of bitcoins mined from stolen power may be estimated by comparing the market value of new coins to the retail value of the power that was needed to produce them.

Re: The Crypto-Chernobyl

#118

Post by pmiller2 »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #113
Apocryphon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is the astronomical price a promotion? Because people are expecting it to get to $100k, which means it's a hot commodity in a speculative bubble. Not everyone who buys into a bubble believes that the underlying fundamentals justify the price in the long run- they just believe that there's room to grow, and that there are greater fools to sell to. > These have little and nothing to do with the cause of the high…

> Everything is animal spirits now in search of yield. Zirp explains exactly why asset prices are inflating, as I said before, animal spirits are an unnecessary hypothesis. > Because people are expecting it to get to $100k, which means it's a hot commodity in a speculative bubble. Not everyone who buys into a bubble believes that the underlying fundamentals justify the price in the long run- they just believe that th…

What are these "fundamentals" you speak of? Why should I pay anything at all for a record of the fact that someone, sometime in the past solved a useless math problem?

Re: The Crypto-Chernobyl

#119

Post by ncmncm »

wsinks wrote: post #34
justforyou wrote: post #5

It's disengenuous to make that argument without a comparison to the full manifold energy consumption required to support fiat cash... (including things like burning gasoline and jet fuel to move paper and metal for shredding/melting.)

I know I just replied, but I just thought of something I hadn't thought of. How many of these Bitcoin miners are using their mining rigs as heaters? I'd be more stoked on it then. There was a Dutch company I knew that was using a distributed protocol to combine data computation in people's homes and have the heat be an actual dependable byproduct. I hope they're doing well. Such a cool idea.

All of such heating that occurs instead of using the power to drive a heat pump is at a net cost to society. Even in Iceland, generating power instead of piping the heat directly to the building is an expense.

Re: The Crypto-Chernobyl

#120

Post by programmarchy »

paul_f wrote: post #6
justforyou wrote: post #5

It's disengenuous to make that argument without a comparison to the full manifold energy consumption required to support fiat cash... (including things like burning gasoline and jet fuel to move paper and metal for shredding/melting.)

I don't think we need a detailed study for most everyone to accept that fiat cash is several orders of magnitude less energy costly than bitcoin

What’s hilarious about this argument is that people with an axe to grind with cryptocurrency suddenly become hyper-libertarians. They criticize its waste and inefficiency, while lauding fiat currency backed by the state, with all its largesse, as a paragon of efficiency. It’s sour grapes disguised as moral righteousness.
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