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Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

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Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#61

Post by cableshaft »

Rallerbabs wrote: post #56
cableshaft wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree there are people that are buying in now that think there's no risk that Bitcoin will go down, and think it's only going to keep going up, and will probably sell as soon as it drops and lose a lot of money. There's definitely a risk it could go down. Bitcoin has been super volatile in the past, and has cratered to 20% of its price before and probably will again. Might even be relatively soon (within a ye…

The real estate & bitcoin comparison is apples & oranges. Real estate existed (and still exists) in a world of inflationary government IOUs (read: fiat). People were taking out too many & too large loans. Ofcourse it was going to go bust. People were talking about it. The author of the book he linked, was being a contrarian. Bitcoin has created its own reality, which has only just started to gain traction. It's the e…

I'm not arguing it's going to die out. I may or may not be one of those someones who has had at least a little bitcoin since it was priced $220 (or earlier).

But while we may be nearing (or at) the end of the era of crazy drops, where everyone thinks "Oh crap, it's all over, time to jump off the ship!" and bitcoin is now in a 2+ year bear run, I can't discount the possibility, and the price still swings up and down in price quite a bit even as recently as two months ago, so I think it's possible that we could see see a fairly big, somewhat sustained drop again (maybe not a whopping 80% drop, but 30-40% maybe? I'm also hopeful it won't last as long, like maybe only 6-12 months, not 24 months).

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#62

Post by cableshaft »

blueblob wrote: post #60
cableshaft wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree there are people that are buying in now that think there's no risk that Bitcoin will go down, and think it's only going to keep going up, and will probably sell as soon as it drops and lose a lot of money. There's definitely a risk it could go down. Bitcoin has been super volatile in the past, and has cratered to 20% of its price before and probably will again. Might even be relatively soon (within a ye…

In my mind this comparison isn't exactly the right way of looking at it. Most of the early buyers who held on bought full shares of bitcoin before fractional shares were an option. The people buying it at 48,000 are likely buying fractional shares. So they're not necessarily invested at the full risk of losing such a significant amount of money. I think this is part of the reason it's going up.

Pretty sure it's always had fractional shares. I was following it somewhat back then. Granted, it was worth so little that most people didn't bother except for maybe the fees, but it was fractional by design from the start, I'm pretty sure.

Regardless of people buying fractional shares, I see plenty of people on the bitcoin subreddit going "I'm a noob at bitcoin, and FOMO bought 0.1/0.2/0.4 coin yesterday for $46k, did I make a mistake, is it about to drop?"

Those people are still putting in thousands of dollars, and some of those people probably aren't so financially stable that they feel comfortable seeing the price of bitcoin drop 20% in 48 hours like it did a month ago, they could end up selling and losing thousands of dollars as a result.

I only put in a little every month, money that I'd probably just waste otherwise, so I'm really happy it's up but I'm not super stressed when it drops. But I acknowledge that not everyone does what I do.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#63

Post by Rallerbabs »

cableshaft wrote: post #61
Rallerbabs wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real estate & bitcoin comparison is apples & oranges. Real estate existed (and still exists) in a world of inflationary government IOUs (read: fiat). People were taking out too many & too large loans. Ofcourse it was going to go bust. People were talking about it. The author of the book he linked, was being a contrarian. Bitcoin has created its own reality, which has only just started to gain traction. It's the e…

I'm not arguing it's going to die out. I may or may not be one of those someones who has had at least a little bitcoin since it was priced $220 (or earlier). But while we may be nearing (or at) the end of the era of crazy drops, where everyone thinks "Oh crap, it's all over, time to jump off the ship!" and bitcoin is now in a 2+ year bear run, I can't discount the possibility, and the price still swings up and down i…

The bear market was actually closer to 3 years. But that ended a while back. It's now solidly in a bull market.

Bitcoin is fantastic. But even fantastic assets can become overvalued. And indeed, this will happen again. There will be another bear market.

I keep myself up to date on the market sentiment every day. I have been doing this for years now. The current sentiment is that we are in the middle of the bull market. Both billionaires as well as retail buyers have only just arrived.

Everything is going much, much higher for at least the rest of the year.

If the market cycle repeats like last time, the bull market will last at least the larger part of this year.

If the cycle is lengthening, as you'd expect when market cap grows larger, then the current bull rally will last longer still: say... to the end of 2022.

The question is: are we currently at the knee of a larger S-curve?

If so, then we are truly witnessing a rare event, in which asset appreciations will truly blow us off our socks.

In such an event, bitcoin would become too scarce for it to do another 85% retrace, which is what it's done in previous market cycles.

(Any by the way... the 30-40% figure are considered normal retraces, of which we usually have multiple during a larger bitcoin bull run.)

Billionaire Michael Saylor from Microstrategies is saying that he's not selling. Billionaires are, in this regard, different from retail, who do sell.

The only way to estimate bottoms and tops successfully, is to be right on top of it every day of every week.

You snooze, you lose.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#64

Post by cableshaft »

Rallerbabs wrote: post #63
cableshaft wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing it's going to die out. I may or may not be one of those someones who has had at least a little bitcoin since it was priced $220 (or earlier). But while we may be nearing (or at) the end of the era of crazy drops, where everyone thinks "Oh crap, it's all over, time to jump off the ship!" and bitcoin is now in a 2+ year bear run, I can't discount the possibility, and the price still swings up and down i…

The bear market was actually closer to 3 years. But that ended a while back. It's now solidly in a bull market. Bitcoin is fantastic. But even fantastic assets can become overvalued. And indeed, this will happen again. There will be another bear market. I keep myself up to date on the market sentiment every day. I have been doing this for years now. The current sentiment is that we are in the middle of the bull marke…

Yeah I don't really think we're actually in disagreement here. I pretty much share your thoughts in this comment.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#65

Post by glial »

Rallerbabs wrote: post #35
ForHackernews wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the neutral language moves the needle. People have been pointing out for years that using more energy than all of Denmark to handle fewer transactions than a mid-sized Walmart is not a recipe for success. There are too many bagholders, excuse me, "investors" who are financially motivated to keep pushing this stuff.

Bitcoin is at all time high, meaning just about everybody who ever bought bitcoin is currently in profit. There are very few bagholders.

It’s not profit till you sell/spend it.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#66

Post by cbzbc »

zyphr wrote: post #19

The locked up energy used for mining was never available to populated area's in the first place, it is exces energy. It's a bit like if you compare taking a shower in the middle of the desert with standing under a water fall and telling someone not to waste water while standing there because you consume as much water as 10000 people.

If you are generating electricity where it cannot be used, then you are causing needless environmental damage and you should almost certainly stop doing that.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#67

Post by orwin »

cableshaft wrote: post #54
pdpi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Anarchic" is a perfectly reasonable, even necessary, descriptor for cryptocurrencies. They were born in the cypherpunk community, and Bitcoin cites Wei Dai's B-money, which directly namechecks Tim May's Crypto-anarchist manifesto.

That was the first one I noticed, and if it was only that word in isolation (without the rest) I wouldn't have bothered making the comment. Regardless of how it was born, I don't think it qualifies as anarchy now, especially with how it can be tracked and regulated (indirectly, i.e. it can be banned, transactions taxed, exchanges subpoena'd for transaction information, ledgers tracked, etc) by governments.

And, tbh, its IS greenwashing, and it is almost more blatant than Total and Exxon.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#68

Post by dralley »

powvans wrote: post #45
reedf1 wrote: post #14

I am so conflicted about the environmental impact of Proof-Of-Work. In many ways it feels like an arbitrary energy spend - but I think criticizing cryptocurrency for it seems a little disingenuous when we don't apply the same logic to other areas. What's the environmental impact of better refresh rates on monitors? What's the environmental impact of large scale cctv systems? What's the environmental impact of western…

What’s the environmental impact of Zoom running away with my CPU? What about Chrome? I’ve finally accepted that I have to switch to Firefox because of Chrome’s performance problems. Apple and Intel and thermals are a know problem, but Chrome is awful too. There seems to be some sort of problematic interaction between MacOS, Chrome, and Google’s software updater that triggers runaway CPU usage. See: https://mobile.twi…

A single bitcoin transaction (amortized) uses as much electricity as an entire house uses (on average) in more than 2 days.

This is like saying why should a massive agricultural project worry about saving water when your uncle Steve leaves the sink running while brushing his teeth. Or complaining about a splinter while impaled on a 2x4.

The scale of the inefficiency is so large as to be difficult to truly comprehend.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#69

Post by solosoyokaze »

ComodoHacker wrote: post #49
reedf1 wrote: post #14

I am so conflicted about the environmental impact of Proof-Of-Work. In many ways it feels like an arbitrary energy spend - but I think criticizing cryptocurrency for it seems a little disingenuous when we don't apply the same logic to other areas. What's the environmental impact of better refresh rates on monitors? What's the environmental impact of large scale cctv systems? What's the environmental impact of western…

Perhaps it's more reasonable to compare the energy footprint of cryptocurrency with that of our traditional fiat currencies. Including all computing power used by banks to settle their transactions.

You really also need to include the entire military budget (and eco damage) as that's what props up the state, which backs the fiat.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#70

Post by qeternity »

dsukhin wrote: post #30

It's worth comparing Bitcoin's proof of work to other schemes of maintaining currency value to understand this in a relative sense. The Military Industrial Complex which arguably is the mechanism by which the dollar maintains its position as the global reserve currency puts out 152MtCO2/yr [1]. Without making any judgement on if this ratio is reasonable: this is 3-5x more than BTC POW but arguably also contains other…

What in the eff...

That's quite an unbelievable leap. The USD infrastructure and it's energy needs is in no way dependent on reserve status. That's just grasping at straws.

The same plumbing handles a plethora of other, smaller currencies with many orders of magnitude better efficiency than BTC does (yeah yeah Lightning, off chain, blah blah).

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