71–80 of 242 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Worth mentioning the cryptocurrency that Bram Cohen (inventor of bittorrent) is creating that is explicitly designed to be low-energy usage and more distributed: https://www.chia.net/ It uses "Proof of Space" (proof that you're allocating a certain amount of storage space) instead of Proof of Work or Proof of Stake. Pretty interesting and they're coming out of beta into their mainnet in the next few weeks. Their on-c…
And while it may be low energy to run, creating hard drives just to prove you have space seems a less than environmentally friendly activity.
It looks just like another proof of waste
ESG probably stands for Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social_and_corp...
It’s become meaningless. Think of it as crypto, AI/ML/DL, big data, etc of investment management industry.
Worth mentioning the cryptocurrency that Bram Cohen (inventor of bittorrent) is creating that is explicitly designed to be low-energy usage and more distributed: https://www.chia.net/ It uses "Proof of Space" (proof that you're allocating a certain amount of storage space) instead of Proof of Work or Proof of Stake. Pretty interesting and they're coming out of beta into their mainnet in the next few weeks. Their on-c…
You set up a system, which inherently ensures a certain resource will remain/become scarce (...for all of humanity), or fail. That's just super counter-productive for human prosperity...
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.
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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The military budget also props up the energy supply for bitcoin mining.
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…
No other systems I know of are deliberately designed to continuously become less efficient. That's why Bitcoin/PoW is in a different category to me: It's a Red Queen's Race where all the miners are incentivized to keep wasting more and more energy (for no greater benefit) or else risk that somebody else can execute a 51% attack. Imagine if your email host needed to keep burning more and more energy, not to send any m…
Well, there are - think of bcrypt :) It actually fits exactly the definition of design that deliberately becomes less efficient.
Ultimately it's a matter of the perceived cost/benefit - encryption is deemed necessary, so the benefits [perceived] offset the costs, while the cryptocurrencies' benefits don't (or do, depending on the opinion).
Bitcoin critics continue to assert that mining is wasteful and disproportionately damaging to the environment. Contrary to consensus thinking, we believe the impact of bitcoin mining is a net positive for the environment. Here's why: First, proof-of-work mining is critical to Bitcoin. In the Bitcoin network, trustworthiness is protected by computation, and mining is what gives Bitcoin its ability to coordinate trust…