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Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

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Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#381

Post by dang »

Certhas wrote: post #186
kryogen1c wrote: post #100

> responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages red flag this article is steeped in pseudoscience. you could spend a lifetime trying to model and predict global weather patterns _with no outside intervention_. the idea that you could even make an attempt at attaching a number to this phenomena is laughable. what are the error bars here, 10,000%? lets pretend, for example, you tried to estimate the impact of tsu…

You clearly haven't actually looked at how the damages are modelled have you? You just in your head inveneted a naive way in which to estimate damages and then argued that that doesn't work. There is a large and robust literature to assess these type of damages (search for Social Cost of Carbon). The methodological challenges are discussed really well in the paper actually. Much of the damages calculated here aren't…

Please omit personal swipes from your HN comments, no matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. Your comment would be just fine without the first paragraph.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#382

Post by dang »

This submission broke the site guidelines, which ask: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Cherry-picking a detail and making that the title instead is the primary form of editorializing, so please don't do that. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Titles are by far the biggest influence on threads, so this matters a lot. Changing the title this way made a flamewar much more likely.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#383

Post by GavinMcG »

effie wrote: post #375
jf22 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a meme'y reply that boils down to pure whatabouism.

What is wrong with search for some comparisons and perspective? Everything has externalities, let's compare them to see how big of an elephant this really is.

Nothing's wrong with it. But the fact that this paper looks at a specific different piece of the puzzle doesn't make it bad. You're just asking for an entirely different piece of research, and criticizing this even though it's a step toward being able to make that comparison.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#384

Post by GavinMcG »

throwaway20875 wrote: post #361
jf22 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We should focus on the important polluters, not minor consumers Do you feel the same way about causes of death? Imagine saying "who cares Cystic Fibrosis kills x people, heart disease is worse!" Also, other consumers like cement, fossil fuel production, and plastics HAVE been focused on. Bitcoin is new and only recently popular so we don't know much about it and it's true cost.

>Imagine saying "who cares Cystic Fibrosis kills x people, heart disease is worse!" You're completely missing the point here: we have finite time and resources to deal with problems. We must dedicate these finite time and resources in the most efficient way to possible to achieve the most desired outcome. If by "worse" you mean "heart disease causes more deaths and drives higher social costs" then yes there is a stro…

This paper is just saying there are reasonably estimable costs. That's all!

It's not even trying to address the bigger argument you're talking about.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#385

Post by throwaway20875 »

GavinMcG wrote: post #384
throwaway20875 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Imagine saying "who cares Cystic Fibrosis kills x people, heart disease is worse!" You're completely missing the point here: we have finite time and resources to deal with problems. We must dedicate these finite time and resources in the most efficient way to possible to achieve the most desired outcome. If by "worse" you mean "heart disease causes more deaths and drives higher social costs" then yes there is a stro…

This paper is just saying there are reasonably estimable costs . That's all! It's not even trying to address the bigger argument you're talking about.

>This paper is just saying there are reasonably estimable costs. That's all!

Wrong. You make numerous comments in this thread asserting that the sole focus on this paper is quantifying externalities of crypto mining when that's plainly false. The paper is prescribing policy options for dealing with crypto externalities and birthing new loaded clinical terms to ascribe solely to those externalities: "cryptodamage". Read it.

"As an alternative to intervening in emergent cryptocurrency markets through prices (e.g., taxation) or outright restricting their development, there may be a role for government investment into R&D that focuses on designing mining puzzles that greatly reduce energy consumption (and thus production costs) while still allowing for secure validation of anonymous transactions. Fully vetting and encouraging such currency alternatives might retain the libertarian social benefits of the blockchain [35] while making “the last Bitcoin” irrelevant. Although there will still be private benefits captured from mining under possible low-energy design alternatives, as illustrated here there would be significant public good benefits (reduced cryptodamages) to justify such government investments into R&D. Importantly, such investments in R&D are not mutually exclusive with taxing to internalize cryptodamages, and may also come with the potential to generate spin-off benefits from blockchain technology more generally."

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#386

Post by effie »

karpour wrote: post #245
ngneer wrote: post #194

All money has cost. How does Bitcoin cost compare to the cost of the mint and keeping dollars in circulation?

Massive. Just as an example, a Bitcoin transaction uses 12.000.000 times as much energy as a VISA transaction. I'm honestly getting tired of this argument. Just think about how much energy a Bitcoin transaction uses. Then scale that up to the entire U.S. worth of transactions. Go figure.

The difference in capabilities is also massive. With VISA you need also a good standing with the Uncle. With bitcoin nobody can stop the transaction.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#387

Post by GavinMcG »

throwaway20875 wrote: post #385
GavinMcG wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This paper is just saying there are reasonably estimable costs . That's all! It's not even trying to address the bigger argument you're talking about.

>This paper is just saying there are reasonably estimable costs. That's all! Wrong. You make numerous comments in this thread asserting that the sole focus on this paper is quantifying externalities of crypto mining when that's plainly false. The paper is prescribing policy options for dealing with crypto externalities and birthing new loaded clinical terms to ascribe solely to those externalities: "cryptodamage". Re…

I did read it, before I made "numerous comments."

Papers discuss the implications and applications of their work. That discussion is not the work itself; it is meant to give a starting point for fitting the work with other research or doing new research that builds on the work. Thus, the authors "close by sharing our brief thoughts on policy implications of recognizing cryptodamages." That section mentions a wide range of policy implications—several paragraphs that you didn't bother quoting—without advocating for anything in particular beyond reducing harm.

Frankly, that leaves it sounding like what you're really bothered by is that the paper points out that there is harm, and advocates for reducing it. And if that's the real problem—that you don't like it when someone speaks up and says hey, this has quantifiable downsides—just be honest about it.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#388

Post by effie »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #144
dosenbrot wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As European citizen I don't really trust the Euros or Dollars. Just think about the loss in value If you own money. Even if the official 2% inflation, its still 2% lost of value. And now with Corona they printing billions of Euros and the inlfation will stay at 2% ... sure.

The whole point of inflation is that your money is actually used to do things. Were those currencies to deflate, it would literally be more beneficial to not touch them. Ever. Investments would grind down to a halt, and why would you do groceries now when you could get more if you waited for next week ? Even as a hardcore socialist, it's worrying that cryptobots have failed econ 101.

GP shows more understanding than you do. Inflation means savings in cash decrease in time, that's why you don't keep big savings in cash or standard bank account but you invest. Besides stocks, maybe gold, maybe cryptocurrencies.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#389

Post by stjohnswarts »

martin-adams wrote: post #191
BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #126

While this is sad, this is a self correcting problem. Miners and other people using bitcoins are going to get tired at some point of the loss from buying all this energy to keep their bitcoin assets going. The most scary part of cryptocoins is the deflationary cycle that makes these crypto asset potentially displace productive investment on an economy wide scale. This is not self correcting. This is Moloch, it's a pr…

> Miners and other people using bitcoins are going to get tired at some point of the loss from buying all this energy to keep their bitcoin assets going Someone might have a better insight to me. My concern is that the demand for energy will push up the price for everyone and it's actually those on lower incomes who will suffer the most. While the economics might eventually get there to solve the problem, could it do…

We all suffer because it pollutes the environment ridiculous amounts for something that is still of dubious worth to society (we already have plenty currencies). The amount of power needed goes asymptotically to infinity as bit coins are mined. It will have to eventually fix itself because of that as other have argued, but before then it's going to do a lot of unnecessary damage to the environment.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#390

Post by stjohnswarts »

ROARosen wrote: post #208
BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #126

While this is sad, this is a self correcting problem. Miners and other people using bitcoins are going to get tired at some point of the loss from buying all this energy to keep their bitcoin assets going. The most scary part of cryptocoins is the deflationary cycle that makes these crypto asset potentially displace productive investment on an economy wide scale. This is not self correcting. This is Moloch, it's a pr…

> Miners and other people using bitcoins are going to get tired at some point of the loss from buying all this energy to keep their bitcoin assets going The only reason miners mine (at least most of them) is because they get a return on their upfront energy costs by the rewarded BTC, so why would they suddenly get tired of it?

After bitcoin collapses (bubble pops) they won't be willing to mine for 2 years to get a block of coins when it's worth maybe $2
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