Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet • Hacker News Board

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#151

Post by fsociety » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

mavhc wrote: post #24

jetpackjoe wrote: post #9

There are so many better crypto-currencies. Better for the environment because they use proof-of-stake, and not proof-of-work. Better for users because transactions are confirmed in seconds, not hours, and without the ridiculous fees that Bitcoin has. I think this shows how truly powerful the network effect, and being first to market is. Because without those things, Bitcoin would be nothing.

Which proof of stake systems currently exist and work well?

Tezos is interesting, upgrades happen without forks and are voted on-the-chain. It’s developer-friendly and seeing slow adoption with some governments. Allegedly France’s C3N uses it and Reno is testing it with NFTs.

Bonus points for it being overseen by a Swiss non-profit, they fund development efforts and encourage adoption.

Who knows what the end result it, but I think the ideas there make it favorable compared to BTC and ETH. Not to mention lower transaction fees :).

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#152

Post by tester756 » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

whoisninja wrote: post #74

Steve Balmer and Bill also used to call Linux a cancer but look now: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-07/hackers-b... their OS filled with malicious stuff and who knows what kind of backdoors is when exploited by hackers, they blame it on China rather than taking responsibility of putting users at risk with vulnerable OS

"Linux is a cancer" - opinion

"Bitcoin is bad for the planet" - fact(?)

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#153

Post by bikamonki » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

If I understand correctly, by design PoW gets harder with time, so it becomes ever more expensive to mine BTC. At some point, it should be economically unfeasible. Now, BTC is rewarded for transaction validation. Does this mean, that at some point in the future, it will be impossibly expensive to validate a new block, hence making it imposible to conduct a BTC transaction between two addresses?

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#154

Post by wtf_is_up » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

kitcar wrote: post #11

Bitcoin is an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws (greed, unwillingness to acknowledge externalities - i.e. selfishness). It's that old SF-trope that the cause of many of humanity's biggest problems is humans.

So we can expect it to proliferate like silicon valley adtech companies.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#155

Post by tester756 » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

whoisninja wrote: post #104

whoisninja wrote: post #74

Steve Balmer and Bill also used to call Linux a cancer but look now: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-07/hackers-b... their OS filled with malicious stuff and who knows what kind of backdoors is when exploited by hackers, they blame it on China rather than taking responsibility of putting users at risk with vulnerable OS

these people had fiduciary duties to make money for their investors. they've only lived in that world their entire life. It doesn't matter what they say about things. Read, learn and make your own conclusions if you will. and as Linus Torvalds simply put it decades ago: that these people are out there to make money and not make world a better place even if they pretend .

>and not make world a better place even if they pretend .

I think MS made computer adaptation over the world significantly faster, but I'm not sure about it.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#156

Post by pmarreck » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

jetpackjoe wrote: post #9

There are so many better crypto-currencies. Better for the environment because they use proof-of-stake, and not proof-of-work. Better for users because transactions are confirmed in seconds, not hours, and without the ridiculous fees that Bitcoin has. I think this shows how truly powerful the network effect, and being first to market is. Because without those things, Bitcoin would be nothing.

Actually, isn't it the case that the first to market often fails, and it's really the second or third to market that usually has the better investment opportunity?

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#157

Post by bouncycastle » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 4:47 PM UTC

Ceezy wrote: post #85

mumblemumble wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're moving toward PoS, which should help with that: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms...

They are talking about POS in ethereum since years.

Their mainnet PoS network went live last december. The aim is to turn off PoW next year.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#158

Post by throwaway4good » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 4:47 PM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #35

hacknat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think Ethereum will overtake Bitcoin eventually in usage. In some ways it already has. Ethereum's transaction fees are set to drop like a rock over the next few years, and so many useful things are built on it already.

Doesn't Ethereum have the same environmental issues?

Worse as it is specifically designed to run on GPUs.

They would like to switch to proof of stake and plan to do so next year.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#159

Post by the_local_host » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 4:47 PM UTC

shiado wrote: post #62

The irony is that the exact society destabilizing grand visions of the future billionaires advocate for are some of the main drivers behind people embracing Bitcoin. If you push a "you own nothing" WEF approved dystopian tech oligarch reality don't be surprised when people adopt an asset that cannot be confiscated by the government.

> An asset that cannot be confiscated by the government

It might be intractable to confiscate bitcoin by attacking the math, but why wouldn't governments just put people in jail until they pay up? With adequate control over the internet, governments would be fairly able to track who's transacting.

Moreover for the vast majority of people on earth would still have basically zero money relative to the emerging bitcoin oligarchs. It would be a grossly unequal society, where there would need to be some non-math-based approach to getting money from the wealthy to redistribute to the less fortunate.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#160

Post by wyldfire » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 4:47 PM UTC

gnrlst wrote: post #143

wbobeirne wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What defines a currency being "better" than another? Is it number of transactions? Is it acceptance among merchants? Is it low fees? Is it stability in purchasing power? Is it likelihood that there will be a fatal flaw in the system that causes financial loss? Every project has its own strengths and weaknesses, but it's hard to argue that Bitcoin isn't the best on many of those measures. It's all about which of them…

All the features mentioned above. For example: - transaction times - energy consumption - scalability (BTC currently does 7tx/s) - security (BTC is getting more centralized over time, increasing the risk of a majority takeover.) - fewer fees as possible (ideally 0) BTC only has first mover advantage, and security...for now.

I'm a big fan of bitcoin and a few altcoins, including some PoS. But I feel like you are understating bitcoin's security. It has been very well tested and has a large bounty - both in its market cap and value of transactions that have not been susceptible to any double-spend attacks.

Other coins might sound good on paper -- adding new features but introducing serious design errors that have yet to be discovered because they're not a big enough target.