Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

Post by cesarb » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

frankenst1 wrote: post #111

endisneigh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is it a poor way to communicate anything useful? if sending someone a dollar through venmo costs $0.0000001 worth of electricity and sending someone a dollar through the bitcoin network costs $1 doesn't that communicate everything you need to know?

Probably because twice the amount of transactions do require as much energy as half of the amount of transactions or as much energy as no transactions at all, i.e. Bitcoin's energy usage depends on the difficulty of mining a block which is not affected by the number of transactions in a block.

Post by xkjkls » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

jjtheblunt wrote: post #252

adolph wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the cause of many of humanity's biggest problems is humans As opposed to elephants or sea urchins? How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems? The Buddha taught there are three kinds of dukkha [usually translated as “suffering”]. The first kind is physical and mental pain from the inevitable stresses of life like old age, sickness, and death. The second is the distress we feel as a result of imperm…

i suspect the assertion was thought of as "nowadays", whereas 150 years ago infectious disease might have been humanity's biggest problem.

Post by luigeus » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

Post by xkjkls » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

nelsontodd wrote: post #54

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.

This is silly. Consensus (probably, I am doubtful of PoS) isn't free. You get a choice between bitcoin mining and military force. Which do you find less harmful? Edit: I should clarify. I am saying that the status of the USD as a reserve currency has led to lots of US military action.

Post by BTCOG » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #221

rhacker wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many times has this been used in practice? Like really - did your friend owe you $200 and you wanted to make sure he couldn't pay you something over square and then call his credit company and say his card was lost? Like are you a shop online and you wanted to make sure ALL of your customers are paying in Bitcoin so they can't claim someone stole their card? Are you a party to a lawsuit and the judge decided to o…

Security is not usually the main use case of a service, but a necessary feature of one. Bitcoin can do many things, and its main use case right now is store of wealth, so with your examples you've demonstrated you don't understand its most basic function. When you notice that multi billion dollar transactions of Bitcoin are made every blue moon you might not be scoffing at what its security protocol is providing it.