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

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

#361

Post by nickelcitymario » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

SiempreViernes wrote: post #330

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…

One year into a worldwide pandemic affecting every aspect of life and you have a hard time finding examples of really bad things not caused by human? That's some committed misanthropy, I got to give you that.

Naw, even the mildest and laziest of misanthropes could find reasons to blame humanity for the pandemic and all its effects. Commitment not required.

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

#362

Post by mrmanner » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote: post #325

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…

> How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems? That's a pretty good indicator of a civilization's state. For an advanced one, the answer to your question would be "it's nowhere near the top worries". All human-made horrors (war, climate change, etc.) would be left far behind. If we were as smart as we think we are, our biggest problems would be rogue asteroids, solar storms and aggressive aliens, not…

True, but also the other way around: A less advanced civilization would have much more trouble with elephants, sea urchins, bacteria, and other natural factors than with humans.

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

#363

Post by Geee » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

whitepaint wrote: post #75

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #56

I say Bill Gates is bad for the Planet. The reality is PoW is the only consensus mechanism that is secure today. PoS is not secure. It will never be secure. It takes energy to secure money, it is that simple. We will spend as much energy as is needed to secure the bitcoin monetary supply - the economic prosperity of the planet is at risk! For all those folks out there begging for PoS bitcoin, it will never happen. Yo…

> PoS is not secure. That is quite a huge claim. You need to give some arguments for this.

There's nothing 'huge' with this claim. It's basic knowledge.

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

#364

Post by tomp » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

meowkit wrote: post #253

saalweachter wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what actually bothers me the most about all crypto-currencies? None of them are actually money, like in the paper-or-gold-coin sense. They're all ledgers. The thing about money is that I can hand it to someone . Possession of the money is possession of the money and third parties don't need to get involved in every transaction. I can hand someone dollars and take a sandwich and walk away, transaction done. T…

> The thing about money is that I can hand it to someone. Honestly don’t know if you’re trolling or just old. I used paper money once last year. To buy weed. Because the federal government has determined I am not responsible enough to use or own weed. No one I know uses physical cash anymore. We’re moving away from physical items where possible, not toward it. I would rather have my currency on a public DLT than cont…

As you've discovered yourself once last year, the option of using cash (without permission / knowledge of a third party) is more important than actually using it.

This is the same misleading argument as when people claim that BTC is in practice equivalent to USD as most people just keep it on exchanges (same as USD in banks). Yes, but BTC/crypto also gives you one new option, i.e. not keepign money on an exchange ("being your own bank"). You're free to take that option, or not - but it exists.

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

#365

Post by noxer » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #256

superbcarrot wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it's hard to argue that Bitcoin isn't the best on many of those measures Seems pretty easy to me. What is Bitcoin best at apart from having the largest market cap?

* Longest running network. * Largest network by nodes. * Largest network hashrate / Most energy consumed. * Simple Satoshi Codebase. * Most accessible - blockchain delivered via satellite! * One can run a node on a RPi. Requires 351G storage for full chain. Eth is TB's (and growing), requires SSD, fast CPU, etc. You are not running ETH nodes at home. * Most decentralized * Most reliable

Half of them are debatable and the rest is true but useless.

You gain nothing from using a system that's 12 year old over one that's 6 years old. Also more nodes just dont add any usefulness anymore at some point, it just more not better.

Reliable is useless without comparing it to something else. BTC had unintentional forks and many small possible double spends and all that stuff in the last 12 years. Its overall reliable, sure but at what metric. Incidents per time? incidents per Tx? Or just the fact that it didn't die in the last 12 years?

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

#366

Post by tiku » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #220

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.

You know what actually bothers me the most about all crypto-currencies? None of them are actually money, like in the paper-or-gold-coin sense. They're all ledgers. The thing about money is that I can hand it to someone . Possession of the money is possession of the money and third parties don't need to get involved in every transaction. I can hand someone dollars and take a sandwich and walk away, transaction done. T…

With an offline wallet we can just give each other some tokens? The ledger is just to keep track of it.

This is why it will be very handy for African countries where no-one has a bank account but they do have cell-phones.

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

#367

Post by rawtxapp » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

mtinkerhess wrote: post #311

mensetmanusman wrote: post #289

Whats worse for the planet are governments, like those in Venezuela, that are causing so much human suffering that their population needs the existence of BTC to survive.

"What about..." There are better solutions.

Such as?

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

#368

Post by ncallaway » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #210

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.

> 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…

> As opposed to elephants or sea urchins? How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?

Dinosaurs' biggest problems was asteroids. There are plenty of externalities outside of human control, or that humans are only marginally responsible for (asteroids, gamma ray bursts, volcanic eruptions, famine due to crop diseases, pandemics, etc).

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

#369

Post by ddeyar » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

fsociety wrote: post #151

mavhc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Don't forget, it is written in a purely functional language. So they are able to apply formal verification to the code. They adopted recently privacy-preserving smart contracts. They are able to adapt all the good stuff other chains are testing. Therefore some people say other blockchains are just their test net.

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

#370

Post by Ruphin » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #256

superbcarrot wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it's hard to argue that Bitcoin isn't the best on many of those measures Seems pretty easy to me. What is Bitcoin best at apart from having the largest market cap?

* Longest running network. * Largest network by nodes. * Largest network hashrate / Most energy consumed. * Simple Satoshi Codebase. * Most accessible - blockchain delivered via satellite! * One can run a node on a RPi. Requires 351G storage for full chain. Eth is TB's (and growing), requires SSD, fast CPU, etc. You are not running ETH nodes at home. * Most decentralized * Most reliable

I am running ETH nodes at home, on RPis. They are even participating in the (future) consensus model through PoS.

I'm a fan of Bitcoin, and I'm not sure why the random need to criticize Ethereum here. Bitcoin has enough reasons to be useful, no need to be insecure about other projects being useful too.