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Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

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

#501
post #480

What's bad for the planet is how decades of individual work output in money can be confiscated (by printing and inflation, not taxation) by the Government under the pretense of doing good. What's bizarre is that the Government is not affected by market forces while the rest of us plebs are forced to be efficient lest we lose to competition. Note: when I say confiscation, I mean money printing and not taxes (which wil…

What of the social contract? The dystopia I see in your words: government as an efficient service provider providing for and competing for the patronage of the ultra-wealthy holders of cryptocurrency: the monopoly on force is broken because wealth is forever exempt. Socialized, societal wealth of all forms - roads, healthcare, police, defense - discarded. The underclass of every nation left without recourse to the po…

Taxation will not disappear in a crypto world, and that's how government would fund themselves. Societal wealth will continue in the form of roads, police, healthcare etc. Govt. will have to be resourceful about how it spends its tax earnings. The key difference is that Government can't go money printer brr whenever tax revenues aren't enough simply because they don't allocate resources efficiently. Tax rates in the US are high enough already. If they were increased more, people might leave. In a crypto world, there would be genuine pressure for the Government to lean up and cut back on unnecessary spending.

In a world where resources are constrained, you will not have SF county spending $61k per year per tent for the homeless. The state would die if they spent with such unconcern. https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/S-F-pays-61-000-a-...

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

#502

Bitcoin itself is not bad for the Planet. The current implementation differs somewhat from the Satoshi vision and has not scaled well in terms of fossil-fuel based electricity consumption. Solar or wind powered Bitcoin would have little impact, and in the right areas be cheaper for the miners. This is a trend I expect to see take off. Also, I suspect Bitcoin at some point will migrate to Proof of Stake once aspects o…

Wow, this got a negative reaction. As far as I know nothing I said is inaccurate. The solar/wind bitcoin not being bad is conjecture.

I hope someone will help me out by pointing out why my comment was low quality, so I know what not to do next time.

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

#503
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.

Not a bitcoin fanboy, but that's a bit strong a statement. What is "greed" versus motivation for innovation? Is innovation rewarded with (taxed, regulated) wealth greed, and if so, is that "bad"? And if it creates Teslas and rockets that land, and robots on Mars that last a year or more analyzing samples, is it a fatal flaw? Some more questions... So let's say BTC is greed - the many financial instruments out there,…

> many financial instruments out there, derivatives, credit default swaps, funds of funds, the crazy options stuff going on ... and you drew the line at BTC?

That seems like you are putting words into the GP’s mouth.

Nobody is saying these other instruments aren’t also ‘greed’, just that Bitcoin is no better.

That’s relevant because one part of the Bitcoin narrative is that it is actually better in some way, and not just another speculative instrument.

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

#504
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.

You could say the same about Windows though

No, you couldn't.

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

#505

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.

Yeah, I think bitcoin has been completely surpassed technologically speaking. Monero in particular solved almost all of bitcoin's problems yet still can't compete with it in popularity.

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

#506
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.

Yes, and the selective bail outs and inflation which favor the rich are just the opposite!

> Yes, and the selective bail outs and inflation which favor the rich are just the opposite!

Doesn't inflation favor people having debt? Esp. since salaries follow inflation.

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

#507

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 "solution" people came up with to this problem was to not solve the problem, and instead solve a different problem, how to have a distributed ledger. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

[deleted]

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

#508
I know, nobody really cares about facts in these Crypto flame wars, any more: It's libertarian economic liberation against greed and ecological destruction, right vs. left, democratic versus republican, the usual polarization these days. However, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

If anybody's interested, here is a fair analysis of Bitcoin's carbon foot print (2019), I found recently: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...

TL;DR: While there is this "energy consumption of Argentina" number in circulation implying Bitcoin's carbon emissions equates that of a whole developed country, in reality this number is closer to that of Kansas City.

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

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Seems correct to me. Just this morning I had the choice of paying for groceries either with Bitcoin or by launching a violent invasion of the store.

You forget about the violent invasions that allowed the USD to maintain its value while you were paying for groceries lol

Quite to the contrary, it was obviously part of their point. :P Poster is definitely not endorsing violent invasions.
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