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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

#531

Post by young_unixer »

Avalaxy wrote: post #128
cies wrote: post #65

Billionaire says XYZ bad for environment. I cannot help thinking: what a hypocrite. Poor people are much better for the environment than rich. Not even considering private-jet flying super rich. I think BG has no business telling others what's good/bad for the planet.

I'm pretty sure Bill Gates has a way way bigger net positive impact on the environment than you, or almost any of us here. Just because he is rich doesn't mean he has a net negative impact. Rich people like him have the money and power to make a significant change and do more good than a 1000 of us combined possibly could.

> I'm pretty sure Bill Gates has a way way bigger net positive impact on the environment than you, or almost any of us here.

I've always found that argument presumptuous.

How do you know that someone in this comment section isn't researching a revolutionary way to generate clean electricity? How do you know that the next Elon Musk isn't lurking around here? Maybe that person will have a bigger impact than Bill Gates? Maybe that person is financing their studies thanks to Bitcoin gains? How can you possibly know all of that and just say: Only person X has a pass to be wasteful because no one else here has a net positive impact on the environment.

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

#532

Post by lostgame »

nelsontodd wrote: post #109
pluc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this rich tech billionaire brought about humanity-changing innovations so maybe what he says deserves some attention? Why does _your_ opinion matter?

His status as rich tech billionaire doesn't make a difference unless he is making arguments that are new or interesting. And he isn't. We've all been hearing the environment argument for years now. Plus, there is obviously an argument to be made that he has had a negative overall influence on the world & therefore shouldn't be trusted.

>> Plus, there is obviously an argument to be made that he has had a negative overall influence on the world

That is not only not obvious, but - even with his philanthropy efforts alone, the opposite would be obvious.

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

#533

Post by soledades »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #436
soledades wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect: > "The bones of 'domiciled' Homo sapiens compared with those of hunter-gatherers are also distinctive: they are smaller; the bones and teeth often bear the signature of nutritional distress, in particular, an iron-deficiency anemia marked above all in women of reproductive age whose diets consist increasingly of grains" from Against the Grain see also: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3…

Mineral deficiency is a chronic lack of a particular nutrient, starvation is an acute lack.

There is such a thing as chronic starvation, and the smaller bones reflect that, not mineral deficiency.

The linked article addresses famine more specifically.

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

#534

Post by JakeTheAndroid »

mancerayder wrote: post #489
JakeTheAndroid wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin innovated through a blockchain years ago and the world has already adopted that. But the current state of bitcoin makes it bad at its other 'innovation', digital currency. Bitcoin is far too volatile to be a widespread, standard currency which seems to be the "reason" people say it's worth as much as it is. But it will never be a widespread currency until it has stability. So it's a chicken/egg situation, one…

How do you explain banks and hedge funds putting their money into it? Your explanation is that they want a digital currency, which you're saying is impossible. But it seems like the BTC advocates aren't arguing that, but instead that it's a store of value as a hedge against inflation?

No, I would argue hedge funds and banks are treating BTC like any other investment; They believe it will make money.

Banks and hedge funds don't inherently care about currencies. They care about the currency that governs their lives but beyond that everything is an investment. Banks don't provide mortgages because homes provide a stable economy or a stable currency. They do so because they will make money back on what they lend through interest. The fact that you store your dollars there is just one way for them to collect tons of assets for lending (among other things). This doesn't means banks care much about the volatility or exchange rate of the currency itself.

Hedge funds would only care about currencies insofar that it's an investment vehicle and investing in currencies can be a good investment. Bonds or other currency investments can increase over time without the volatility of BTC. A hedge fund is literally just an investment group, so it's pretty obvious they don't NEED to care about BTC stability or any stability at all.

Now, the question could be why would banks and hedge funds be willing to invest into such a volatile currency when they are usually risk adverse (banks more than hedge funds). And that would be a good question, except BTC has kept going up and now crypto as a whole is just another ETF market. So there are plenty of safe ways to hedge your bets on BTC or crypto generically without actually believing in the underlying philosophical justifications.

EDIT: Also, I don't think that it's impossible to have a crypto currency that is viable and stable. I think Ethereum has a fairly logical approach to their core issues that could solve the issues down the road. We'll see. I do think it'll be hard for BTC to become a viable currency because of how pumped up it is, and people treat it like an infinite money machine. Until the systemic issues of the BTC ethos are solved, I don't see a promising future for BTC as a widespread currency. But, it might have value in setting up the infra that the future crypto that IS viable will use.

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

#535

Post by gzu »

standardUser wrote: post #412
gzu wrote: post #48

What about 0 percent interest rates? How much environmentally damaging malinvestment across the globe has been caused by risk free money? Think of how carbon intensive the concrete, steel, manufacturing, power generation industry are. Not to mention the population boom beyond our earths carrying capacity needed to perpetuate our ever increasing monetary scheme requiring never ending growth where deflation can never e…

Sometimes "whataboutism" is subtle. Other times, people simply say "What about...".

Bitcoin is "bad for the planet". 0 percent interest rates are worse. It's the lesser of evils.

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

#536

Post by dmingod666 »

mancerayder wrote: post #483
rcrisan wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think it's true that bitcoin is the solution to a couple of problems that don't exist?

Again, I'm not a BTC fanboy, I don't even own any. But obviously it solves SOME problems - like how to transfer some sort of store of value across borders without using a bank. That's one of them. It's not tulips and 100% useless. A digital currency is interesting to explore. It's interesting enough that institutions are stuffing their cash into it because they are fearing inflation, and the old school explanations o…

Exactly correct. You can recognize its not useless even if you don't like the thing.

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

#538

Post by tim333 »

runarberg wrote: post #314
BTCOG wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it has in fact been proven many times over in many research white papers to be fatally flawed and that's why no serious cryptocurrency would implement proof of stake.

Still asking out of desire to learn: How has it been shown to be flawed? With what kind of experiments? Which are the flaws? How to they manifest them self (e.g. how could you exploit them with PoS but not with PoW)?

One problem: You fire up your blockchain software and it reaches out over the internet to find other servers and ask them if they have a copy of the blockchain.

But how does in know which copy is the real one and not one cooked up by someone like me showing I own half the coins?

With proof of work you can choose the one with the most work in it and that's hard to fake as the real bitcoin blockchain has billions of dollars worth of computer work in.

With proof of stake it's hard. If there is no real cost, fakers can make thousands or millions of fake chains and how do you know which is the 'real' one?

There are potential solutions but it's tricky. Like if you have www.stake-coin.com point to the real one, what if someone manages to take over the domain?

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

#539

Post by whitepaint »

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #190
whitepaint wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Argument: PoW is a security model that depends on energy usage and mathematics. PoS is a security model that depends on human behavior. I trust physics over human behavior any day. Human psychology is the weak link in any system. In the next year, we will see a further consolidation of funds towards traditional finance (they have the capital to acquire the floating btc). We do not want tradfi in charge of coin emissi…

I will myself be a validator as well. Anyone can be one (even if you don't have 32 ethers, you can join a pool). You are either purposefully or ignorantly telling lies.

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

#540

Post by frankbreetz »

silentsea90 wrote: post #501
w0de0 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

SF County can't print money, only the federal government can. As far as I know California receives the least amount of federal tax benefits. They pay more then they recieve
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