Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

technologyelevation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 862 posts

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

#551

Post by jedberg »

hertzrat wrote: post #497
redwall_hp wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, aside from recurring bills, I put everything on credit and then pay it off within the week. That way I get cashback rewards, build credit and can ensure I have the peace of mind of being able to pay for anything at the time of transaction without worrying about shifting money between accounts or where I am in the pay cycle. It also ensures that, due to building my credit score, I have ample credit at my disposa…

Those 1% cash back rewards cost everybody you buy from 3%

That sounds like a complaint to take to your representatives. It won't be solved with a boycott of using credit cards.

My understanding is that Europe has strict limits on credit card fees, and as such, most cards in Europe don't have rewards.

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

#552

Post by sokoloff »

adolph wrote: post #475
nmz wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Thin out" is this another word for dying?

If you have lived a good life, is dying a problem?

Dying from starvation (and watching the people you love also suffer and some die from it)? Yes, I'd say it's a problem.

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

#554

Post by jasonlaramburu »

meowster wrote: post #471
jasonlaramburu wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is 'backed' by the sunk cost of the energy used to mine it.

That sounds like the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Just because something valuable was already wasted, doesn't make the result valuable.

Agreed, that is why on a long enough timeline someone will end up holding the bag.

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

#555

Post by kbenson »

delaaxe wrote: post #414
jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

By default, nature is an aggressive and competitive environment. It's only after we barricaded ourselves in towers protected by walls that we started to find predatory animals cute (and even made children's toys in their image)

> It's only after we barricaded ourselves in towers protected by walls that we started to find predatory animals cute

I don't think that's entirely accurate. Dogs were domesticated well over 10k years ago, possibly close to 30k years ago. I see no reason to think that people didn't find puppies cute then as well since the reasons why we think of baby animals cute seems to be related to the same pattern recognition that causes us to recognize those attributes in human infants and think they are cute. The version of animals we find "cute" are all represented with infantile portions. There is something to be said for removal of danger as a prerequisite though (I doubt most people would have been receptive to the teddy bear in the 1920's if problems with bears were still frequent).

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

#556

Post by w0m »

shrubble wrote: post #29

Microsoft's success has objectively been a step backwards for computing. Anyone who has used a NeXTstation with 32Mbytes of RAM and an 68040 CPU, which did not even have accelerated video, can certainly understand how bloated and wasteful of resources all the various Windows applications and operating systems have been over the years. How many resources does Xbox use? It's not essential either...

If Next had survived to modern day, it's have similar modern bloat. Software grows with the hardware to run it on; which in turn encourages faster hardware which leads to more bloat.

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

#557

Post by throwawayyipyip »

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.

> Bitcoin is an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws (greed, unwillingness to acknowledge externalities - i.e. selfishness).

Presuming Satoshi did this out pure altruism, I wouldn't say perfect. However, if Satoshi still has 10% of the Bitcoin supply, then I couldn't agree more. Given the fact that most of us don't know, we're simply projecting whatever believe we have on that particular matter, which definitely votes for "an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws"

But that's how I look at it :)

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

#558

Post by 72deluxe »

Shorel wrote: post #203
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.

This is actually something that Bjarne Stroustrup addressed when talking about C++: There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses. In the case of cryptocurrencies, as soon as a cryptocurrency has any important percentage of use, these transactions are not confirmed in seconds anymore, and transaction fees starts to grow up. No one is really using PoS right now, so let'…

I remember Stroustrup also saying how much he detested Bitcoin in his keynote from a few years ago, where he says it uses as much power as Switzerland and was saddened to know it had been written in C++.

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

#559

Post by rcrisan »

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…

Hi, thanks for the reply, makes sense what you said. I am not looking for strong stances or arguing; I just want to expand my understanding. I get from you that institutions pour real money into it and they rely on bitcoin's scarcity to overcome inflation. Makes sense. However, I want to understand why using banks or FinTech companies for money transfer is so bad? Nowadays there are low fees, way lower than what Bitcoin offers today. And that is just one aspect. It's just an opinion but I feel that money transfer problems caused by banks are exaggerated, especially in developed countries. Can you explain why I might be wrong about it? I also do not own Bitcoin, my employer is not a bank and I do not have any involvement or desire to promote the banking or payments industry.

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

#560

Post by codehalo »

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #424
la_fayette wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think understanding bitcoin from a systems point of view is of great value. Although proof of work is problematic, the idea and manifestation of a censorship resisten electronic monetary system is just amazing. Bitcoin is actually working for more than 10 years... There are alternatives to PoW, e.g. ethereum 2.0, let's see if this works and than judge again...

Is it really censorship resistant though? In order to actually buy anything with BTC, you need a fiat offramp which is 100% vulnerable to censorship.

Do you really think you cannot by anything with Bitcoin? Are you uninformed or just dishonest?
Post reply on HN