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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

#691

Post by backtoyoujim »

Mining gold is also a very destructive and poisonous business that is incredibly bad for the planet. So is copper mining. So is manufacturing computers.

Thank god computers and digital networks are so important that we recognize the importance to keep mining these limited resources to build and sell more computers and digital networks and places to store Office yearly subscription receipt pdfs.

That said, something like 40% of all bitcoin are in just like 1000 wallets.

If bitcoin were to suddenly fossilize into the world's currency the distribution of wealth would be even more inequitable and concentrated than now with national fiats.

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

#692

Post by coinward »

Readers, you are discussing Bitcoin before the 4th of 32 halvenings. Things aren't so clear to most and dust has not settled. One thing is certain, it is not too late to read the whitepaper and learn what the emergence of the first new base layer money in 5000 years truly means and get your head around the significance.

Now, to the article. This is a write up response to a comment one of the world's richest men said on the app, Clubhouse. These are the articles worth discussing with this audience? Look at the final sentence of the article. Seriously? "This currency is not good for Green Planet." Yikes.

We're all on our own journey an in time all roads lead to Bitcoin. This is not a technology story, or an energy story, but a human story. The story of Bitcoin tells about people working with machines to accomplish something that seems impossible to most of us.

Bitcoin frees the slaves. Literally, not figuratively. If you have to sell your time, sweat, and blood to earn money, it is unacceptable to allow corruptible central planners to create that same money out of nothing. This is a power that no group of people should have over others, and certainly one that future generations will look back on find it laughable that a society would entrust people with control over the money supply after time and time again history has shown what happens.

Bitcoin is ending the monetary enslavement that central banks have been desperately clinging to. Issues around central banking, inflation, and money supply manipulation are not new in the story of human history. The current chapter is unfolding to see Bitcoin demonstrating an incorruptible money and it is growing up rapidly.

How much energy do you feel is appropriate to put toward abolishing central banking and freeing humanity? Personally, I feel blessed to have discovered Bitcoin while it still consumes less energy than small countries. What a time to be here!

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

#693

Post by yazaddaruvala »

jf22 wrote: post #609
rafale wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value is providing the ownership of a digital scarce fixed-supply item that can be transferred and traded. That's the product. And the market gives it a price. Also, it has everything to do with monetary policy.

There is a difference between monetary value and utilitarian value. Bitcoin has negligent utilitarian value. It does nothing besides reward people who can consume energy the fastest.

There is a difference between short term utilitarian value and long term utilitarian value.

BTC might have no short term utilitarian value, but in the long term the utilitarian value is to create a globalized monetary policy.

1. BTC is speculative because it may not actually achieve the goal of a single globalized monetary policy. Some other crypto might become the defacto denationalized currency instead, or maybe nothing changes.

2. A single globalized monetary policy may not be useful. However, no one really knows. People investing in any crypto seem to believe that a denationalized monetary policy will be better functioning.

Speculation alone doesn't imply no long-term utilitarian value exists.

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

#694

Post by blockmarker »

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.

If transaction fees were reasonable, you could simply sell it to people and they pay you in cash. Nowadays I don't know how resistant it is.

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

#695

Post by moralsupply »

I love how much the HN community is invested in demonizing Bitcoin for its energy consumption.

I wish for you bashing Bitcoin to keep all your wealth allocated in assets associated with fiat currencies.

I also wish that you spend lots of time running political narratives in order to stop a decentralized piece of technology from growing.

Good luck trying to reach out the Bitcoin CEO in order to ask him to shut down his "environmentally damaging operations".

In 5 years time, however, once the US dollar has lost 50% of its purchase power, you'll be begging your employer to pay you in Bitcoin.

By that time you'll conveniently forget the narrative about energy consumption.

You'll even claim that Bitcoin is one of the most important technologies ever invented, and that you always believed in it.

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

#696

Post by nprz »

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #427
TameAntelope wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting a lot of responses, because this is a pretty common complaint about crypto, and it taps into a great "WELL ACTUALLY" moment, because your concern is close enough to the "at least real money is backed by something" misconception (which, tbh, I'm sure you're aware of at this point if you weren't already). Fundamentally, what folks are trying to get to with crypto is a trust-less system, one that can oper…

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

We can (and China already does) use energy that would otherwise be wasted to mine bitcoin: https://twitter.com/nic__carter/status/1369007894969122816?s...

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

#697

Post by Dzugaru »

tim333 wrote: post #538
runarberg wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

You bootstrap the pos chain onto the pow one, so you have your trivially checkable first part. After that it.s not exactly trivial to fake the whole chain without holding validators private keys (remember, they had stake in pow chain).

Im kinda at a loss about what other vectors of attack possible, hard to find any digestible info, and pos protocol designs are really complex.

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

#698

Post by qertoip »

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.

No, they are not better, because they are easy to change, and so it is easy to change monetary policy "for better", or make the coin "more compliant".

Bitcoin value is that it is extremely hard to change, especially when it comes to fundamental properties, like 21m hard cap.

You can actually rely on Bitcoin's monetary policy to be fixed forever.

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

#699

Post by [deleted] »

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%

[deleted]

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

#700

Post by [deleted] »

triceratops wrote: post #389
meowkit wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> No one I know uses physical cash anymore. But physical cash should always be an option. You can't have a truly free society without it. Some intermediary could always have control over your transactions.

[deleted]
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