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

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

#731

Post by rfd4sgmk8u » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

whitepaint wrote: post #548

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is entirely an non-issue. Nobody has the right to say how others use energy. One can make an argument about transmission efficiency, and generation materials (and how renewable sources are more efficient), thus profitable for both the planet and the miner. But the actual use of energy? Get out of here. Tired arguments that I thought died years ago.

> Nobody has the right to say how others use energy. Bitcoin will get destroyed eventually by the free markets because of how inferior it is to many alternatives. One being its usage of energy.

You can believe that. I believe that existing, inferior stores of value like the USD and EURO will be destroyed by the alternative (Bitcoin). Energy usage is its biggest strength.

Lets see who is correct in 10 years?

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

#732

Post by w0de0 » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

silentsea90 wrote: post #568

frankbreetz wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, I am aware of SF county being unable to print (only the central bank can). The point I am making is that this is an instance of wasteful expenditure that would be expensive in a world where nations lose control over currency and are operating on a tight budget that enforces skin in the game and discipline.

This is also an argument for a gold standard. What is a society to do when collective debt can help? For example: existential war, economic turmoil. Do you contend that governments should never spend on credit? I contend that printing money may sometimes be a good idea.

What society would undertake moonshots like DARPA... or going to the moon... if it could not invest with debt collateralized on a future generation's produce?

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

#733

Post by large » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

moralsupply wrote: post #695

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 hi…

This is a bitcoin shill spam account.

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

#734

Post by silentsea90 » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

anoncake wrote: post #730

silentsea90 wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I had the power you accuse me of wielding. I hope and wish that in a few decades from now, we will look back in bewilderment how we allowed nation states to have control over currencies to fund centralized operations at our expense. BTC doesn't concentrate power, it tilts the balance in favor of a just system where value isn't plundered at a whim.

You don't have it (on your own) but you try. > BTC doesn't concentrate power, it tilts the balance in favor of a just system where value isn't plundered at a whim. No, the value is "plundered" by a democratically elected government. You don't like it? Vote against it. Or work to fix your system of government if it's too broken for that. But don't try to make the policies you don't like impossible. And yes, unlike BTC…

What part of your belief system is violated if the nation state lost power over currencies? Democracy will still prevail in the alternative I am suggesting, it will just be defanged from a certain viewpoint.

I suggest reading the history of money. The current system is an aberration. Historically, with gold as the currency/gold standard, nation states couldn't inflate money away.

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

#735

Post by BTCOG » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

qertoip wrote: post #687

BTCOG wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XMR has the Bitcoin core devs developing for it and it has nothing technologically "surpassing" Bitcoin. Bulletproofs for Monero were written by GMaxwell. Do all people on HackerNews outside of my own bubble also constantly speak about things from a position like they know things when they clearly know nothing of the subject matter?

XMR is great but no, it does not have Bitcoin core devs developing for it. And no, nullc did not implement bulletproofs for Monero. Maybe you meant nullc designed confidential transactions. A modified variant of CT was then implemented independently in Monero by Monero devs.

I must admit to not following recent XMR development much the last couple years and last recall after Maxwell wrote bulletproofs that it was intended to be implemented. I did check and see that it had been re-written and implemented by another in a different custom-tailored way. I do pay the XMR guys respect for doing their thing and branching their way. No disrespect, I should have generally said that the Bitcoin core devs have paved work for them. No, I did not mean core devs are writing all XMR code.

https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/1066.pdf

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

#736

Post by PhilosAccnting » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 8:32 PM UTC

SavantIdiot wrote: post #646

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…

That's any fiat currency, though. But if you think not being backed by something tangible is bad, wait until you hear about 51% attacks... https://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/51-attack.asp Kinda like you waking up to a brand-new bank account, with proof! The only thing stopping 51% on BitCoin is the cost of mounting one: were it a smaller crypto currency, it would be at risk. (I'm pretty sure I got that right, but I…

I'm probably speaking _way_ out of my league here, but I imagine it's somehow spoofable, kinda like how you can generate fake MACs or IPs, so why not? One terrifying/beautiful element of tech is that where there's a will there's a way!

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

#737

Post by rfd4sgmk8u » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

whitepaint wrote: post #539

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How so? I have no doubt that anyone can stake their ether.

What I doubt is the security model of having large ether stakers in control of emission/tx inclusion.

If large stakeholders, like the largest banks in the world, have a say in how this works, the value of a decentralized, antifragile peer to peer money fails.

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

#738

Post by HeadsUpHigh » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

melomal wrote: post #347

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…

I've never been robbed for cash. I have had my bank account emptied multiple times though, recently too. When I hand cash over to someone, I know how much is leaving and coming back right then and there. When I fill out a payment form with my card details I'm handing over my entire balance into the ether. I could be sleeping and quietly money is leaving my bank account, which happened. So cash is king still. Plus it'…

This sounds really stupid. No bank allows it here. You get redirected to the bank's site and are asked to confirm the transaction with all the details including the amount of money, plus there's an OTP pin required. Maybe it's the damn socialism protecting it's citizens with regulations again.

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

#739

Post by silentsea90 » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 8:39 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #492

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…

Yep. There's a reasonable argument to be made that the decline in the Western Roman Empire's ability to raise taxes led in part to feudalism and the decline of cities and the transformation of rural peasantry into serfs. Authoritarian landholders and aristocratic armies replaced an (admittedly oppressive but also moderately concerned with some social welfare) organized state. The state is a double-edged sword for sur…

A system that can't fund itself via taxation alone is broken and needs fixing. Money printing is a proxy for taxation but targeted at the poor, as the rich aren't affected (arguably, they do better as assets go up).

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

#740

Post by rfd4sgmk8u » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

Ruphin wrote: post #370

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* 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.

I was under the impression that the RPi CPU is too slow to process/sync blocks. And unless you have an SSD to store blocks, IO will limit your capacity to verify new incoming blocks every 15 seconds. This was my experience a few years ago.

Are your running a full archival ETH node on a RPI with a 3TB+ SSD attached?