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

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

#751

Post by moralsupply » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

large wrote: post #733

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.

Have you noticed that recently we get at least 2-3 bitcoin "energy consumption" stories reaching the homepage every week? You're not concerned with that, but you're concerned with my posts?

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

#752

Post by HeadsUpHigh » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

choward wrote: post #549

saul_goodman wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeezus people have short memories. Bitcoin solved a flotilla of problems that were blockers for an all-digital currency in 2008. The most severe and proven problem was the threat of government shutdown by a police raid of your servers, this is what killed E-gold and other predecessors. The blockchain solved the problem of having your central ledger being shutdown by the cops/IRS/etc. by decentralizing it and of cours…

> governments have to be careful here as they must ensure that there are no challengers to their primary form of taxation payment Why do they have to be careful? Are they going to magically going to have to start accepting Bitcoin instead of dollars? > Bitcoin was very carefully crafted to survive government attack and finally the government accepted it by considering it a taxable commodity. They still doesn't mean y…

>Why do they have to be careful? Are they going to magically going to have to start accepting Bitcoin instead of dollars?

There is zero chance bitcoin with it's current network is every going to be used as money. What might happen however is that more and more transactions could move towards other networks like nano or various stablecoins that are built on top of smart contract platforms.

If governments end up issuing a currency that is only useful for tax payments then they have effectively lost control of the monetary policy. And in any case banning crypto will only help towards redirecting monetary flow towards other countries. So in many ways governments' hands are tied in this.

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

#753

Post by hannasanarion » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #720

hannasanarion wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what is the value of a distributed computer? Turns out, virtually nil, because it's been around for 8 years and nobody is using it, because there is no real-world use case for contracts written as software.

At least you could try a quick googling before you write a comment.

I love how this comment amounts to "nuh-uh!" because you can't think of a single example even though you're an enthusiast.

The only people using smart-contracts are enthusiasts and proof-of-concept startups that have no traction in the market because smart contracts don't offer any advantage over any other computing system.

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

#754

Post by Bakary » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:13 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…

If the dollar loses that much in 5 years, getting a salary will be the least of our worries

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

#755

Post by koonsolo » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

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.

Proof of Stake cryptocurrencies are not mined, so where do they get their value from? Plenty of them have high market caps.

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

#756

Post by hannasanarion » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

thebean11 wrote: post #674

hannasanarion wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what is the value of a distributed computer? Turns out, virtually nil, because it's been around for 8 years and nobody is using it, because there is no real-world use case for contracts written as software.

> it's been around for 8 years and nobody is using it That's laughably wrong, go look up how much revenue the Ethereum network is bringing in with smart contract fees.

And what are those smart contract fees being used for?

- Speculators buying ETH to ride the bubble

- A revolving door of Proof-of-concept startups with backing from starry-eyed VCs and no viable business plans that pop up, use a bunch of compute, and then fail, every couple of months.

Ethereum mining conglomerates don't even use Smart Contracts, they just cite "a long history of successful payouts", trust, and old-fashioned promises written in vernacular English.

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

#757

Post by SavantIdiot » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

wbobeirne wrote: post #743

PhilosAccnting wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It's spoofable in the same way that a hash collision or guessing a password is "spoofable", given infinite time and / or energy you could. But the chain would move on while you're generating your spoof, and you're limited by the constraints of the physical world and your available computing power.

Not exactly... You just need the majority to agree that the new manipulated chain is the real chain. You don't need to find a SHA256 collision.

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

#758

Post by xur17 » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

rocho wrote: post #745

xur17 wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there another way to send money over the internet that doesn't involve a third party?

The blockchain IS a third party. It's maintained by other entities.

Sort of, but not really in the same way that a banking ledger is maintained by a bank. You don't need to trust the other 3rd parties to maintain it properly, and you are also "maintaining" the ledger yourself.

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

#759

Post by fao_ » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

thebean11 wrote: post #674

hannasanarion wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what is the value of a distributed computer? Turns out, virtually nil, because it's been around for 8 years and nobody is using it, because there is no real-world use case for contracts written as software.

> it's been around for 8 years and nobody is using it That's laughably wrong, go look up how much revenue the Ethereum network is bringing in with smart contract fees.

> That's laughably wrong, go look up how much revenue the Ethereum network is bringing in with smart contract fees.

Nobody is using the compute power, though. Can you point to what they are using it for, if you have an example?

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

#760

Post by thebean11 » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

fao_ wrote: post #759

thebean11 wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's been around for 8 years and nobody is using it That's laughably wrong, go look up how much revenue the Ethereum network is bringing in with smart contract fees.

> That's laughably wrong, go look up how much revenue the Ethereum network is bringing in with smart contract fees. Nobody is using the compute power, though. Can you point to what they are using it for, if you have an example?

What do you mean by compute power? Smart contracts (which run on-chain code) pay fees for each command they execute. The most popular smart contracts are token exchanges and DeFi (ie crypto backed loans).

Having trouble finding the total smart contract revenue, but this article has examples of the top few, and gives an idea of their usage patterns: https://medium.com/@vikati/ranking-ethereum-smart-contracts-...