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Proof-of-work should be banned

stopburncoins.medium.com

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Re: Proof-of-work should be banned

#71

Post by aetherane »

quotemstr wrote: post #43
semitones wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you make the same argument for driving a gasoline-guzzling truck? People have the right to tell you whatever you want, but you also have the right not to listen. In this case, I don't think the onus is on you, the individual consumer, to turn down their mining operation. It's problematic when something so wasteful is done on such a massive scale, as is the case with large corporate/state mining operations that…

Yes, I would. If there's some negative externality caused by activity X, put a price on that externality and let the market decide whether X is still worth it. Top-down bans and mandates and price controls and all sorts of other clumsy interventions in society destroy value and cause endless misery to humanity. What works is letting people decide on their own how to live their lives. https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-lik…

How does this work then? If you raise electricity prices people who need it for everyday living won't be able to afford it

Re: Proof-of-work should be banned

#72

Post by CyberRabbi »

mnd999 wrote: post #55
CyberRabbi wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically they do but I agree that these calls for banning Bitcoin because it consumes energy are anti-freedom when considering that its consumption of energy is a drop in the bucket in grand scheme of things.

It's not a drop in the bucket. If bitcoin were a country it would be in the top 30 energy users worldwide. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952

It is a drop in the bucket. As expected the distribution of energy usage among distinct countries follows a power law distribution. Of the percentage of the highest consumer (China), it’s less than 1%.

Comparing the usage to China makes sense because each country’s consumption of energy for the purposes of mining Bitcoin also follows a similar power law distribution. We find that the vast majority of Bitcoin mining happens in China.

These types of arguments are based on bad reasoning and misuse of statistics. If you compare the usage of any small industry in the largest consumer country, it will likely dwarf the total energy usage of many smaller countries. I see similar tendencies in activist pieces that make population policy arguments without using per-capita analysis.

Re: Proof-of-work should be banned

#73

Post by xboxnolifes »

OliverGilan wrote: post #54

I really don’t understand this attack on Bitcoin. It seems to be all the rage nowadays to lament the effects of Bitcoin’s electricity usage on the environment but a couple things seem true to me. 1) Any civilization sufficiently progressing will use more and more energy. Bitcoin could definitely be more energy efficient but even without it our society would still increase our energy usage over time. 2) The issue peop…

#2 Is the big one to me. I understand why people attack bitcoin here, but attacking both bitcoin and dirty energy creation is double accounting. People expending that electricity are paying for it. And if they aren't paying for it, we should be fixing that issue, not choosing what they can use with said electricity.

Re: Proof-of-work should be banned

#74

Post by aetherane »

kreetx wrote: post #63
aetherane wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Bitcoin is not needed. It currently provides little to no positive value to society and a lot of negative value so it is hard to classify it as society progressing.

The positive value is that it protects from inflation.

Inflation is highly important to productive economies. Countries can default when there is no control over their money supply and inflation is needed to avoid stagnation.

Re: Proof-of-work should be banned

#75

Post by [deleted] »

aetherane wrote: post #59
OliverGilan wrote: post #54

I really don’t understand this attack on Bitcoin. It seems to be all the rage nowadays to lament the effects of Bitcoin’s electricity usage on the environment but a couple things seem true to me. 1) Any civilization sufficiently progressing will use more and more energy. Bitcoin could definitely be more energy efficient but even without it our society would still increase our energy usage over time. 2) The issue peop…

But Bitcoin is not needed. It currently provides little to no positive value to society and a lot of negative value so it is hard to classify it as society progressing.

[deleted]

Re: Proof-of-work should be banned

#76

Post by smashem »

aetherane wrote: post #74
kreetx wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The positive value is that it protects from inflation.

Inflation is highly important to productive economies. Countries can default when there is no control over their money supply and inflation is needed to avoid stagnation.

All economies eventually fail due to inflation and central planning.

I'm not saying we don't need national currencies, but bitcoin is the perfect hedge against central banking.

Re: Proof-of-work should be banned

#77

Post by derefr »

pureliquidhw wrote: post #67
derefr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the parenthetical after that sentence? My point was that we waited until after we had practical alternatives to ban them. We didn’t ban them in order to magically force practical alternatives into existence .

There's no digital currency or methods to transact that are more efficient than Bitcoin? Like ACH, Venmo, wire transfers, etc? Bitcoin is like CFL bulbs. An unfortunate ecological misstep while trying to improve what was available. I'll agree the parallel is clunky since CFLs still saved energy, bit bitcoin burns through it.

Those other methods (ACH, Venmo, wire transfers) are owned by companies/banks and thus censorable. The whole thing Bitcoin is doing that everyone is spending all this money/electricity on, is allowing the global market to route around market inefficiencies introduced by government control (e.g. trade sanctions, tariffs, “capital flight” export controls, taxation double-binds [like for dual US/somewhere-else citizens], AML laws, etc.) That’s the base cryptocurrency “value prop” — before you add on the smart-contract programmable-financial-instrument stuff.

There are also other PoW chains, like Monero, that are “cheaper for now” — but if everyone using Bitcoin switched to those, they’d be just as expensive as Bitcoin is.

PoS chains (including maybe PoS state-channels for PoW base chains) are the good alternative — everyone in the space can see that. But they’re not ready yet.

> Bitcoin is like CFL bulbs.

I agree: like CFLs, Bitcoin is better than what we had before in some ways, but worse in others, and we can clearly see that we’re going to need to replace it. (The bad-actor analogy even holds up: both CFLs and PoW chains have externalized consequences. CFLs put mercury into the environment; Bitcoin contributes to climate change.)

But we didn’t try to muscle CFLs out of the ecosystem. They just disappeared from relevance — and production went to 1/1000th of peak — once we got good, cheap LED bulbs into the market. Until then, the market concentrated on CFL bulbs, because they really were a (rational-selfish-economic-actor) “better” option than incandescent. It made economic sense for property developers and other mass-buyers to fill their lighting neeeds with CFLs. And then — once LEDs were good and cheap — it didn’t.

Re: Proof-of-work should be banned

#78

Post by smashem »

OliverGilan wrote: post #54

I really don’t understand this attack on Bitcoin. It seems to be all the rage nowadays to lament the effects of Bitcoin’s electricity usage on the environment but a couple things seem true to me. 1) Any civilization sufficiently progressing will use more and more energy. Bitcoin could definitely be more energy efficient but even without it our society would still increase our energy usage over time. 2) The issue peop…

#1, correct. Nothing wrong with energy consumption. In fact, there is a relationship between GDP growth and energy consumption growth, in general. That's not to say we don't need more efficient energy usage, though, but bitcoin has been and always will be driving that forward.

#2, yeah, bitcoin is driving renewable energy innovation. bitcoin demands renewable energy, and the industry must supply it. It's great for the industry. Renewable companies need to embrace it or they will miss out on great growth opportunities.

#3, yes. Bitcoin is moving towards the edge of the grid, looking for the cleanest, cheapest, and most abundant sources of energy.

Re: Proof-of-work should be banned

#79

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

pydry wrote: post #60
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because governments love "the circumvention of capital controls" ?

Do you think the United States objects to Chinese nationals buying up property in the US and sending their kids to school there?

I think that this - of course - within the remit of The Chinese government. And should they object to it, being a large and powerful state, they have a large number of ways to curb it, starting with, but not limited to:

Insisting on international treaties that act against the flows of dark money over borders in any direction (at which point, yes, other countries are obliged to object).

Then moving on to acting directly and legally against Chinese citizens who do things that their state does not allow.

Also, I am told that a lot of bitcoin "mining" occurs within the borders of China.

other countries are already moving to do this kind of thing with cryptocurrency: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-india-cryptocurrency-ban-...

Re: Proof-of-work should be banned

#80

Post by shawnz »

burlesona wrote: post #25

Actual question as I’m not too familiar with proof of stake. As described in the article, all that matters is how much is in your wallet... Doesn’t that seem ripe for hyper capitalist abuse? I realize the article is just offering a simplified explanation, but the idea that whoever has the most money directly controls the money supply itself seems... well, not ideal? So could anyone elaborate on what else about proof…

The pro-proof-of-stake argument is that every other system is inherently already like that: For example with proof-of-work, the richest can already afford the most hardware which gets them the most earnings. But actually with proof-of-work it's even worse, because it is a non-linear relationship as to what kind of mining hardware you can afford (richer can afford exponentially more efficient hardware). So proof-of-stake is actually better, because at least it's linear.
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