71–80 of 109 posts
Luckily there is a whole new generation of PoS networks that don't rely on proof of work. Some even automatically buy carbon offset credits to maintain a carbon neural footprint.
I've been reading about proof of stake cryptocurrencies for years, and how they will solve the problem of bitcoin's energy usage. Yet the problem persists. What will it take to end bitcoin's predominance?
Trust.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The "legacy financial system" is far, FAR more energy efficient in comparison. Citation needed. The legacy financial system has a huge infrastructure behind it to secure and maintain it (buildings, transport, security, ...). I would assume the US Petrodollar alone probably exceeds Bitcoin's consumption of resources (I don't have any sources though). > Even Bitcoin Cash, which copies the same stupid design is a more…
> Citation needed. A BTC transaction is currently estimated to take 821 kWh. That's ridiculous. > BCH is a scam. Not because they assume that the removal of the block size limit comes without any costs, but because it regularly splits after influential but narcissistic 'leaders' attempt to grab more power and because its community continues to justify deceitful tactics to promote BCH and trick people into buying BCH…
It is huge, I agree. But ridiculous in comparison to what? How much energy/CO2 does the traditional financial system consume/produce (incl. buildings, production, transport, security)?
>> BCH is a scam.
> I don't care about any of that, actually. I'm mercilessly meritocratic in this regard, and in my case, merit == processing transactions at a low cost. My interest in crypto is extremely minor.
If you don't care about the details and your interest in crypto is extremely minor it is super risky to put any money in an altcoin like BCH or to advertise it without a disclaimer.
You are more likely to lose value because
- a) it has low security (a collusion of only 0.5% of Bitcoin miners can perform a 51% attack on BCH)
- b) the community and their 'leaders' continuously lie and mislead the public about BCHs performance, adoption and scalability (e.g. unlimited transactions without degraded decentralization)
- c) the coin and the community splits regularly because of power grabs
- d) the market's expected value of BCH drops continuously (because of the points mentioned before)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, but until demonstrated otherwise, the legacy financial system also supports Bitcoin. It's what makes it possible to create the goods and services that people want to buy with Bitcoins, and the electricity to do the computations. We don't even know what society would look like without our present-day economic infrastructure. For now, the cost of Bitcoin is on top of the cost of the existing system, not instead of…
> For now, the cost of Bitcoin is on top of the cost of the existing system, not instead of it. You can have a closed loop of exchanging Bitcoin for goods and services without any legacy financial system involved. Just because you prefer to exchange your Bitcoins for your local currency does not imply that the cost of maintaining your local currency should be added on top of Bitcoins own.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you mean the hashing will stop - it won’t, because that’s how the system is secured. The creation of new bitcoins is irrelevant as far as energy use goes.
The creation of new bitcoin is what incentives miner to spend so much. When the reward go down, the miners would presumably spend less energy. (But it has so far been offset by the increase of value of bitcoin itself.)
Total reward has been ~10-15% composed of tx fees recently.
Waiting for reward to drop off by halving will take a long time and if current trends persist will be nicely padded by tx fees.
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People just want an asset that can't be manipulated away. If it takes tons of energy, or if it totally changes power dynamics, or if we need to transact in different ways, then so be it. No one is going to give up the opportunity to own something like this for any reason. Regardless of whether people like it or not, they will have to adapt, since there is probably no viable way to stop something like this when people…
Bitcoin is extremely manipulable. Just look at the fact that the modern BTC no longer complies with its original ideals. Remember the pizza? Buying games on Steam? All that ended, because the core group controlling bitcoin decided a tiny block size limit suited their interests. This makes perfect sense for people sitting on a hoard of coins and who want to keep on increasing the contention and driving up the value, b…
Even if there was some conspiracy going on, this happened in what 2017? The price of Bitcoin rose from ~2K to ~60K up to today. So whatever 'the group behind bitcoin' did, the market seems to agree with 'them'.
All the Bitcoin forks who misleadingly claim to be "the real Bitcoin" are either dead now or the market values them at <1/100 of BTC. Conspiracy theories tend to grow over time so maybe this is now just 'the group behind Bitcoin' manipulating the global markets as well?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin is extremely manipulable. Just look at the fact that the modern BTC no longer complies with its original ideals. Remember the pizza? Buying games on Steam? All that ended, because the core group controlling bitcoin decided a tiny block size limit suited their interests. This makes perfect sense for people sitting on a hoard of coins and who want to keep on increasing the contention and driving up the value, b…
> the core group controlling bitcoin decided a tiny block size limit suited their interests Even if there was some conspiracy going on, this happened in what 2017? The price of Bitcoin rose from ~2K to ~60K up to today. So whatever 'the group behind bitcoin' did, the market seems to agree with 'them'. All the Bitcoin forks who misleadingly claim to be "the real Bitcoin" are either dead now or the market values them a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Citation needed. A BTC transaction is currently estimated to take 821 kWh. That's ridiculous. > BCH is a scam. Not because they assume that the removal of the block size limit comes without any costs, but because it regularly splits after influential but narcissistic 'leaders' attempt to grab more power and because its community continues to justify deceitful tactics to promote BCH and trick people into buying BCH…
> A BTC transaction is currently estimated to take 821 kWh. That's ridiculous. It is huge, I agree. But ridiculous in comparison to what? How much energy/CO2 does the traditional financial system consume/produce (incl. buildings, production, transport, security)? >> BCH is a scam. > I don't care about any of that, actually. I'm mercilessly meritocratic in this regard, and in my case, merit == processing transactions…
The current system, which is far more efficient.
> a) it has low security (a collusion of only 0.5% of Bitcoin miners can perform a 51% attack on BCH)
Not a critical issue, since evidently it's not happening. I'm not putting in more than I can afford to lose.
> - b) the community and their 'leaders' continuously lie and mislead the public about BCHs performance, adoption and scalability (e.g. unlimited transactions without degraded decentralization) > - c) the coin and the community splits regularly because of power grabs
Completely unimportant to me. I'm not loyal to BCH or anyone else. I use whatever works at any given point in time. BCH currently seems to be the most usable for my ends, given how it performs transactions cheaply and has decent enough adoption. But if it dies, no big deal, I'll use something else. Heck, even DOGE seems to be doing okay.
Plus, this is crypto. There is no such a thing as an altcoin. It's all software. Permissionless money, remember? Lies, deceit, cheating, are all fair game since there's nobody to give anybody official blessings or permission on anything. So I couldn't care less who said what or what internal drama is brewing. Does it work or does it not for my use is the only metric, and the second it stops working I'll find something else.
> - d) the market's expected value of BCH drops continuously (because of the points mentioned before)
No, currently it isn't. See the graphs. Plus I'm not interested in the virtual gold kind of usage. So long it more or less holds up, that works for me.
The energy cost of mining will always be bid up to approximately the net value of the reward. So as the price of Bitcoin goes up, so does the mining effort. If the price drops, the energy expended would drop as well. It's important to note that the cost of energy its priced to is more or less the global lowest cost of energy. No one mines Bitcoin in Los Angeles during the summer. Bitcoin is a way to convert cheap or…
> The reason the price of bitcoin (and hence the energy cost of mining) is going up is that people have lost faith in the monetary institutions No, the reason bitcoin has increased in price is speculation of future increases.
Basically every asset is up considerably since the US government decided to spend $12 trillion and increase the money supply by 23% in one year. I'm sure its completely unrelated
The energy cost of mining will always be bid up to approximately the net value of the reward. So as the price of Bitcoin goes up, so does the mining effort. If the price drops, the energy expended would drop as well. It's important to note that the cost of energy its priced to is more or less the global lowest cost of energy. No one mines Bitcoin in Los Angeles during the summer. Bitcoin is a way to convert cheap or…
> Bitcoin is a way to convert cheap or excess energy anywhere in the world into money, much of it renewable or energy that would go to waste. Is there somewhere where I can get good data on where the electricity for Bitcoin mining comes from? The article itself says this: > And the electricity the Bitcoin miners use overwhelmingly comes from polluting sources.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the core group controlling bitcoin decided a tiny block size limit suited their interests Even if there was some conspiracy going on, this happened in what 2017? The price of Bitcoin rose from ~2K to ~60K up to today. So whatever 'the group behind bitcoin' did, the market seems to agree with 'them'. All the Bitcoin forks who misleadingly claim to be "the real Bitcoin" are either dead now or the market values them a…
I do have questions about the Digital Currency Group, Blockstream, MasterCard, and the former head of the Bilderburg group, but I'll need to read up on that in depth to come to any conclusions.