Coinbase from YC to DPO • Hacker News Board

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#121

Post by toolz » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

rawtxapp wrote: post #98

fumblebee wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. I struggle to comprehend how an energy obliterating and (relatively speaking) primitive technology like Bitcoin is the top dog in this space. Sure, first mover advantage counts for something, but come on - how has superior tech not yet left it in the rearview. In a space that moves at such rapid pace with heavy investment and buckets of innovation, at some point the crowd surely will migrate en m…

PoS is yet to be proven, I'm really hoping eth2 shows that it actually works, because the other ones with PoS aren't that heavily used or tested in adversarial ways. When it comes to money and value, the utmost important thing is security, that's the tradeoff that Bitcoin makes and that's what people are buying into. Everything else is secondary.

cardano is completely distributed PoS 46 billion market cap (5th largest crypto) - I'm not sure what you mean by "yet to be proven"

it also theoretically supports 1MM tx/second - to put that into perspective VISA does somewhere in the ballpark of 2k tx/second (but theoretically can do much more than that I'm sure)

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#122

Post by jariel » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #43

Fede_V wrote: post #35

I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream. It has significantly worse externalities than just about any company I can think of (including defense contractors/vaping companies), and, if it grows larger before we have clean energy, then we virtually guarantee we won't be able to tackle global warming. We are going to bestow a world that will be sig…

Bitcoin allows you to convert excess energy into money. Because it can be mined anywhere at any time, it's priced to the global low cost of energy. It doesn't make sense to use expensive energy sources. Much of energy production is meant to meet peak demand and storage is difficult. Bitcoin mining is a great way to monetize energy that has a low market value and would likely go to waste. If you want to price energy o…

"Bitcoin mining is a great way to monetize energy that has a low market value and would likely go to waste."

Mining BTC is literally a waste.

There is no value creation at all.

Though some individuals may value it - it's not actually useful. The world economy does not grow one bit due to BTC or BTC mining - lives are not improved, products are not developed or made, or enabled etc..

Even if BTC were a very useful currency, it would still be wasteful to use considerable electricity to support it, because it's not necessary - it just happens to be the mechanism chosen to mine new coins.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#123

Post by sosuke » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #91

sosuke wrote: post #2

Dividends to HN users? Joking aside congrats! I'm planning on picking up a share or two as I did with Digital Ocean.

They did give 0.1 btc in the early days. Which if you did hold into them would be roughly $6500 by today's rate (you'd also have BCH, BCHN, BSV and BTG).

Crazy I missed another boat there. More will come down the river and I'll jump on the right one eventually.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#124

Post by frongpik » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

Fede_V wrote: post #35

I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream. It has significantly worse externalities than just about any company I can think of (including defense contractors/vaping companies), and, if it grows larger before we have clean energy, then we virtually guarantee we won't be able to tackle global warming. We are going to bestow a world that will be sig…

A dissenting opinion. If those in power really cared about global warming, the WH would have codified work from home into law. Right now the big corps are pulling workers back to offices, so millions of office workers are going to drive back and forth again. Obviously, the media prefers to talk about the bad bitcoin instead.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#125

Post by hundreddaysoff » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

Fede_V wrote: post #35

I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream. It has significantly worse externalities than just about any company I can think of (including defense contractors/vaping companies), and, if it grows larger before we have clean energy, then we virtually guarantee we won't be able to tackle global warming. We are going to bestow a world that will be sig…

Naive related question from a crypto n00b that a lazygoogle failed to answer:

I just plotted some Chia. I left my laptop open to do this. Usually I would just put the laptop in power save mode all night.

My understanding is that to actually make any Chia, I would need to wait ~1 year with my one 100GB plot with full-power mode enabled. Vs mostly with the case closed, as it is now, while I do other things.

And this doesn't even account for the rare elements etc needed to fabricate my hard disk.

So, general naive questions:

1. Vs Proof of Work, just how much better are Proof of Space/Proof of Stake/$HDOS_SUPER_AWESOME_PROOF in terms of energy consumption but also other standard measures of environmental impact?

2. How much worse, if at all, are they vs the null hypothesis of "modern" pre-crypto finance?

Has anyone run credible numbers on these things?

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#126

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #101

dehrmann wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all you care about is energy usage and transaction speed, the traditional finance system still wins. Unless people are actively trading bitcoin enough where the transaction cost because an issue, there's little reason to trade in their tulip bulbs for iris bulbs. A bet on a cryptocurrency is a bet that people will think it's worth more money, not an investment in the underlying technology.

> If all you care about is energy usage and transaction speed, the traditional finance system still wins Does it though? There are so many things to consider when talking about the "energy usage" of traditional money. All the vans moving money around, manufacturing, items to support PoS systems, sorting, protecting the money and so on.

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#127

Post by svachalek » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

kbos87 wrote: post #96

delaaxe wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 links: - In today’s news: https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/critics-claim-bitcoin-threa... - From earlier: https://pomp.substack.com/p/bitcoin-mining-is-good-for-the-e...

These are two great examples of just how thin and self-serving the counter-arguments to crypto being an energy hog are. I'll save you some time... The premise of the first article is that the carbon footprint of fiat currency needs to include the impact of an endless cycle of debt, inflation, recessions, and wars that fiat currency enables. Regardless of whether or not that cycle is true and driven by fiat currency i…

You are right but you need to substitute "proof of work" for "crypto" when you talk about energy hogs. Proof of Stake is also crypto and does not need to guzzle power.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#128

Post by bob33212 » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

Fede_V wrote: post #35

I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream. It has significantly worse externalities than just about any company I can think of (including defense contractors/vaping companies), and, if it grows larger before we have clean energy, then we virtually guarantee we won't be able to tackle global warming. We are going to bestow a world that will be sig…

Like a lot of bubbles, there is FOMO and lack of understanding of the technology. It is easy to compare crypto to the internet. When the internet first started out a lot of people didn't invest in GOOG because it was not obvious where the revenue would come from.

People are afraid of making the same mistake here as well. "I don't know how BTC will generate cashflow outside of being a Ponzi scheme, but I assume the technology will advance and revolutionize finance" so they buy.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#129

Post by frongpik » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #43

Fede_V wrote: post #35

I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream. It has significantly worse externalities than just about any company I can think of (including defense contractors/vaping companies), and, if it grows larger before we have clean energy, then we virtually guarantee we won't be able to tackle global warming. We are going to bestow a world that will be sig…

Bitcoin allows you to convert excess energy into money. Because it can be mined anywhere at any time, it's priced to the global low cost of energy. It doesn't make sense to use expensive energy sources. Much of energy production is meant to meet peak demand and storage is difficult. Bitcoin mining is a great way to monetize energy that has a low market value and would likely go to waste. If you want to price energy o…

You imply good will of bitcoin miners. Once it becomes big enough for state actors, people in power will burn the Amazon forest or dry up entire rivers to mine bitcoin. Our civilization is all about ruthless greed and bitcoin exploits this nicely.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#130

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #79

purple_ferret wrote: post #23

Coinbase is definitely a success story in how to appeal to the masses. There were always alternatives, but coinbase always came out on top despite the high fees and poor customer service. I think Coinbase as a publicly traded company will be very interesting to follow. Not only is it a massively cyclical industry, but the supposed point of crypto is to reducing the reliance on, and grifting from, companies like Coinb…

> the supposed point of crypto is to reducing the reliance on, and grifting from, companies like Coinbase That was the pitch of crypto. In practice, people are buying it as a bet that it will go up. I suspect most people are only buying it because the value is going up. If bitcoin actually worked like a currency and traded between $8k and $12 for the past 5 years, no one would care.

Global wealth is $400T. All crypto currency combined is worth about ~$2T at this point. So to store 0.5% of the world's wealth, we are using 0.6% of the world's energy.

Banks obviously don't use anywhere near this much energy. Bitcoin is estimated to use more energy than all other server farms put together.

So we are using 0.6% of the world's energy to store 0.5% of the world's wealth. And Doesn't seem like the ideal wealth storage technology.