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Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

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Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#441

Post by shawnz »

propertymagnate wrote: post #436
shawnz wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if calculations about Bitcoin’s footprint are true it uses up as much energy as Argentina. An entire country. I don’t think that for the use Bitcoin gets in the developed world it justifies energy uses at that level. Compare for example with MGM's properties in Las Vegas which they claim consume 171 MW. That's not quite as much as Bitcoin, but it's still higher than 65 of the countries listed here: https://en.w…

To rephrase that, Bitcoin uses more energy that all of MGM's properties in Las Vegas.

Yes, which seems reasonable to me. It would be more interesting if a global monetary system could use less than a bunch of casinos. (And maybe that will even happen with the adoption of proof-of-stake)

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#442

Post by reynard_le_faux »

Siira wrote: post #393
UncleMeat wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we had 1000x the power being used to confirm transactions? 1,000,000x the power? At some point we aren't achieving anything. The is made worse by the fact that there are alternatives to produce trustworthy ledgers that don't involve destroying the planet.

Yes, alternatives that work for rich, powerful people.

These people buying power stations aren't rich?

One of the issues with crypto currency is that we're replacing one elite with another.

As John Oliver says Cryptocurrency is everything you don't understand about finance combined with everything you don't understand about computers. That new, even eliter, elite is probably no more moral or ethical than the old.

It's not like cryptocurrency is more accessible. Maybe it will become so but I still have to fork out a lot of money to buy Bitcoin. It's just the fees get paid to different people.

Not entirely sure how it's better. It is different though, I'll give you that.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#443

Post by Webox »

roenxi wrote: post #359
arcticbull wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About half is used for jewelry because gold is shiny pebbles. About 10% is used for electronics. Mining Bitcoin consumes 5X as much energy as gold, btw, per unit value extracted. It also requires mining gold to produce the circuit boards used for mining Bitcoin - given the popularity of the ENIG immersion gold plating process for PCB contacts. The secondary issue is that of course each Bitcoin transaction generates 1…

There is a really easy solution for this disaster - a trusted party could run a big relational database that was basically a non-inflating currency and really cheap to run. Except that isn't going to work, because governments are untrustworthy and as history shows will sooner rather than later debase their currency. All people are looking for here is a safe way to store value over time. If governments would let peopl…

I don't get your argument.

Bitcoin is very very volatile and just because it went up the last x years, doesn't make it stable or trustworthy.

My money in my bank is very safe and it doesn't cost me anything.

The inflation itself is a systematic thing and should affect bitcoin equaly.

When corona came, i was looking at the stock market and was surprised how many people left it. It doesn't make much sense to distrist the stock market that much. After all alot of pension funds are existing, lots of companies or people who are self employed also have to keep their money safe. There is a lot of dependency on the share market and we are all bound to a certain degree of not being able to move it out asap.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#444

Post by zepto »

chii wrote: post #197
zepto wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin doesn’t produce trust. It just produces a verified log.

which people trust to be unmodifiable and thus, dependable. That's what it means to trust it. I have blind faith in the banking system (and blind faith that the gov't regulation keeps them honest), but i can trust the blockchain.

That’s a category error. The blockchain is a document. The banking system is people.

Do you trust people to always give you $60,000 in exchange for a Bitcoin?

Do you trust regulators not to tax Bitcoin or put onerous ‘anti-laundering’ conditions on its use?

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#445

Post by BTCOG »

mountainriver wrote: post #394
roenxi wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a really easy solution for this disaster - a trusted party could run a big relational database that was basically a non-inflating currency and really cheap to run. Except that isn't going to work, because governments are untrustworthy and as history shows will sooner rather than later debase their currency. All people are looking for here is a safe way to store value over time. If governments would let peopl…

Bitcoins wild fluctuations based on speculation would say it’s not a safe place to store value over time

Interesting that you should say the opposite of what JP Morgan is now saying. That the wild fluctuations are steadily going away as volatility has been calming down quite a lot.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#446

Post by BTCOG »

webinvest wrote: post #400
malka wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a trusted party" does not exist at scale.

One such trusted party does exist. It’s a non-profit and it’s called the Stellar Development Foundation. It’s cryptocurrency, the Stellar Lumens (XLM) is trusted well enough to be in the top 15 cryptocurrencies by marketcap. It has years of history to look back at. It doesn’t have a inflation rate (0% inflation rate now + occasional coin-burns). It uses orders of magnitude less electricity than bitcoin because it use…

This is utter nonsense. XLM is founded by Jed McCaleb of Ripple and Mt Gox fame, and it's not a cryptocurrency. It certainly is not money. Bitcoin tx fees are readily verifiable on mempool.space and are currently $11-12 for a low-medium priority transaction. (One can easily get in for several dollars less, as well) When you insert such blatantly misleading and outright false information it brings into question everything else you said. Plus, it should be noted this fee is pretty high. The BTC tx fees lately have been averaging only around $5-8 and that is sending on Legacy.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#447

Post by bransonf »

dmurray wrote: post #439
bransonf wrote: post #94

It’s a simple equation: So long as there is more money in mining BTC than there is cost in energy to mine it, mining will proceed. No entity in the world can control the price of crypto. But, we can and already do regulate energy production. I think we need a carbon tax, that is specifically a financial disincentive towards any means of energy production that directly pollutes the atmosphere. Seriously, what are the…

> Seriously, what are the current best arguments against levying such a disincentive? The best argument against it is: it's very hard to enforce it on everybody internationally, and if one country adopts it unilaterally, then production just moves to another country (making everyone worse off - same amount of pollution, but the production is presumably less economically efficient). The second best argument against it…

Absolutely agree, thanks for this reply. I was cognizant of the foreign policy implications (how would this possibly get implemented globally) but I hadn’t heard or considered your points 2 and 3.

Given how much lobbying I suspect there is, 3 probably isn’t all that distant of a concern. Especially in older industries, say railroads or trucking, I understand there could be a lot of contention.

And as others mention, I think there needs to be a separation of taxation by segments of polluting activities. Would burning fuel in a combustion engine count as taxable energy production? Only power plants? What about agriculture, construction, material production?

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#448

Post by mbar84 »

bransonf wrote: post #94

It’s a simple equation: So long as there is more money in mining BTC than there is cost in energy to mine it, mining will proceed. No entity in the world can control the price of crypto. But, we can and already do regulate energy production. I think we need a carbon tax, that is specifically a financial disincentive towards any means of energy production that directly pollutes the atmosphere. Seriously, what are the…

Wrt. your second question: Supply of Bitcoin is pretty much constant, regardless of energy expended, regardless of mining technology. The causation runs like this: demand -> price -> mining. Less demand, lower price, less mining. More demand, higher price, more mining. This is different than any other resource we are used to, because the supply of nothing else is as constant as with bitcoin. If the cost to mine Gold increases, the supply goes down and the price will rise.

Wrt your first question: The best argument against making energy more expensive is the same argument as it was 100 years ago:

If you use energy now, you build a more prosperous civilization for the future. Your grandchildren may have to deal with a warmer climate, but they will be much better able to do so than if they were more poor.

This argument stands and falls with your evaluation of the benefits of using more energy, the costs of a warmer climate and how you weigh these against each other.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#449

Post by savingisbadnow »

XorNot wrote: post #410
Applejinx wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socially, why? I could see making the argument for 'the same share, in perpetuity' as that is kind of the whole idea of what money is: parking value in some way. Why bigger, exactly? What is the justification?

Sarcasm (I presume) doesn't transfer well on the internet. The parent is pointing out the absurdity of the whole idea of deflationary currency: sit and do nothing, and force the next generation to turn over more of their productivity then you ever produced.

Yes, its extremely absurd to expect that your savings and life energy is preserved for the future. Money should have an expiry date like in China, so you have to consume cheap garbage constantly and make the economy work faster!

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#450

Post by savingisbadnow »

throwaway939321 wrote: post #398
ekianjo wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we need a carbon tax, that is specifically a financial disincentive towards any means of energy production that directly pollutes the atmosphere. Then by all means lets ban video games which are an extreme waste of electricity polluting the atmosphere for no good reason. You see how this reasonning can go?

Video games don't produce any electricity. The idea is to disincentive electricity production .

Yes thats right. The more energy the world has the worse our lives are, people should keepliving in extreme poverty so we can stop climate change. We should actually reduce most of our energy use and on elect throwaway939321 as a world dictator to decide what we should use energy for and what not.
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