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Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

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Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#521

Post by jerry1979 »

jariel wrote: post #492
jerry1979 wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin creates no value. Bitcoin creates a "source of truth" which has lots of value for people. For example, working at an organization where everyone wants to cooperate to deliver a product, figuring out who should own, update, and report on sources of truth takes lots of effort. But those sources of truth within organizations help people coordinate their collective efforts. Out here in the regular world where w…

That's a good idea, but in practice, no value is created by BTC. And of course, there are a ton of ways of having a 'source of truth'. So BTC is not a good currency, and it's not a very good store of value either. But we knew that going into it, because it's obvious from the start. It's just a speculative instrument. If you get paid in a regular currency, then you're good. If you don't want to hold it, than buy an ET…

I think you make a good observation when you say that we have many kinds of sources of truth. People want to create many different kinds of sources of truth because people find sources of truth very very valuable. The fact that we can agree that bitcoin gives us a source of truth proves that bitcoin creates value because, as we know, people find them so valuable.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#522

Post by jariel »

jerry1979 wrote: post #521
jariel wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good idea, but in practice, no value is created by BTC. And of course, there are a ton of ways of having a 'source of truth'. So BTC is not a good currency, and it's not a very good store of value either. But we knew that going into it, because it's obvious from the start. It's just a speculative instrument. If you get paid in a regular currency, then you're good. If you don't want to hold it, than buy an ET…

I think you make a good observation when you say that we have many kinds of sources of truth. People want to create many different kinds of sources of truth because people find sources of truth very very valuable. The fact that we can agree that bitcoin gives us a source of truth proves that bitcoin creates value because, as we know, people find them so valuable.

" The fact that we can agree that bitcoin gives us a source"

'Sources of Truth' are a commodity.

There are any number of ways to do that.

There's no reason to have a $50B source of truth.

And FYI there is no value merely in a 'source of truth' it has to be put to use in some way, and BTC has zero uses.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#523

Post by zepto »

tshaddox wrote: post #506
zepto wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That sounds like a stretch. No more of a stretch as comparing it to farming or art. I’m not making a judgement here, just listing other activities that make money for people and which have externalities, since ‘making money for the miners’ is claimed as a good. You be the judge.

> No more of a stretch as comparing it to farming or art. Indeed, and that’s precisely my point. The externality problem ought to be addressed directly instead of creating a new regulatory body to decide which goods are “good” and thus allowed to have externalities and which goods are “bad” and thus are banned completely or banned from having externalities.

> The externality problem ought to be addressed directly

What does ‘directly’ mean?

> instead of creating a new regulatory body to decide which goods are “good” and thus allowed to have externalities and which goods are “bad” and thus are banned completely or banned from having externalities.

How would you apply this direct approach to muggings or cigarette companies?

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#524

Post by zepto »

tshaddox wrote: post #507
zepto wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turning electricity into money is different from using some electricity while you make money.

I fail to see the distinction. Bitcoin mining, just like farming, traditional mining, etc. doesn’t literally have electricity as its only input.

> I fail to see the distinction. Bitcoin mining, just like farming, traditional mining, etc. doesn’t literally have electricity as its only input.

If your are referring to the wasted hardware, then sure, but once the equipment is in place, Bitcoin mining itself does in fact have electricity as the only input.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#525

Post by yreg »

snarf21 wrote: post #483
yreg wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the carbon tax drastically drop bitcoin price? If electricity price increases, the difficulty dicreases. As far as the difficulty stays high enough to keep the network secure the markets don't have a reason to care.

The problem with the difficulty decreasing is that it depends on how much and how fast. It depends on how much the tax is relative to the cost to mine. Also, it could also politically be positioned as a "bitcoin tax" instead of a climate change thing to make it bi-partisan. I personally think these are the things that causes Main Street to move on. If all of the commoners sell their BTC the price will drop.

An international carbon tax could not be surprisingly high (innitially) nor come fast enough to shock the markets.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#526

Post by anoncake »

machiaweliczny wrote: post #487
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…

AFAIK No, BTC algorithm ensures fixed mining difficulty (so amount of mining&minners doesn't matter (only for overtaking network)). Actually if too much BTC will be mined by limited amount of miners whole coin my lose value, e.g. if we require that barier to entry is having own power plant BTC might get destroyed by too greedy miners. IMO BTC existence is possibly good as it raises demand for cheap energy (and curren…

> IMO BTC existence is possibly good as it raises demand for cheap energy (and currently green energy is cheapest it seems), it's also good as forcing function for fiat.

No. It increases demand for energy period. Increasing demand makes energy more expensive, not less.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#527

Post by joshspankit »

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…

I think you’ve stumbled on The Solution.

Like, in reality miners will use whatever power is cheapest, and solar is currently the cheapest. They are also extremely* agile and can shift location/power source in a handful of days which leads me to believe that they are currently driving adoption of solar, BUT: with miners being framed as The Big Threat, we might be able to finally use that perception as a crowbar to remove incentives for energy sources that pollute and even impose heavy taxes on those sources and end up completely digging out the oil/coal industries.

Win Win Win as far as I’m concerned.

*Apparently unless you can buy an entire power plant

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#528

Post by webinvest »

BTCOG wrote: post #446
webinvest wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 everyt…

My mistake, bitcoin transaction fees are lower around $25 according to this chart[1].

Everything else in my comment still stands though and it certainly is a cryptocurrency.

[1] https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f...

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#529

Post by webinvest »

gruez wrote: post #424
webinvest wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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). market cap =/= trust, especially when you consider that in the past there were outright scams that were in the top 15 (eg. IOTA).

I don’t like IOTA. It was pretty overhyped for it’s value. I don’t know how many cryptocurrencies there are, maybe 10s of thousands, but being in the top 15 by market cap lends more credibility than in the top 1000 by market cap. Anyone can make a cryptocurrency, but not anyone can make it valuable.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#530

Post by webinvest »

arcticbull wrote: post #499
webinvest wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It’s cryptocurrency, the Stellar Lumens (XLM) is trusted well enough to be in the top 15 cryptocurrencies by marketcap. lol, Dogecoin is #6 and XLM is #14. Are you saying your currency is less trusted than one with a dog on it?

Possibly, yes? It’s not my cryptocurrency, it’s just one I’ve used and known about for a few years. Dogecoin is something else; I don’t know how that meme coin got so big. Also by your same logic, should we not trust the USDC stablecoin because it’s #18? Lol
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