SolarBatteryBitcoin • Hacker News Board

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#141

Post by SuoDuanDao » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

Hermio wrote: post #125

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your arguments also seem deliberately wordy and full of minor inaccuracies or things that look inaccurate but are simply your opinions; you give the impression of someone who crafts his arguments not to inform but to waste the time of people engaging him, then claims victory when they let him have the last word.

I brought arguments. It should be easy for you to take part in this discussion by using my arguments and showing they are wrong. I have no clue why you would see my writing as 'deliberately wordy' if you could just counterargue them? I'm also not a native speaker, not sure if my style of writing is just different. "who crafts his arguments not to inform but to waste the time of people engaging him" I'm lost. You make…

Ah well, if English is not your primary language I suppose I could have been a bit harsh. I'll give one example and expand. You wrote:

>No country has a benefit of allowing bitcoin.

which is absurd to anyone who's heard the first argument in favour of Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency allows reliable recordkeeping of transactions without a bribe-able human in the loop. Therefore, it allows default transparency and reduces corruption. Every government gains a benefit from allowing that. As for Bitcoin specifically, in multi-country deals it offers a neutral currency that neither party has more control over. Among other things this allows loans to be brokered without a risk of either party manipulating the supply of currency in which the loan must be repaid. It's a huge benefit to most countries to have a tool like that available. These are very basic arguments in favour of crypto. You seem highly informed on the subject by how much you have to say, but it's unlikely a highly informed person would have never encountered them. Therefore, you give the impression of being dishonest or at least uninterested in the other side's arguments.

Just a note in general, there are various manuals online about how to control the narrative around contentious topics. One method commonly outlined is to provide lengthy, slightly rambling opinions for one side. The lengthy nature of these replies makes them difficult to thoroughly argue against, if they're copy and pasted it actually takes more effort to read them than to write them. This causes many people who could argue against them to decide it's not worth the trouble. Neutral or uninformed parties then see a large amount of intelligent-seeming text in favour of one side of the argument with no responses, and conclude that the side posting these large text blocks is correct without themselves evaluating the content.

Now, brevity is obviously more difficult in a non-native language and I have sympathy for that. You might have noticed my own writing has a similarly wordy tone, and most people struggle with saying a lot with few words. I just hope it's worth knowing there's a pattern of malicious action that your comment resembled.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#142

Post by noxer » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #97

jillesvangurp wrote: post #79

The premise is that there no more worthier causes than bitcoin beyond the grid needs. That premise is simply false. You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen. These are all applications that can flexibly use clean/cheap power when it is available instead of putting a constant load on the grid. This solution would compet…

> You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen. Ideally you need something where the cost of electricity would normally dominate the capital costs of setting up the operation. Otherwise, you're better off running the process all the time, and it's not a useful grid battery. Alternatively, something where you need to overbu…

>Charging cars is a great application even though cars are expensive to build...

Its also logistically hard to actually get the energy back into the grid from cars. Driving around with it is fine but if you cant put the energy back into the grid at peak time you still have to over produce more energy in total than just to cover the peak. It uses the energy which is good but it does not reduce the difference between peak demand an low demand. If that is reduced it has an overall larger impact than just to using the excess energy.

Pumping water back up into a reservoir is the most common and probably oldest way to store excess grid capacity like an actual grid batter (one that gives energy back to the grid). Ofc its not feasible in many places due to the lack of hydro power plant but there are other ways to actually store energy and deliver it back to the grid unlike the Buttcoin battery nonsense.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#143

Post by rfd4sgmk8u » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

Hermio wrote: post #139

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do NOT have money and trust today. Every single government ever has debased their currency. Central banks cannot be trusted not to destroy your hard earned savings. A dystopia is being enslaved to the existing economic debt machine, rather than being free to trade the hardest money ever invented by humans. When folks understand this, they run to the fiat exits.

To trust whom instead? How would a world, realisticly speaking, look like if we ever reach a dystopian level where we all stop using the currencies of our own countries? Srsly, if i stop trusting in the Euro, i can't imagine how our whole economy has to look like. I think we might have a lot of bigger issues at this point in time as bitcoin and probably not enough resources anymore to run bitcoin.

Math and Energy. That's the beautiful thing. If you trust the ECDSA is secure, and you trust that SHA256 is secure - You don't need to trust the individual network participants.

If ECDSA or SHA256 were shown to be weaker than believed, they can be substituted in the bitcoin codebase (given approval of all participants, which are incentivized to ensure the computational security of the protocol).

The energy is the barrier to prevent malicious parties from rewinding history. Fundamental, understood quantities in the universe is far better than the political whims of the party in charge.

What does hyperbitcoinization look like? This infographic video provides some introduction to what this could be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pDlaOGA2ac (Bitcoin: Everything there is, divided by 21 million)

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#144

Post by rfd4sgmk8u » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #105

speeder wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people need bitcoin. It is really useful to hoard! Not to ge rich, but to avoid getting poorer in countries with rampant inflation. Also it facilitate money transfers a lot. Yes, a transaction in bitcoin is expensive, but a international wire transfer on my country for example is EVEN MORE expensive, so transferring money using Bitcoin, even after eating all the fees, is cheaper (and easier too). So people t…

>It is really useful to hoard! Not to ge rich, but to avoid getting poorer in countries with rampant inflation. >Also it facilitate money transfers a lot. You do realize that, because the total number of bitcoins is limited, it will get harder and harder to get bitcoins? So every generations will have to work/fight harder to get their currency, which is extremely unfair? Why would a newborn have more trouble to get h…

You do realize the total number of land on earth is limited, and it will get harder to buy land? Every generation will have to fight over land, and this is extremely unfair.

So is your beef against capitalism? Or the medium of exchange?

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#145

Post by merpnderp » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

Hermio wrote: post #139

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do NOT have money and trust today. Every single government ever has debased their currency. Central banks cannot be trusted not to destroy your hard earned savings. A dystopia is being enslaved to the existing economic debt machine, rather than being free to trade the hardest money ever invented by humans. When folks understand this, they run to the fiat exits.

To trust whom instead? How would a world, realisticly speaking, look like if we ever reach a dystopian level where we all stop using the currencies of our own countries? Srsly, if i stop trusting in the Euro, i can't imagine how our whole economy has to look like. I think we might have a lot of bigger issues at this point in time as bitcoin and probably not enough resources anymore to run bitcoin.

Your "dystopian" world was the status quo for thousands of years as people used gold. You don't have to imagine how the economy would look, you could just pick up a history book.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#146

Post by thebean11 » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #70

csomar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is purely subjective. Bitcoin's spent electricity goes to increase security of the network (whether one's care about the network, is the subjective part). But the electricity is not being turned into heat for no purpose and then ejected into the atmosphere.

That's still not the problem: Proof-of-work mining wastes energy purposefully, while any other type of data processing only does so coincidentally. Data centers would jump at the opportunity of using 50% less electricity due to more efficient processors. Bitcoin miners would just mine twice as fast.

No, the amount of energy "wasted" is not measured, the incentive is hashrate, and each generation of hardware is more efficient in terms of hashrate per joule.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#147

Post by christkv » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

The amount of energy spent on this is breathtaking and it really has to stop.

A single bitcoin transaction has a carbon footprint of 359.04 kgCO2 – equivalent to the carbon footprint of 795,752 VISA transactions or 59,840 hours of watching YouTube.

https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/bitcoin-shocker-cr...

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#148

Post by noxer » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #131

dmurray wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen. Ideally you need something where the cost of electricity would normally dominate the capital costs of setting up the operation. Otherwise, you're better off running the process all the time, and it's not a useful grid battery. Alternatively, something where you need to overbu…

Water desalination and green hydrogen production using clean energy are already real applications and growing markets. The cost of the water is a function of electricity cost, investment needed to build the plants. So, being able to use cheap clean energy for that would reduce cost and make that more attractive. With water, you tend to use the cheapest option. If you are in the middle east on the coast, far from rive…

The problems with water desalination and hydrogen production is that if you dont run at a somewhat constant volume you likely aren't at the financial optimum. You can do maintenance and stuff when the energy price is high but turning everything off is just likely not financially sustainable. The energy cost is just one factor. If the plant does not use any energy it still has plenty other running cost that wont stop.

We need more solutions that work like pumping water back up into a reservoir (see other reply). These solutions aren't at risk that they need to run on high energy cost anyway to stay profitable.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#149

Post by hannob » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

The main problem with this "model" is that it assumes a world where only solar power, batteries and bitcoin exist.

But we live in a more complicated world where coal power plants, other possible uses of excess electricity and many other things exist.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#150

Post by silveraxe93 » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

Blumfid wrote: post #132

silveraxe93 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that your money? The whole point of money is that who owns it decides where it should be used.

Yes let's ignore that I'm living on the same planet as you do and it doesn't affect myself and my family. Right? And no we don't live in a society where this doesn't matter. You are not allowed to do with your money whatever you want. Buying a hitman: illegal in most of the world. And you do understand that it is hypocritical to create a ton of co2 and making farming in other countries really hard and complaining lat…

How on Earth is comparing this to hiring a hitman reasonable?

If your point is that you can't spend money on illegal things, bitcoin is not illegal.

Also, who complained about immigrants? Where did this come from. And even if immigrants/farming had any relevance to the discussion co2 is likely to increase crop yields.