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SolarBatteryBitcoin
161–170 of 214 posts
Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin
#162The incessant snide comments expressing nothing but dislike for Bitcoin really don’t belong on HN. Not liking Bitcoin is fine, but if you don’t have anything to add just don’t comment. Every thread about Bitcoin on HN does not a dozen comments that it’s a waste of time and energy.
It's really pretty ridiculous and frustrating. I come here for intelligent discussion, and I agree it's okay if people don't like Bitcoin, but at least take some time to learn about it if you're going to argue. It's straight up denial at this point, because Bitcoin, Ethereum, and DeFi are securing and transacting billions of dollars every single day. It's not a question of if it works at this point, it does work! An…
Thank you! I come to HN to have intelligent discussion as well, and I totally agree. If I go to Reddit it's mostly just a bunch of garbage, even with crypto fans. I do think HN is warming up to crypto, a little bit, at least, or maybe it's just that more crypto fans are speaking up here.
Anyway, like you said, crypto is already working. The network effects are real.
Also, PoW does require a lot of energy, which is a common argument, but this is energy that includes audits, transport and security of the system. For Bitcoin, that's currently over $1 trillion, which to me seems like it is worth securing.
There also do seem to be ways to use excess energy for PoW and make it more green, which seems promising. The energy can be captured anywhere on the planet and used to support the global Bitcoin network from wherever the energy is. There is so much potential in this network.
Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin
#163The 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…
I haven’t looked at the details of the calculations but one of problems with mining is that mining hardware deprecates and therefor it needs to be used now - in two years more energy efficient hardware will render it useless. So the idea of switching it on and off according to energy prices doesn’t really hold.
The mining hardware made by Bitmain uses the latest high-end fabrication nodes from TSMC. How much TSMC's manufacturing capacity is used by cryptocurrency is unclear; the number is hidden inside the high performance computing segment in TSMC's financial statements. But it is probably a sizeable part.
Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
The price (and therefore value?) of satoshis rise/fall at the exact same rate as a price of a bitcoin, so I don't see how this invalidates their argument.
if you can acquire 0.0006USD worth of bitcoin then the price of bitcoin alone is not a limiting factor. Maybe if OP is talking about hundreds of years in the future and BTC is worth $1 Million+?
If the USD were completely replaced with bitcoin (ignoring long transaction times and other garbage) you'd expect approximately 1BTC for every $1.3M currently in circulation. In just a few decades even a Satoshi would be worth the equivalent of $1+.
Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin
#165Earlier 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…
Fiat currencies will still exist. Remember, Bitcoin is a competing asset to fiat, not a wholesale replacement. I suspect that even if central banks adopt Bitcoin as a currency reserve, their fiat will be pegged to it by some ratio only.
At some point, the real yield on a government treasury will exceed the real yield on Bitcoin, indicating that a better savings rate in fiat is available. This will shift value back out to fiat, similarly to the way gold inflows/outflows in expansion and recession.
Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 bar…
You will still have political parties. They will be the ones with the militaries. The endgame of HODL is a digital Fort Knox. Under the gold standard people didn’t actually exchange pieces of eight. They used paper money.
Yes, and what will they pay the soldiers? Worthless Fiat?
Part of the debasement of the roman currency was to pay their armies. When you take that ability away from a state, how do you maintain them without unlimited funding?
I don't know if bitcoin will end all wars, but it is far closer to a peaceful coexistence than debt-based economies.
Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin
#167The 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…
Just for the sake of anecdote, my state in Australia has both a desalination plant and a hydrogen plant, one was a government project to protect the state's water supply and the other was a private initiative to supply "green" hydrogen to steel plants and other heavy industries as they move to a different steel process.
So those are good uses of off-peak power when your local economy is already interested in having those things. The state also has some other initiatives to use the excess generation, such as residential water heating and EV charging using "smart grid" sockets that take into account the local and greater network's load and generation.
Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know you don’t believe it has any value; my belief is it is the most valuable thing on earth, more valuable than gold, platinum and love. I believe this as passionately as you are choosing to ignore it. Your wall of text has many misconceptions and misunderstandings about how things actually work. I implore you to let your partially formed ideas go and read some more about what is really going on here. Why do you t…
I think its currently popular because its new and highly volatile and unregulated. Our society is quite busy with corona and while bitcoin uses a lot of energy already, the market size is still very small. Core reasons why i think we don't hear more about regulating bitcoins. Popularity doesn't correlate to real value.
The market cap of Bitcoin is currently larger than Facebook [1]. The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies is over $2 trillion, which is larger than Microsoft, Amazon, Google or silver, and nearing the market cap of Apple. I would not consider that a small market.
It is not unregulated. There have been several lawsuits brought on to the space already [2][3]. Exchanges that don't enforce AML/KYC have charges brought against them [4]. It is less regulated than the stock market, but it is by no means the wild west, at least in the US.
1: https://companiesmarketcap.com/assets-by-market-cap
2: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-262
3: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-338
4: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/bloomberg-law-analysis/analysi...
Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree we already have a system of money and trust. Bitcoin energy demands will scale much more than any other uses of the energy grid going forward, so our entire economy becomes slaved to preserving bitcoin. A dystopia
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.
If the dollar inflates to hell, I wouldn't lose much. I'd still have my skills, to work for a living. I'd still have my house, my car, my workshop, my tools, my computers, etc. Unless it's a total collapse I'll still have my stocks, too.
Preserving my wealth in the event of the dollar rapidly losing value is not a problem for me. I'm 90% OK on that front without even trying particularly hard to do anything about it.
What would be a problem for me, is that a failing dollar might be a symptom of the US government failing, in which case society would be falling apart around me. If basic services like roads, infrastructure, fire and police, electricity and clean running water aren't working properly nationwide, it's going to interfere with my life big time. Maybe directly, maybe indirectly: e.g. my grocery store has trouble restocking because the supply chain is not running smoothly. Bitcoin doesn't help me with that type of problem at all.
I'd be better off trying to keep my government functional by promoting and voting for good policies, staying involved at the local level, and generally acting as a participant in government rather than a subject of it. Playing John Galt and pretending that I'm just going to have my own safe little bitcoin world if our government fails, so I don't care and in fact assume that it WILL fail, would be both sickeningly cynical (regarding society's outcome) and naively optimistic (regarding my own outcome).
Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin
#170The 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…
I haven’t looked at the details of the calculations but one of problems with mining is that mining hardware deprecates and therefor it needs to be used now - in two years more energy efficient hardware will render it useless. So the idea of switching it on and off according to energy prices doesn’t really hold.
Since this model is mining with "free" power, it seems like even less efficient hardware could still be used profitably which would extend the depreciation (and reduce e-waste concerns). They might even buy used miners that are considered too inefficient by other companies.