Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#251

Post by mrtksn » Thu, May 13, 2021, 10:52 AM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #95

What I don't get is, why people are talking about environmental impact per transaction. Transactions or not, the computers are churning constantly to solve the useless function that would produce the hash with the most 0s in it. It really doesn't have anything to do with transactions(the fees are only a fraction of the profits). The energy impact would be precisely correlated to the fiat price since the miners will b…

There was a comment that was deleted as I was writing a reply. Just not to waste it, here it is:

the comment: "Correct me if I'm wrong but in absolute numbers Bitcoin seems to be responsible for more CO2 emissions than the whole financial industry. [1] And it's hardly in use. Indeed it seems convincing that Bitcoin together with Bitcoin Cash can be tuned to have reasonably low energy usage per transaction, e.g. by doing lots of transactions off-chain. But it's not the default, it's an option that is not really being taken advantage of. It's unfair to compare systems that are not optimized with systems that are optimized. On the other hand Bitcoin is now more than 10 years old and there was already a reasonable amount of time to optimize it. That said, I think some of the initially advertised noble goals (more stable currency, democratized access to financial tooling) are thrown away for quick profits. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952"

my reply:

On chain, off-chain doesn't matter because it's not the transactions that the miners are after.

The Bitcoin blockchain can probably be mined even on a fitness tracker, it's not that the calculation itself requiring gargantuous amount of energy. It can even be mined by hand.

The problem is, it is a competition by design which economically dictates that there's money to be made up until the price of mining matches the reward of a mined block. This is also dynamically adjusted to match the mining availability through increasing or decreasing the difficulty(which is, the adjustment of number of 0s that are needed in the hash for a block to be valid).

The current situation is by design and BTC will work fine with any amount of energy thrown at it. It will work exactly the same, on-chain, off chain, mined by a single server, mined by the complete use of humanity's energy, the energy collected by a Dyson Sphere. If will work exactly the same, only the number of zeros on the hash of a block will change.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#252

Post by simondotau » Thu, May 13, 2021, 10:56 AM UTC

kaba0 wrote: post #220

simondotau wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're a touch over-optimistic if you think that all large companies always consider every possible ramification of every decision to its fullest extent prior to acting. Personally I think Tesla's (and Elon's, and for that matter everyone's) involvement with cryptocurrency as a serious investment is moronic, driven almost entirely by sci-fi daydreaming rather than by actual principles. But my opinion doesn't…

It’s a typical pump-and-dump+market manipulation decision in an unregulated market so it is legal, and highly profitable. It’s not a bad investment, only a moral failing.

Given that they haven't pumped (if anything they stand accused of deflating, not pumping) and they haven't dumped (they still hold roughly 90% of their peak position) how do you figure that they performed a "pump and dump"?

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#253

Post by throwaway-8c93 » Thu, May 13, 2021, 10:58 AM UTC

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #131

qeternity wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is tremendous risk of having data located in China. This is not the case with Bitcoin. If you put your SOTA AI/ML project there, your IP will be stolen, guaranteed. If you put your Bitcoin mining there, your only risk is the hardware.

The Bitcoin mining farms in China are not rented out to western customers. They do not sell the raw processing power. They sell the finished product: mined blocks. They could do the same for ML. Sell the trained models.

The trained model is a guarded treasure. There's a reason why very few ML papers publish their trained models; or Deepmind/OpenAI never releasing the resulting models - it's expensive to train the network, but cheap to use it afterwards. You don't want anyone unauthorized to get their hands on it.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#254

Post by rdsubhas » Thu, May 13, 2021, 11:51 AM UTC

bidirectional wrote: post #227

iamacyborg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative was to essentially provide free options to customers. It was stupid whichever way they did it.

No, the alternative was to issue refunds in the currency of transaction. There's no reason they would ever offer customers the choice of refund currency.

That doesn't work. Say you purchase car for 0.5BTC today. Tommorrow BTC goes up. You ask for a refund and immediately buy the same car back for say 0.25BTC. Free discount. Who would not do it?

Core of this is that BTC (atleast right now) is a highly volatile, speculative asset. There is no way direct payments in BTC will make common "market sense" until volatility stabilizes. Until then someone has to take responsibility for bearing that volatility, either the customer or the manufacturer. In this case, it's apt that the customer bears it (as they should, it's their gamble).

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#255

Post by srg0 » Thu, May 13, 2021, 11:53 AM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #230

jiriknesl wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use crypto (and mainly Bitcoin) to pay for three years every month now. Average fee over those years is more like $1. In comparison with $20 transaction fees my bank asks when I transact for example from EU to SouthAm, zero hassle and no paperwork when sending to countries with trade embargo, I must say, Bitcoin is golden.

I use Western Union and for the last 2 years it's said there's 0 transfer fee's. It's basically the same exchange rate as the bank so i don't think they skim off the top and if they do it would end up being like 50 cents in difference to the bank. ( i have no idea how WU makes money)

You may be benefiting from some kind of a special deal or a promotion, but overall their fees are very high

https://www.westernunion.com/content/dam/wu/EU/EN/feeTableRe...

Like sometimes two digit percentage high.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#256

Post by jiriknesl » Thu, May 13, 2021, 11:55 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #224

jiriknesl wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use crypto (and mainly Bitcoin) to pay for three years every month now. Average fee over those years is more like $1. In comparison with $20 transaction fees my bank asks when I transact for example from EU to SouthAm, zero hassle and no paperwork when sending to countries with trade embargo, I must say, Bitcoin is golden.

How much are the fees for converting to Bitcoin, the recipient converting from Bitcoin, and the transaction costs? TransferWise is quoting me an effective all-in price[0] of £1.98 to send someone in Brazil £100 of my hard-earned Sterling. I’m struggling to believe you’re getting Bitcoin in or out of fiat for less than 2-5% a go, and transaction cost is ~$15, so ballpark this is costing $25? 0: £100 -> 729.83, where G…

So it depends. For example in Argentina, they AFAIK have two conversion rates. When you use a normal bank account, you have to use government conversion rate that's 50% of black market rate between Argentinian pesos and USDs. With Bitcoin, you could try black market straight away and even if you pay 2-5%, you might end up better.

For transaction rate, Trezor says at 22sat/B., you will have your transaction confirmed in 4 hours 10 minutes for $1.85.

Even if BTC price was stable, I would still use it. But my experience is that having some BTC is usually better than just having cash.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#257

Post by swinglock » Thu, May 13, 2021, 1:05 PM UTC

arss wrote: post #216

swinglock wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because it's not used. This is like arguing we should switch from using cars currently on the road because they use energy, to cars currently standing in a garage, because we measured and clearly the parked cars use less energy than the cars on the road. It's not even hyperbole, it's precisely equivalent and just as boneheaded as it sounds.

This is not true. Dogecoin is way lower KW per hash than bitcoin. Dogecoin is .12 and bitcoin is 707 https://www.trgdatacenters.com/most-environment-friendly-cry...

KW per hash, are you pulling my leg? What does washer fluid consumption per turn signal rate has to do with anything?

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#258

Post by swinglock » Thu, May 13, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #139

mrtksn wrote: post #95

What I don't get is, why people are talking about environmental impact per transaction. Transactions or not, the computers are churning constantly to solve the useless function that would produce the hash with the most 0s in it. It really doesn't have anything to do with transactions(the fees are only a fraction of the profits). The energy impact would be precisely correlated to the fiat price since the miners will b…

And as such, the best thing that Tesla can do for the environment is to sell all of its PoW coins and continue to talk-down the price. They, and we, can also petition Governments to ban the exchange of PoW coins for fiat. PoW coins serve no purpose and represent a egregious waste of our civilization's advanced manufactured goods and electricity. Taking crypto down a notch might also make ransomware attacks less likel…

If it was about the environment and not looking for a scape goat, then ban or simply tax the dirty energy sources.

It makes no difference to the environment if you burn coal to feed Bitcoin or a factory.

Higher taxes on dirty energy would make a huge difference to which power sources would be used by Bitcoin however as Bitcoin feeds on cheap energy, but why limit ourselves to Bitcoin anyway; it doesn't burn the coal.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#259

Post by iamacyborg » Thu, May 13, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #128

iamacyborg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that being the natural choice for another pump n dump scheme is a good thing.

Tesla didn't dump bitcoin. They only sold 10% of their holding, so any negative impact of their decision to cease acceptance of bitcoin for vehicle purchases, on the value of their bitcoin holdings, would outweigh the gains they made from pumping bitcoin and selling a portion of it.

> They only sold 10% of their holding

That we know of.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#260

Post by mrtksn » Thu, May 13, 2021, 1:47 PM UTC

swinglock wrote: post #258

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as such, the best thing that Tesla can do for the environment is to sell all of its PoW coins and continue to talk-down the price. They, and we, can also petition Governments to ban the exchange of PoW coins for fiat. PoW coins serve no purpose and represent a egregious waste of our civilization's advanced manufactured goods and electricity. Taking crypto down a notch might also make ransomware attacks less likel…

If it was about the environment and not looking for a scape goat, then ban or simply tax the dirty energy sources. It makes no difference to the environment if you burn coal to feed Bitcoin or a factory. Higher taxes on dirty energy would make a huge difference to which power sources would be used by Bitcoin however as Bitcoin feeds on cheap energy, but why limit ourselves to Bitcoin anyway; it doesn't burn the coal.

Fossil energy sources is a necessary evil, the pollution we create results in cars, computers, food etc. You can't simply say that from now on you'll shut down the coal energy, that would be catastrophic.

Instead, the governments are incentivising the cleaner sources over the other. At least the governments that have a mandate to do that.

The problem with the energy spent on Bitcoin is that it produces a gambling marketplace and nothing else(okay, also some ransomware and illicit trade tools too but these are minuscule). Do we really need to have huge global gambling marketplace at the cost of the destruction of the environment? At the same destruction we could he better food, electronics cars etc. The same gambling marketplace infrastructure could be run for just a few kWh.