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

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#261

Post by DonHopkins » Thu, May 13, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

RichardHeart wrote: post #74

Elon is still promoting Dogecoin which is also proof of work. Lots of people will be harmed when it crashes. Nearly all cryptocurrencies crash 85% every once in a while.

Is your real name "Richard J Schueler", and is this true?

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/kwhjxa/why_...

>Why HEX is a Ponzi and not a solid investment (Part 2): Richard Heart

>Legal and questionable events from Richard J Schueler:

>2002: Sued and won by Peacefire.org for violating Washingtons anti-spam laws, he was known at that time as the 'spam king' and made a lot of money off it - source. The Methuselah Foundation, for which Heart volunteered at that time, was committed to extending the human lifespan and “making 90 the new 50”.

>Questionable events in Panama: Several of Heart’s alleged aliases (James Hart, J. Richard, Richard Schueler) were named in connection with a Panamanian criminal network. Heart, called "CharityLover' at that time supposed cohorts included robbers, blackmailers and corrupt lawyers and judges, according to posts stemming from the now defunct Panama-Guide website . Miguel Antonio Bernal (Panama lawyer) described the process by which American criminals flooded Panama to “rob, cheat and blackmail local businessmen using Panama’s weak legal system'' in the linked post under ''Panama".

You're the same "Richard Heart" who won the "Golden Pump Award" for "Best New Scam" for "HEX", correct?

https://twitter.com/JuanSGalt/status/1233242355995750400

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=857&v=tf-lJu5iDh...

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#262

Post by smaryjerry » Thu, May 13, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #229

x3sphere wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but none of it makes any sense. I have to imagine the decision to buy Bitcoin and accept it as payment was vetted by a lot of people internally, not just Musk himself. And the environmental impacts from mining are well known. Musk isn’t stupid either - he must’ve known this would be an issue for Tesla’s image.

In my opinion Musk probably thinks/knows he's like Trump. Whatever they do, they have a bunch of hardcore defenders (like the ones who will burn this comment to the ground). Wake me up when Musk stops selling his carbon offsets. Because for every non-pollution a Tesla car doesn't do, the sold carbon offset means there's another ICE car that's doing it. "Musk cares for the environment". Hah, that's as bullshit as "Tru…

Carbon credits are doing their exact purpose. It is moving profitability into environmentally friendly sectors and out of polluting sectors. This is in order to make polluting more expensive and environmentally friendly cheaper... I’m not sure why you would think selling carbon credits is evil.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#263

Post by DonHopkins » Thu, May 13, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

propertymagnate wrote: post #186

Negitivefrags wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it bad to not want to do something only because public opinion says not to? I think if you think it is bad, then that implies a certain world view about absolute good and evil. The implication is that this is an evil thing, and only an evil person would want to do it, and so if the only reason they won’t do it is because of public opinion then that doesn’t change their inherent evilness. But the other possibility…

In terms of the discussion about it being a neutral thing, some points: 1. Elon Musk is afraid of AI for the reasons of the paperclip apocalypse problem. You would make something and it would consume all of the resource due to it understanding its need to self replicate and not the fact that its use of resources meant a lack of resources for everyone else and potentially the destruction of the society consuming the p…

It's not like figuring out that bitcoin destroys the environment is rocket science.

Even if it was, doesn't he have rocket scientists to figure that kind of stuff out for him?

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#264

Post by ArtTimeInvestor » Thu, May 13, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

throwaway-8c93 wrote: post #249

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #96

Why is is Bitcoin mining mainly happening in China, but not other compute bound tasks? How about machine learning. Why aren't the leading data centers for ML based in China? Or are they? And on the energy front - if fossil fuels are the best energy source for calculating hashes, why not for other types of number crunching? Can boycotting one type of calculations really keep the fossil fuels under the ground? If they…

There are several reasons it's mostly a China-operation. Interestingly, it's a textbook example of deficiencies being the competitive advantage. #1 - China's electricity grid is not very efficient at distributing, which leads to some areas with constant surpluses, directly translating into extremely low electricity prices in those areas #2 - almost all computer hardware is manufactured in East Asia. Chinese miners do…

These 4 points would apply to any type of high latency / low security computation though.

Is Bitcoin mining the only type of such computation for which there is a large demand?

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#265

Post by ArtTimeInvestor » Thu, May 13, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

throwaway-8c93 wrote: post #253

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, somehow the models must be monetized.

Either by giving them to the customer (Like Tesla will put them into cars) or by letting the customer interact with them via the internet (SaaS).

Either way - if the production of the models is most efficient in China, then we should see them being made in China.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#266

Post by bellyfullofbac » Thu, May 13, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

smaryjerry wrote: post #262

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion Musk probably thinks/knows he's like Trump. Whatever they do, they have a bunch of hardcore defenders (like the ones who will burn this comment to the ground). Wake me up when Musk stops selling his carbon offsets. Because for every non-pollution a Tesla car doesn't do, the sold carbon offset means there's another ICE car that's doing it. "Musk cares for the environment". Hah, that's as bullshit as "Tru…

Carbon credits are doing their exact purpose. It is moving profitability into environmentally friendly sectors and out of polluting sectors. This is in order to make polluting more expensive and environmentally friendly cheaper... I’m not sure why you would think selling carbon credits is evil.

So if I'm allowed to put out 1000kg of CO2, and my neighbour as well for a total of 2000kg of CO2, hey, let me be zero emissions and emit 5kg of CO2. Hooray, it's better for the environment, the CO2 emissions are down 995kg!

Oh wait, I sold my credits to my neighbor, so total CO2 emissions are still 2000kg. Hooray, I'm saving the planet! Worship me! /s

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#267

Post by arcticbull » Thu, May 13, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

qaq wrote: post #130

serf wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I mean, isn’t this exactly the behaviour we want to encourage? I want to encourage 'corporate flexibility and social accountability'. I do not want to encourage market-whale-individuals to attempt one-person pump-and-dumps on small(ish) global markets and further market opportunism & manipulation. Personally I believe that the decision has little to do with environmental impact; I think that the btc opportunity is b…

"small(ish)" a trillion USD (+/-) is not exactly small

As of today, we know about 3.87% of the 56 billion outstanding Tethers that help define that market cap are backed by cash. During the big dump to 46K a day ago, Coinbase' bid-ask spread went to $1000-2500 depending on when you looked. That's a serious lack of liquidity. While a "trillion" is not small, its a completely illusory number.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#268

Post by Moodles » Thu, May 13, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

karlkloss wrote: post #209

Moodles wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People would take back the criticism of market manipulation if Tesla donated the profits made from BTC to environmental charities.

That doesn't make it any better, fraud for charity is still fraud.

It would at least help the narrative that they genuinely had a change of conscious though, as opposed to just keeping the profits.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#269

Post by johnnycerberus » Thu, May 13, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

esjeon wrote: post #206

johnnycerberus wrote: post #159

Same people calling for decentralization, unregulated practices and absolute freemarket are now calling for regulation and accusing Elon of market manipulation. This can't get any better, I'm having a lot of fun reading Reddit and Hackernews. Good job, Elon! You demonstrated once again that you are a talented businessman. It's so easy to make money when there are so many naive people around. Thanks for the lesson.

Anything that makes money (for me) is good. Capitalism at its finest. Cheers.

Indeed. Say that again.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#270

Post by simondotau » Thu, May 13, 2021, 11:23 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #244

simondotau wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it clever to tank an asset that they own? How did the 12% drop benefit Tesla? You're not making any sense.

> Why is it clever to tank an asset that they own? It's not but that doesn't mean Musk won't do it anyway. He once tanked his own company's stock by smoking cannabis in public. After something like that anything is possible.

Stock market investors don’t care, because they’re in it for the long term. It’s the stock market gamblers who bitch and moan, even though they’re the ones who actually cause these fluctuations by reacting to superficial, fleeting news stories which have no bearing on the underlying asset.