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El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

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Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#41

Post by oogabooga123 »

gjulianm wrote: post #28
personlurking wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An attempt to answer your "what's next?" question: "What about you guys floating $1 billion in “Volcano Bonds” (backed by future #BTC mining output) for El Salvador to pay off the IMF loan - so they can tell the IMF to beat it." https://twitter.com/maxkeiser/status/1403023717429559299

It's a $1B loan to a country with a low debt rating. It's a risky investment already, and now you add Bitcoin with its price volatility? I don't know how that's a good idea from the investors point of view.

I would buy some bonds just because of the idea that a nation could be free from international banking debt. Like a charitable donation, almost

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#42

Post by disruptalot »

epigen wrote: post #16
garydevenay wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of laundering Bitcoin— this seems to be a majorly misunderstood concept. Bitcoin transactions are completely transparent and observable by everyone who has an internet connection. Anyone (with an internet connection) can watch any wallet and observe any and all transactions. The notion of a country being a "good location for laundering bitcoins" doesn't really make sense, as Bitcoin are never in a locatio…

> this seems to be a majorly misunderstood concept. It seems you misunderstand. Illicit fiat and extortion can be used to access energy to mine Bitcoin, effectively laundering that illicit fiat.

Wow this is perhaps the best critique of Bitcoin yet.

In summary, Bitcoin is bad because it allows money laundered using the existing financial system to flow into it. Forget the property, energy and hardware providers for accepting illicit funds. Bitcoin is the real problem.

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#43

Post by jMyles »

ostenning wrote: post #18
dadoge wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/tech... Nah. Bitcoin is actually a lot easier to trace than paper US Dollars.

Exactly, people who claim btc is anonymous don’t know what they are talking about. You can literally trace every transaction ever made, and given nearly all on-off ramps to fiat require KYC, btc itself is not the problem. The problem comes from privacy coins like Monero, which arguably should be outlawed (if not already)

Can you imagine the price spike the day that's announced?

But also: outlaw where? Math doesn't recognize borders; the two are like oil and water.

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#44

Post by oogabooga123 »

jMyles wrote: post #34
graderjs wrote: post #17

It just gets better and better. - ES makes BTC fiat - ES taps volcanoes to mine BTC What next? - ES uses natural wormholes to plot the future timeline and win Earth?

> makes BTC fiat Did I miss a memo? Or is this a sort of Freduian slip wherein you said 'fiat' when you meant to say 'official'? It seems to me that we've been conditioned to conflate the two.

That’s what “fiat” means. Did you have a Freudian slip wherein you said “fiat” when you meant to say “debt based central bank monetary system”?

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#45

Post by cinntaile »

ostenning wrote: post #18
dadoge wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/tech... Nah. Bitcoin is actually a lot easier to trace than paper US Dollars.

Exactly, people who claim btc is anonymous don’t know what they are talking about. You can literally trace every transaction ever made, and given nearly all on-off ramps to fiat require KYC, btc itself is not the problem. The problem comes from privacy coins like Monero, which arguably should be outlawed (if not already)

Regarding privacy coins... This sounds a bit dystopian though, why do you think the state should have a right to see your entire transaction history?

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#46

Post by dadoge »

ceejayoz wrote: post #40
dadoge wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will literally have more money in their pockets. Good things happen when people have more money in their pockets - people save more, invest more, build more.

I have a sneaking suspicion the folks with "more money in their pockets" from this are most likely to be President Bukele and his friends.

[flagged]

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#47

Post by willcipriano »

hulitu wrote: post #11

Is this paper a subsidiary of the Onion ? "100% clean, 100% renewable, 0 emissions energy from our volcano" . So when a volcano is depleted you plant another one ?

If extracting heat from the earth's core isn't sustainable, nothing is.

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#48

Post by deweller »

lucb1e wrote: post #37

Almost half the electricity produced in El Salvador is from fossil sources (they don't have nuclear power): https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.PETR.ZS?location... Option A: invest in that volcano and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Option B: invest in that volcano and mine bitcoin. B makes them richer so long as other people keep expecting Bitcoin prices to rise (increasing demand), so I can see why they do…

This is a false dichotomy.

They can subsidize the startup costs for harvesting geothermal energy from Bitcoin mining and then use the geothermal infrastructure to produce electricity for the country.

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#49

Post by gjulianm »

oogabooga123 wrote: post #41
gjulianm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a $1B loan to a country with a low debt rating. It's a risky investment already, and now you add Bitcoin with its price volatility? I don't know how that's a good idea from the investors point of view.

I would buy some bonds just because of the idea that a nation could be free from international banking debt. Like a charitable donation, almost

Good luck getting $1B to El Salvador as "almost charitable donations".

Not to mention the effect that trying to sell $1B-worth of Bitcoin could have on the market (even just a portion, Bitcoin is accepted nowhere for so they'd need real currency).

Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin

#50

Post by lucb1e »

deweller wrote: post #48
lucb1e wrote: post #37

Almost half the electricity produced in El Salvador is from fossil sources (they don't have nuclear power): https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.PETR.ZS?location... Option A: invest in that volcano and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Option B: invest in that volcano and mine bitcoin. B makes them richer so long as other people keep expecting Bitcoin prices to rise (increasing demand), so I can see why they do…

This is a false dichotomy. They can subsidize the startup costs for harvesting geothermal energy from Bitcoin mining and then use the geothermal infrastructure to produce electricity for the country.

That sounds great. Let's hope that actually happens and hope that the geothermal equipment lasts longer than Bitcoin demand lasts. Perhaps, though, if that is actually the plan, they could say as much?
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