Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 332 posts

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

#201

Post by pkulak »

rawtxapp wrote: post #167
sanderjd wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without debating any of your points: bitcoin is a terrible choice for this. It is horribly volatile, it is incredibly expensive to transact in, it is an awful waste of energy. Using a stablecoin on a proof of stake blockchain with high transaction rates would make a lot of sense. But that wouldn't help the officials who pushed this get rich from their stash of bitcoin...

Once again, El Salvador is using lightning network which enable almost instant and practically free Bitcoin payments. PoS isn't perfect either and has it's own sets of problems.

Lightning is a horrible kludge to deal with the fact that Bitcoin is terrible at being a currency. It essentially boils down to this process:

1. Pay huge fees to take your money off the blockchain.

2. Whiz it around a new, totally independent, centralized network where you need an always-on connection to anyone you're paying or receiving from and need to trust any intermediaries you're using, with brand new fees for every transaction and even at rest (so you can pay a "watchtower" to help make sure you don't get cheated).

3. Pay more huge fees to put your money back on the blockchain when you're done.

4. Wonder how you got yourself into a situation where you have all the disadvantages of Visa and Bitcoin, with none of the advantages of either.

We already have existing coins, like Nano, that can handle transactions instantly, for zero fees, and with nearly no energy use, on the main chain.

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

#202

Post by defgeneric »

geofft wrote: post #94
enchiridion wrote: post #79

So, I'm going to choose to be an optimist when it comes to crypto energy consumption. There has literally never been a more direct reward for efficient energy production.

Yes, but it undermines the point of energy production, because the energy produced is not going to existing consumers of energy, it's going to feed the insatiable-by-design blockchain. Imagine if there were a cryptocurrency based on proof-of-driving-things-between-cities with a mining reward, and Los Angeles invested in it. There would be an incredible incentive for expanding LA's highway infrastructure, and you'd ex…

That analogy would hold if the additional energy produced for bitcoin mining had some negative impact on the existing energy infrastructure. It doesn't. If anything it creates an incentive for making energy production more efficient. The fact that energy is produced and consumed is not bad in itself. The Sun could be said to be "wasting" energy by sending it off into space.

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

#203

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

defgeneric wrote: post #198
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #197

From what I've heard about Salvador, investors who plan to mine cryptocurrencies in El Salvador should include an armed to the teeth private army in their projected expenses, or else their mining equipment would soon change owners.

If you want to opine on a country at least learn its name: "El Salvador".

It does not have 'El' in my native language, just Сальвадор. Also, if salvadorians want english speakers to call their country with 'El', they should probably start using 'THE Estados Unidos' and 'THE Gran Bretana'.

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

#204

Post by bthazos »

narrator wrote: post #107
emodendroket wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a false dichotomy. The infrastructure does not exist and they can't do both things at once

They can put the Bitcoin mine out in the middle of nowhere next to the volcano. Building a transmission and distribution infrastructure to the rest of the country can be funded by the Bitcoin mine.

They tried this in Italy 2000+ years ago. A wealthy city will spawn from the mine, but since bitcoin doesn't appease the gods like physical gold does, the city will be buried in ash.

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

#205

Post by defgeneric »

thehappypm wrote: post #121

One interesting thing to me is that Bitcoin is a lot easier to steal than money in banks. A bad actor can steal your private key and take all of your BTC, and it's gone forever. Try doing that with a bank account -- the bank will back you up, there are transfer limits.

The whole point of Bitcoin is that the bank itself cannot steal your money.

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

#206

Post by defgeneric »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #203
defgeneric wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to opine on a country at least learn its name: "El Salvador".

It does not have 'El' in my native language, just Сальвадор. Also, if salvadorians want english speakers to call their country with 'El', they should probably start using 'THE Estados Unidos' and 'THE Gran Bretana'.

In English the name of the country is "El Salvador".

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

#207

Post by jMyles »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #177
jMyles wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If Bitcoin is money, then it is absolutely fiat money and always has been. The alternatives would be that it is commodity money (which is not the case because you can't use a Bitcoin other than exchange it for something else) or representative money (which is not the case because Bitcoin isn't backed by anything else for which it can exchanged). Up to this point, it's been a rather degenerate case of fiat money becau…

By whose fiat can the supply of Bitcoin be inflated?

And are precious metals fiat by the standard you've laid out? Or are they commodities strictly on thin premise that you can use silver as a disinfectant, etc?

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

#208

Post by jerry1979 »

kragen wrote: post #165

I wrote a couple of comments yesterday exploring the environmental questions related to Bitcoin in depth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27450417 The short summary is that the environmental effect of Bitcoin mining is very small at present (12 GW consumption out of the world's 18 TW), but probably positive, because it slightly accelerates the renewable transition. But this could change.

I read through your answers in that thread and really enjoyed them. Thank you for taking the time to do that work. Have you considered consolidating those ideas into a blog post or similar? It sounds like you have some expertise in this area or maybe just like to research. Either way, I think others would really enjoy having access to your seemingly well thought out analysis in a place that isn't the HN comment section.

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

#209

Post by wyager »

adrianN wrote: post #156
wyager wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economics of geothermal are often unfavorable for consumer/industrial electricity production. Bitcoin mining is unique in that provides a consistent consumer for electricity at a reliable price 24/7. The long-term effect of Bitcoin mining will probably be to subsidize the creation of reliable constant-output power sources like geothermal and nuclear, with some of that capacity being used for consumer/industrial u…

"a reliable price" until the bubble pops?

If the price of Bitcoin goes down, it will reduce demand starting at the most expensive power sources used to mine Bitcoin. There is a lot of “buffer” for something like geothermal before Bitcoin falls enough for it to get axed.

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

#210

Post by defgeneric »

sanderjd wrote: post #149
mtalantikite wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is only one part of the story for them. If 70% of their country is un-banked, many transactions are probably in cash, and there probably are a lot of undeclared sales and income that is not being taxed. If they can really get their population using tools that would make it easier for the government to collect taxes, make it easier for tourists to visit and spend money, etc then the mining rewards are onl…

Even if crypto is a good solution for all this, bitcoin is a bad one.

I understand this argument, but if I had to choose right now which coin would be the best for my country, I would still go with Bitcoin. You don't get to choose which coin has the most backing, or the most diverse set of players from around the world.
Post reply on HN