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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

#251

Post by willmadden »

rawtxapp wrote: post #144
fnord123 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mandating BTC as legal tender is an awesome move. To me the most important benefit is that the 70% of the population which was excluded from banking and relegated to use physical currency will now be included. If the economy is an engine and money is the oil, El Salvador, which had only some drops of oil, will now get a complete oil change with synthetic on top of that. You are 100% incorrect. Bitcoin is wildly def…

> You are 100% incorrect. Bitcoin is wildly deflationary. Therefore it does not encourage an economy to function, it encourages people to hold onto it with white knuckles. It's not oil for the economy, it's sand. In my opinion, that's the biggest lie that people have been made to believe to justify constant stealing of their purchasing power over time. People will always spend money for things they need, they will al…

Correct. Keynesian economics is a fraud we're taught to disguise the fact that we're being robbed. You don't need an inflationary currency for a currency to work. Gold and silver worked just fine for thousands of years, and only ran into problems when corrupt governments and banks printed more paper receipts than they had reserves. Central banking just legalized this practice for private profit, and then the peg to gold and silver was eliminated once they had monopoly control.

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

#252

Post by bootlooped »

wyager wrote: post #147
acjohnson55 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually a complete waste. All it produces is more security for the blockchain, which is of low marginal value. They could use that energy to produce something of actual value, like hydroponic food, or desalinated water, or run a data center, or literally anything else.

Bitcoin subsidizes the creation of constant-output power sources (geothermal, nuclear) which are not usually economical for highly variable consumer/industrial power usage. Long-term, these sources will probably power the grid during peak hours and power Bitcoin hardware during off-peak.

It also subsidizes the use of dirty power sources. The greenwashing of Proof of Work cryptocurrencies is insane. It's using the same amount of electricity as Argentina.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkby7z/a-fossil-fuel-power-p...

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

#253

Post by bootlooped »

wmil wrote: post #103
acjohnson55 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually a complete waste. All it produces is more security for the blockchain, which is of low marginal value. They could use that energy to produce something of actual value, like hydroponic food, or desalinated water, or run a data center, or literally anything else.

Right now there's a chicken and egg problem where cheap power is not near things that need it. Crypto mining will allow places with cheap power sources to build up energy production. Once that's established it's easier to build up infrastructure for things like data centers.

I think it's somewhat of a Tragedy of the Commons situation.

Everybody would benefit from power being built in remote places, but nobody wants to be the one to pay to build it there. I'm not seeing why crypto mining is any different though; it's a for-profit endeavor like anything else.

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

#254

Post by bootlooped »

defgeneric wrote: post #202
geofft wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If anything it creates an incentive for making energy production more efficient.

How is this different from any other consumer of electricity? Every consumer wants to buy the cheapest electricity, and every producer wants to produce the most of it per energy input.

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

#255

Post by reader_mode »

rawtxapp wrote: post #220
reader_mode wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's all fine and dandy until you need to take out a loan and on top of high interest you also need to account for deflation - good luck getting a house mortgage and falling wages. Deflation puta pressure on price of work as well - but people don't like pay cuts.

You know what happens then? House prices will fall because they won't have access to cheap money, so they'll end up being priced at their true value. Housing would stop being an investment, instead it would serve it's true purpose of providing lodging.

So you're going to end up paying more in real terms (since deflation), for a house that's going to be worth less, you're making less and you have to pay interest. Sounds like an amazing deal, would vote for bitcoin tomorrow !

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

#256

Post by deviantfero »

sanderjd wrote: post #191
deviantfero wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geothermal power in El Salvador represents 25% of the country's total electricity production.

Excellent! Seems like they could go further if they have extra to use for asics running hashes.

there are storage and distribution limitations for producing even more energy, that's why surplus is sold to neighboring countries currently.

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

#257

Post by zoomgyal »

thehappypm wrote: post #248
randomhodler84 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) Ensuring the time-value of my labor is not eroded by the state through inflation. Yes, there are day to day risks of fluctuations in value, but one just needs to compare the trend line of where BTC is going vs fiat currencies in the longer term. I’m not worried about 50% draw downs on an asset that appreciates > 100% pa. B) ensuring that third parties like banks are unable to steal my funds. Through fees, charges,…

A: Bitcoin has inflated 40% in value in the last month. B: This is probably the strongest argument for Bitcoin and the original vision. C: Sending BTC is immediate but since you can’t really use BTC to buy much (yet) you still need to sell and wait for funds to clear, which takes about as long as just wiring money.

When OP talks about "inflation" they're talking about the amount of money entering the money supply. Bitcoin didnt "inflate" even though it got more expensive. The price did, not the supply. The supply of BTC is algorithmically programmed and there will only ever be 21 million produced. You can't print more Bitcoin at will but a government can print their fiat currency, for better or worse.

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

#258

Post by season2episode3 »

thehappypm wrote: post #228
clpm4j wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what percentage of people in El Salvador have enough money to "put into BTC". Wouldn't most of the poor population be living essentially hand to mouth and spending their meager amount of money on daily food and shelter?

Yep, impoverished people can't acquire BTC to begin with. This doesn't help at all.

On the question of principles vs practicals... the principles sound great and all. I also appreciate that this takes advantage of the large number of mobile devices already out there, and encourages the development of rural internet.

But, I predict that the practicals are not going to be good. Bitcoin transaction fees are high. If anything, this is a gift to large criminal organizations with a large footprint in the country which will be far more able to make use of their BTC. The law enforcement arm of this will not be ready or able to deal with it.

There is a role for cryptocurrency in helping the underserved gain access to banking. This plan does not sound like the right one to me.

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

#259

Post by beckingz »

jollybean wrote: post #243
GhostVII wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also encourages them to invest their money. The choice isn't either spend money on over-consumerism or lose it, the choice is either spend it or invest it so someone else can allocate more resources to what they are doing.

This is not about incentives to spend or invest - it's about having a functioning basic unit of economic measure that is 1) stable 2) has integrity and 3) hopefully under the control over the government. BTC isn't good for any of that. USD is good for 1 and 2. The gov. can move to re-establish it's currency and have 3 as well.

Looks like USD may be losing qualities 1 or 2 depending on how you define stability or integrity.

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

#260

Post by wyager »

bootlooped wrote: post #252
wyager wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin subsidizes the creation of constant-output power sources (geothermal, nuclear) which are not usually economical for highly variable consumer/industrial power usage. Long-term, these sources will probably power the grid during peak hours and power Bitcoin hardware during off-peak.

It also subsidizes the use of dirty power sources. The greenwashing of Proof of Work cryptocurrencies is insane. It's using the same amount of electricity as Argentina. https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkby7z/a-fossil-fuel-power-p...

Green energy sources are cheaper when you don’t have to scale demand hour by hour. The overwhelming majority of Bitcoin power usage is already green and that will only increase.

Claims like “Bitcoin uses more electricity than .” are totally irrelevant. Good. I want humanity to climb the Kardashev scale. If we have an invention that can help fund the creation of billions of watts of efficient energy capacity then that’s great!

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