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

Post by kragen » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

jerry1979 wrote: post #208

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 secti…

Post by randomhodler84 » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

megameter wrote: post #224

jerry1979 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other consensus algorithms all follow the same consolidation logic of capitalism. Specifically, power consolidates year after year similar to banks, media companies, communication companies, etc. It looks to me like the PoS systems algorithmically codify this logic, and since the consolidation exists digitally, I would have a hard time coming up with a plan to break up the PoS oligopolies. The reason why the digi…

I've gradually come around to the side of PoW being important as layer 1, because it's as close as we're likely to get to Lockean labor theory of property being directly manifest rather than built on a legal-deeds-and-titles national framework, and that has an immediate effect of building trust out of speculative value. PoW can be made more efficient along some axes, but not all of them. As such it puts every economy…

Post by emptysongglass » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 10:15 PM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #227

rawtxapp wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, of course hodl, but not at the cost of dying of starvation or missing out on having your dream home, etc. Bitcoin subreddit is full of stories of people buying their first homes or cars, I've seen many people start their small businesses with their gains. Life is short, you enjoy/spend what you have while you're here.

But currency needs to move in order to be, you know, a currency. The lack of upward price movement of e.g. the US dollar means that there is no advantage to sitting on it. Invest it, spend it, or lose it. Inversely, with BTC, you would want to spend as little as humanly possible. Make whatever philosophical arguments you want: this is not adding oil to the engine. This is adding sand.

Post by cratermoon » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

bogota wrote: post #190

cratermoon wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are doing it to make money In no scenario does "they" refer to El Salvador's poor population, especially not the indigenous peoples. The money will go to the colonizing foreign investors and circulate in things like CDOs. A few crumbs that fall off the table will go to improving the lives of the upper end of El Salvador's people, and incidentally some crumbs of the crumbs might fall down to the rest of the pop…

You defeated your own argument :) I’m referring to the whole nation as poor which it is. Poor people rarely benefit from any government economic policies but in order to have them the government needs to be in a place to offer them to start with. There’s some other points to be argued such as people now are holding an asset that is volatile but deflationary in nature by default and they have the option to convert and…

Post by acjohnson55 » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

randomhodler84 wrote: post #240

acjohnson55 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are now other cryptocurrencies that provide that without wasteful proof of work.

Ok, hold up. Energy usage is a good thing and provides security, actually. You can’t ditch the energy and retain security. I’m sorry, but PoS is a bad and the wrong model for censorship resistant, non-state stores of value.