El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by lupire » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 1:59 AM UTC

technotony wrote: post #233

maneesh wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're one of the 70% of people who are unbanked in el salvador, there are no needs for loans or interest -- the concept barely exists.

It's very counterintuitive, but actually the more unbanked you are the more you needs loans/savings and the more complicated your personal financial balance sheet is. I'd recommend the book 'the poor and their money'[1] for the details on this, but essentially if you haven't got savings you are constantly borrowing and lending informally with your community to meet life needs like a new roof or school fees. [1] https…

That's having a tightly knit society where people take care of each other instead of ignoring the poor people to die alone.

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

#302

Post by enchiridion » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

JamilD wrote: post #119

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.

Why is this a more direct reward than generating energy to sell? In mining, revenue = efficiency * potential energy * BTC per unit produced energy In selling energy, revenue = efficiency * potential energy * USD per unit produced energy I don’t see the difference, other than the fact the former just adds to the pool of required energy (it’s strictly additive to the energy produced by the second)

Well if imagine with selling energy, the profit equation has more terms, which are difficult to model correctly.

With crypto the only really question is how will the price of the currency affect the break even point for hardware cost (assuming all mined tokens are sold immediately).

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

#303

Post by perl4ever » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:09 AM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #275

ethanbond wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Inversely, with BTC, you would want to spend as little as humanly possible. Sign me up. Hyper-consumerism has laid waste to our planet, commoditized every human interaction, and polluted our minds with its drivel. Behold Denmark and its glorious decision to punish its citizenry for saving any amount of money at all. Hope you weren't thinking of saving your pennies for a ticket out of the renter's racket, Denmark wo…

>Hyper-consumerism has laid waste to our planet

If you don't want to consume, then you can just...not consume.

Why buy bitcoin in order to not sell it, ever?

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

#304

Post by sentinel » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:12 AM UTC

acjohnson55 wrote: post #91

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.

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.

The counter argument here is that sound money is the foundation on which all other activities of value develop.

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

#305

Post by saurik » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:32 AM UTC

GhostVII wrote: post #154

rawtxapp wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 why there is so much VC money that people build "disruptive" companies whose primary trick is "let's lose money until all our competitors who don't understand revenue is boring are out of business" :(.

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

#306

Post by saurik » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:34 AM UTC

fnord123 wrote: post #294

pocoloco wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and this is exactly what Jeff Booth explains in this podcast way better that I ever could: How Inflation Is Stealing Your Wealth | Jeff Booth | Pomp Podcast #572 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCqFjU9Wi4

This is presented in a conspiratorial manner. "Who wants their money to be worth less?" "Governments don't want you to know..." It's very simple. 100 euros in your hand right now is worth more than a possible/probable 100 euros in your hand next week. And Jeff Booth is arguing that we are trapped in a mental prison because we agree with this obvious fact.

Inflation is a different problem: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but if you have a bird in your hand you are better off trading it for a table because somehow a table in the hand depreciates less than a bird?

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

#307

Post by Empact » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 4:23 AM UTC

jollybean wrote: post #299

Empact wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really so difficult to imagine a world where people spent less conspicuously, and invested more prudently? In a sound currency world, interest rates are set by the relative availability of funds for investment - that is, they are counter-cyclically market-determined: if there is little investment, rates will be low, if the economy is booming, rates will naturally rise. Secondly, the rate of deflation is determi…

It's 'definitely not sane' to fix the amount of currency in circulation, either fiat or gold or crypto, arbitrarily. It would be like saying 'we're going to fix the amount of roads we have' and 'people will be forced to use the roads more sensibly!'. The only reason for 'fixing' currency would be to prevent bad actors from running the printing press. Now - this is actually a very real problem historically - however,…

Infinitely divisible money is an unit with unlimited ability to scale to the circumstances - if more is needed, simply add another zero. You err in comparing this to roads, which are necessarily in proportion to the amount of traffic over them. Money needs only to be able to represent value, and the relative value of different things.

Good monetary policy may be practicable by angels or saints, but not by men, who stand at the gates of unimaginable wealth that emanates from the printing press. Literal trillions of dollars - who can even conceive of that value, let alone decline the exercise thereof? Better to take it out of our hands.

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

#308

Post by jollybean » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

Empact wrote: post #307

jollybean wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 'definitely not sane' to fix the amount of currency in circulation, either fiat or gold or crypto, arbitrarily. It would be like saying 'we're going to fix the amount of roads we have' and 'people will be forced to use the roads more sensibly!'. The only reason for 'fixing' currency would be to prevent bad actors from running the printing press. Now - this is actually a very real problem historically - however,…

Infinitely divisible money is an unit with unlimited ability to scale to the circumstances - if more is needed, simply add another zero. You err in comparing this to roads, which are necessarily in proportion to the amount of traffic over them. Money needs only to be able to represent value, and the relative value of different things. Good monetary policy may be practicable by angels or saints, but not by men, who st…

No, this is not true.

If there was no elasticity in the monetary supply, then in both 2009 and 2021 the entire US economy would have collapsed probably taking down the world with in 2008, and most nations would have been wiped out in 2021 as well.

Also, most major currencies are managed well enough.

If you don't like your local fiat units, then don't hold on to them. Exchange them for anything else you value more and use local currency on as that - currency. Currency was never meant to be a long term store of value.

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

#309

Post by enchiridion » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 5:07 AM UTC

munificent wrote: post #293

enchiridion wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it's not a perfect analogy, but I'd be willing to bet a lot of lessons from battlefield medicine has made it's way into civilian trauma care.

Yes, but that is not a sufficient justification for war. The idea that bitcoin incentivizing efficient power generation because it consumes all that power somehow being a justification for bitcoin is entirely bananas.

If your concede that there's a trade off then there is a point where the efficiency gains outweigh the negative externalities.

I think it's unknowable right now where we will land, and as an optimist I choose to believe we will end up on the right side of the trade off, based on the apparent efficiency of market forces.

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

#310

Post by acjohnson55 » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 5:07 AM UTC

randomhodler84 wrote: post #291

acjohnson55 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's simply not true. Proof of work is nothing but an extremely expensive to randomly select the entity that gets to finalize the next block. The system leaks value like a sieve. Either the miners have to be compensated by printing money--and devaluaing everyone else's holdings--or by the transaction fees of a system that has a hard practical and ideological limits on its transaction capacity. Avalanche already pro…

Yes it is true! You still don’t get it, and I don’t think I can convince you. Energy = Security. This is an fundamental axiom. Security of transactional data grows with every block in a PoW chain. PoS finally breaks down to mutant PoW with stake grinding; among other oligarchical concerns. We must spend energy to sustain the hardest money humans have known. Yes, it is a deep ideology that a monetary network must incu…

You're right that it is an axiom: "a statement or proposition which is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true."

There's nothing "hard" about money that requires a nation's worth of energy simply to continue to exist.

Proof of stake isn't fundamentally flawed, and proof of work isn't perfect. They both have many variations, and there's certainly many more to explore yet.

The only free lunch I see people pining for is the idea that they can squat on a wasteful, moribund asset, expecting it to be worth much more in the future.