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China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
171–180 of 699 posts
Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
#172I hope the rest of world follows. There is nothing more volatile than a decentralised crypto currency. The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% and energy consumption is beyond acceptable. Crypto as a tech to serve something different is totally fine of course.
It blows my mind that a community dedicated to technology would support this.
Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
#173For those of you keeping track, this is about the 20th time China has declared to have banned Bitcoin or crypto. The only thing they've done is demonstrated that crypto is a threat to their all-reaching power grab and that they are mostly powerless to control it.
This is a country rounding up a whole population of a religious minority and sending them to reeducation camps. A country that mobilized over a billion people to almost completely control covid. You are vastly underestimating the CCP, as most Westerns continue to do.
Its not ccp only. Many asian countries were very obedient and self controling, contrary to many western places.
Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing wrong with the fundamentals of your argument, but growth can’t be unlimited. Eventually it’s starts slowing down, then those complacent middle class will start being less complacent and start demanding more freedom. I think it’s reasonable to say the CCP will keep their grip on power for as long as they can continue delivering wealth to the middle class, and lifting those in poverty into the middle class. Wha…
That newly freedom-thirsty middle class could be simply brutally suppressed by an automated police force, powered by AI-driven surveillance. The CCP is a long-term thinking government, I'm sure they are at least considering how it would work.
The problem comes from the fact that educated, wealthy middle classes are not fungible I'm the same way peasants are.
You can crush a thousand peasant farmers and replace them easily, you can't do that with the middle class without heavily setting back your economy and therefore being less competitive on the world stage.
The CCP will need to decide whether they want to release control and let their population produce value, or keep control and be unable to compete as a world power.
That's my take.
Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only PoW cryptocurrencies can be fairly distributed and avoid wealth concentration (although many fail to do so by concentrating most of emission in just the first few years).
Not true, you need capital to mine. Capital begets capital even on pow.
Pretty much that's why they say you need to let money work for you.
Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
#176I hope the rest of world follows. There is nothing more volatile than a decentralised crypto currency. The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% and energy consumption is beyond acceptable. Crypto as a tech to serve something different is totally fine of course.
> energy consumption is beyond acceptable Do you have any resources or studies to describe this more? I have really struggled to find actually nuanced discussions and unbiased sources for this. It’s all at the extremes of it’s either the worst thing ever to not a problem at all. I’d also be interested in comparisons to energy usage of say servers that run Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.
A lot of the energy consumption argument against bitcoin stems from this study [1]. Some have pointed out flaws in the study that over inflate the consumption numbers. This has sparked various indexes that have tried to measure the consumption in an unbiased way [2].
Additional studies [3] have shown that 39% of bitcoin miners are using renewables.
The energy consumption argument has led some to investigate the energy consumption of other assets such as gold with some estimating the energy requirements for gold to be 50x that of mining bitcoin [4].
Whenever energy consumption of other assets are pointed out to be higher than bitcoin the debate then shifts to utility; e.g it’s ok if Y consumes X energy because Y provides Z to society.
Some bitcoin miners are finding interesting way to utilize the heat produced by their mining equipment [5]. And some say that bitcoin mining can help reduce the cost of producing new green energy infrastructure since excess power that would’ve been wasted could be used for bitcoin mining to offset costs.
I agree with you that it is tough to find unbiased info on the subject.
- [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328581842_Bitcoin_e...
- [2] https://cbeci.org/
- [3] https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2021-cc...
- [4] https://simon.medium.com/bitcoin-and-pollution-the-definitiv...
- [5] https://braiins.com/blog/green-innovation-in-bitcoin-mining-...
Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
#177> virtual currency does not have the same legal status as legal currency
> they are not legal and should not and cannot be used as currency in the market
So, you're not allowed to use it as a currency. Can you still use it as an asset?
Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Give me a break. Power consumption numbers are completely meaningless in this argument. Power usage does not correlate directly to CO2 emissions. Crypto can and does run on renewables. If we were serious about fixing climate change we'd stop all air traffic tomorrow. In reality, the climate issue is just a convenient political bludgeon.
CO2 emissions are Θ(P). I don't see how you could say this "does not correlate directly to CO2 emissions".
Its not complicated. It is not necessary for crypto PoW to be powered by CO2 emitting fuels. It can be powered with renewables. Therefore the power usage of Bitcoin can't be used to infer its environmental impact. You need to know how much of that usage was on the back of fossil fuels.
Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I won't downplay the environmental consequences of PoW, but the actual reason so many governments are speeding the push against crypto might be related to a future of high inflation and high gov debt. It would be the perfect storm for mainstream crypto adoption.
> the actual reason so many governments are speeding the push against crypto might be related to a future of high inflation and high gov debt The reason why we have inflation and debt is to keep the value of our currencies stable. IE, if people want to use dollars, the US government can print more dollars to satisfy the demand. (And thus keep the value stable.) Cryptocurrency's volatile value is a result of its inabi…
> The reason why we have inflation and debt is to keep the value of our currencies stable.
I'm not following. By definition, inflation is what happens when the price of a currency is not stable.
> Remember: Currency is not an investment. A good currency has a stable value over time; otherwise it's very difficult to conduct commerce
Agreed. But in countries with high inflation, such as mine, you will lose money if all your wealth is stored as fiat.
Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
#180I hope the rest of world follows. There is nothing more volatile than a decentralised crypto currency. The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% and energy consumption is beyond acceptable. Crypto as a tech to serve something different is totally fine of course.
You probably live in the first world and had never to worry about inflation or politicians/bureaucrats just straight destroying the fiat currency and your wealth in the process. That's why crypto sounds so "wasteful" to you. BTW, if we give the government the power to judge what is a waste of energy and what's not, I can assure you life would be 100% more miserable, to everyone.