621–630 of 699 posts
crypto currency ?
ok, boomer. just kidding. I see 'crypto', I think 'cryptography', and China banning cryptography (except for the party/government) doesn't seem that far fetched, so I think its a bad headline.
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Energy is a zero sum game. Every watt you use for crypto mining is a watt not used for something more productive. Every watt of renewable power generated to power a crypto miner, is a watt not being used to reduce the use of non-renewables in the wider energy grid. I don’t care if your crypto gear is hooked up to a dedicated hydro plant, I care that the hydroplant is not connected to the wider grid and shutting down…
>Energy is a zero sum game. Only from the view of the universe, not from the view of humans. It cost less energy to drill for oil than the energy you get out of the gasoline. It takes less energy to create a solar panel than what you can get out of it. It takes less energy to labor at the factory for an hour than the energy you get from the 150KwH of power you can buy for your house from that hour of motion you perfo…
On an aggregated pre transaction basis we know this isn’t true. Crypto is not more energy efficient than existing financial infrastructure. Additionally you’re comparing a small part of a financial transactions (I.e. and database update) to a complete end-to-end transaction, including turning those digital funds into spendable cash.
Unless you friend in Kenya is also capable of spending that crypto, without turning it into fiat, then example is meaningless, because your ignoring all the infrastructure need to do that fiat conversion.
Additionally Kenya has digital banking infrastructure. Send a SEPA payment instead, no need to Western Union.
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> "Every watt of renewable power generated to power a crypto miner," IS investment in renewable energy Yes, that is true... > which he would rather was not invested in renewable energy ...no, he would have used the generated electricity for something more useful, NOT make it so that it isn't generated in the first place.
So he is turning down real investment in renewables in the hopes that other more agreeable investment materializes out of thin air.. meanwhile his plan crashes the price of renewable energy endangering those industries and shrinking the market.. allowing established fossil fuel industries a bigger share. genius.
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I'm 'not' for people not going to jail because they smoke weed, and 'for' people going to jail for tax evasion. The kind of straw manning that reveals itself here due to the complete lack of civic thinking in some circles is really disturbing. There is no necessity for mass energy usage for crypto, there are any number of ways to distribute new units of currency. Again the use of the term 'necessary' here is a hint a…
> the complete lack of civic thinking in some circles is really disturbing. I used to love the idea of the government fixing societies' woes. Unfortunately in my lifetime I've seen several business cycles wherein the rich get bailouts and the rest of us lose our shirts. My country has entered wars I didn't then, and don't now support. I've seen 3 letter agencies topple foreign governments, and I'm watching China leve…
Tax the damn land and do negative interest rates on cash and use the negative interest to pay for the deposit insurance.
That's it. Bonus: Get rid of other regressive taxes. Lower income tax, corporate income tax, capital gains tax, sales tax, VAT and so on. Rather than redistributing incomes redistribute jobs.
In a world where economic rents are eliminated, income = spending is true on an individual and country level and jobs are fairly allocated there is no need for charity and welfare. It would be one small step closer to utopia yet it will not happen because nobody will recognize it as a "free market" that is supposedly the be and end all of economics even though it would be free-er than anything the capitalists will come up with.
Yes, here is the homework: If the solution is so simple how come there are so many people wanting to keep the system unfair and rigged?
Here is my answer: It's because the rich need to trick people into believing that the source of inequality is fair and morally justifiable. After all, if inequality has no place in a moral framework then any source of inequality would be tackled immediately.
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You can't solve structural economic problems with monetary policy. That's how you get (hyper)inflation, and that story's been born out dozens of times across history. The solution to real productivity declines is real productivity increases, and the incentive to reallocate your resources into the most productive activities is lacking when the cost of capital is effectively nil and the central bank bails out any misal…
I don't understand your comment. When the cost of capital is nil then the common expectation is that too much investment drives up inflation and we then have to prioritize and allocate resources. Governments are begging for this to happen. I don't know why but when the central bank intends lower interest rates to overheat the market people somehow stop believing that the market even exists. It's really strange. I mea…
Bankruptcy and unemployment are the means with which we "prioritize and allocate resources". They are, by definition, when you stop doing what you were doing and start doing something else. So no, I would disagree that "governments are begging for this to happen" - I can't think of a government that's encouraged bankruptcy and unemployment since the 1980s.
I view various forms of capital as a way to get over local maxima in economic efficiency. You borrow money or raise funds now so that you can build up tooling and innovations that will let you work more efficiently in the future, and then if you're right, you make lots of profits and can pay back your loans & dividends. If you're wrong, you go bankrupt, your investors take a haircut, and that capital goes back to other more productive activities.
Constantly growing debt balances and inflation, however, I view as a way of lying to ourselves. They're basically saying "Well, in the future, things will get better", but when the future arrives and you still don't have profits, shrink the yardstick so things look better. That's exactly what "government action that supports the market" is - it's a way to avoid the failure of enterprises and loss of jobs that the market, on its own, doesn't demand enough to make profitable. Do this over 90 years and you can get some pretty extensive misallocation of capital.
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>Energy is a zero sum game. Only from the view of the universe, not from the view of humans. It cost less energy to drill for oil than the energy you get out of the gasoline. It takes less energy to create a solar panel than what you can get out of it. It takes less energy to labor at the factory for an hour than the energy you get from the 150KwH of power you can buy for your house from that hour of motion you perfo…
> If I use some electricity to run PoW on an electronic litecoin transaction from me to my friend in Kenya, that's a hell of a lot lower energy than building and operating a Western Union in Kenya isn't it? On an aggregated pre transaction basis we know this isn’t true. Crypto is not more energy efficient than existing financial infrastructure. Additionally you’re comparing a small part of a financial transactions (I…
Crypto can be spendable cash. You can buy a coffee or a bar of gold with it, even bullets. Sounds like it can be used as a currency to me. It only takes a willing counterparty.
> Crypto is not more energy efficient than existing financial infrastructure.
That depends on the place and circumstance. I concede that Kenya was a poor example and I should have used someplace like Central African Republic instead.
>Additionally Kenya has digital banking infrastructure. Send a SEPA payment instead, no need to Western Union.
Assuming you are one of the one third of Kenyans who have a bank account. And assuming the one sending the money has a bank account. Both of which involve documentation and KYC, something not necessary in most crypto transactions.
>because your ignoring all the infrastructure need to do that fiat conversion
Not really, crypto to fiat can be done informally. There's several people in my city who buy and sell it and all they need is a cellphone and local currency.
It's only from the perspective of someone that thinks like a loser, always trying to find something wrong, that you can find zero uses where using crypto is more energy efficient than other financial options. And not all cryptos use the same energy or transaction cost as others.
For an example of transaction efficiency, I can buy a bar of gold from some established bullion vendors in litecoin much cheaper than with a visa card due to lower transaction risks for the merchant and lower transaction fees. If you can't wait multiple days for an ACH transaction and have to buy precious metals online, crypto is actually the cheapest way in the US.
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You're a bigot for pretending to believe such obvious bullshit.
And you are choosing to ignore the most unsavory aspects that have been raised in the west because your local media has told you otherwise. Its absolutely true! There are very strong analogies here with Holocaust denialism, which some states see as such a problem they outlaw the philosophy! It is not bigotry to stand up to authoritarianism and human rights abuses. You wield that term bigot to downplay the vast and mo…
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> How do you think the dollar keeps its value? Base demand for dollars is created due to taxation. As the money supply is managed via fractional reserve lending, each new dollar that enters circulation is backed by the demand for repayment of that loan. When someone borrows money from a bank, the bank enters a negative balance in its ledger and the borrower gets a positive balance in their account. This is how money…
"Base demand" I get that this is working econ theory, but is that even meaningful? Do you honestly think people hold dollars because "someone can use it to.pay taxes"?
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How can you possibly imagine adoption of Bitcoin would end the US army? The US army existed for hundreds of years on the gold standard. World wars were fought on the gold standard. Exactly, step my step, please explain how adoption of bitcoin would reduce military energy consumption.
That’s not what I said. It’s simple. Bitcoin has value because of proof-of-work which uses a ton of energy. US dollar has value because it’s propped up by the military which uses MORE energy (more so because there is no more gold standard)