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Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

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Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#201

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #179
opaov wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile the bitcoin marketing mega machine is going into over drive. Full/Front page ads in newspapers, targeted campaigns on the most misguided, propping up talking heads and influencers, 24*7 sms bombardment in countries all over the world offering free coins, games and wallets to rope in more and more people who have clue about anything. Show growth. Get funds to buy more marketing, target the most ignorant, pro…

Everything is a scam nowadays, from tap water to US presidency. It’s almost if the rich people stopped caring about morals and just started setting up traps to entertain themselves with the suffering of others.

>It’s almost if the rich people stopped caring about morals and just started setting up traps to entertain themselves with the suffering of others.

There is even a successful Korean TV show depicting this current situation.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#202

Post by Jensson »

VMG wrote: post #190
sk0g wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first point is classic whataboutism. Would you defend a murder court case by claiming people don't care when the police kill people? It's the same thing, but people being replaced by the planet. Second point - who are these people, and how much of BTC usage comes from that, vs greedy 'investors'/'evangelists' who have bought in, and get rich by other people buying in? It's a rich people's plaything. Poor people i…

Bitcoin is targeted because it is a threat to power, not because of any environmental concerns. The people who use it do not have to justify it for you or anyone else. That's what makes it successful.

Sweden wouldn't be the first western country to ban crypto mining if it was just about power. Sweden has a lot of environmentalists in its government though, so it makes sense that Sweden is the first western country to ban it for environmental reasons.

If you think a government wouldn't ban crypto for environmental reasons, can you believe a country would ban drinking straws for environmental reasons? Yeah, that happened, banning crypto is much more reasonable than banning drinking straws.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#203

Post by ur-whale »

junon wrote: post #142
oytis wrote: post #139

Nice, what other software I'm not allowed to run on my machine? Can I play high end games? Make scientific computations? Experiment with machine learning?

This is purposefully reductio ad absurdum.

> This is purposefully reductio ad absurdum.

It's not, he's making a valid point.

To put it in a maybe a more arguable way:

where do you draw the line at a government deciding what you can and can't run on your computer?

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#204

Post by 3r8Oltr0ziouVDM »

ninepoints wrote: post #97
swman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly do we really need cryptocurrency? I don’t want my transactions public. I like exchanging cash for weed (legal in California) and nobody needs to know regardless. I also don’t understand what’s wrong with USD. I grew up in a third world country so maybe it could help people there but in USA? I’m happy with the dollar fluctuations vs four digit fluctuations daily. Can someone give me a good explain?

The explanation is simply that there are people that have bought in that want others to buy in also so they can liquidate for a profit. Meanwhile, others are susceptible to what amounts to FOMO-driven investment. The same sentiment that drove the beanie-baby craze, the dot-com boom, the subprime mortgage crisis, the current metaverse craze, and so on. Nothing new under the sun.

You don't need to invest if you just want to use it.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#205

Post by jamesrr39 »

Hard to disagree, the amount of energy and CO2 emissions are staggering especially considering how little you can actually do with the end product. Their "We therefore call for" section seems reasonable as well. I like that the article is concise, clear, and that the authors understand the difference between proof of work and other mining methods.

Interesting that they call it crypto-assets and never refer to it as a crypto-currency (not disagreeing; you can't use it to buy very much in Sweden, just thought it was an interesting observation).

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#206

Post by ur-whale »

boppo1 wrote: post #195
ur-whale wrote: post #86

Energy consumption is not an environmental problem (whatever you use said energy for, be it Bitcoin mining, heating your home or powering your massage chair), and all policies that try to limit energy consumption are basically building on quicksand and doomed to fail: the world has and will continue to consume increasing amounts of energy by capita. And anyone who's being an activist towards reducing energy consumpti…

Perhaps leaders have found the problem of scaling energy production intractable. Perhaps partial stone-age reversion is an acceptable solution. I'm seeing lots and lots of support building for efforts to reduce meat consumption.

> Perhaps partial stone-age reversion is an acceptable solution.

Good luck winning an election with that program.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#207

Post by oytis »

TomSwirly wrote: post #173
swalsh wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all crypto is money. ETH for example (which will soon be proof of stake... and more energy efficient) could be considered more accurately as a really large (but relatively slow) computer that never turns off. This plus infrastructure like ipfs enables a brand new internet. Completely decentralized and free of the strangle hold of large tech companies. To me, money and profit is less important than freedom. Web 3.…

It's funny and sad that when people talk about their "freedom" in 2021, it's almost always some sort of madness: freedom not to get vaccinated; freedom not to wear a mask; freedom to use cryptocurrencies.

Isn't freedom always a freedom to do something the majority won't like and/or find absurd. Most of it is really absurd, but some things pave way for the future, and it justifies tolerating the rest of it.

I personally don't believe in cryptocurrency and blockchain in general, but also I must say if I believed in it 10 years ago I would be financially much better off :)

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#208

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #197
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>car was the Devil's tool, because we are running as fast as we can to devastate our climate by turning fossil fuels into carbon dioxide. To be fair, mankind evolved a lot due to the use of cars. Off-rail transportation has changed the way we live, not just for the worse. The coffee and bananas I bought today was transported by a motor vehicle for the last mile. The ambulance that drove my friend to the hospital was…

Your examples are all commercial trucks, not personal cars. If so many individual people across America didn't need to own multiple cars to commute long distances to work every day, and could simply take decent government subsidized public transportation, or ride their bike safely on well designed ubiquitous bike paths, like I can where I live in Amsterdam, then the world would be a much better place. Just as the wor…

> could simply take decent government subsidized public transportation, or ride their bike safely on well designed ubiquitous bike paths, like I can where I live in Amsterdam

That sounds preachy and pretentious. Like Paris Hilton saying homeless people should just stop being poor and go to an ATM and take out money to buy a house like she did. Not everyone has access to Amsterdam like infrastructure since not everyone lives in Amsterdam and usually people have no direct say in the public infrastructure of the place they live so they adapt in way that improves their live, the best way they can, usually by owning cars.

Have you considered why 85% of Germans own cars and drive almost everywhere? Same in Austria, outside of Vienna or the city center of the other "bigger" cities, you absolutely need a private car to get anywhere in a timely manner as public transport is sparse and infrequent.

You can't just come in on your high horse flat and dense rich city with top infrastructure and preach that everyone else is doing it wrong and should live like you do, because most people don't have that luxury of such choices where they live and instead have to deal as best they can with poor infrastructure choices made by governments and interest groups way before they were even born, choices which take decades and millions to reverse, if they ever even do.

So please consider this next time.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#209

Post by scoopertrooper »

TomSwirly wrote: post #171
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there are people that have bought in that want others to buy in also so they can liquidate for a profit. Is that any different than a ponzi/pyramid scheme?

Consider this. Crypo cannot create or destroy fiat currency. So if you sell your crypto and make a profit in dollars, it's exactly because someone else bought it at a higher price than you did. And they expect someone else will buy it from them, in just the same way... So every dollar that comes out of cryptocurrency is because a later investor put a dollar in. Doesn't that sound like the definition of a Ponzi scheme…

Actually it can create fiat currency... in a roundabout way...

The core of the coin ecosystem are the stable coins, which are generally pegged to fiat, but are only backed by fractional reserves of cash. So the same USD can be recycled many times to buy Bitcoin.

Not only that, but the stable coin operators are under no obligation to exchange their coins back to you for the pegged currency at face value.

Tether is essentially an unregulated bank with nominal deposits totaling 73 billion USD, no obligation to pay depositors, a huge amount of minimally disclosed liabilities, and unaudited financial reserves.

Ponzi was but an amateur.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#210

Post by DonHopkins »

swalsh wrote: post #133
swman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly do we really need cryptocurrency? I don’t want my transactions public. I like exchanging cash for weed (legal in California) and nobody needs to know regardless. I also don’t understand what’s wrong with USD. I grew up in a third world country so maybe it could help people there but in USA? I’m happy with the dollar fluctuations vs four digit fluctuations daily. Can someone give me a good explain?

Not all crypto is money. ETH for example (which will soon be proof of stake... and more energy efficient) could be considered more accurately as a really large (but relatively slow) computer that never turns off. This plus infrastructure like ipfs enables a brand new internet. Completely decentralized and free of the strangle hold of large tech companies. To me, money and profit is less important than freedom. Web 3.…

Don't you realize that HBO made a whole TV show series that made fun of people who say stuff like that?

Erlich Bachman Vs Psilocybin. (Making The World a Better Place.):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tLvzyb3_Uc

Silicon Valley: Making the World a Better Place | SXSW Convergence 2016:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE9Dvd_NEBg

OH GOD this is hilarious! Zach Woods is so perfectly in character that I'm afraid he may actually be as deeply disturbed as the character he plays on the show. His impression of the Little Lord Fauntleroy of the Grindr empire was perfect! The setup starts at 3:40.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zach_Woods

I won't transcribe his NFSW joke, but later there's some excellent clean discussion too (starting at 13:18):

Steven Leckart (Moderator, Writer and Filmmaker)> You guys need to understand, these guys get pitched all the time by Silicon Valley. Like, we were in the back room, and there were guys from a -- can I say who it is? Should I say who it is?

(Off Camera)> Naaaaaw!

Leckart> But like this tech company that we've all read about in the news is coming up and like handing business cards, and cornering them, and telling them all about their, like, business strategies. And there is no hint -- it's like a deer in the headlights, right, like? Like you are just going to take this conversation and find a way to weave it into the show. And I sort of wondered, like, does Silicon Valley, are they just completely out to lunch about what you're doing? Like, why does anyone talk to you about this stuff?

Martin Star (Bertram Glfoyle)> They want to be a part of the show.

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