951–960 of 1001 posts
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I'm also expecting a lot of GPU's to flood the used markets. Coupled with the next generation of GPU's being released soon.
I don't. I expect the owners to switch to mining other PoW coins.
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Using electricity isn't the problem. Anyone could use vast amounts of electricity as long as they are willing to pay the price for it. The problem is carbon emissions. The switch to PoS is a non-issue from my perspective: a centralized system changed from using method A to method B, I don't understand why I should care. Bitcoin mining is increasingly being used to prevent methane emissions in stranded gas reserves. H…
> The switch to PoS is a non-issue from my perspective: a centralized system changed from using method A to method B, I don't understand why I should care. Because every bitcoin transaction costs $60 in electricity. That is a monumentally stupid amount to pay. It's $125 per kB. Proof of stake incentivizes capital directly. Proof of work incentivizes capital via the ability to find prime numbers, which limits you to p…
> Instead of being used for something useful
Bitcoin uses less energy than YouTube. Wether you think having a decentralized, global monetary system that gives everyone an opportunity to own sound money that the government cannot take away is more or less useful than YouTube is of course something everyone is entitled to have an opinion on.
It might be that you are correct, it is too early to tell, but you are no the final judge of what is useful in the world or not, so this quote is just your personal opinion and nothing more.
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Who is going to run a bank without fractional reserve banking, and how can you do that with BTC?
You do fractional reserve banking with BTC the same way you do it with any other currency: You only keep enough BTC on hand to cover the projected worst-case withdrawals, and take the risk of needing to shut down or possibly declare bankruptcy in the event of a bank run. There is no "lender of last resort" to bail you out, but banks were doing fractional reserve banking long before the creation of the FDIC. It wasn't…
Fractional reserve banks are very honest about the fact they reuse your money until you withdraw it. What you are describing is a full-reserve bank.
Prior to the merge ethereum’s trust was controlled by the organizations with the most money who bought/built massive data centers to mine it. With the merge & staking that abstraction layer has disappeared and it’s still the organizations with the most money who control it. Sure it’s great that non-productive math problems no longer need to be solved & consume so much energy and hardware to make it all work. And it m…
> “Proof-of-stake is like running an app on your MacBook,” he said. “It's like running Slack. It's like running Google Chrome or running Netflix. Obviously, your MacBook plugs into the wall and uses electricity to run. But no one thinks about the environmental impact of running Slack, right?” People do think about that. But definitely an improvement!
No one with any influence thinks about that. Have you see the typical CPU/network overhead of an application compared to what it accomplishes? :-p
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Not using up a goat load of electricity is like 99% of why this change is great. Let people speculate on their funny money without harming everyone. A lateral move on the other details is rather unsurprising.
The thing is, most "crypto haters" on HN are just regretful no-coiners. Crypto is exactly the type of thing you would except HN to love, it ticks the box in so many ways, except for the one where... They forgot to buy some and are forever resentful. I honestly struggle to believe this group of people truly care that much about crypto's effects on the environment; from the people I've spoken about this with personally…
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Agreed. My top concern with cryptocurrency is the huge waste of energy inherent to PoW. It's really, really good to see ETH pull this off. There are a pile of other problems in crypto, but it's fantastic to see this biggest (IMO) issue addressed by the #2 cryptocurrency. I actually thought it might never happen. It's a day to celebrate for sure.
Honestly, PoW seems like a big problem but the reality is that miners have been boosting the solar companies. Solar is cheaper than most other power sources and any miner will tell you that the cheaper the power the more profit they make.
All else being equal, building solar panels is a negative; producing and transporting solar panels consumes materials and produces CO2. The reason building solar power plants is usually good is that they reduce the need for even worse forms of energy production. If you build a solar farm, just to waste all or most of the energy it generates, what you have done is a net negative for the environment.
This is in addition to the fact that a whole lot of mining uses existing infrastructure, which negates the gains from building out clean energy and keeps demand high enough to require dirty energy, as /u/oofbey covered.
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> liberation of people from massively powerful banks and governments The difference between business and governments is that in business every dollar has a vote, whereas in a democracy every adult has a vote. "liberation of people" can only happen by having a working democracy. And a working democracy can only exist when there is (democratically elected) government. So it's not like people should be liberated from go…
> "liberation of people" can only happen by having a working democracy If 51% democratically voted to enslave the other 49%, that would be a working democracy but far from "liberation of people".
But what's usually left out when people bring out that argument, is that the alternative is worse. If the 51% can enslave the 49% in a democracy, then the 1% can enslave the 99% in a system where people vote with their money. In both versions, you need to protect groups with less power, but democracies distribute power much, much better than "capitalocracies" where 1 dollar = 1 vote.
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I’ve given up on HN understating crypto before they mint some Giga unicorn and everyone understand where the future is. The hive mind here is dangerously anti crypto. It’s the biggest wealth producing opportunity of the next decade or two and HN doesn’t get it at all. It’s basically become a forum for your average developer. I’d bet a lot of folk who don’t understand crypto at all are web developers or something wher…
> It’s the biggest wealth producing opportunity of the next decade or two and HN doesn’t get it at all. It HAS been the biggest wealth producing opportunity of the LAST decade , along with Bitcoin. They are now both priced for world changing paradigm shift and perfect execution doing so. Which means that there is no wealth producing opportunity at all considering that you need everything to pan out great just to mant…
Already multiple huge apps such as: Uniswap, Opensea, MakerDAO, Compound, Balancer, Curve. A lot of small stuff that could grow like Opulous. Lots to be built. Huge field of opportunity.