Bitcoins are clearly negative sum game (resources used, GPUs burned, CO2 emitted, money changed hands). Wish we could do less of it.
> GPUs burned
Bitcoin doesn't use GPUs, just ASICs. You may be thinking of Ethereum or others.
Binance founder 'CZ' leaves prison on Friday
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Re: Binance founder 'CZ' leaves prison on Friday
#42Bitcoins are clearly negative sum game (resources used, GPUs burned, CO2 emitted, money changed hands). Wish we could do less of it.
> GPUs burned Bitcoin doesn't use GPUs, just ASICs. You may be thinking of Ethereum or others.
Ethereum doesn't use GPUs. You may be thinking of others.
Re: Binance founder 'CZ' leaves prison on Friday
#43Bitcoins are clearly negative sum game (resources used, GPUs burned, CO2 emitted, money changed hands). Wish we could do less of it.
At least the broader crypto ecosystem mostly moved over to proof-of-stake, even if Bitcoin will probably always be proof-of-work, so at least most of their Ponzi schemes aren't boiling the oceans in the process anymore. Small victories.
We are still waiting for AI (Deep Learning) to do the same and move to efficient alternatives without incinerating the environment and consuming the oceans to cool their GPUs whilst training and doing inference on their AI models.
So many years, yet no practical efficient solutions currently in production to reduce the emissions AI is producing. Much more urgent than crypto since that already has largely moved to proof-of-stake.
Re: Binance founder 'CZ' leaves prison on Friday
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m just curious - if you were to try making a decentralized currency as a fun project, what mechanism would you use instead? I’m someone who doesn’t really use it, but was fascinated with it before “blockchain” became a buzzword. edit: proof-of-work. I have been out of the loop for years :) My next question is are there downsides to proof-of-stake, and why has bitcoin not moved towards it?
> My next question is are there downsides to proof-of-stake, and why has bitcoin not moved towards it? There are minor downsides in theory. Proof-of-stake is a bit less "democratic" and gives more voting share to those who have more money, vs. just are mining. In practice, proof-of-stake coins seem to be doing fine. The main one here is Ethereum. The main reason Bitcoin hasn't is due to inertia and the interest for m…
Proof-of-stake ruins it's security with a rich get richer endgame where the stakers concentrate until it's not distributed enough and one entity or group can collude and control the system and there's no way to exit that state.
Re: Binance founder 'CZ' leaves prison on Friday
#45Meanwhile, SBF is settling right into prison gang life: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1av88z5/fir... No tats visible in the pic, tho.
He's leveled up to expert level polycule
Re: Binance founder 'CZ' leaves prison on Friday
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do we need a so-called decentralized currency anyway? I'd be less antagonistic if its major use case wasn't money laundering.
Just some examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_currency_controls_(2... https://www.statista.com/statistics/316750/inflation-rate-in... https://hongkongfp.com/2023/12/15/hong-kong-govt-amends-nati... https://www.ibanet.org/article/5584f623-6456-4287-8c34-1907b... https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/20/americas/canada-trucker-p...
In the case of Argentina, in most cases people have turned to the much safer USD.
Re: Binance founder 'CZ' leaves prison on Friday
#47Bitcoins are clearly negative sum game (resources used, GPUs burned, CO2 emitted, money changed hands). Wish we could do less of it.
I’m just curious - if you were to try making a decentralized currency as a fun project, what mechanism would you use instead? I’m someone who doesn’t really use it, but was fascinated with it before “blockchain” became a buzzword. edit: proof-of-work. I have been out of the loop for years :) My next question is are there downsides to proof-of-stake, and why has bitcoin not moved towards it?
> My next question is are there downsides to proof-of-stake, and why has bitcoin not moved towards it?
The main threat against any cryptocurrency is that a malicious actor will gain control of 51% of the voting power of the system, and use it in nefarious ways that ultimately break the cryptocurrency. Different Proof-of-X systems handle that problem in different ways.
It's generally considered that Proof-of-Work is easier to 51% attack, but also easier to recover from that Proof-of-Stake. The attack and recovery both use the same mechanism - add more hardware mining power to the system. There is no hard limit on this baked into the system, it's just a matter of how much mining power is available to purchase irl. And recovery can be accomplished without having to hard fork the network.
Proof-of-Stake on the other hand may be more difficult to 51% attack since it requires an attacker to obtain 51% of all the currency value in the system. But if this is accomplished, then it's difficult or impossible for the honest participants to rectify, since there's no more currency available to purchase. The attacker isn't going to sell them any of his 51%. So there's an inherent hard limit baked into the system, and the attacker now has 51% of it (including 51% of all newly created currency as well, since new currency is created by staking existing currency). The only fix is for the honest participants to hard-fork the network and create a new version of it that excludes the attacker. (There are other mitigations like slashing for malicious behavior designed to prevent attackers from gaining 51% in the first place).
There are other differences, but I believe those are the main ones, and one reason why Bitcoin hasn't moved to it.
Re: Binance founder 'CZ' leaves prison on Friday
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m just curious - if you were to try making a decentralized currency as a fun project, what mechanism would you use instead? I’m someone who doesn’t really use it, but was fascinated with it before “blockchain” became a buzzword. edit: proof-of-work. I have been out of the loop for years :) My next question is are there downsides to proof-of-stake, and why has bitcoin not moved towards it?
Why do we need a so-called decentralized currency anyway? I'd be less antagonistic if its major use case wasn't money laundering.
Capital controls are becoming more and more erratic and authoritarian. A decentralized currency provides a relief valve.
Re: Binance founder 'CZ' leaves prison on Friday
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
It intends to rely on fees, i.e. to have a constant backlog of high fee paying transactions. We'll see how that plays out within a few decades as the block subsidy becomes insignificant.
Transaction volume goes up and down. Just look at ETH gas prices - varying between 1 and 1000 month-to-month. BTC holders aren't going to be OK with a temporary lull in transactions leading to a double-spend attack etc.
I agree it seems wildly optimistic.
Re: Binance founder 'CZ' leaves prison on Friday
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m just curious - if you were to try making a decentralized currency as a fun project, what mechanism would you use instead? I’m someone who doesn’t really use it, but was fascinated with it before “blockchain” became a buzzword. edit: proof-of-work. I have been out of the loop for years :) My next question is are there downsides to proof-of-stake, and why has bitcoin not moved towards it?
Bitcoin's advantage is mainly its name recognition and unchanging nature (== trust and protocol stability). You could never get the necessary support for any meaningful changes. For people who want proof-of-stake there are plenty of coins doing that. Etherium is probably the best known most established option. But no coin really solves the other big challenge of crypto-currency: barely anyone uses them as currency. M…
Whoever is using it as digital gold certainly sees economic value, e.g. preserving wealth to invest elsewhere.