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Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

nytimes.com

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Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#101

Post by throwawaylolx »

hudon wrote: post #97
zigzag448 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion about the energy consumption of bitcoin can only be discussed because we know how much energy it takes to produce one BTC. What we don’t know is how many banks there are in the world with all the computers and mainframes they use to keep track of all the fiat money. And then of course the energy to produce a hardcopy of that money like knocking down trees and mining metals. So in my opinion we only can…

As the article I linked to explains, 100,000 transactions on Visa uses considerably less electricity than 1 Bitcoin transaction. If we can’t find any benefit that Bitcoin brings, then there should be a cost threshold where we start applying the brakes. In other words, how much energy are we willing to spend without a beneficial use case? With Visa and banks, we already know they serve hundreds of millions of people o…

>. In other words, how much energy are we willing to spend without a beneficial use case?

That's quite a statement. Did you mean without beneficial use cases that you personally know of? Example I posted somewhere in this thread: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ktorpey/2017/12/31/bitpesa-ceo-...

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#102

Post by daneyh »

dmoy wrote: post #92
zigzag448 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion about the energy consumption of bitcoin can only be discussed because we know how much energy it takes to produce one BTC. What we don’t know is how many banks there are in the world with all the computers and mainframes they use to keep track of all the fiat money. And then of course the energy to produce a hardcopy of that money like knocking down trees and mining metals. So in my opinion we only can…

I'm not sure I buy this. If we know definitively that btc uses more energy than all of Switzerland, and we know that Switzerland doesn't spend >100% (or likely even >30%) of its energy on banking, and we know that Swiss banks clear more money than Bitcoin, then we have a reasonable point of comparison.

I understand what you're trying to say but this logic would only work if we knew that swiss bank operations 'based in switzerland' clear more money than bitcoin.

Credit suisse/UBS main operations are in London.

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#103

Post by [deleted] »

mvindahl wrote: post #52
VMG wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5) Doesn't corrode and doesn't depend upon hardware or storage media to be working. Bitcoin corrodes? You can encode your private keys in Gold if you want to.

Well, the whole thing is computer data, stored on media. Already these days it's hard to find hardware to read the 5.25" floppy disks that I stored my code on in the late 1980s, and that's just three decades. Preserving digital data is a continuous effort. And yeah, you can encode your private keys in gold, and I kind of think that everyone should do that, to keep future archaeologists puzzled :-P

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#104

Post by blackrock »

sparkie wrote: post #70
blackrock wrote: post #64

How do you guys buy your Bitcoin? What exchange do you use? Do you use Coinbase? Or do you have an offline wallet?

You should always have your own local wallet, and if you use an exchange, you should immediately transfer your funds to your local wallet once you buy them. In terms of exchanges, there are many alternatives to Coinbase which you should look into. Coinbase has some sketchy history like insider trading, blocking Wikileaks without giving reasonable explanation, several times they've turned off their markets when condit…

Any recommendations other than Coinbase?

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#105

Post by xtracto »

mvindahl wrote: post #42
DINKDINK wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advantages of gold over bitcoin: If there's a total internet && computer && electricity apocalypse, a physical barter exchange with gold is more trustless than bitcoin. You can still transact bitcoin but there's trust involved. Advantages of Bitcoin over gold: No trusted third party (If you're moving sizable sums of gold, you're doing it with a trusted third party[TTP)) 99.99226%[1] transaction uptime (Your TTP keep…

Further advantages of gold over bitcoin: 1) Has been used for millennia. Bitcoin was invented ten years ago. 2) Accepted as valuable by most of human population. Bitcoin mostly as valuable within internet echo bubbles. 3) Although price fluctuates, it's more stable than that of bitcoin, thus better suited as store of value. 4) Has applications for industrial uses or for jewelry, guaranteeing that your gold retains at…

> 4) Has applications for industrial uses or for jewelry, guaranteeing that your gold retains at least a base value. Same cannot be said of prime number data structures.

This is really interesting. Gold has physical uses for constructs that were developed during the industrial revolution. And as you say are well tested.

Ethereum or BCH, have information uses, for constructs that either have been developed in the last 20 years, or are being developed in this "information revolution" era.

I think we are about 20 years early to really see if a thing with physical properties will actually be more valuable than something with "informatic" properties. My bet is that the latter will win, given that materials sit on a lower level chain of complexity than information management.

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#106

Post by sparkie »

blackrock wrote: post #104
sparkie wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should always have your own local wallet, and if you use an exchange, you should immediately transfer your funds to your local wallet once you buy them. In terms of exchanges, there are many alternatives to Coinbase which you should look into. Coinbase has some sketchy history like insider trading, blocking Wikileaks without giving reasonable explanation, several times they've turned off their markets when condit…

Any recommendations other than Coinbase?

Depends where you are. I use Coinfloor (UK). I've heard good (and nothing bad) about Gemini for US.

I also used Kraken in the past but now I actively avoid any exchange which deals in Tether, as they've repeatedly failed to produce an audit to show that the money actually exists.

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#107

Post by lawn »

lrvick wrote: post #56
tobiaswk wrote: post #55

In all fairness the Bitcoin, BTC, is currently close to unusable and scales very bad. It quickly gets oversaturated with transaction and transaction fees rise quick. I think the conspiracy has come full circle. Those who slowly "threw sand in its engine" has done a great job. Why are transaction fees low today? Because no one, or a lot less, is using BTC. I know some will label me as a conspiracist. I've been followi…

Bitcoin fees were cut in half on a technical level by those that chose to adopt segwit which made transactions roughly half as big. Schnoor signatures can further compress transactions to get even more in a block. If in spite of these innovations blocks end up full, a block size increase is still a tool kept in reserve. In reality BCH did not make any hard won technical innovations and simply reached for the bigger b…

And segwit and schnorr signatures would be "hard won technical innovations"?

Segwit is an overengineered solution forced into a soft fork unnecessarily. Schnorr is another overengineered solution which only helps the segwit transactions to a very small degree. It's a great disservice to call these scaling solutions since their purpose are different and they are so very bad at them.

> a block size increase is still a tool kept in reserve.

Until we see +$20 fees? That sure didn't stop some of the Core developers from celebrating the success (yes you read that right!).

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#108

Post by hudon »

throwawaylolx wrote: post #101
hudon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article I linked to explains, 100,000 transactions on Visa uses considerably less electricity than 1 Bitcoin transaction. If we can’t find any benefit that Bitcoin brings, then there should be a cost threshold where we start applying the brakes. In other words, how much energy are we willing to spend without a beneficial use case? With Visa and banks, we already know they serve hundreds of millions of people o…

>. In other words, how much energy are we willing to spend without a beneficial use case? That's quite a statement. Did you mean without beneficial use cases that you personally know of? Example I posted somewhere in this thread: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ktorpey/2017/12/31/bitpesa-ceo-...

The only indication that Bitcoin might be better than incumbents is this line: "According to Rossiello, it’s still the fastest and easiest way for her to pay her lawyer in San Francisco and developers in Europe."

The hint at her anecdote not holding true in the general case comes right after: "While BitPesa is still happy with Bitcoin for now, Rossiello did note that it’s annoying that on-chain transactions have become much more expensive.

Rossiello went as far as to say there will be a mass exodus away from Bitcoin if a countermeasure for high fees is not deployed within the next twelve months; however, she pointed to the Lightning Network as a possible solution to this issue."

OK so the CEO of a Bitcoin payment company is annoyed that Bitcoin is increasingly worse than alternatives and she is hoping the Lightning Network will redeem it, otherwise there will be a "mass exodus".

That's hardly a convincing case for Bitcoin being the better alternative for payments and reads more like all other blockchain things: an experiment. Experiments are good as long as we're keeping track of their costs and being honest about the results.

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#109

Post by dmoy »

daneyh wrote: post #102
dmoy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I buy this. If we know definitively that btc uses more energy than all of Switzerland, and we know that Switzerland doesn't spend >100% (or likely even >30%) of its energy on banking, and we know that Swiss banks clear more money than Bitcoin, then we have a reasonable point of comparison.

I understand what you're trying to say but this logic would only work if we knew that swiss bank operations 'based in switzerland' clear more money than bitcoin. Credit suisse/UBS main operations are in London.

The domestic banking of a single small country is enough. You're talking about like 4m people getting paychecks every couple weeks at minimum. Paycheck deposits alone is more transactions than all of bitcoin.

There is no way the numbers come out in bitcoins favor here, the scale just isn't there.

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#110

Post by Nursie »

lrvick wrote: post #66
Nursie wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greener? It's not free to manufacture hard drives, in terms of materials, energy, CO2 etc. Proof of space and time merely shifts the pressure away from compute power to storage. It has the potential to do for the storage market what PoW as done for the graphics card market - pump up prices and move useful tech out of the reach of most consumers.

Graphics cards and ASICs are high up front cost and ongoing electricity cost that forces them to geographical areas with cheap electricity. Disk based systems are still up front cost, but substantially less cost to operate. Chia style nodes could be very low compute/electricity overhead and could potentially run off raspberry Pis on solar or using spare storage on mobile devices that are already powered on for other…

Yes, but such a system would incentivise the mass acquisition of storage media, pumping up prices, increasong production and having huge environmental consequences.

Proof of storage is just another ecological disaster in the making and I sincerely hope it never takes off.

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