111–120 of 219 posts
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"Value" implies you can retrieve that work back out of it. Otherwise, it is a cost. Seeing as how I can't retrieve the computing power back out of Bitcoin that was mined, it is a cost.
Well, couldn't you actually sell the coin in exchange for computing power?
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So illegal transactions and money laundering it is.
The long-term value of crypto will likely come from use cases made possible by auditable smart contracts that are administered on decentralized databases and run at perfect fidelity, facilitating the efficient flow of information through multiple types of systems (logistics, finance, etc) at a refresh rate / granularity that will be orders of magnitude faster / more detailed than the current status quo. In the meanti…
And some terrifying consequences for bugs. Or administrative errors with contracts, or non-binding contracts that you'll need a traditional court to sort out anyway.
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Yes but you're ignoring the many hours of entertainment derived from obsessively refreshing your Coinbase account balance.
Sounds like an idea for an idle game.
An important harbinger of trouble to come is that the Tether (USDT) coin, which is supposed to be pegged 1:1 to USD, is now trading substantially below $1: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-15/dollar-pe... Billions of Tethers were printed seemingly out of thin air and used to purchase Bitcoin. It's part of the foundation of the house of cards that keeps Bitcoin at its current price: "Despite their modes…
I saw a couple of comments today about the price of USDT so I think it's worth while explaining how it works just in case anyone is interested in knowing more. USDT is a pegged-currency. It's often described as a stablecoin but that's not correct because it doesn't have an inbuilt stabilisation mechanism unlike Maker's DAI for instance. The way it works is purely based on well known legal mechanisms that have no cryp…
If the USDT to USD ratio fluctuates so much, what is the point of 'parking' your money in USDT?
>Echoing sentiments of mainstream economists Yea, Paul Krugman has been saying "Bitcoin is doomed" since 2012. He'll always be wrong because this is all politically motivated. The banking and political establishment are scared shitless by alternative currencies, crypto or otherwise. Google the "Liberty Dollar". Mouth pieces for the financial industry like Bloomberg will attack alternatives to the petrodollar no matte…
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Well, couldn't you actually sell the coin in exchange for computing power?
That's just buying computing power like you would do with USD.
Another example of this is gold. To extract it out of the ground, you need to invest energy. That energy is then "stored" in the gold. You can release it by selling it for USD, then purchasing service from someone and so on.
I think it's hard to argue that the energy you put into it is lost even if that seems unintuitive at first glance.
The only currencies which exhibit that feature (no energy put in, hence no real intrinsic value) are fiat currencies, which come with their own set of unique issues.
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I saw a couple of comments today about the price of USDT so I think it's worth while explaining how it works just in case anyone is interested in knowing more. USDT is a pegged-currency. It's often described as a stablecoin but that's not correct because it doesn't have an inbuilt stabilisation mechanism unlike Maker's DAI for instance. The way it works is purely based on well known legal mechanisms that have no cryp…
> then commissions a receipt that proves their balance Why would this report be believable?
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> the biggest waste of computing power and energy in the history of the planet If we except the tetris, or minesweeper...
When will this horrible argument stop being thrown around? Tetris and minesweeper use a minuscule amount of power and typically provide many hours of entertainment. As technology has advanced, the power efficiency of these games increased exponentially. On the other hand, blockchain mining responds to more efficient hardware by increasing difficulty in order to compensate for the impact of improved hardware on the ha…
Maybe the cumulative effect on energy spent for playing tetris, or minesweep (not to mention much modern videogames) is not so small after all.
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You're off by more than an order of magnitude. $50 million is 3,382 lbs (1534 kg, 1.6 US tons) of gold at current prices.
You're right; I was calculating based on the per-troy-ounce price, thinking it was the per-gram price. Thanks for pointing out my mistake.
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I meant a number of second layer solutions, but lightning is one of the best examples right now. Check this visualisation for a current view of the size of the network: https://www.easyzoom.com/image/126770
not a great sign when "NO NOOBS" is one of your more central nodes