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Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

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Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#111

Post by frankenst1 »

endisneigh wrote: post #27
zests wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electricity per transaction is an extremely poor way to communicate anything useful. It says nothing about the actual harm of Bitcoin and only leaves readers (and bloggers) drawing their own conclusions.

why is it a poor way to communicate anything useful? if sending someone a dollar through venmo costs $0.0000001 worth of electricity and sending someone a dollar through the bitcoin network costs $1 doesn't that communicate everything you need to know?

Probably because twice the amount of transactions do require as much energy as half of the amount of transactions or as much energy as no transactions at all, i.e. Bitcoin's energy usage depends on the difficulty of mining a block which is not affected by the number of transactions in a block.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#112

Post by _7fvc »

Bitcoin is bad for the environment, for now. There is no way to value Bitcoin. It has no intrinsic value. Its valuation is a narrative. The higher the price goes, the more energy we'd spend on mining it. I call this the Bitcoin Price Paradox [1]. But it's not all hopeless. We can find a way to ground Bitcoin to reality by develop non-speculative use-cases. Then we can develop a valuation model. I believe the key to solving this paradox is to have an inflationary crypto. It can drive payment adoption. I'm involved with Bitflate, a crypto with 7% inflation [2]. Once we have payment adoption, we can create valuation models and control energy spend on mining.

[1] https://bitflate.org/post/2021/02/05/the-bitcoin-price-parad...

[2] https://bitflate.org/bitflate.pdf

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#113

Post by thedudeabides5 »

runarberg wrote: post #38
jetpackjoe wrote: post #9

There are so many better crypto-currencies. Better for the environment because they use proof-of-stake, and not proof-of-work. Better for users because transactions are confirmed in seconds, not hours, and without the ridiculous fees that Bitcoin has. I think this shows how truly powerful the network effect, and being first to market is. Because without those things, Bitcoin would be nothing.

Could anyone explain to me how proof of stake works (as opposed to proof of work), and how it is better? Has proof of stake been proven to be as robust as proof of work? EDIT: The wikipedia article is easy to find[1]. However it is really short, looks incomplete, and has a lot of “citation needed” after each point. So I would rather ask on HN. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake

Kind of funny the goal of crypto was a total new, decentralized, democratic system, and what we end up (to solve the scale issue), is yet another class system where you can vote only in proportion to your wealth.

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

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#114

Post by gnrlst »

mavhc wrote: post #24
jetpackjoe wrote: post #9

There are so many better crypto-currencies. Better for the environment because they use proof-of-stake, and not proof-of-work. Better for users because transactions are confirmed in seconds, not hours, and without the ridiculous fees that Bitcoin has. I think this shows how truly powerful the network effect, and being first to market is. Because without those things, Bitcoin would be nothing.

Which proof of stake systems currently exist and work well?

Since you asked: nano is the only _pure_ cryptocurrency using a variant of PoS called Open Representative Voting. Other projects are piling on features to chase trends (defi, smart contracts). The inherent problem with having multiple functions, is that it inevitably takes away from the primary purpose of pure store and transfer of value. Cash for example, can only be cash and has no utility except that of being stored, or switched for a good or service, or another form of cash from another country. If cash suddenly had a "feature" (such as fees, rewards, etc), the feature in itself will suddenly take priority over cash's original purpose of being a means of exchange and store of value. Transfer and store of value can't be separated. In order for something to be a good store of value, it needs to be a good transfer of value.

Taken from a Q&A with nano's creator[1] around a question of why doesn't nano implement smart contracts:

> Smart contracts can’t cause side effects to happen. They can’t move property and they can’t negotiate unforeseen disputes. When you carefully look at it, all smart contracts take the form of a prepayment and slow release of locked-up funds. People haven’t and won’t use this for multiple reasons. Economically the opportunity cost of locked-up funds means they can’t be used elsewhere while locked up. From a practical standpoint, something simple like a rental smart contract could mean you’d have to lock up your year’s rent to slowly trickle out to your landlord. People simply don’t have this much money to lock up. Smart contracts can’t sample unforeseen circumstances, something like a judge ruling in contradiction to a smart contract means it will continue to operate incorrectly given the new situation. Oracles in smart contracts will very quickly become infeasible. Consider writing a contract about a building in a remote town, who is the person that’s going to go on location, make the determination, and feed the input into the system? How are we sure they aren’t coerced to lie?

[1] https://changenow-io.medium.com/ama-with-nanos-founder-colin...

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#115

Post by A12-B »

meddlepal wrote: post #58

What is up with the comments in this thread? Feels like tons of them are bot written. Weird attacks on Bill Gates and Microsoft all over the place.

The type of person hackernews respects the most - a billionaire - told them that their favourite toy is bad.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#116

Post by nindalf »

rustybelt wrote: post #81
nelsontodd wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is silly. Consensus (probably, I am doubtful of PoS) isn't free. You get a choice between bitcoin mining and military force. Which do you find less harmful? Edit: I should clarify. I am saying that the status of the USD as a reserve currency has led to lots of US military action.

Wow. What? This may be the worst false dichotomy I've ever seen.

How so? Seems correct to me. Just this morning I had the choice of paying for groceries either with Bitcoin or by launching a violent invasion of the store.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#117

Post by Pungsnigel »

akudha wrote: post #90
cies wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cardano and Polkadot iirc.

If I want to learn blockchain, would these two be good projects to start with?

I started with a combination of crypto basics + bitcoin and Cardano. The combination was great imo.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#118

Post by lambda_obrien »

shiado wrote: post #62

The irony is that the exact society destabilizing grand visions of the future billionaires advocate for are some of the main drivers behind people embracing Bitcoin. If you push a "you own nothing" WEF approved dystopian tech oligarch reality don't be surprised when people adopt an asset that cannot be confiscated by the government.

Your government can force you to do or give them anything, don't think math will stop them from trying. If they fail, they'll just lock you up.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#119

Post by jetpackjoe »

thedudeabides5 wrote: post #113
runarberg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could anyone explain to me how proof of stake works (as opposed to proof of work), and how it is better? Has proof of stake been proven to be as robust as proof of work? EDIT: The wikipedia article is easy to find[1]. However it is really short, looks incomplete, and has a lot of “citation needed” after each point. So I would rather ask on HN. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake

Kind of funny the goal of crypto was a total new, decentralized, democratic system, and what we end up (to solve the scale issue), is yet another class system where you can vote only in proportion to your wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_qualification

This, I find, to be the biggest flaw with crypto in general.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#120

Post by asmos7 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #84
nelsontodd wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is silly. Consensus (probably, I am doubtful of PoS) isn't free. You get a choice between bitcoin mining and military force. Which do you find less harmful? Edit: I should clarify. I am saying that the status of the USD as a reserve currency has led to lots of US military action.

Military force and law enforcement provide solutions for consensus across great many domains, so they're marginally near-free to use for consensus in any single area of interest. You could say, they are consensus factored out and made incarnate. Conversely, if all money suddenly become Bitcoin, military force and police would still be needed, in mostly the same amount they are today.

It's odd to me that people think Bitcoin can be free of "force" long term. Bad guys can point a gun at your head and demand you login into Coinbase to transfer coins to them. What happens if the government makes Microsoft give them admin accounts to the Bitcoin repo? What happens if there is a fork and China doesn't like it and prohibits miners from adopting it? BTC is way more susceptible to traditional military and government might then people make it out to be.
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