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Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

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Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#111

Post by post_below »

Athas wrote: post #62
Negitivefrags wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Tesla announced the initial move they received a huge amount of push back for the environmental concerns. And it didn’t look good for an EV company of all things. There is a trend I’ve seen of a company making a decison, everyone hating on them for it, then they reverse the decision, and they are still criticised. If a company turns around and reverses a decision citing the very reasons they were criticised for…

No, because this makes it seem like they are not making the right decisions because they are right , but only because doing the wrong thing made them unpopular. It makes you wonder what other wrong things they do that doesn't elicit enough of a popular response to make them reconsider. It's not like the environmental impact of Bitcoin was a subtle or obscure issue when they first made the decision. They should have k…

For profit companies don't make decisions because they're right. Right and wrong have no meaning in capitalism. Companies make decisions based on profits.

We might wish it were different, but it very clearly isn't.

The best we can hope for is that public pressure convinces companies that right and profitable overlap.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#112

Post by isatty »

simondotau wrote: post #89
toxik wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t think they knew that going in?

I think a lot of people are aware that bitcoin transactions have an energy cost but haven’t sufficiently gone down the rabbit hole of quantifying exactly what that cost is.

A company as big as as TSLA has people on payroll to figure that out. If they don’t, then it’s still on them. You think this is WSB where I see a ticker, strike and expiry and I’m in with my life savings?

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#113

Post by alpaca128 »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #46
arcticbull wrote: post #10

So far, Elon/Tesla: 1. Bought a bunch of Bitcoin. 2. Announced they were going to accept Bitcoin, sending the price up. 3. Sold a bunch of Bitcoin to pad out otherwise poor earnings, citing their goal of "testing liquidity of the market." 4. Announced they were going to stop accepting Bitcoin, sending the price plummeting. As though he didn't know the environmental impact a week ago? As though he didn't check for liq…

When Tesla announced the initial move they received a huge amount of push back for the environmental concerns. And it didn’t look good for an EV company of all things. There is a trend I’ve seen of a company making a decison, everyone hating on them for it, then they reverse the decision, and they are still criticised. If a company turns around and reverses a decision citing the very reasons they were criticised for…

> isn’t this exactly the behaviour we want to encourage?

A company manipulating a volatile market for financial gains, then distancing themselves for PR while keeping the profits?

I don't see how any part of this should be encouraged. I could imagine a much larger backlash if this wasn't done by Tesla but, say, AT&T or Google.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#114

Post by adh636 »

viraptor wrote: post #56
adh636 wrote: post #25

The same argument people made against Tesla saying why electric cars weren't really better than combustion engine cars. They said Tesla cars use a lot of energy, much of which comes from coal and other dirty sources. What a joke that Elon is making this argument.

There's a big difference. Even if people using EVs now effectively burn coal to do it, they replaced an ICE and can migrate to greener sources over time. On the other hand, crypto mining exists purely on top of existing energy usage. These are not really comparable situations.

Sorry, I am not sure I completely understand your argument. You expect the energy used for Tesla cars to more easily migrate to greener energy? Bitcoin mining is completely location independent and is able to migrate to cheaper (which as renewable energy tech improves will equal greener) energy much easier than an individual tesla owner can.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#115

Post by qeternity »

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #96

Why is is Bitcoin mining mainly happening in China, but not other compute bound tasks? How about machine learning. Why aren't the leading data centers for ML based in China? Or are they? And on the energy front - if fossil fuels are the best energy source for calculating hashes, why not for other types of number crunching? Can boycotting one type of calculations really keep the fossil fuels under the ground? If they…

Because there is tremendous risk of having data located in China. This is not the case with Bitcoin. If you put your SOTA AI/ML project there, your IP will be stolen, guaranteed. If you put your Bitcoin mining there, your only risk is the hardware.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#117

Post by riffraff »

x3sphere wrote: post #63
Negitivefrags wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Tesla announced the initial move they received a huge amount of push back for the environmental concerns. And it didn’t look good for an EV company of all things. There is a trend I’ve seen of a company making a decison, everyone hating on them for it, then they reverse the decision, and they are still criticised. If a company turns around and reverses a decision citing the very reasons they were criticised for…

Sure, but none of it makes any sense. I have to imagine the decision to buy Bitcoin and accept it as payment was vetted by a lot of people internally, not just Musk himself. And the environmental impacts from mining are well known. Musk isn’t stupid either - he must’ve known this would be an issue for Tesla’s image.

the impact from mining was well know, the PR impact was not.

It is hard these days to gauge how bad people will react, if you're lucky something else happens to get people screaming the same week and you can get away with anything.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#118

Post by harwoodleon »

ptsneves wrote: post #3

Hope we now can start a proof of stake cycle. Peercoin is dead. What other proof of stake viable currency is there? Only when the energy impact of crypto currency is dealt with will i indulge in speculating that it can be a net good for humanicy

Https://Nano.org

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#119

Post by alpaca128 »

epgui wrote: post #75
asddubs wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you can't really take a company at face value if they reverse course after having already profited from their "lapse in judgement". The parent post lined out potential motivations behind all this that IMO aren't really that outlandish. It's speculation, but it's not some outlandish crackpot theory

Sure, but a basic rule of civility is that you should "assume good faith" and give others the benefit of the doubt when the good faith explanation is plausible.

Read enough news and your good faith for publicly traded companies of any kind will be gone quickly. Tesla may be more trendy than EA, but the motivations are always the same.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#120

Post by vanviegen »

hunter-2 wrote: post #55

Why is this guy not in jail? This is blatantly manipulating cryptos almost every other week.

Is there anything legally wrong with manipulating crypto courses? Or even ethically?

The supposed main advantage of cryptos is that they are independent of governments and institutions, and their rules. And in this case, that's exactly what they get.

And besides that, without 'manipulation' (which I'd say includes any kind of marketing), cryptos would inherently be worth exactly nothing.

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