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Bitcoin Is Time

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Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#141

Post by maxmax »

arbawk wrote: post #106
user-the-name wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing baseless in saying that using 0.1% of the entire world's energy in order to do 3 transactions per second is beyond ludicrous, and an environmental disaster of massive proportions.

Now do the gold mining industry, and then how USD is backed by armies. And then you can research Lightning Network on top of Bitcoin and how it can process an unlimited number of transactions.

So you agree then that the USD is not fiat, but is in fact a plutonium based currency? How does this fact effect the bitcoin case?

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#142

Post by space_rock »

DennisP wrote: post #122
doomroot wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here me out. What if it was the only way to defund the US military? Would you be interested then? Why do we waste so much energy building killing machines? Why is there not a daily hackernews thread complaining about the energy consumption of the US military? Because it’s a necessary to ensure you can buy and sell things when you want to.

Anything Bitcoin can do, we can do now with proof-of-stake currencies at a tiny fraction of the energy consumption.

No theory to backup this claim. We had what is now rebranded PoS well before Bitcoin and it never and never will solve the problems PoW solves

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#143

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

yerwhat01010 wrote: post #125
doomroot wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here me out. What if it was the only way to defund the US military? Would you be interested then? Why do we waste so much energy building killing machines? Why is there not a daily hackernews thread complaining about the energy consumption of the US military? Because it’s a necessary to ensure you can buy and sell things when you want to.

How will Bitcoin lead to the defunding of the US military? Can I get a specific, plausible answer that isn't some vague utopian libertarian handwave?

That's not the point. The point is, it hypocritical to complain about bitcoin energy consumption without also complaining about the energy, material and human deaths consumption caused by for example US military, which is in essense what is required for something like a USD as a reserve currency to function.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#144

Post by dntrkv »

ben_w wrote: post #119
doomroot wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here me out. What if it was the only way to defund the US military? Would you be interested then? Why do we waste so much energy building killing machines? Why is there not a daily hackernews thread complaining about the energy consumption of the US military? Because it’s a necessary to ensure you can buy and sell things when you want to.

If that was the argument, I would ask in response: if it could do that, why would the combined vested interests of the US military-industrial lot allow Bitcoin to succeed ? It’s not beyond the reach of governments to ban unwanted trade, and even though bans are not magic, even a half-arsed enforcement of such a ban is enough to prevent a currency becoming endemic.

One possible reason is that by the time they realize it's a threat, it will be too late.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#145

Post by Dirlewanger »

randomsearch wrote: post #60
arbawk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ponzi schemes will always have people at the pinnacle of the period looking to sell. Bitcoin supporters will never sell, thus there is no bottoming out. It's actually just money, you're likely missing something.

Why won’t Bitcoin supporters ever sell? How can you say that with certainty? People sold GameStop, for instance.

Not everyone will hold forever. BTC's situation is really no different from gold's: it's seen as a store of value, but in the case of BTC, there's a lot of hype around it. The GME situation is related, but doesn't have the overtly greedy hedge funds at the forefront.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#146

Post by Mikester »

leppr wrote: post #70
arbawk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is the most durable money we've had, it can never be disposed of. Lost, perhaps. Energy consumption != energy production. Bitcoin is incentivizing reusable energy and moving energy to cheaper locations, further from cities. I suggest you look into how it's actually quite positive for the Earth.

There's nothing about Bitcoin that incentives mining with green energy sources more than dirty one. If coal electricity is cheaper, then bitcoin incentives burning coal. The only somewhat valid rebutals to the energy consumption arguments I know of are: - a lot of it is spare power that would be wasted otherwise (only partially true). - it uses less energy overall than governments spend protecting their fiat money's…

> gold mining uses a lot of energy too (but I doubt Bitcoin will reduce the energy spent on gold mining, it will probably just add up

Why do people keep making the comparison to gold mining? It's inappropriate.

Gold mining is bad for the value of gold, because it increases the amount of gold in the world. Eventually, the gold coffers on Earth will deplete and there will be no more gold mining.

Bitcoin mining is necessary for the value of bitcoin, otherwise there can be no certainty of the blockchain. After most of the bitcoins get minted, the mining will still have to continue out of transaction fees.

The cost of mining bitcoin needs to be compared to the cost of gold storage and handling of gold transactions, not gold mining.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#147

Post by ballofrubber »

toto444 wrote: post #127
olah_1 wrote: post #69

This is the article that made things finally click with me. Thinking about the pre-WWI gold standard and the issues that existed there and the improvements that Bitcoin brings around time, consensus, etc. The baseless negative comments with no interaction with the article content confirms for me that Bitcoin is on to something. Sour grapes syndrome is a result of pride, I think.

> Sour grapes syndrome is a result of pride, I think. Or maybe it comes from people who have read an Econo101 textbook and who have spent a lot of time trying to explain a crowd of Bitcoin enthusiasts why their reasoning is wrong but no one has been listening to them so far so they are bored. Back in the time I used to spend my days on a forum about Economics. Every other week there was a random guy who signed up jus…

Would you care to share your Econo101 knowledge?

I'm not an economist, but nothing has convinced me yet that bitcoin is not the best form of money.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#148

Post by 7373737373 »

keiferski wrote: post #55

Nothing is less material than money. . . . Money is abstract, I repeated, money is future time. It can be an evening in the suburbs, it can be the music of Brahms, it can be maps, it can be chess, it can be coffee, it can be the words of Epictetus teaching us to despise gold. Money is a Proteus more versatile than the one on the island of Pharos. —Jorge Luis Borges, “The Zahir” https://longreads.com/2016/06/14/borges…

> Richard Dawkins said in an offhand comment in The Selfish Gene that “Money is a formal token of delayed reciprocal altruism.” - https://nakamotoinstitute.org/reciprocal-altruism-in-the-the...

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#149

Post by bena »

arbawk wrote: post #117
SkipperCat wrote: post #68

Bitcoin is only popular because tech workers get paid a lot and have the ability to speculate, we live in a world of massive asset bubbles created by government fiscal policies and Bitcoin is excellent for buying drugs on-line. Most people want security in their assets, which is why a majority of folks read articles about bitcoin but never touch one. All of these articles are great examples of creative writing. I do…

Actually it's pretty important for many: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLYYh4aPXAM It's being widely adopted in countries with inflating currencies: Nigeria, Vietnma, and Argentina made it to #3 today (this link is slightly old). https://www.statista.com/chart/18345/crypto-currency-adoptio...

I see this being thrown about as a talking point a lot, but I think it ignores what's fundamentally happening here.

Bitcoin is essentially a proxy for another currency. Mostly the USD. These people need a way to protect their assets from what their own governments are doing to the value of their native currencies.

They cannot buy securities or foreign currencies for various reasons.

Bitcoin gives them a way. A way to convert their native currencies into USD, a stronger currency.

So while it's a good use-case for Bitcoin, it's not exactly a situation that's applicable to the world at large.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#150

Post by almost_usual »

doomroot wrote: post #108
user-the-name wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing baseless in saying that using 0.1% of the entire world's energy in order to do 3 transactions per second is beyond ludicrous, and an environmental disaster of massive proportions.

Here me out. What if it was the only way to defund the US military? Would you be interested then? Why do we waste so much energy building killing machines? Why is there not a daily hackernews thread complaining about the energy consumption of the US military? Because it’s a necessary to ensure you can buy and sell things when you want to.

If you think the US military or any military will go away because Bitcoin you’re delusional.

> Why is there not a daily hackernews thread complaining about the energy consumption of the US military?

People are willing to pay a high energy cost for safety. Bitcoin doesn’t provide me any safety and it doesn’t have the strongest military in the world claiming it’s worth anything.

If you think Bitcoin will topple governments be prepared for a long future of conflict and casualties. Maybe it will be worth it but I doubt it.

So all in all it’s a massive energy waste thought experiment.

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