Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

sciencedirect.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 436 posts

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#141

Post by gruez »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #131
gruez wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even as a European citizen, I have faith that the US Dollar will stay the US dollar, and keep value. Clearly the market doesn't think so. Nearly every asset class is getting inflated in the past year, in the middle of a pandemic no less.

That's... called printing money. Inflation is a necessary evil and infinitely more preferable to the alternative that is bitcoin, which gives you no reason to ever use it. Why would you use it at 10k when it's going to be a 20k next month ? Inflation encourages money changing hands. The market has absolutely fuck all to do with it.

In other words, you're saying that it won't keep value?

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#144

Post by ohgodplsno »

dosenbrot wrote: post #122
ohgodplsno wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptobots really believe this? Even as a European citizen, I have faith that the US Dollar will stay the US dollar, and keep value. The Euro will keep being the Euro. Hell, even the Yuan will stay the Yuan. Just accept that you're willing to shit on the planet to make a few bucks, it's fine.

As European citizen I don't really trust the Euros or Dollars. Just think about the loss in value If you own money. Even if the official 2% inflation, its still 2% lost of value. And now with Corona they printing billions of Euros and the inlfation will stay at 2% ... sure.

The whole point of inflation is that your money is actually used to do things. Were those currencies to deflate, it would literally be more beneficial to not touch them. Ever. Investments would grind down to a halt, and why would you do groceries now when you could get more if you waited for next week ?

Even as a hardcore socialist, it's worrying that cryptobots have failed econ 101.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#145

Post by kristo »

rkachowski wrote: post #132

I don't understand where all these "cryptocurrency vs the environment" posts are coming from recently. The core problem is energy use, no? Things using electricity - of which bitcoin is a huge one - are powered by environmentally damaging supplies. I don't care about BTC at all, but if it were to be wiped out of existence tomorrow it would prevent further damage to the environment in exactly the same way that getting…

Huh? It would reduce a statistically significant amount of wasted energy. About as much as Ireland uses every year. Seems like a good goal to pursue, unless you’re a nihilist I guess

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#146

Post by Henk0 »

Bluestein wrote: post #20
yetihehe wrote: post #5

And every cent coin created in US and some other developed countries costs more than 1 cent and promotes harmful mining operations for copper and other metals. Also copper is harmful for environment. We should stop making money altogether. /s

Or come up with an eco-friendly, efficient, workable digital money substitute (improvement?) :) No need to throw the baby away with the bathwater ...

Third generation cryptos like Cardano/Ada, Polkadot and others using proof-of-stake instead of proof-of-work to generate new blocks are orders of magnitude less energy demanding and more efficient in terms of transaction speed and costs than bitcoin and ethereum. Bitcoin has, unfortunately, become synonymous with cryptocurrency in many people's minds. It will be interesting to see what happens with the value of bitcoin as these limitations relative to the new kids on the block (sorry, pun intended, showing myself out the door etc.) become more obvious.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#147

Post by hellohiyesokay »

Jenk wrote: post #121
skinkestek wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you deny that hydro is cheap or do you claim that miners choose to use power in more expensive locations?

Miners don't care/get a choice. They plug their machines into the nearest wall socket.

Patently false. I do a lot of contracting work for miners, they specifically tune their operations to the power cost of an area and in variable rate loads will switch off miners during peak costs. $/kWh is a big concern for actual mining operations, maybe not for people with one or two rigs in their basement.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#148

Post by jf22 »

trident5000 wrote: post #140
kryogen1c wrote: post #100

> responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages red flag this article is steeped in pseudoscience. you could spend a lifetime trying to model and predict global weather patterns _with no outside intervention_. the idea that you could even make an attempt at attaching a number to this phenomena is laughable. what are the error bars here, 10,000%? lets pretend, for example, you tried to estimate the impact of tsu…

You could make up some fear mongering "study" about almost every energy using topic. AI and video rendering for instance which is often for some marginal purpose. Or heating pools, idle electronics, big homes with AC, leisure travel, all the useless crap bought and manufactured in China with dirty coal, etc.

Right, and all those things are harmful to the planet.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#149

Post by arghwhat »

skinkestek wrote: post #104
crumbshot wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of this electricity comes from the cheapest source of power, which is hydro. This has become almost a religious belief amongst cryptocurrency acolytes, but it's simply not true. -- Edit: please see my comment¹ and piplikoc's comment² below for more detail on this. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26342411 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26342366

Do you deny that hydro is cheap or do you claim that miners choose to use power in more expensive locations?

Cheap is not necessarily renewable, but is often just a cheaper country which in turn tend to be more lenient.

Also, it is wrong to assume that consuming 1GW near a hydroplant is fine. That 1GW would have been sold to someone else, and unless the net has an abundance of renewable energy, a non-renewable plant is going to have to cover for that.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#150

Post by permo-w »

ricardobayes wrote: post #13

And I'm especially angry at hypocrites like Elon Musk who are profiting from climate change and then proceeds invest those profits in bitcoin that accelerates climate change.

But then none of his enterprises have been explicitly exploitative, unlike many billionaires, and he’s pushed the car industry into moving away from combustion engines, so personally I give him a pass
Post reply on HN