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Bitcoin as a Battery

nickgrossman.xyz

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Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#171

Post by smashem »

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #10

It is not a battery in the physical sense because it does not store energy. What it does is, it allows you to transfer the economic utility of cheap local energy to regions where energy is more in demand. Although, as the article itself highlights, this could also be done more efficiently with aluminum smelting, and other processes that are energy intensive but don't require much infrastructure. From a purely financi…

> ...it does not store energy.

Yes it does. It stores what is called "monetary energy", and monetary energy belongs in the same class as kinetic, elastic, and chemical energies.

One of the key differences between bitcoin and other monetary assets is that bitcoin is absolutely scarce (the first absolutely scare monetary asset in human history), so its energy cannot leak via inflation.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#173

Post by funkychicken »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #155
audunw wrote: post #143

What the hell is is with cryptocurrency proponents and trying to redefine words to suit their narrative? First Bitcoin was NOT fiat currency (despite being one of the most fiat currencies by definition), then it was also a store of value (despite it being a horrible store of value, a high-risk high-reward investment is more accurate). Now it's supposed to be a battery? When the energy being put into it is basically p…

You need to have a triadic understanding of bitcoin, this is what allows it to be a flat currency, a store of value, and a battery at both one and the same time, through the act of transubstantiation of the coin a quantum state is triggered that allows the individual coin to choose which form it will manifest itself as.

I wish I could give this comment HackerNews Gold.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#174

Post by ashray »

specialist wrote: post #90

From OC: > One of my favorite things about crypto is that, every so often, your conception of what it is changes. Yup. Money is weird. Measurement of value, accounting of debts, commodity to be collected. David Graeber's book Debt has a pretty good survey of our evolving, manyform, paradoxical thinking towards money and related metaphors. As for crypto currency, I mostly agree with Mark Cuban's conclusion they're col…

Not trying to convince you of anything but just wanted to share this with you. It has started happening...

Zug in Switzerland accepts crypto for taxes.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/switzerlands-crypto-valley-h...

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#175

Post by Retric »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #168
Retric wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money doesn’t buy electricity in a blackout. That’s the difference between an abstraction and the underlying reality.

It does actually, thousands in Texas had no electricity while I did. Cost me 1/5 of a Bitcoin.

I think you misunderstood. I had electricity just fine during the storm due to the wonders of working infrastructure and thus not being in a blackout.

But, for those without power due to a blackout, you can’t simply spend money and instantly turn the lights back on. You can either have already spent money to have backup power, or you have a problem. It’s like breathing, if your drowning spending money to be able to breath in 2 hours is useless you need air now.

Which is why electric grid operators need infrastructure not money to avoid causing blackouts.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#176

Post by mattnewton »

TheBlight wrote: post #165
audunw wrote: post #143

What the hell is is with cryptocurrency proponents and trying to redefine words to suit their narrative? First Bitcoin was NOT fiat currency (despite being one of the most fiat currencies by definition), then it was also a store of value (despite it being a horrible store of value, a high-risk high-reward investment is more accurate). Now it's supposed to be a battery? When the energy being put into it is basically p…

>First Bitcoin was NOT fiat currency (despite being one of the most fiat currencies by definition) What is your working definition for fiat currency? Mine is: "Fiat money is a government-issued currency that is not backed by a commodity such as gold." Government doesn't issue bitcoins. Stopped reading after that as you seem uneducated on the subject.

I think of the government part as largely an accident; my definition of fiat money is “money that has value solely because the transacting parties say it has, and not intrinsic uses” - historically the way to get people to agree something intrinsically value-less has value was by government decree, but there are lots of exceptions. I think of the Yapannese rei stones as fiat money, for example (though there is some question about them having inherent value). Basically any money that isn’t commodity money (or directly redeemable for commodities) is a fiat money.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#177

Post by smashem »

Cantinflas wrote: post #5

It is not a battery if you cannot get electricity out when needed. It's a weird analogy for something that does not store energy in any form

Since a bitcoin is a monetary form of energy, and since the bitcoin network is so readily available, we could build layers on top of the network to enable quicker conversion of monetary energy to electrical energy.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#178

Post by [deleted] »

audunw wrote: post #143

What the hell is is with cryptocurrency proponents and trying to redefine words to suit their narrative? First Bitcoin was NOT fiat currency (despite being one of the most fiat currencies by definition), then it was also a store of value (despite it being a horrible store of value, a high-risk high-reward investment is more accurate). Now it's supposed to be a battery? When the energy being put into it is basically p…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#179

Post by klyrs »

capableweb wrote: post #170
IMTDb wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast difference here is that the energy consumption required by Bitcoin is integral to its model. The stated goal is to make massive amount of otherwise useless computations. If there was any way to stream porn using less electricity, we would consume less electricity for that. If there was any way to make those billboards consume less electricity, we consume less electricity. As soon as there is a new way to do…

> If there was any way to stream porn using less electricity, we would consume less electricity for that In a perfect world, yes. We would use less electricity if we realize we could. Unfortunately it doesn't work like that in the real world. In reality it has to make economic sense, as capitalism is "the way of life" in the western world (and many other places), otherwise it won't be thought of. We're slowly changin…

Data centers and cloud providers are optimizing flops per watt, not flops per second. Energy providers are finding that wind and solar have become incredibly cheap, and transitioning as fast as they can. It took us a while to overcome political hurdles erected by the carbon-burning industry, but it turns out this stuff just makes sense on an economic level.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#180

Post by WinstonSmith84 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #159
berkes wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Pure waste' is very much a point of view. If you dislike porn, the entire energy to create and distribute that, is 'pure waste' in your view (last time I looked, streaming porn consumes about the same amount of energy as Bitcoin. This probably changed by now). If, like me, you dislike billboards, all those giant flaring screens, burning neon, or LCD pixels, screaming to make you buy Pepsi, is 'pure waste'. If you di…

A waste by most societal measures. Purely imaginary point backed by nothing that is easily defrauded and highly volatile. With no societal or personal value. And we've chosen to burn gigawatts of energy on this foolish game. Its easy to see it as enormous waste.

A waste by your societal measures. It's easy to see it as enormous waste, for you

Speaking of "burnt gigawatts", if our society is still using coal to produce energy, are you blaming also Bitcoin for this? Too easy, sorry.

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