Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#181

Post by deeeeplearning » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

tor11 wrote: post #171

deeeeplearning wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yay I can't wait for a trip to the grocery store to take 12 hours because every transaction takes 20 minutes. lol. This is just pure bitcoin hype, there are far better coins to use if you are actually interested in them as currency.

> trip to the grocery store try sending money to someone in north korea. how many hours does that take? > actually interested in them as currency it is still a currency.

>try sending money to someone in north korea. how many hours does that take?

Thats the best defense for Btc you have?

>it is still a currency.

The only people consistently using BTC as currency are drug dealers or drug buyers.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#182

Post by deeeeplearning » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

solosoyokaze wrote: post #152

deeeeplearning wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yay I can't wait for a trip to the grocery store to take 12 hours because every transaction takes 20 minutes. lol. This is just pure bitcoin hype, there are far better coins to use if you are actually interested in them as currency.

I don't see Bitcoin as currency, it's a store of value. You're correct that there are better coins for currency.

Edit: Could have sworn your comment said BTC and not crypto?

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#183

Post by NullPrefix » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:42 PM UTC

dralley wrote: post #68

powvans wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the environmental impact of Zoom running away with my CPU? What about Chrome? I’ve finally accepted that I have to switch to Firefox because of Chrome’s performance problems. Apple and Intel and thermals are a know problem, but Chrome is awful too. There seems to be some sort of problematic interaction between MacOS, Chrome, and Google’s software updater that triggers runaway CPU usage. See: https://mobile.twi…

A single bitcoin transaction (amortized) uses as much electricity as an entire house uses (on average) in more than 2 days. This is like saying why should a massive agricultural project worry about saving water when your uncle Steve leaves the sink running while brushing his teeth. Or complaining about a splinter while impaled on a 2x4. The scale of the inefficiency is so large as to be difficult to truly comprehend.

>A single bitcoin transaction (amortized) uses as much electricity as an entire house uses (on average) in more than 2 days.

That could be true, but how much energy does the finance world consumes through all the quantitative easings and other shenanigans? I doubt it's even possible to burn that worth of energy in electricity.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#184

Post by pseudozach » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

So many gems in this one that shows the bias of the author: "Simply: the Bitcoin blockchain only transfers and secures bitcoins. It does not move actual money like Fedwire does." This is factually incorrect when you actually own both of these "monies". But it wouldn't bother you if you only own the devaluing one.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#185

Post by superjan » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

solosoyokaze wrote: post #83

Nursie wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When cryptocurrency provides 1% of the services that the traditional banking system does, let me know and we can do this comparison.

You can already do many things with crypto that you cannot do with the traditional banking system. Can you open 10,000 bank accounts right now? I can make 10k wallets. There are so many new things we can do with crypto that it's going to take decades for people to discover them.

Please don’t downvote this guy, or the other crypto proponents, when they try to explain why they support it. I think the idea here is to have open debates with them, not run them out of town.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#186

Post by lottin » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #147

lottin wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You go to some cryptocurrency hangout, pay some stranger a hundred bucks in cash and they transfer a hundred bucks in Bitcoin to your wallet. You go pay for a VPN with it. Then everybody can see that A transferred money to B and B transferred money to C, but nobody knows that you're B and those are the only transactions for that wallet. Essentially you have to create a brand-new, single-use wallet for every transac…

So what?

Nothing.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#187

Post by Proven » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #180

lwansbrough wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...it is. How much energy does it take to store gold?

Much more than to store Bitcoin....gold takes much more space than a digital wallet.

Complete nonsense.

Gold costs almost noting to store, there's some cost to secure it. Bitcoin on other other hand, consumes ever more power - the cost of maintaining the network (which is what it costs to store your BTC) is growing all the time. That's what the article is about.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#188

Post by solosoyokaze » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

simiones wrote: post #179

solosoyokaze wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Seizing Bitcoin is not as trivial as you think it is. 2. Fiat is not a social problem but a technological one that crypto is well poised to take on. 3. BTC is well on its way to passing gold in aggregate value. It's safe to say, it's no longer a "toy". 4. I'm left of Chomsky but in general, a big fan.

1. It's not trivial, but it's certainly not impossible for the US government. 2. I don't understand how fiat is a technological problem. Fiat was a solution to the problem of a fixed supply (gold-pegged) currency. Crypto is generally a step back. 3. The value of bitcoin is irrelevant to its impact on global financial systems. It can handle 7 transactions per second, while consuming more power than the Czech Republic.…

1. I don't agree, it's also a great justification for why BTC uses so much power: to protect takeover from things like the US government.

2. Fiat is a technological solution, as is Bitcoin. Really though, the dichotomy between "social" and "tech" solutions is false. Technology and society are one and the same.

3. BTC has moved billions of dollars into crypto. That crypto can be pegged in smart contracts on more appropriate tech stacks (like ETH) to enable currency use-cases with alt coins. It's early days here, but very exciting.

4. There's not many leftist libertarians but it is an actual philosophy. Individual liberty + social and humanitarian thinking + acknowledgement of the role racism and exploitation has had in today's power structures. I believe in radical decentralization and leveraging technology and automation to make life better for all.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#189

Post by pseudozach » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

Glench wrote: post #6

Worth mentioning the cryptocurrency that Bram Cohen (inventor of bittorrent) is creating that is explicitly designed to be low-energy usage and more distributed: https://www.chia.net/ It uses "Proof of Space" (proof that you're allocating a certain amount of storage space) instead of Proof of Work or Proof of Stake. Pretty interesting and they're coming out of beta into their mainnet in the next few weeks. Their on-c…

main issue OP and other "I have a version of bitcoin that doesn't uses less energy/faster/cheaper etc." people have is that these existed before bitcoin and didn't work. They were shut down/coerced/coopted. Bitcoin ensures decentralization and finality via PoW. This new coin will take its place under bitcoin amongst 3000+ abandoned and newly released ones.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#190

Post by JumpCrisscross » Mon, Feb 15, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

solosoyokaze wrote: post #148

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I imagine... That’s moving the goalpost. There isn’t any barrier to programmatic banking. The use case is too narrow for it to be a widely-advertised service.

It's not moving the goal posts. I cannot do this right now. > There isn’t any barrier to programmatic banking. There absolutely is, there's no open API for this.

> I cannot do this right now

There is a difference between not being able to and not knowing how to. You can. There are no-minimum balance API banking interfaces. There just isn’t a common enough use case for them to be heavily advertised.

We can move the goalpost again to an open API, but that’s another thing once more.