Bitcoin Is Time • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#181

Post by UncleMeat » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

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.

> What if it was the only way to defund the US military?

What if the moon were made of cheese?

I don't see any connection between the growth of BTC and the shrinking of military budgets or the reduction of warfare.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#182

Post by noxer » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

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.

>Bitcoin is onto something

What if it "was"?

The "hate" people express against bitcoin especially here on HN is often towards the implementation. People clearly see the flaw in PoW if they are not emotionally attached to it because they have no money at stake. You should not misinterpret that as hate because they missed the train to richness.

Objectively PoW does not scale. Objectively we have DLTs (blockchains) with Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) instead of PoW/PoS that can do everything Bitcoin can and more without the most severe downsides that come with PoW/PoS. The future will probably bring even better tech and if we learned something from the past then its that better solution always take over the old worse solutions. Bitcoin ultimately has to fail because its not a system that could be upgraded. Its most fundamental core properties are intentionally not changeable.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#183

Post by Erlich_Bachman » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

olah_1 wrote: post #94

gt565k wrote: post #66

Why are we still talking about bitcoin and first gen blockchain tech. Yes it's old, yes it's slow, yes it wastes resources. It is legacy software after all. PoS solves the problem of mining and wasted energy. Cardano's Ouroboros is a provable and secure Proof-of-Stake blockchain protocol. https://docs.cardano.org/en/latest/explore-cardano/relevant-...

I'm not saying this is you, but many people on HN will cry out "Use Boring Tech!" while also not understanding why Bitcoin is king. Bitcoin is old, secure, proven, and most importantly _simple_. Of course what you sacrifice with Proof of Stake is sovereignty. A random person cannot participate in the network unless they have X amount of existing resources. So that's the trade-off as I understand it. Depends on where…

Your point could be truth in theory, and/or in the future.

However, in practice, it seems that it almost works the other way around.

To mine on BTC, you cannot enter the game with 10$ to your name. You can't buy a mining rig, it is way too wasteful to mine on your existing CPU, etc.

However if we look for example at staking in Ethereum, there are decentralized (no trust required) pools that allow you to stake however little amount of ETH. The chain itself will require at least 32ETH to run a single meaningful staking contract, but through pooling this is directly practically accessible to anyone with even small amount of ETH.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#184

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

yerwhat01010 wrote: post #126

olah_1 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using 0.1% of the entire world's energy in order to do 3 transactions per second is beyond ludicrous In comparison to what? What do we get in return? Many consider the benefits to be worth it.

> What do we get in return? Fantastic question. I've been waiting 10 years for a convincing answer; still waiting.

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#185

Post by cyphertruck » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #169

thewarrior wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently decided to think deeply about Bitcoin and I think my initial skepticism about Bitcoin was wrong. Most of the criticisms of Bitcoin are centered around the fact that Bitcoin has a very low throughput. However this is not necessarily a problem. And here is one hypothetical example of how we can overcome this issue: When countries owe each other money they used to transfer gold back and forth or trust someone…

> Bitcoin is digital gold for settlements among digital currencies. What are the implications of this on the network stability wrt mining? Doesn't bitcoin need transaction volume to remain a stable network? My read is that the incentive structure changes. Right now, miners are motivated by block rewards. In the future, they'll be motivated by transaction fees. If transactions are rare, mining profitably is going to b…

To answer that question you have to make assumptions about the cost of mining, the cost of attacks and the cost of hash power at a point 117 years from now. But we know in the future hash power (technology) will be cheaper and thus bitcoin security will be cheaper, while bitcoin will be more valuable (or non-existing — it has to be either or).

Also remember if you have wealth in bitcoin you would likely mine at a loss merely to secure your own bitcoin.

I can’t imagine mining going away.

I think every appliance in a household will end up mining a little bit and it will be intrinsic to the fabric of the economy. The way the internet is now.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#186

Post by BTCOG » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

mediaman wrote: post #124

joosters wrote: post #8

Time is money. Bitcoin is wasted time. And wasted money. And wasted energy.

Bitcoin has a strong base of advocacy not based on any logic or utility but solely sprung from the mule stubbornness of those who profited from their speculation. 1. Bitcoin is environmentally damaging. It produces 37 megatons of CO2 per year and consumes 78 terawatt-hours of electricity annually. Much of that electric consumption is powered by coal. Not all energy consumption or CO2 output is bad, but value should b…

You have many severely fundamentally misunderstood ideas about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is "money" and not a "currency." Bitcoin works very wonderfully as money.

Bitcoin is not very wasteful in energy, contrary to the pushed narrative by those that want everyone to believe this is truth. Bitcoin uses a tiny fraction, currently around 7-9% of the electricity that the global banking system currently uses. Bitcoin uses a very large portion of renewable energy sources, and will continue to balance it's energy use towards efficiency and optimizations.

Your part 2/3 etc, it's not a currency. Bitcoin is pure money. We also do not really ever use gold for currency. It is money. Bitcoin is a better money than gold. Once you stop drumming on the wrong path, you'll more easily understand the differences and stop banging your head about how it's a bad currency. It's not a great currency, while it is the very best form of money.

Your whole bit about meandering into defending it's value as currency or store of value, is just highlighting your total misunderstanding of the value of gold, or the new digital version of gold as money. Money IS a store of value.

Lastly, Bitcoin really has no fundamental problems. Nobody that knows about bitcoin gives a flying fuck about the price.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#187

Post by UncleMeat » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #140

ben_w wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It’s not beyond the reach of governments to ban unwanted trade Yeah, right, it worked so well for alcohol... It DOES (/s) work so well for drugs in the US right now... And hey imagine whether it's easier or harder to ban something that doesn't take any physical space in your suitcase and can be transacted with only internet connection.

Alcohol didn't apparently threaten to end the authority of the state.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#188

Post by Erlich_Bachman » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

casi wrote: post #131

gt565k wrote: post #66

Why are we still talking about bitcoin and first gen blockchain tech. Yes it's old, yes it's slow, yes it wastes resources. It is legacy software after all. PoS solves the problem of mining and wasted energy. Cardano's Ouroboros is a provable and secure Proof-of-Stake blockchain protocol. https://docs.cardano.org/en/latest/explore-cardano/relevant-...

pretty weird seeing this recent trend of hn going from crypto-resistant, to cardano pumping. out of all the blockchains cardano? thats where you see the future? really? bizarre.

Pretend that someone is really reading and trying to understand for a moment ;).

What do you see in Cardano that makes it a poor candidate for a future blockchain? Governance? Functionality? Algorithms? Investment?

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#189

Post by cloakandswagger » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

casi wrote: post #131

gt565k wrote: post #66

Why are we still talking about bitcoin and first gen blockchain tech. Yes it's old, yes it's slow, yes it wastes resources. It is legacy software after all. PoS solves the problem of mining and wasted energy. Cardano's Ouroboros is a provable and secure Proof-of-Stake blockchain protocol. https://docs.cardano.org/en/latest/explore-cardano/relevant-...

pretty weird seeing this recent trend of hn going from crypto-resistant, to cardano pumping. out of all the blockchains cardano? thats where you see the future? really? bizarre.

This is the only commenter in this post mentioning Cardano, so I wouldn't characterize it as a trend.

Don't worry, HN comment sections will be filled with indignant nocoiners for years to come.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#190

Post by notahacker » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #158

yerwhat01010 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do we get in return? Fantastic question. I've been waiting 10 years for a convincing answer; still waiting.

There are millions of people who use it, trade it, store their value in it, program more software for it etc. They see the answer, they get the point. Can you please just answer this - do you suppose they all halt what they are doing and wait for an undeterminate amount of time for you to also get it, before they can go on with their businesses and lives?

I think the more pertinent question is, if they all halted what they are doing for an indeterminate amount of time for other people to get it, would the world [in future] be a worse place? And how?