201–210 of 431 posts
I know it’s a flawed analogy, but considering the influence China has on Bitcoin, on some level buying into Bitcoin seems not unlike shorting the US dollar.
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Care to share your sources? Naturally, a summation of the energy expenditure of all of the related components of the existing fiat system must be included, from the totality of all people operating the various functions that facilitate the existing fiat system; i.e. their commutes, aggregate expenditures due to needing to operate physical banks, power usage at these physical banks, etc. are all factored into this cal…
This is a bit of crypto-delusion I have never understood: why compare Bitcoin with the financial system as a whole to get out of the "it is mostly powered by coal plants in China"-argument? Does Bitcoin assess credit risks of governments, companies and people and then extend+manage credit? What does Bitcoin offer in regards to risk management/hedging for operating businesses? Maybe Bitcoin has some liquidity manageme…
It's not misleading at all. It's important to consider that a large group of human operators, using a separately large set of semi automated processes, are a large component of the current energy spend of aggregate financial activity - all those busy worker bees are using energy.
Not really interested in doing some super thorough calculation, hopefully this general outline makes a little bit of sense. I'm just asserting that if we are going to criticize one thing's energy spend, you need to actually define what you are measuring and determine a baseline with respect to what the current thing's energy consumption is, ideally as line items and then sources for each input component.
Looking forward to some sources. (If you are referring to the Argentina article, please just identify that as your source). No need to be antagonistic, we're all friends here.
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Care to share your sources? Naturally, a summation of the energy expenditure of all of the related components of the existing fiat system must be included, from the totality of all people operating the various functions that facilitate the existing fiat system; i.e. their commutes, aggregate expenditures due to needing to operate physical banks, power usage at these physical banks, etc. are all factored into this cal…
You make a good point wrt. physical cash (coins and bills) versus electronic currency. I think it's sensible to analyze the two separately. Also, it's important to consider that commercial banks do much more than just keep track of "who owns how much USD". Banks are primarily middle men in the credit markets, and this is not related to establishing people's balance (which is all the Bitcoin network does). If Bitcoin…
The largest single asset within the category is bitcoin + the majority of crypto-assets (in market cap terms, in aggregate) are currently PoW based systems (exception of Eth2 if you're just looking at top 5 but the bridge isn't live yet to my knowledge) so it makes sense to take a step back and really try to understand whether we are measuring the same things across both systems - the terms (in a linguistic sense) need to be defined for any serious discussion/analysis can be undertaken. Basically the Fed Reserve system's budget (some % of their budget) + cost of operating basic banking operations across all banks needs to be part of the calculation, at a minimum. Any other terms (in the equation that represents the relative spend across the two systems) could add greater accuracy, but the record keeping seems like the biggest cost that needs to be factored in to accurately reflect the energy consumption differences between the two systems.
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A good reminder that bitcoin is mined by 51% chinese miners and that it's not that decentralized, obviously.
A reminder that blockchain is public and 51% attacks would be visible.
It's the preferred method of payment for scammers, so visibility means absolutely nothing.
Reminder that 51% were even possible in the past. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GHash.io
Seeing the transactions weren't a solution then and aren't a solution now.
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Bitcoin is neither good nor bad for China. The minors are not making USD for foreign reserves to be honest, they are mostly a way to transfer wealth out of the country (buying equipments and electricity and sell bitcoins abroad or not selling it at all). That's why China has banned its bank to do crypto related transactions and exchanges mostly. However, it is hard to enforce. You can find many exchange use Bank Tran…
This is partially correct. Every time a miner exchanges crypto for RMB (like with Alipay or WeChat), China overall benefits a bit. Because Chinese banks (as you correctly stated) are not allowed to hold crypto and exchanges are illegal, what really happens is the crypto gets exchanged for foreign fiat (like USD) where exchanges are legal, which then gets exchanged for RMB, building up foreign reserves. In the past, a…
Yes, it is illegal for Chinese banks to do transaction for cryptos, but it is still legal to transfer money to others in exchange for crypto (p2p). WeChat, Bank Transfer and AliPay all being available in exchange. Holding crypto is not illegal in China, also mining is not illegal.
I believe there are still a lot shady business going on for those buying cryptos with RMB. It is quite easy for Chinese to buy/sell crypto at the moment.
Actually the same happens in stock market. When Chinese companies go for IPO in the US, they will typically keep the fund in US, rather than bring them back to China to make it easier to do business in dollars without restriction of Chinese financial system.
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Or, we don’t live in a fictional world where infinite growth exists. Useless energy expenditure is useless and objectively bad.
>we don’t live in a fictional world where infinite growth exists. we do. One just need to see the world beyond their own planet. >Useless energy expenditure is useless and objectively bad. your comment cost some energy to be expended. Basically most of computer use by humans is a useless energy expenditure, yet somehow some people single out crypto.
Heat death of the universe would like a world with you. And before you say that it is so damn far we should not care about it, meaningful space travel is similarly so. We should save our own planet because a goddamn apocalyptic Earth after ww3 is still a more livable place then any planet in the Solar system.
Also, is being globally connected to each other with comparatively less energy expenditure bad? How about hosting free educational resources, but even just fun things? It is not comparable to hashing random numbers for proof of work levels of useless.
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I'm not sure. The trouble is you're comparing apples to oranges. On the one hand you have money which, while not essential for civilisation, is generally agreed to be a good thing. On the other you have this thing that absolutely is not money by any stretch. How do you possibly calculate how much value each of these adds to society?
I think that money is essential for civilization. I support what Jeremy Irons said Kevin Spacey in movie Margin Call: “Money is just a made up thing that helps we don’t kill each other for food.”
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This is a bit of crypto-delusion I have never understood: why compare Bitcoin with the financial system as a whole to get out of the "it is mostly powered by coal plants in China"-argument? Does Bitcoin assess credit risks of governments, companies and people and then extend+manage credit? What does Bitcoin offer in regards to risk management/hedging for operating businesses? Maybe Bitcoin has some liquidity manageme…
I worked at Goldman Sachs for 3 years in technology and trading roles so I'm fairly confident that I am largely familiar with how a bulge bracket investment bank as well as how most consumer banking firms operate work. It's not misleading at all. It's important to consider that a large group of human operators, using a separately large set of semi automated processes, are a large component of the current energy spend…
A lot of that is compliance though. Some (or maybe even most, I'm not in the industry) of that doesn't need to exist for the system to function - the banking system would work just fine without suspicious activity reports. I don't think it's an apples to apples comparison as these checks don't and can't exist in cryptocurrency.
That's just scratching the tip of the iceberg, as mentioned above the traditional financial system provides lots of services that cryptocurrencies can't provide or don't provide at any meaningful scale.
> Significantly, the Xinjiang and Sichuan regions of China combined account for more than 50 percent of the overall Bitcoin mining hash rate I don't get it, doesn't this effectively mean China can force a 51% attack by just strongarming the pools that operate there?
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Depending on what's flooded Hydro can actually be the dirtest power out there. There's a hydro plant in brazil that contributes 3 times the number of ghg emissions as it's equivalent coal plant.
That is due to the construction? Just wondering nif there are any hidden runtime emissions you are refering to.