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SolarBatteryBitcoin

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Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#201

Post by chriswarbo »

jude- wrote: post #190
chriswarbo wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only way we'll ever succeed in making PoW green is to make energy production itself green Proof-of-work is an energy sink . Its existence is counter -productive for energy, green or not.

If all energy produced is green, then it doesn't matter anymore how much PoW consumes.

Of course it does. Even green/renewable energy has costs. Solar farms take up a lot of land, which competes with farming, puts pressure on ecosytems, etc. Wind turbines also require land, they make noise, disrupt views and kill birds. Man-made hydro requires flooding large areas; even tapping hydro on to existing lakes creates a flooding risk downstream. Hydro also has severe geopolitical implicications (e.g. Egypt's reaction to Ethiopia damming the Nile).

The first principle of green energy is to reduce consumption as much as possible; renewable generation is a 'fallback' for unavoidable power consumption. It's similar to dealing with waste: recycling is a fallback, a far better solution is to reduce consumption.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#202

Post by MrMan »

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #137
MrMan wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree we already have a system of money and trust. Bitcoin energy demands will scale much more than any other uses of the energy grid going forward, so our entire economy becomes slaved to preserving bitcoin. A dystopia

We do NOT have money and trust today. Every single government ever has debased their currency. Central banks cannot be trusted not to destroy your hard earned savings. A dystopia is being enslaved to the existing economic debt machine, rather than being free to trade the hardest money ever invented by humans. When folks understand this, they run to the fiat exits.

We don't have trust? You should look deeper at every transaction and interaction you undertake, every day

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#203

Post by MrMan »

zepto wrote: post #183
rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and what will they pay the soldiers? Worthless Fiat? Part of the debasement of the roman currency was to pay their armies. When you take that ability away from a state, how do you maintain them without unlimited funding? I don't know if bitcoin will end all wars, but it is far closer to a peaceful coexistence than debt-based economies.

You might manage to cause an upheaval in which who runs the state changes hands, but nothing else will change for the better. You’ll just get a new state which holds Bitcoin and issues debt based on Bitcoin in the form of promissory notes. It’s pretty simple - just require taxes be paid in Bitcoin and use violence against those who don’t pay. Just like with other revolutionary wars, you pay generals with land and sol…

Yes I see bitcoin causing a lot of trouble, if it is successful. And by trouble I mean violence and political upheaval

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#204

Post by MrMan »

adrianN wrote: post #119
nyolfen wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your comment only makes sense if it's interpreted as describing a world where bitcoin conquers the world and there is no other kind of money > Only because we _currently_ lack trust? If so, shouldn't we focus on that instead? my friend, if you can solve the problems of trust in human social systems, you will have solved a lot more than decentralized digital cash

In practice the problem of trust is not a big deal, otherwise nobody would be able to trade anything.

My conjecture is that given two economic zones of roughly equal size, the economy which requires less energy to achieve a unit of productivity will be more competitive.

Right now the game is being framed as honest crypto vs corrupt government legacy weakness, but I think an economy that must devote huge resources to maintaining the security and operational infrastructure of their currency will be at a comparative disadvantage.

The defi stuff appeals to me as enabling composable bottom up tools for interaction but trustlessness I think is a very niche attribute which adds a lot of expense and in many cases doesn't mitigate any risks.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#205

Post by MrMan »

merpnderp wrote: post #140
jillesvangurp wrote: post #79

The premise is that there no more worthier causes than bitcoin beyond the grid needs. That premise is simply false. You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen. These are all applications that can flexibly use clean/cheap power when it is available instead of putting a constant load on the grid. This solution would compet…

But these same arguments could be used against gold. And yet gold serves a valuable purpose in the economy as it allows people to take more investment risks.

If gold went away as a trading instrument no one would notice. It exists, but it is not integral. Much more value is stored in the stock and bond markets and RE

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#206

Post by Hermio »

swensel wrote: post #168
Hermio wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its currently popular because its new and highly volatile and unregulated. Our society is quite busy with corona and while bitcoin uses a lot of energy already, the market size is still very small. Core reasons why i think we don't hear more about regulating bitcoins. Popularity doesn't correlate to real value.

The market cap of Bitcoin is currently larger than Facebook [1]. The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies is over $2 trillion, which is larger than Microsoft, Amazon, Google or silver, and nearing the market cap of Apple. I would not consider that a small market. It is not unregulated. There have been several lawsuits brought on to the space already [2][3]. Exchanges that don't enforce AML/KYC have charges brough…

I reference bitcoin against 'normal' markets like Gold, shares or normal currency.

But its true its value quadrupled in the last 6 month.

I do hope though that the pressure on Bitcoin increases based on co2 consumption alone.

But also all governments and law things are slow. Like if start a lawsuit today, something like this can take years right?

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#207

Post by Hermio »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #141
Hermio wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I brought arguments. It should be easy for you to take part in this discussion by using my arguments and showing they are wrong. I have no clue why you would see my writing as 'deliberately wordy' if you could just counterargue them? I'm also not a native speaker, not sure if my style of writing is just different. "who crafts his arguments not to inform but to waste the time of people engaging him" I'm lost. You make…

Ah well, if English is not your primary language I suppose I could have been a bit harsh. I'll give one example and expand. You wrote: >No country has a benefit of allowing bitcoin. which is absurd to anyone who's heard the first argument in favour of Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency allows reliable recordkeeping of transactions without a bribe-able human in the loop. Therefore, it allows default transparency and reduces corr…

I want to clarify, that i argue against Bitcoin and not against cryptocurrency. I can imagine a world with a Crypto-Euro which doesn't has any gold equivilent anymore and works on some blockchain technology but is controlled / signed through central banks (like every central bank of every european country) which would also solve the energy issue.

Your transparency argument, while flaws have been shown from the other person commenting on it, is too much transparency. No one wants to have all transactions publicly available. It could make sense to use it for public funds.

I argue against Bitcoin itself as an independent tool and the power consumption of bitcoin and i don't think we need to spend that much Energy on Bitcoin right now to do further research on blockchain and crypto currencies.

I have never thought about how to write my arguments shorter as no-one every brought it up. But online also makes it quite hard to have a common ground. I will try to be more aware of this.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#208

Post by Hermio »

jkepler wrote: post #124
Hermio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have not shown a real scenario how bitcoin could work without an energy armes race. The power consumption is NOT arbitrary: Everyone who owns bitcoins has to be motivated to keep bitcoin alive. More people having bitcoin means more people need to make sure that mining is happening. The second point is, bitcoin mining requires a certain amount of distribution to work as intended which leads to: you need a critical…

You stated, "We all LIKE that current system... " Who is the "we all" you speak of? Its certainly not me (I've had far too many frustrating, expensive, time-consuming problems with the legacy banking/financial system), and I have lots of friends and acquaintances who are not at all content with the tyrannical "know your customer" regulations. Banks have been deputized to act as police, and at least in the EU, laws we…

"we all" references here my parents, my siblings and probably all people around me. I don't mean to use like as love, but no one complains about it.

When i talk about crypto, people do prefer to have their money at the bank where they can use it versus in bitcoin where it could just disappear by loosing their wallet.

I have never heard of banks stealing money. Do you have a src for this? I'm aware that there is a bank insurance for your money as long as you are in the EU (around 100.000,- Euros protected by the central bank) but in Germany i never heard of money gotten stolen from banks?

I personally don't have debt and i do think its a good think to be able to get debt when investing it in something like a house. But i can't follow your argument here again, how would that be gone with bitcoin? People would just start borrowing bitcoin, or not?

The big issue still is here: for Bitcoin we produce currently co2 from producing and consuming over 100twh. Bitcoin has a higher energy consumption than googles datacenter. We are now trying to get our co2 output to zero 2050 or so which we have to do. Everthing which produces more co2 adds to the issue. We have to invest in renewable energy without bitcoin and germany did this a few years back. Right now solar energy is the cheapest energy you can produce and on the other side, there is now a power plant in NY which runs 24/7 because it can mine for bitcoins and before that it was not feasable and no one is forcing those people doing this to reinvest their earnings in removing that additional co2 again. They probably consume more as they just spend it

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#209

Post by SergeAx »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #79

The premise is that there no more worthier causes than bitcoin beyond the grid needs. That premise is simply false. You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen. These are all applications that can flexibly use clean/cheap power when it is available instead of putting a constant load on the grid. This solution would compet…

> hoarding it; which is pretty much the only thing you can do with it

You just can't be more wrong than that! With Bitcoin you may buy narcotics, illegal guns, false passports, child pornography, order DDoS attack or even a murder!

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#210

Post by jude- »

chriswarbo wrote: post #201
jude- wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all energy produced is green, then it doesn't matter anymore how much PoW consumes.

Of course it does. Even green/renewable energy has costs. Solar farms take up a lot of land, which competes with farming, puts pressure on ecosytems, etc. Wind turbines also require land, they make noise, disrupt views and kill birds. Man-made hydro requires flooding large areas; even tapping hydro on to existing lakes creates a flooding risk downstream. Hydro also has severe geopolitical implicications (e.g. Egypt's…

Really? I thought the first principle of green energy was to stop polluting. There's no need to reduce consumption unless green energy tech can't meet the demand (and given advances in battery tech, I have no reason to believe it can't)
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